Cuchullin Hills in Skye. 93 



polish which the rocks here do not admit of) in greater per- 

 fection than in the valley of Coruisk. 



They are not confined to the entrance of the valley, but 

 extend up to the higher part of it, and to a great height above 

 its level, particularly on the west side, where the faces of 

 these almost vertical cliffs of adamantine hardness are scored 

 horizontally, as potter's clay might be by the pressure of the 

 fingers, or like the moulding of a cornice by the plasterer's 

 tool. 



The sight of these beautiful swelling forms, so unnatural 

 to the rock, so opposed to its common method of weathering, 

 and in such palpable contradiction to the untractable resist- 

 ing character, on which I had wasted many and many a fruit- 

 less blow of the hammer, filled me with a kind of amazement, 

 which the entire absence of any ostensible agent for so great 

 a work, or even any evidence of its action in the accumula- 

 tion of triturated material which these surfaces must have 

 parted with somehow or other, but which is nowhere now to 

 be seen, increased to the highest pitch ; and I owned to my- 

 self, that nothing I had seen in the Alps surprised me so 

 much as this, or seemed to require more the interposition of 

 a peculiar agent. It is very interesting to see how these 

 phenomena struck an acute observer like Dr MacCulloch, at 

 a time when the most probable explanation could hardly have 

 been thought of. Whatever Dr MacCulloch did not see, we 

 know that he saw Coruisk well, as the following very faith- 

 ful description would alone testify, although his mistake of 

 the special forms of Coruisk for the general mode of decom- 

 position of hypersthene rock, shews how little he had seen 

 or observed of any other part of the Cuchullins than those 

 which present this palpable anomaly from their natural cha- 

 racter. 



Speaking of the hypersthene rock, he says, *' It is dis- 

 posed in huge beds with a convex surface, separated from 

 each other, not so much by the actual presence, as by the 

 indication of future fissures. * * * Besides the more 

 extended convex beds, large spheroidal concretions are of 

 frequent occuiTence ; being in some cases so protuberant, 



