ofa part of the Saguenay Country. 98 
account of those found in Ireland, neither having seen their pla- 
tes, nor being possessed of any specimens. 
«: That which has been found at Cape Wrath, in-Scotland; 
is of a grain much larger than even the Parian, and is conse- 
quently useless for the purpose of sculpture ; and this indeed 
is by much the most common character of the Scottish speci- 
mens. ‘Those of Blairgowrie, of Glenavon and of Balahulish, 
are all equally characterized by this large sparry texture, and 
are all equally unfit for sculpture, however applicable to the 
purposes of architecture. The marble of Iona has been long 
since exhausted, and consequently requires no particular no- 
tice : however, valuable from the purity of its colour and 
compactness of its texture, yet the uncertainty of its splintery 
fracture before the chisel, (that tool without which no spirited 
work was ever finished) combined with its great hardness, 
would probably have rendered it useless in the arts even if it 
were still to be procured. 
** Ina paper on Assynt, I have already described the white 
marble of that district ; it is of a very close texture, and al. 
though it contains no earth but lime, is of unusual specific 
gravity and harduess. It is incapable of being polished, a cir- 
cumstance, it is true, of no cousequence in Statuary, since the 
polish only gives a false light to the surface, and is not admit- 
ted of in modern sculpture ; but it labours under the concomi- 
tant disadvantage of want of transparency, producing nearly the 
same dead effect and dry outline as is seen in a plaster cast, a 
fault in itself sufficient to prevent it from ever being adopted 
asa good material in the arts : its extreme hardness also renders 
it very expensive to work. 
“ The marble of Sky, the more immediate object of this 
discussion, is of a pure white colour, and appears sufficiently 
extensive and continuous to be capable of fielding large blocks, 
The purity of its colour is seldom contaminated, its fracture is 
gra- 
