380 Scien tific In telUgen ce — Mineralogy . 



Mr Reid, the principal keeper of Barrahead Lighthouse, the as- 

 sistant keeper, and all the inhabitants of the little island, were eye- 

 witnesses of this curious exhibition of the force of the waves ; and 

 Mr Reid also gives the following description of the manner in which 

 they acted upon the stone. 



*' The sea," he says, " when I saw it striking the stone, would 

 wholly immerse or bury it out of sight, and the run extended up to 

 the grass line above it, making a ^perpendicular rise of from 39 to 

 40 feet above the high water level. On the incoming waves striking 

 the stone, we could see this*monstrous mass of upwards of forty tons 

 weight lean landwards, and the back run would uplift it again with 

 a jerk, leaving it with very little water about it, when the next in- 

 coming wave made it recline again. We did not credit the former 

 inhabitants of the island, who remarked that the sea would reach the 

 storehouse which we were building ; and when these stones were said 

 to have been moved it was treated with no credit, and was declared 

 by all the workmen at the lighthouse works to be impossible ; yet 

 the natives affirmed it to be so, and said if we were long here we 

 might yet see it. They seemed to feel a kind of triumph when they 

 called me to see it on the day of this great storm." — Thomas 

 Stevenson^ Civil-Engineer, in Edinburgh Royal Society's Trans- 

 actions, Vol. xvi., Part I. 



MINERALOGY. 



9. Manganocalcite. — This mineral, which is found at Schemnitz, 

 and was considered by Breithaupt as an aragonite, has the following 

 composition, according to an analysis performed in Dr Rammels- 

 berg's laboratory, by Mr Missoudakis : — Carbonate of the protoxide 

 of manganese 77"98 ; carbonate of lime 18-71 ; carbonate of the 

 protoxide of iron 3*31 = 100. Manganocalcite would thus seem to 

 have the same relation to manganese-spar which aragonite has to 

 calcareous- spar. — (Bammehherg'' s Zweites Supplement, p. 88.) 



10. Wohler on a New Locality of Zircon in the Tyrol. — Some 

 time ago a Tyrolese brought various beautiful minerals, obtained from 

 a newly observed repository in the Pfitschgrund at iheRothen wdnden. 

 Among them were some very fine periclines and rutiles ; the latter 

 being sometimes crystallized in prisms 2^ inches in length, and 

 6 lines in thickness, and sometimes in thin transparent fragments of a 

 beautiful red colour. There were also a specimen of brown sphene, 

 and some well -developed colourless crystals, which a careful exami- 

 nation proved to be zircon or hyacinth. The crystals of zircon were 

 two or three lines in thickness, translucent, and remarkable for the 

 lustre of their faces, and the sharpness of their edges — {Proceedings 

 of the Academy of Sciences of Munich in VInstitut, No. 621, 

 p. 413.) 



11. M. A. Damour^s Analysis of White Jade, and •probable 



