554 MULL. GEOLOGY. 



size as well as the beauty of this stone would render it 

 very valuable for architectural uses, were there any de- 

 mand for works of art requiring such materials. Its 

 vicinity to the sea and the facility with which it may be 

 quarried are circumstances equally favourable ; but they 

 are perhaps rendered fruitless by the distance from Lon- 

 don, the great mart of such an article, if any mart existed. 

 There are two varieties of this granite, the one of a pale 

 flesh colour, the other of a high red. It is large grained 

 yet compact, and the mica is black, nor did I any where 

 perceive any hornblende entering into its composition. In 

 some places it slightly affects the magnetic needle; a 

 property on which I have in another place made the 

 only remarks that seem necessary.* 



To the granite succeeds a belt of primary strata, con- 

 terminous with that rock on the western side, and bounded 

 towards the east by an irregular line drawn between two 

 points in the neighbourhood of Bunessan and of Shiha. 

 The extent of these beds is consequently much greater 

 on the southern than on the northern shore of the Ross. 

 They are generally thin, and distinct, appearing to be 

 very regular except where in the immediate vicinity of 

 the granite. That regularity is most apparent on the 

 southern shore, where they are most continuously acces- 

 sible ; and the dip here appears to be westward, although 

 the angle is so high as frequently to approach the per- 

 pendicular. The direction of the elevated edges on both 

 shores appeared to be about south-east.f 



The rock which forms these strata consists apparently 

 of an alternation of quartz rock and micaceous schist 

 in some parts, while in others it puts on the characters 

 of a schistose gneiss. It is unnecessary, after the remarks 



* Geological Transactions, vol. iii. 



f A fault having been detected in the compass after these observations 

 were made, there is reason to suspect that the positions of the strata both 

 here and at Inch Kenneth are not correctly stated. The error, if it 

 exists, cannot now be corrected, but fortunately is not of much importance. 



