If the MINERALOGIST does not find so great a variety of substances to repay his research as he may do in most parts of the sister-island of Great Britain, yet the geologist will discover many leading features upon a large scale that deserve his attention. Hitherto the little notice that has been taken on these two subjects, of the soil of Ireland, both superficial and fossil, has been in regard to agricultural purposes; but from casual discoveries hitherto made, there seems reason to hope that an accurate mineralogical research will be both interesting to science and beneficial in political and domestic economics. So far as general examination has yet gone, and in order to offer some leading hints to the scientific inquirer, it may be observed, that sandy soils, such as are frequent in England, are seldom seen except in maritime situations; but there are many inland beds of a red substance, too soft to be called stone, yet too compact to be called sand, though perfectly reducible to that state by the action of the sun or artificial heat. This however generally, if not always, lies below a thin stratum of soil more congenial to vegetation. Of argillaceous earths, clay is not uncommon, but seldom at the surface, and never so tenacious as in the eastern parts of England. Pipe-clay is also met with; and an indifferent kind of fuller's-earth. Calcareous matter is very frequent, as limestone; but chalk is unknown. Silex is found in limestone quarries; but the flints are generally in nodules. Loam is frequent, and now much attended to as a manure or top dressing. Marble and granite, also specimens of porphyry, exist in many districts; and the marble quarries in Kilkenny and Carlow in particular, will not fail to arrest the attention of the geologist, in consequence of the great deposition of sea-shells and marine exuviæ contained in them. Freestone is also often met with; presenting, when cut in particular directions, the semblance of fir-deal in the position of its strata. There is a geological observation made by the Rev. Mr. Townsend in his Survey of Cork, which deserves the investigation of the geological tourist, and may serve to lead him to valuable facts in the course of his research. That intelligent writer remarks, that in many of the southern districts, the limits of limestone tracts are generally marked by the course of a river; and this he illustrates by the fact that the Blackwater river, in its course from Fermoy to Mill-street, runs at the south side of the limestone; whilst, for the far greater part of the way between Castlemore and Cork, a distance of about eleven miles, the course of the limestone is distinctly marked, first by the river Bride, and after its junction with the Lee, by the latter river. During this space, he states that the limestone invariably adheres to one side of the channel, which it follows in all its windings, without ever crossing it.