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HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



Hypericum Calycinum {St. John's wort). — This 

 plant, though said in Sir James Edward Smith's 

 " English Botany" to be frequently seen ornamenting 

 shady gardens and shrubberies, I do not remember 

 having observed in gardens, since the days of my 

 boyhood, in a damp sunless corner of a rectory in 

 Essex, upwards of sixty years ago, except at Folke- 

 stone, where I saw it growing at the edge of a very 

 small clean running streamlet in the garden of the 

 Pavilion Hotel. Being desirous of obtaining the 

 plant for cultivation in a most shady spot, I applied 

 to Mr. Balchin at his nursery, Cliftonville, when I 

 found he had recently introduced it ; it was then 

 (September i) in full flower. It is admirably adapted 

 for damp spots shut out from the sun's rays, where 

 nothing else will grow, and would be a great 

 ornament under the trees in the Pavilion Gardens at 

 Brighton, and especially in a place called the Level, 

 where has lately been planted ivy, as also the 

 evonymus, which latter shrub, though it will live, 

 will never thrive under the trees as in the open air ; 

 it is a very low evergreen shrub, with very large 

 bright gold coloured flowers. It is noticed in Sir S. E. 

 Smith's " English Botany " as follows : " Few plants 

 flourish so well under drip of trees, but its creeping 

 habit renders it better adapted to the shrubbery than 

 the garden." Flowers from June to October. It needs 

 no other recommendation to those who wish for 

 pretty and cheerful flowers interspersed in shrubberies 

 and among evergreens. The "Treasury of Botany" 

 says this is commonly planted in shrubberies or 

 extensive rookeries, where it is valued not only on 

 account of its handsome flowers, but because it affords 

 excellent shelter for game. — T. B. W., Brighton. 



Spartina stricta. — It may interest lovers of the 

 graminese to know that this grass, which was thought 

 to have disappeared from this neighbourhood, has 

 been again found ; but although now early in 

 September, it has scarcely begun to flower. — F. H. 

 Arnold, Fishlmcrne. 



GEOLOGY. 



The Metamorphic Rocks of Scotland. —Mr. 

 James Thomson, F.G.S., at a recent meeting of the 

 Glasgow Geological Society, exhibited a series of 

 metamorphic rocks from Harris and Loch Maddy, 

 North Uist, and read notes on their stratigraphical 

 aspect, and briefly referred to the opinions of Dr. 

 McCulloch, Sir Roderick Murchison and others who 

 had described the rocks of these islands as belonging 

 to the "Fundamental Gneiss," the oldest series of 

 rocks in Scotland. By some observers these crystalline 

 metamorphic rocks have been regarded as the oldest 

 in the world. Mr. Thomson then described the series 

 in the neighbourhood of Harris in their geological 

 sequence, and referred to some varieties of " granite," 



"granitoid" "gneiss," and to an extensive body of 

 conglomerate he had discovered interstratified with 

 the granite and granitoid gneiss, which consists 

 of fragments and boulders of gneiss, hornblendic 

 gneiss, and granitoid rocks, varying in size from 

 small particles not larger than a small pea, to 

 boulders eight feet in diameter, all more or less 

 different from the rocks that immediately surround 

 the section, and which are embedded in a more or less 

 felspathic matrix, in some places of a dull bluish- 

 gray colour in others of a .creamy colour. He then 

 described the rocks in the neighbourhood of Loch 

 Maddy, North Uist, beginning with those exposed on 

 the shore line near the pier, all of which dip to the 

 north-west. About two hundred yards from the pier 

 he found interstratified with the gneissic rocks of the 

 district a bed of conglomerate two hundred and 

 forty feet thick, extending from the shore inland for 

 fully one mile, it may extend further inland, but the 

 section was lost in the banks of one of the fresh-water 

 lochs which occur so frequently in the North Uist, 

 but his time would not permit him to trace further the 

 conglomerate mass. There is an excellent section 

 exposed opposite the inn door. The matrix is fel- 

 spathic, and is of a dull bluish-gray colour, but in 

 some parts it passes into a somewhat greenish colour. 

 The embedded erratics consist of gneiss, hornblendic 

 gneiss, granitoid gneiss, with some numerous particles 

 of vitreous quartz, varying in size from minute 

 fragments to boulders of considerable dimensions. 

 They did not resemble pebbles and boulders which had 

 been exposed to the action of water upon a coast-line ; 

 some were angular, subangular, or rounded, and had 

 all the appearance of having been transported and 

 dropped into a soft plastic matter. Indeed the section 

 is more like some of the sections of boulder drift of 

 more recent times. It had been suggested that the 

 conglomerate might belong to that series described 

 by Dr. Hicks as Pebidian and Dimetian, but a careful 

 examination of the rocks these erratics are inter- 

 stratified with, led the author to believe that neither 

 the Pebidian nor Dimetian beds are found in the 

 locality. He had seen what he believed to be the 

 Pebidian beds in Loch Carron, and also in Skye, to 

 the south of the Bay of Lucey, near Broadford, where 

 the Cambrian conglomerate is seen reposing upon 

 the Pebidian beds, and which in turn repose upon the 

 Dimetian series. The latter extend to, and are well 

 exposed in the Isle of Ornsay, in the Sound of Sleet, 

 but he had failed to discover rocks of either of the 

 latter series in Harris or Loch Maddy, North Uist. 

 Mr. Thomson referred to the able paper of Mr. James 

 Geikie, F.R.S., and was surprised that no mention 

 was made therein of this section of conglomerate, and 

 more especially as there is one of the best exposed 

 sections opposite the hotel door at Loch Maddy. 

 He then stated that he inferred from the presence of 

 these erratics embedded in the felspathic matrix and 

 interstratified with a series of metamorphic rocks, 



