Bibliography for 1st Earl.—True Remembrances, written by himself and printed by Birch in his edition of the works of Robert Boyle; Lismore Papers, ed. by A. B. Grosart (10 vols., 1886-1887), 1st series consisting of the diary from 1611 to his death and of autobiographical notes, and 2nd series of correspondence; Life of Lord Cork, by Dorothea Townshend (1904); article in the Dict. of Nat. Biog., with authorities there given; Egerton MSS. 80 (copies of correspondence); Add. MSS., Brit. Mus., 19831-19832 (rebellion in Munster, examination before the Star Chamber, correspondence) and 18023; Strafford’s Letters; Calendars of State Papers, Domestic and Irish, and Carew Papers; E. Lodge’s Irish Peerage, i. 144; E. Budgell’s Memoirs of the Boyles (1737); Ed. Edwards’s Life of Raleigh; Gardiner’s Hist. of England; Charles Smith’s History of Cork (1893); R. Caulfield’s Council Book of Youghal; also the biography in Biographia Britannica, Kippis, vol. ii.
[1] Lords Journals.
[2] Strafford Letters, i. 156.
CORK, a county of Ireland in the province of Munster, bounded S. by the Atlantic Ocean, E. by the counties Waterford and Tipperary, N. by Limerick, and W. by Kerry. It is the largest county in Ireland, having an area of 1,849,686 acres, or about 2890 sq. m. The outline is irregular; the coast is for the most part bold and rocky, and is intersected by the bays of Bantry, Dunmanus, and Roaring Water. The southern part of the coast projects several headlands into the Atlantic, and its south-eastern side is indented by Cork Harbour, and Ballycotton and Youghal Bays. The surface is undulating. It consists of low rounded ridges, with corresponding valleys, running east and west, except in the western portion of the county, which is more mountainous. The principal rivers are the Blackwater, the Lee, and the Bandon, flowing generally eastward from their sources in the high ground of the west. The most elevated part of the county is in the Boggeragh Mountains, in the north-west, which reach an extreme height of 2118 ft. To the south are the Shehy Mountains, at the root of the two promontories flanking Bantry Bay, the Caha Mountains forming the backbone of the northern of these promontories, and the hills of the district of Corbery to the south of the Shehy range. North of the Blackwater the country is comparatively level, being a branch of the great plain which occupies a large part of the centre of Ireland. Of the principal rivers the Blackwater has its source in the county Limerick. The Lee originates in the wild and picturesque Gouganebarra Lough, and the Bandon river rises in the Cullinagh Lough. There are also some smaller streams which flow directly into the sea, the more important of these being in the south-west portion of the county. No lakes of any magnitude occur, the largest being Lough Allua, or Inchigeelagh, an expansion of the river Lee. The scenery of the western parts of the county is bold and rugged. In the central and eastern parts, especially in the valleys, it is green and quiet, and in some spots well wooded.
Geology.—The county presents a remarkable simplicity of geological structure. Its surface is controlled throughout by the “Hercynian” folds, running from the Kerry border eastward to the sea at Youghal. The Old Red Sandstone comes out in the north, forming the heather-clad Ballyhoura Hills, which are repeated across the limestone hollow of Mitchelstown by the western spur of the Knockmealdown Mountains. On the west, beds as high as the Millstone Grit and Coal Measures remain above the limestone, extending from Mallow and Kanturk to the Limerick and Kerry borders. Another synclinal of Carboniferous Limestone runs from Millstreet through Lismore, and the Blackwater has worn out an easy course along it. Then the Old Red Sandstone again rises as an undulating upland through the centre of the county, with a few synclinal patches of Carboniferous Shale and Limestone caught in on its back. Cork city lies on the north slope and in the floor of a larger synclinal, and the Yellow Sandstone, which forms the passage-beds from the Old Red Sandstone to the Carboniferous, appears near the city. This hollow continues across the Lee through Middleton. The limestone in it has become crystalline, veined and brecciated, while a fine red staining, especially at Little Island, adds to its value as a marble. After another anticlinal of Old Red Sandstone, the Carboniferous Slate occupies most of the country southward, with occasional appearances of the basal Coomhola Grits and of the underlying Old Red Sandstone along anticlinals. The soils thus vary from sandy loams, usually on the higher ground, to stiff clays along the limestone hollows.
This country admirably illustrates the system of river-development originally traced out by Prof. J. B. Jukes in 1862, and further explained by Prof. W. M. Davis and others. The folded series, culminating originally in Upper Carboniferous strata, was worn down, perhaps as far back as Permian times, until it possessed a fairly uniform surface. This surface, or “peneplain,” was probably the result of denudation working away the beds almost to sea-level. A subsequent elevation enabled the streams, as in so many cases now recognized, to cut into the surface along the direction of greatest inclination, which here happened to be southward. When the higher strata had been worn away, the rivers and their tributaries worked upon rocks of very various hardness, but with a common strike from east to west. The tributaries, running along the strike, speedily confined themselves to the synclinals of limestone, along which they could erode and dissolve long valleys. The present surface of anticlinal sandstone ridges and synclinal limestone hollows thus began to arise; but the main streams still held on their courses across the strike, that is, from north to south. Here and there a more active tributary worked its way back at its head into the basin of one of the cross-streams, and drew off into its own system the head-waters of this other stream. With this new flood of water the strengthened system still further deepened its original ravine across the strike, while the beheaded cross-stream or streams rapidly dwindled in importance. Ultimately, the tributaries of the surviving river-systems appeared as the most important feature, stretching far west—in the case of county Cork—along the synclinal hollows; while the original cross-ravine remained in the course of each river, a right-angled bend occurring thus in the lower portion of the valleys. Jukes urged that the upper part of the original cross-ravine can be traced above the bend in each case, though the stream now descending along it seems merely a tributary entering parallel with the north-and-south portion of the main stream. Moreover, the tributaries on the north side of the great synclinal valleys may in many cases be the relics of original cross-streams that once flowed directly to the sea until captured by the growth along the synclinal of the tributary of another stream. The Blackwater, rising on Upper Carboniferous beds on the Kerry border, thus falls steeply southward to Rathmore, and then turns eastward along the synclinal valley of limestone from Millstreet to Cappoquin. Here it abruptly turns south, keeping, in fact, to that part of its valley which was first developed. The Lee, rising in the Old Red Sandstone moors of Gouganebarra, runs east, encountering one or two patches of limestone in the floor of the synclinal on its way, mere residues of the rock that once occupied the hollow. Near Cork, the limestone and accompanying shale are better preserved; but the river, instead of continuing along the synclinal through Middleton to Youghal, turns south, and forms the now submerged valley of Cork Harbour. Observations have shown that the coast lay much at its present level in pre-Glacial times, and that Cork Harbour was thus a marine inlet before the ice descended into it. The synclinal valleys of Bantry Bay and Dunmanus Bay were also, in all probability, submerged at this same early epoch.
The county has been famous for its copper-mines, notably at Allihies in the extreme west. The region south-west of Bantry has been mined in several places. Both gold and silver have been found in the copper-ores of this latter area. Barytes has been mined near Bantry, Schull and Clonakilty, and manganese-ore at Glandore. Anthracite has been raised from time to time in the band of Coal Measures south-west of Kanturk. The marble of Little Island near Cork is quarried under the name of “Cork Red,” and the veined pink and grey marble of Middleton is also much esteemed.