Identifier: earthitsinhabita481recl (find matches)
Title: The earth and its inhabitants ..
Year: 1881 (1880s)
Authors: Reclus, Elisée, 1830-1905 Ravenstein, Ernest George, 1834-1913 Keane, A. H. (Augustus Henry), 1833-1912
Subjects: Geography
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: MBLWHOI Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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Text Appearing Before Image:
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, i. 1877. Hardman, Journal of the Royal Geological Society of Ireland, iv.
388 THE BRITISH ISLES.
large a scale as in the mouutains bordering upon the Adriatic. Sometimes it happens that the arch which covers one of the corroded hollows or channels givesway, and the chasm thus created may give birth to a lake, or lay open an under-ground river channel. It is thus that Lough Lena feeds both the Dell, a visible at Huent of the Boyne, and an underground channel which communicates with a river flowing into Lough Eee. The great Lough Mask, which fills a rock basin in Connemara, has apparently no outlet, except through an artificial canal connecting it with the still larger Lough Corrib. But on closer examination it has been found that it is drained by an underground river, which reappears in copious springs at Cong. These springs, which immediately give birth to a large river,
Fig. 196.—The Underground Emissary of Lough Mask.
Scale 1 : 145,000.
Text Appearing After Image:
2 Miles.
were formerly held in high veneration, and an abbey was built by their side. Several lakes, similar in all respects to that of Zirknitz, in the Carso, are to be met with in the fissured limestone region of Western Ireland. During summer they retire into underground cavities, and sheep browse upon the herbage which springs up on their bed ; but soon the rainfall causes the hidden water to rise againto the surface, the lake bed is once more filled, and sometimes it even overflows and inundates the country around. One of the turloughs, or winter lakes, of Galway occasionally expands until it is 2 miles wide.* But whilst some lakes, owing to the erosive action of the water, are perpetually
*- William Hughes, Geography of the British Islands.
THE BRITISH ISLE. 389
enlarging their area, others grow smaller, and in the end disappear altogether, although they receive the same amount of rain as before, and have not been drained.Lakes of this kind are sucked up as it were by the vegetati

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