The heterogeneous bomb-like character of the boulders is not so strongly marked as in the Dunluce rock, and this may arise from the closer proximity of the basalt, which, coming here in direct contact, would be likely to heat the clay matrix (itself formed mainly of ice-ground basalt) to incipient fusion, and thereby render it more like the basalt boulders it contains than the other clay that had been less intensely heated on account of greater distance from the lava-flow.
The path leading to the ladder by which the bridge is approached passes over such conglomerate, and further extensions are seen in sections around. I saw sufficient in the course of my hurried visit to indicate the existence of a large area of this particular formation.
At a short distance from Carrick-a-Rede, on the way to Ballycastle, the car passes in sight of considerable deposits of ordinary boulder clay uncovered and unaltered.
The blocks of basalt, etc., embedded in this correspond in general size and shape with the “bombs,” excepting that some of the latter have a laminated, or shaly, character near their surfaces.
I regret my inability to do justice to this subject in consequence of the fact that the above explanation of the origin of this curious formation only suggested itself when hurrying homeward after a somewhat protracted visit to Ireland. As I may not have an opportunity of further investigation for some time to come, I offer the hypothesis in this crude form in order that it may be discussed, and either confirmed or refuted by the geologists of the Ordnance Survey, or others who have better opportunities of observation than I can possibly command.
Should this conglomerate prove to be, as I suppose, a drift deposit altered by a subsequent flow of lava, it will supply exceedingly interesting data for the determination of the chronological relations of the glacial epoch to that period of volcanic activity to which the lavas of the N.E. of Ireland are due. Though it will nowise disturb the general conclusion that the great eruptions that overspread the cretaceous rocks of this region, and supplied the boulders of my supposed metamorphosed drift, occurred during the Miocene period, it will show that this volcanic epoch was of vastly greater duration than is usually supposed; or that there must have been two or more volcanic epochs—pre-glacial, as usually understood, and post-glacial, in order to supply the lava overflowing the drift.
This post-glacial extension of the volcanic period has an especial interest in Ireland, as the “Annals of the Four Masters,” and other records of ancient Irish history and tradition, abound in accounts of physical changes, many of which correspond remarkably with those of recent occurrence in the neighborhood of active and extinct volcanoes.
In a paper read before the Royal Irish Academy, June 23, 1873, and published in its “Proceedings,” Dr. Sigerson has collected some of the best authenticated of these accounts, and compares them with similar phenomena recently observed in Naples, Sicily, South America, Siberia, etc. etc. The “great sobriety of diction, and circumstantial precision of statement,” of names, dates, etc., which characterize these accounts render them well worthy of the sort of comparison with strictly scientific data which Dr. Sigerson has made.
As we now know that man existed in Britain during the inter-glacial, if not the pre-glacial period, and as so violent a volcanic disturbance as that which poured out the lavas of Antrim and the Mourne district could scarcely have subsided suddenly, but was probably followed by ages of declining activity, it is not at all surprising that this period of minor activity should have extended into that of tradition and the earliest of historical records.