Donegal Climate
The climate was formerly cold and unhealthy, with an incessant humidity of atmosphere; but the drainage of some of the lakes and marshes, and the lowering of the levels and deepening of the beds of several rivers, during late years, have produced a very beneficial change, both as to the health of the inhabitants and the increase of arable land: the soils are very various: the richest are those of the champaign district in the south-east. Near Leitrim county it is deep, coarse, and sometimes incumbered with rushes, but in the vicinity of Ballyshannon it assumes a richer character. The change arises from the subsoil, here limestone, the bed of which extends to the neighbourhood of Donegal, supporting a light, gravelly, brown soil; thence to the mountains of Boylagh and Bannagh the soil gradually deteriorates, having a brown clay and rubbly substratum. From Dunkanealy to Killybegs and to Tellen Head the soil of the cultivable glens is a light gravelly till, resting on variously coloured earths and rocks; while that of the mountain region, with the exception of a few green spots, consists of a thin surface of peat on a substratum of coarse quartz gravel, under which are found variously coloured clays, based for the most part upon granite. The soil of the little dales in Fannet is a brown gravelly mould, or a kind of till based on gravel, soft freestone or clay-slate of various colours: but both here and at Horn head, to the west of Sheep Haven, the drifting sands, impelled by the gales from the Atlantic, have covered much good land. The soil of the arable lands of Ennishowen is mostly similar to that of those last described.
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