Ireland produce a variety of marbles well suited for decorative work. 1 Black Marble. The principal quarries of black marble are those at Kilkenny and Galway. The Kilkenny marble takes a beautiful polish, and when first cut is quite black; but the organic matter to which its blackness is due, gradually passes off, and ultimately white marks of fossil forms present them selves upon its surface. The Galway quarries are situated at Angliliam and Menlough, along the verge of Lough Corrib, and blocks are largely exported. 3 Blocks of twelve to fourteen feet long, and four to five feet wide, and about twelve or thirteen inches in thickness, can be raised. Some large slabs sixteen feet long were raised some years since, and worked in London into landing-steps, and carved balustrades for Hamilton Palace in Scotland. Black marble is also found at Churchtown and Doneraile, Co. Cork ; Carlow; and black and white varieties near Tralee, and in the Islands of Kenmare Biver. 1 Much of my information of the Irish marbles is taken from Kane’s Industrial Resources of Ireland (1844), 231-3, and Wil kinson’s Practical Geology, &c., 1845. Specimens of these marbles, both in the rough and worked states may be seen in the hall and galleries of the Royal College of Science, Dublin. In this city there are extensive marble cutting and polishing works, which will amply repay a visit. 2 Mr. Kinahan gives a full account of these quarries in Expl. Memoir to sheet 105 of the Geological Survey Maps, p. 21.
