An Account of the Caves of Ballybunian; County of Kerry (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1834 edition. Excerpt: ...extremity of this bay a stream of water rushes over a broken cliff in a pleasing cascade, the stream being at times so thin that the winds scatter the waters before they reach the ground, terminating, on a small scale like the Staubach, in a torrent of dust. Bullock has described something similar as occurring in Mexico, where the waters of many of the falls, coming over lofty clifl's, are lost in the foliage; but in the fall formed by the river Malkan at the foot of the Elburos, no current of water is stated to be perceived, the fall being so extremely high that the water drops in isolated masses one after another. The height of this waterfall is 78 feet, and the bed over which the water rushes is a__stratum of quartz rock three feet thick: the same rock. alternating beneath with beds of ampelite. _ Cataracts which take their origin in circumstances connected with the physical features of a country, as in the abrupt termination of a transverse into a longitudinal valley, are also given birth to by causes which are purely geognostic, as in the presence of a rock of a more compact texture or harder materials than the bed of the stream, or the passage of a dyke of basalt, as in the Deers Leap, in the Nerbudda, or of beds of limestone (Niagara, Chute de Gavarnie, &c.); and again by slight changes in the structure of the rock itself, as in mica slate becoming chloritic and compact, as in Powerscourt Waterfall, county Wicklow, or the intercalation of quartzose rocks, (Falls of F yers and Beauly, Inverneshire, ) and similar geognostic circumstances; of which many illustrations might be given. In the present case we have the two circumstances combined, of the termination of a stream over a cliif, and the existence of an...