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Notes of a Geologist in Ireland during August and September, 1857

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2016

W. S. Symonds*
Affiliation:
Rector of Pendock, President of the Malvern Natural History Field Club
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Extract

As the summer approaches, many of the readers of the Geologist will be preparing for their vacation-rambles; and should any think of visiting our Sister Isle—“Old Erin”—the following notes may be of service.

We started on a bright August morning of last year for the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Dublin, and with the intention of travelling over as much country, breaking as many stones, gathering as many plants, and catching as many salmon as time and circumstances would permit. We were fortunate in our combination of naturalist and sportsman, but as these notes are intended solely for the naturalist, we leave our “salmon struggles” unrecorded—at least in the pages of the Geologist.

We travelled by Conway and Bangor to Holyhead, and as it was blowing a gale of wind when we arrived, we determined to wait until the sea was calmer, and, in the meanwhile, to visit the Cambrian rocks of Anglesea.

We never saw a more instructive example of contortion and twisting of rocks than is displayed at the South Stack Lighthouse, of which a good sketch is given in Sir R. Murchison's “Siluria.” It is indeed a rugged coast; and the terrible Bay of Caernarvon to the south has been the locale of more shipwrecks than any other in the British Isles. We visited the grand quarries of quartzite, worked on a gigantic scale for the great breakwater. Here, as the geologist approaches the quarry from Holyhead, is a greenstone-dyke traversing the quartzite with a singular vein of pink decomposing felspathic rock.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1858

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