96 Lieut. Baddeley on the geognosy. 
granular and splintery, and its texture fine, less fine than that 
of Iona, but more so than that of Assynt ; its compactness, 
hardness and gravity are greater than those of the marble of 
Carrara, which it in fact resembles in little else than colour. — 
It is apparently well fitted for all the purposes of sculpture 
as it can be wrought in any direction, and has sufficient 
transparency, while at the same time it assumes even a better po- 
lish than is required for statuary. With these good qualities, 
however, is combined an uncertainty arising from its unequal 
hardness. While some parts of the stone are nearly as easy to 
work as that of Carrara, many other specimens turn out so hard 
as to add a charge of near 50 per cent to the cost of working : 
this appears to arise from the influence of the syenitic and trap 
veins which traverse it, as I have before mentioned, but which, 
however, produce no change in its chemical composition, nor 
any other effect than that of induration. This addition of 
price to the current charge of working is sufficient in the har- 
der specimens to counterbalance in a great degree the superior 
cheapness of the material, and the advantages derived from low- 
er freight, duty and insurance. Such are the difficulties which 
oppose the introduction of the most perfect marble which has 
yet been found in Britain, difficulties which, slight as they are, 
ought, together with the prevalence of established habits, and 
of acommercial routine, to check the extravagant hopes which 
have been entertained in this country, of superseding by its 
own produce, the importation of foreign statuary marble. But 
it will not be rendering justice to the marble of Sky if I do not 
add, that it possesses a property not found in that of Carrara 
and one of considerable importance, at least in small sculptures 
This is, that compactness of texture by which it resists the 
bruise which so often takes place in marble, at the point where 
the chisel stops, an effect known to sculptors, by the techni- 
cal 
