278^* Dr. Mac Culloch on the Junction 



logical appearances. It is in the peculiarities of structure — ■ 

 in the approximate parts of the two, indeed, that the chief 

 interest of this place consists. It is impossible to render these 

 thoroughly intelligible without the series of specimens collected 

 from them. An attempt, indeed, has been made to render 

 the facts more clear by means of some slight sketches ; but 

 specimens cannot be drawn, nor mineralogical varieties of 

 character represented, in this manner ; nor, indeed, can any 

 thing but a sight of the parts, in their native place, convey 

 either an idea of their true nature, or the impression of that 

 interest which they are calculated to excite. 



The body of granite exhibits every where throughout its chief 

 face, which extends upwards in some places for 100 feet and 

 more, a solid mass, marked only by the indications of a vertical 

 fracture, or, in some places, by an appearance of a vertical la- 

 minar structure on a large scale, such as is familiar to those who 

 have seen the granite faces in Glen Sannox, and in many other 

 parts of Arran ; those in Mull ; or those about the sources of the 

 Dee, and the other precipices of the Braes of Mar. In some 

 spots, it has even an irregular prismatic appearance ; and all of 

 these are circumstances which it is necessary to point out to 

 those who may visit this spot ; because, where it is most easily 

 accessible, it presents appearances of a very different nature, 

 immediately to be mentioned, and the observer might there- 

 fore overlook, or neglect those parts of more difficult access, 

 where it appears under the unquestionable characters just 

 described. 



Where the mass of this granite approximates to the sand- 

 stone, this laminar or vertical structure first disappears, and it 

 then displays solid masses rounded by the action of the weather, 

 and not satisfactorily distinguishable by the eye from the neigh- 

 bouring sandstones, which have been subjected to the same 

 influences. At length, as it comes close to the sandstone, it 

 begins to resemble a stratified rock; and, at the first view, 

 appears so like the sandstone near it, that the observer begins 

 to question the existence of any granite, and to conclude that 

 the whole is a mass of sandstone, of which the lower bed is 

 occasionally thick, and, like the conglomerates which often 

 attend this sandstone, less distinctly stratified. In one place. 



