660 



GEOLOGY. 



Mount Taygetus from the Plains of Sparta. 



LOWER SERIES. Gneiss, with primary limestone, quartz-rock, hornblende slate, &c. 

 Gneiss is the predominant rock, and varies much in all respects ; the others are of local 

 occurrence. Mica-schist alternates with gneiss. No organic remains. The gneiss series 

 occupies nearly all the Hebrides, and very large tracts of the northern and north-western 

 Highlands. 



"We have no important examples of mica-schist in South Britain, but in Scotland it 

 occupies a calculated area of 4150 square miles. In connection with gneiss, most of the 

 considerable mountain ranges on the face of the globe present rocks belonging to these 

 systems, ' uplifted, as Professor Phillips remarks, upon an axis of unstratified granitic 

 masses, so as to be inclined at high angles to the horizon. " The great European basin 

 is defined by irregular elevations of this kind from the frozen sea to the Atlantic ; by 

 the Uralian and Caucasian chains, the ranges of Asia Minor. Greece, South Italy, and 

 the Atlas ; the irregular western border of Spain, Ireland, the north of Scotland, and 

 Scandinavia, is of similar structure. Within this area, the Sierras of Spain, the Pyrenees, 

 the Alps, and many minor mountains, show the extremely wide expansion of these oldest 

 known systems of stratified rocks." 



The primary limestone, mentioned as a subordinate member of both systems, forms 

 irregular beds, indistinctly stratified, or large lenticular masses thinning out, and again 

 increasing. It is composed of calcareous earth in its pure state, is generally white and 

 crystalline, and bears such a striking resemblance to loaf-sugar as to be called saccharine, 

 or chaux carbonatce saccharoid, by the French. The white variety is the statuary 



