of the Counties of Derry and Antrim . „ 199 
Ninth Stratum , ( h ). 
This stratum is forty-four feet thick, that being the exact 
length of the neat pillars composing it ; at its emersion it 
forms the bases of the two conical islands in Portmoon, and is 
no more seen in that bay, but immediately to the northward 
it begins to shew itself in colonnades and groups, some of 
them resembling castles and towers. 
It ascends along the precipice obliquely, like those above 
it, forms the lower range at Bengore and Pleskin, from which 
last it dips to the westward regularly, composes the group at 
Port Nojfer, called the Organs , seen from the causeway, and 
finally at its immersion, or intersection with the plane of the 
sea, it forms the beautiful assemblage of neat pillars, so long 
distinguished by the name of the Giant’s Causeway. 
At these two intersections, each of them accessible by 
land and water, the prisms exactly resemble each other in 
grain, size, and neatness ; the interval between them is full 
two miles, through great part of which this stratum is dis- 
played at different heights ; it culminates between Pleskin and 
Bengore, with its lower edge more than two hundred feet 
above the water. 
We see now what a diminutive portion of our vast basaltic 
mass has, until lately, monopolized the attention of the curious ; 
and even after it was discovered that we had many other, 
and much finer collections of pillars on the same promon- 
tory, it never occurred, to those who were preparing to give 
accounts of them to the public, to examine whether these 
were mere desultory groups, or detached parts of a grand 
and regular whole, which a more comprehensive view of the 
subject would soon have laid open to them, . 
