increase by long exposure to the air. The quantity exported is fifty tons annually. Some coarse articles are furnished at the quarry, but the principal work is done at the marble-mill, which is on the left bank of the river, nearly two miles from Kilkenny.

INCRUSTATIONS AND PETRIFACTIONS. Incrustations on moss and roots are formed in great quantity, and with rapidity, by a stream which flows through the glen of Ballyragget, in Kilkenny. Calcareous petrifications are occasionally seen dispersed in the county of Kilkenny as pectunculites, echinities, cochlites, and some cornua ammonites; tubiporites, both flatted and round, are not unfrequent, particularly in the barony of Galloway, where they may often be seen in the fields and in the dry stone walls. A very large mass of this kind was taken out of the Barrow near Mount Lofftus, and is now in the cabinet of the Dublin Society. It is two feet in one direction, and a foot and a half in another.

LAKES AND WATERFALLS.

SOME of the Lakes of Ireland are of great extent, and are remarkable for their picturesque scenery, particularly the Lakes of Killarney the Waterfalls are also highly interesting.

LOUGH NEAGH.

This great expanse of water, which may well be styled an Inland Sea, is bounded by five different counties, Armagh on the south, Tyrone on the west, Londonderry on the northwest, Down on a small part of the east, and Antrim on the north and east. It was anciently called Lough Eagh, i. e., the wonderful lake, and by corruption Lough Neagh; about the beginning of the sixteenth century it was generally styled Lough Sidney. It is the largest fresh-water lake in Europe, with the exception of Ladoga and Onega in Muscovy, and of Geneva in Switzerland. Its surface varies very considerably in extent or area, according to the season of the year; the waters overflowing considerable tracts of low grounds in winter, which are perfectly dry in summer. The superficial area has been computed at 100,000 plantation acres, but later measurements have proved this to be inaccurate. Mr. Lendrick reduces its contents to 58,200, and

the Antrim Survey estimates it at 60,361 Irish, or 97,775 English acres. Its depth is not considerable; at the lowest height in summer-time, it is about forty-five or fifty feet, and to this seven feet may be added for the increase in winter; it was once known to have risen seven feet nine inches at Shane's Castle. The overflowings of the lake and indentations of the banks are attributable to the great supply derived from the influx of seven large rivers, and many tributary streams, into the same basin, from which they have no mode of escape, except by the narrow and obstructed channel of the Bann. The waste occasioned by these inundations is very great: around the lake there are about 70,000 acres of bog, and 60,000 acres of profitable land are covered with three feet of water every winter. The Downshire front to this lake has been sometimes overflown to a distance of eight miles from the usual margin of the waters.

This evil of inundation has been progressively creeping on for ages, and eminences which were once peninsulas and promontories, are now detached from the mainland, and converted into islands. Ram island, which is now three miles from the shore, was probably formed in this way, the channel between being very shallow.

The means of remedying this evil has long occupied the attention of the ingenious and sagacious persons who surveyed the surrounding counties; and Mr. Townshend has suggested a plan which appears to be both practicable and efficacious.

The royalties and fisheries of Lough Neagh were granted to the Farl of Donegall, under the name of Lough Sidney or Lough Chichester, and they are held in lease by the Viscounts Massareene, or their representatives. The species of fish which visit periodically are the salmon and eel; there are others which are permanent inhabitants, viz., the bodach or churl, some of which are found to weigh upwards of thirty pounds; its flesh is of a deep red, and has an excellent relish. The pollan, or freshwater herring, called by the English the shad, or mother of herrings, is taken here in great quantities: it is scaled and shaped like a herring, but the back is of a lighter blue, and the head smaller and more pointed: it is found in Lough Erne, in the county of Fermanagh, but not in such abundance, and several have been taken in the rivers Thames and Severn, and it has been asserted that one was caught in the Liffey near Dublin.

There are besides, pike, trout, roach, and bream, in great abundance, and they are easily taken; and finally, the salmo alpinus, or charr, which was formerly supposed peculiarly to inhabit the English lakes, frequents this great lake also.

There are two extraordinary properties of this immense sheet of water, yet untold, viz., its healing and petrifying qualities. The first of these is fabulous; but the petrifying quality of the lake, is attended with circumstances of a more interesting nature, and has continued to puzzle our most sagacious naturalists from the time of Nennius, who wrote of this

fact in the ninth century, to the present -day.

Tradition states, that pieces of holly have been completely transmuted into stone in the space of seven years, by the waters of the lake, while the experiments of the philosopher prove that a lapse of twenty years was insufficient to cause the slightest apparent tendency to petrifaction in pieces of the same timber, similarly disposed. One account asserts, that a holly stake has been driven into the sandy bottom of the lake, so that one portion was buried in the sand, another under water, and the remainder exposed to the atmosphere, and the result was that the lower part was converted into iron, the middle into stone, and the upper part retained its ligneous nature; but this harmless chimera is unworthy of belief. Such an experiment was tried, for the purpose of ascertaining to which of the three elements in question the petrifying quality was attributable, but probably neither the duration of the experimentalist's life, nor the impatience of discovery, permitted the result of a sufficient experiment to be fairly established; and the state of the argument at this day is, that such a property or petrifying quality actually exists in the vicinity of Lough Neagh; but where this virtue resides, whether in the soil, the water, or the exhalations which arise from the lake, is still a matter of controversy amongst the learned.

The strand of the Lough abounds in very beautiful pebbles, much resembling the Scotch, and susceptible of a very high polish; they