Dewn and Cornwll^ Belgium^ the Eifel^ ^'c. 473 
mountains, to Brickeen island (beyond which to the east 
everything must be imaginary), as is indicated in Mr. Grif- 
fith’s plan and sections ; nor does he clearly aver that he has 
seen such himself, his idea of dislocation appearing mainly 
to rest on a seeming unconformity arising from some dif- 
ferences of strike*. The whole question, I think, is simply 
solved by two considerations : 1st, by the inosculation of the 
several strata, whether schistose, conglomerated, or calcare- 
ous, in the line of their strike, while all dip conformably 
south ; 2nd, that where the line of strike has been irregu- 
larly broken through by superficial excavations on the exist- 
ing dry land, as in Dunloe Gap, or by the intervention of 
spaces occupied by water, as in the Lower Lake of Killarney, 
and in Turk Lake, thus separating and removing from obser- 
vation the direct continuity of strata, if we find some difference 
of strike in the opposite dismembered masses, it is not ne- 
cessary to imagine a fault in the case, and to represent the 
distant strata as forming, wLen protracted, abutting angles 
upon such a line of fault, since a simple flexure of the strata 
upon the line of strike explains the whole matter at once. 
And this is quite in accordance with the general observation 
I have made on the older stratified rocks of the south of 
Ireland, as possessing, when viewed on the large scale, an 
east and west strike, yet subject to inflections from that line, 
which are locally of greater or less extentf. The opposite 
shores of Turk Lake, and those of the Lower Lake of Kil- 
larney also, being thus brought into connexion by a simple 
curvature of the strata, remove all difficulty, bearing in mind 
that the constituent strata are not persistently continuous, but 
interlock with each other; and the same may be affirmed 
with respect to the relations in Dunloe Gap. 
But if the supposed fault were even real and not imaginary, 
how would it prove that all the strata north of it belong to 
one aera, and those to the south of it to another, while ana- 
logous strata in the valley of Kenmare are in uninterrupted 
connexion with each other, being there also included in and 
interlocked one with the other, and not persistently continuous 
*■ Lend, and Edinb. Phil. Mag. for March 1840, pp. 163, 166, 171. 
f Geol. Trans., vol. v., second series. Memoir on the South of Ireland, 
§ 7. — It is as if we w^ere to draw a straight line to denote the general east 
and west strike, and then upon this straight line to trace an undulated one, 
the successive curvatures of which rising above and falling below the straioht 
line, would express the local strikes. In such a view it is obvious, that if 
the inflected line be divided into parts, and certain intervening portions be 
removed, that the remaining separate parts may appear to have a different 
strike relatively to each other, although in fact constituting portions of 
the same series, as, for example, in the opposite shores of Turk Lake. 
