lC-04.] 



THE BRITISH NATURALIST. 



Of all that is most beauteous imaged there 



In happier beauty, more pellucid streams, 

 An ample ether, a diviner air, 



And fields invested with purpureal gleams. 



The Irish elysium is brief. Perhaps an hour or perhaps two may pass, 

 and then the vision fades into the light of common day. You still see 

 the same objects, but under such changed conditions that you feel as 

 though you had emerged from a dreamy state of only partial conscious- 

 ness in which your imagination had run away with your power of 

 accurate appreciation of fact. 



There are many similar points of vantage to that of the Muckross 

 Lodge, such as for instance Lord Kenmare's new house, or the church- 

 yard of Aghadoe, and, singularly enough, you will look in vain through 

 any of the local collections of photographs for any sun-record of these 

 landscapes. I pass on to inquire how the framework of the scenery 

 has been fashioned into the shape which to us seems beautiful. We 

 have ruins here of such age and remains of such vast pristine 

 greatness that it will take all our powers of conception to form an idea 

 of them. I mentioned purposely the ruined tower on the promontory 

 as a conspicuous object that gave interest to the scene. A ruin of the 

 respectable age of 230 years at once enlists human sympathy. As we 

 gaze on still older remains and trace backwards the life of man in the 

 dim past, by the help that such illustrations as Norman or Grecian or 

 Egyptian ruins afford, we cannot escape a feeling of awe at the huge 

 interval that separates us from our predecessors. Yet what ephemeral 

 erections must their buildings of fort or temple or tomb have been in 

 comparison with the geological structures, the relics of which now 

 confront us. That mountainous wall of rock, by the side of which we 

 have travelled from the east, and which is itself but a remnant of 

 mighty masses that have come into existence and have served their 

 purpose and again have been disintegrated and for ever have 

 disappeared from that form, is but a thing of yesterday compared with 

 those Dingle hills on the western horizon which contain fossils that 

 allocate them without any possibility of doubt to the Silurian system. 

 Our juvenile hills — Mangerton, Tore, the Tomies, and the Reeks, 

 &c, which here rise to the height of 3,400ft., the greatest in Ireland, 

 not much lower than Snowdon, and which claim a probable duration 

 of millions of years — belong to the Old Red Sandstone series. Their 

 place in geological eras is assigned to the Devonian, but there are 

 sceptics in this as in most other things, and Professor Hull would have 

 us believe that they ought to be classified as Upper Silurian. This is 

 a nicety for professional geologists to decide, and to them we will leave 

 it. The Government surveyors estimate the total thickness of this 

 series of strata in Kerry at 10,000ft. There are three or four different 



