Geological Relations of the East of Ireland, 283 
west of Freshford, is comparatively unimportant ; having afforded, 
it is said, only an indifferent culm. 
§ 183. The Killenaule district, like the other portions of the 
Leinster coal tract, forms a low range of hills placed upon, and 
elevated above the floetz limestone. It is about six miles broad in 
the widest part, and eighteen miles in length, extending conti- 
nuously from near Freshford on the north-east to the brow opposite 
to New Park, about five miles south-west of Killenaule ; where a 
limestone flat intervenes, cutting off some detached portions of the 
coal rocks, that extend even to Cashel, about three miles farther. 
This district varies in its elevation, being highest and most abrupt 
toward the north-western side, the hills in general fluctuating in that 
quarter between three hundred and six hundred feet in height above 
the limestone plain ; while toward the south-east the surface gradu- 
ally declines, all the principal streams flowing in that direction. 
The aspect of the surface is various, but it commonly presents round 
backed hills, with intervening hollows. 
§ 184. The limestone border generally follows the foot of the 
hills, but in some cases it rises half way up the brow ; as in the line 
extending on the north-western side from Kilcooly toward Fresh- 
ford ; and in others, it even occupies the summits, forming the 
whole of the exterior hills, as in a range of about three miles in 
length, between Killenaule and New Park on the south-west. 
The limestone and the superincumbent coal beds exhibit a more 
rapid inclination on the north-western side of the district than on 
the south-eastern, as the following observations testify. 
2 n 2 
