20 
the space of six miles present to view sixteen distinct curves ; but in the 
section now brought to your notice the strata exhibit in the cliffs no less 
than nineteen curvatures alternately convex upwards and concave down- 
wards in the space of little more than a mile in extent, so that in that 
limited area the contortions are more numerous and much more acutely 
defined than in the more extended line of Scotch cliffs. 
Along the whole line of coast on the margins of the three rivers, the Suir, 
the ISTore, and the Barrow, whose confluent streams form the fine expanse 
of water known as Waterford Haven, which separates the counties of 
"Wexford, Waterford, and Kilkenny from each other and extends from the 
Hook Point b to the city of Waterford, igneous agency of remote periods is 
very conspicuous. Trap rocks are visible at Herrylock, Duncannon Fort> 
the Neuk, Snow Hill, Newtown Head, Cheek Point, and Cromwell's Eock, 
all of which are situated on or near the shore. 
On the beach of Great Island lenticular-shaped pieces of talcose schist 
studded with minute common garnets are wedged in between the beds of 
grey slates, and appear to have been produced by igneous influence or 
metamorphic action. On the opposite or Kilkenny shore, at Snow Hill, a 
basaltic dyke rises to an elevation of upwards of 150 feet. This mass of 
basalt is locally known as the "White Horse," so named by the boatmen 
on the river from its surface appearing of a dingy white, caused by the 
decomposition of the felspar which enters largely into its composition. The 
dyke has cut through the slate rocks which near the junction have become 
much indurated and studded with cubes of iron pyrites, wdrile the Old Eed 
Sandstone resting on and near the apex of the dyke is more crystalline 
than the beds at some distance from it. 
On " Little Island," near Waterford, portions of the old slates have been 
baked into porcelain, whilst on the opposite or Waterford side of the 
King's Channel they also appear to have been acted on by metamorphic 
influence, and the hard and tough hornblende rock there has evidently 
been in a semi-liquid state and seems as though it had seethed as in a 
cauldron until it became twisted into wreaths and rolls of curious forms. 
At Duncannon Fort the trap rock when in a liquid state has evidently 
welled up from below, and this occurred after the slate beds had been tilted 
and contorted. In the low cliff to the south of the glacis portions of the 
melted trap appear to have run into the concavity formed by a synclinal in 
the slates, and there become consolidated, while on the sands at a short 
distance from the fort a detached fragment of slate rock twenty-four feet 
in length is completely enveloped in the trap, which has also separated 
Rome of the layers and forced itself between them, 
