Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/292

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272
DRIFT AND BOULDERS IN IRELAND.
CHAP. XIV.

rein-deer, horse, &c., were found in a cave;[1] another in the centre of the island near Belturbet, in the county of Cavan.

Perhaps the conversion into land of the bed of the glacial sea, and the immigration into the newly upheaved region of the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, which coexisted with the fabricators of the St. Acheul flint hatchets, were events which preceded in time the elevation of the Irish drift, and the union of that island with England. Ireland may have continued for a longer time in the state of an archipelago, and was therefore for a much shorter time inhabited by the large extinct post-pliocene pachyderms.

In one of the reports of the geological survey of Ireland, published in 1859, Professor Jukes, in explanation of sheet 184 of the maps, alludes to beds of sand and gravel, and signs of the polishing and furrowing of the rocks in the counties of Kerry and Killarney, as high as 2,500 feet above the sea, and supposes (perhaps with good reason) that the land was depressed even to that extent. He observes that above that elevation (2,500 feet) the rocks are rough, and not smoothed, as if by ice. Some of the drift was traced as high as 1,500 feet, the highest hills there exceeding 3,400 feet. Mr. Jukes, however, is by no means inclined to insist on submergence to the extent of 2,500 feet, as he is aware that ice, like that now prevailing in Greenland, might explain most, if not all, the appearances of glaciation in the highest regions.

Although the course taken by the Irish erratics in general is such that their transportation seems to have been due to floating ice or coast-ice, yet some granite blocks have travelled from south to north, as recorded by Sir R. Griffiths, namely, those of the Ox Mountains in Sligo; a fact from which Mr. Jamieson infers that those mountains formed at one time a centre of dispersion. In the same part of Ireland,

  1. E. Brenan and Dr. Carte, Dublin, 1859.