714 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 
pointed out tlie elongation of pebbles and fossils due to cleavage in the 
Carboniferous rocks in the county Cork. 
In all coarse fragmentary accumulations, from the Cambrian and 
older conglomerates, up to the drift forming at the present day, it is 
found that fine argillaceous or arenaceous sediment has a tendency to 
curl round any inlying blocks or fragments. If, therefore, in any such 
accumulations there was a subsequent metamorphism, the foliation 
induced by the primary structure would be similarly curled. But of 
course any subsequent shearing would more or less elongate the origi- 
nal curling or spheroidal structure. 
That the statements abo^e abstracted from Dr. Geikie's paper are 
erroneous in connexion with the county Galway will hereafter be 
shown ; but previous to doing so it is expedient to give a resume of 
what we learned in Scotland. 
During our stay in Sutherland we saw some undoubted valuable 
discoveries ; but at the same time we were asked to believe statements 
for which no proofs could be shown. 
"We were asked to believe that the pre-Cambrian schists, called by 
them " Old Boy," were originally massive intrudes of diorite or allied 
rocks; and tliat their present apparent stratification is solely due to 
reconstruction ; that is, attenuation caused by shearing, which tore up 
the masses of igneous rocks, and left the materials in their present 
apparent stratified order. Ko positive proofs in favour of their assertions 
were, however, forthcoming ; on the contrary, all the facts we could 
be shown were calculated to prove that the assertions were wrong. 
In the " Old Boy " there are the masses and courses of hornblende 
rock (Maculloch — but called by them by some new name) said to be the 
untorn-up portions. These, however, graduate into nodular and schis- 
tose varieties, which, as already demonstrated, suggest that this tearing 
up is more imaginary than real ; the masses and their adjuncts having 
similar relations to one another as those of the whinstones and their 
adjuncts of Ordovician age in the counties of Wicklow and "Wexford, 
where the rocks have been subjected to very little alteration from 
either shearing or molecular change. 
These advocates of the origin of their *'01d Boy" would like to 
ignore the facts that in the different areas there are considerable tracts 
that are highly qilartzitic {micaceous or gneissose quartzite) and others 
that are very f elspathic ( felsitite and micaceous felsitite) rocks that by no 
process of shearing, or by no molecular, or by no chemical change, 
could be reconstructed whinstone. These difficulties, however, they 
tried to get over by. saying that, associated with the original masses of 
