James A. Mahony, The Zoologist (1877)
“ Leaving the shore and going further west, one is struck by the abundance of the royal fern, which, instead of being the nearly extirpated rarity it is in the Clyde Valley, is here a common weed, growing in clumps like a little forest: it is disliked by the farmers, and, along with rushes and mosses, are all to be banished by drainage, "when the times mend." Ferns are not so specifically numerous as in Scotland. ”
James A. Mahony, The Zoologist (1877)
“ The primary and melamorphic rocks form the backbone of the County Donegal. In very local patches, and in small quantities, the more valuable minerals and metals occur. Lead, copper, silver and gold have been found, but so sparingly as would not repay the expense of working. The post-tertiary deposits are everywhere met with, and are often full of interest. The boulder clay is very general over the county, but, unlike its equivalent near Glasgow, it is a loose agglomeration of sand and hunch-backed pebbles and large stones. ”
James A. Mahony, The Zoologist (1877)
“ Bog-iron is to be found wherever the land is bleak and barren, and hundreds of tons of it are shipped annually to England, where it is used instead of lime for the purification of gas. Along the shores of Lough Swilly a light blue clay is found about forty feet above the present sea-level: it contains numerous fragments of shells, and seems to mark the old sea-beach. Bog is the surface deposit on a large portion of the county, and in some places it is as much as twenty feet deep, with trees occurring abundantly in it. ”
