[GLENCOE AND BREADALBANE. 407 



very fine tract of mingled hill, island, and mountain, 

 the formation here is the mica-schist, and the scene 

 finely represents its characteristic pictures queness. You 

 then enter Glencoe, a porphyritic region, and you at 

 once find the picturesque giving place to the sublime. 

 The forms of the hills are different, every summit is a 

 pyramidal peak, and the vast precipices are barred by 

 imperfectly -formed columns. At the top of the glen you 

 enter a granitic region; there are vast barren plains, 

 and the hills are rounded, not peaked. 



' Where the porphyry ends and the granite begins 

 you see a hill of each, set up in close juxtaposition as if 

 for specimens. You then enter on a dreary gneiss 

 district ; the hills are vast, but truncated mere lower 

 stories of hills ; the valleys, too, are on a large scale, but 

 not picturesque. You then a second time enter a mica- 

 schist district, and all is picturesqueness and beauty. 

 And then you arrive at Loch Lomond, and all is known 

 ground. I know not better illustrations anywhere of 

 the dependence of scenery on geologic formation than 

 are to be found in the line from Fort William to Dum- 

 barton, so interesting on many other accounts, and wish 

 you would take it. 



' I have not yet said anything of London, and yet I 

 passed my week there nearly a week, at least most 

 agreeably. The greater part of two days I devoted to 

 the Museum, but I did not derive such advantage from 

 the study of its fossils as I had expected. They are 

 numerous, but in most cases the arrangement is not 

 good. I had some conversation on the subject with the 

 curator of this department, and found he had enough of 

 geology to discover that I, maugre my "leather clothes," 

 had more. By the way, in the shelves devoted to fossil 

 fish I saw a very considerable number of specimens of 



