streams are short, and except when swollen by rains their volume is
small. The principal lakes are Lough Mask and Lough Corrib, on the
borders of the county with Galway, and Loughs Conn in the east,
Carrowmore in the north-west, Beltra in the west, and Carra adjoining
Lough Mask. These loughs and the smaller loughs, with the streams
generally, afford admirable sport with salmon, sea-trout and brown
trout, and Ballina is a favourite centre.
_Geology._--The wild and barren west of this county, including the
great hills on Achill Island, is formed of "Dalradian" rocks, schists
and quartzites, highly folded and metamorphosed, with intrusions of
granite near Belmullet. At Blacksod Bay the granite has been quarried
as an ornamental stone. Nephin Beg, Nephin and Croagh Patrick are
typical quartzite summits, the last named belonging possibly to a
Silurian horizon but rising from a metamorphosed area on the south
side of Clew Bay. The schists and gneisses of the Ox Mountain axis
also enter the county north of Castlebar. The Muilrea and Ben Gorm
range, bounding the fine fjord of Killary Harbour, is formed of
terraced Silurian rocks, from Bala to Ludlow age. These beds, with
intercalated lavas, form the mountainous west shore of Lough Mask, the
east, like that of Lough Corrib, being formed of low Carboniferous
Limestone ground. Silurian rocks, with Old Red Sandstone over them,
come out at the west end of the Curlew range at Ballaghaderreen. Clew
Bay, with its islets capped by glacial drift, is a submerged part of a
synclinal of Carboniferous strata, and Old Red Sandstone comes out on
the north side of this, from near Achill to Lough Conn. The country
from Lough Conn northward to the sea is a lowland of Carboniferous
Limestone, with L. Carboniferous Sandstone against the Dalradian on
the west.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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