I894-] 



THE BRITISH NATURALIST. 



185 



denuding action going on for millions of years without appropriating 

 them as a tribute to the worth of a modern animal whose years, accord- 

 ing to a competent authority, are but three score and ten. Whatever the 

 difficulties of travel may have been in the days of the postchaise or the 

 public coach or the car, it is perfectly easy to reach Killarney now, 

 when a few hours suffice to transport you from Lancashire to Kerry. 

 Whatever condition the traveller may have been in during the journey, 

 whether on the alert of observation or in a semi-comatose indifference 

 to whatever occurred, he must wake up at Mallow. There the line to 

 Cork is left and our train descends sharply to the level of the Black- 

 water— a river of fame which as we travel westwards we trace back- 

 wards to its source. We find ourselves in a hilly country, with plenty 

 of rounded eminences, on the sides or summits of which are comfortable- 

 looking residences, such as, nearer home, we see between Penistone and 

 Barnsley — and the resemblance suggests that you are now in a coal 

 district, although on inquiry you may find that it is an Irish coal 

 district and does not pay for the working. On the surface it is as grey 

 as its English congener, with the same inequalities of contour — the 

 meadows as green, the woods and coppices as bright with wild flowers, 

 and the flashing streams as pleasant to the eye and ear. At length you 

 emerge upon a much wider and more open and level valley, with a long 

 wall of rock, rising every three or four miles to eminences more than 

 2,000 feet high, bounding the southern view as far either east or west 

 as the eye can travel, and indeed for the matter of that across the whole 

 breadth of Ireland from sea to sea. The base of ihe valley is composed 

 of gravel heaps coated over with peat, and as it so continues for twenty 

 miles the landscape is somewhat monotonous. The streams that you 

 cross run with sluggish current, and when about half way you reach the 

 watershed, it is not easy of recognition. Approaching Killarney a 

 break of continuity appears in the mountain wall, and through it emerges 

 the river Flisk — the drainage of lands the other side of the range 

 and the rocky sides of the interval exhibit the effects of great pressure 

 in the zig-zag contortions of the strata. As the rail and the river 

 approach nearer to each other one may easily observe that the bed of 

 the latter is cut through the masses of drift that bed th£ valley. 



Proceeding from the railway station at Killarney by the south road 

 towards the mountains, which are about four miles off, we pass through 

 a solemn and deep shaded avenue, from which we emerge to cross the 

 Flisk foaming over its boulder-strewn bed, and then come to a very high 

 and solid wall on the right hand side of the road which effectually screens 

 off the demesnes— or, as we call them, parks — of the resident gentry from 

 the vulgar gaze. 



There are breaks in this as in the great mountain wSflf and two 

 miles from Killarney you come to the lodge of Mr. Herbert of Muckross, 



