246 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
along the northern base of the hills, on which this boulder rests, is 
not more than 100 feet.* 
Over the whole of the Killarney district, the range of the Eeeks, 
Torek mountain, the mountains between Killarney Lakes and Kenmare, 
and between Kenmare and Glengariff, wherever rock surfaces are ex- 
posed freshly or denuded of the Drift, they are more or less rounded 
and polished, and bear the marks of glacial striae. This is very appa- 
rent over the rocky bosses in the Upper Lake district of Killarney, 
at an elevation of about 96 feet above the sea ; and the striae are ob- 
served up the western side of Torek mountain to a height of over 600 
feet, where they appear to have been produced by the impinging of ice- 
masses against this flank of the mountain on their passage from the 
glen of the upper lake to the west, and before they were deflected to 
the northwards through the gorge between Torek mountain and the 
" Eagle's Nest" mountain, into what was comparatively the open sea 
lying to the northward. 
Many rounded and striated rock-surfaces are to be seen at a 
heiglit of 1000 feet above the sea in this district, the striae having a 
general direction of N.W. and S.E., being frequently thin at the end 
pointing to the former, and blunt at that turned to the latter point 
of the compass. If we suppose that the force which produced these 
scratches was exerted from the jM.W. to the S.E,, and its motion to 
have been one of sudden starts or bumps, we should expect that marks 
having the peculiar form of those observed would be the result. 
In such glens and gorges as the Gap of Dunloe, and what is now 
the bed of the Upper Lake at Killarney, the glacial striae are invariably 
parallel to the longest axis of the valley, as we would expect if they 
had been produced by the passage of large masses of ice, or, as in the 
Gap of Dunloe, by the movements of a glacier. In the former there- 
fore the direction of the striae is N. and S., and in the valley of the 
latter E. and W. 
At the lower or northern end of the Gap of Dunloe there is a very 
remarkable deposit of Drift ; it consists of three lunet-shaped 
mounds, formed of local sand, gravel, and boulders, extending across 
the mouth of the glen. The two outer mounds measure fully one 
mile in length from east to west, by about 100 yards in width ; and 
they are all cut through near their centre by the E-iver Loe. As this 
mass of Drift extends for the distance of fully one mile from the ab- 
solute base of the mountains, and the entrance to the Gap, we may 
* See ' Memoirs of the Geological Sui'vey of Ireland,' p. 184. 
