LIGNITES. 319 



notice ; not only because they are " national" ones, 

 but from their instructive difficulty and singularity : 

 while the geological student may learn a much needed 

 lesson, if, in noting the confidence and ease with which 

 they are now descibed by those who, formerly, could 

 neither see nor understand them, he shall extend his 

 views of morality, and also reflect that the fame built 

 on the labours of others is as perishable as it is little 

 creditable. On the western coast of Scotland, there 

 are the scattered fragments of this series, discoverable, 

 often by the most slender and obscure indications, in 

 different parts of Sky, Rasay, Mull, and some other 

 associated islands, and, on the mainland, in Morven ; 

 finally terminating, southward, in a far remote frag- 

 ment near Campbelltown. To add to the obscurity 

 produced by separation and distance, they are every 

 where, except at the last place, entangled in trap, and 

 often deeply covered by it, so that they can only be 

 traced, in some places, beneath it, by the most slender 

 and limited indications. And in Morven, such is the 

 result of this interference, that minute and far insu- 

 lated beds of coal are found perched on the summits 

 of conical mountains of gneiss, covered by masses of 

 trap; remaining as beacons to indicate what has been 

 removed by posterior causes, to add to this difficulty. 

 The details will be found in my account of the Western 

 Islands ; but the general deduction here required is, 

 that there had once existed on this side of Scotland, 

 an extended deposit of the lias and oolithe series, con- 

 taining coal, and that these have been overwhelmed 

 by trap, and, further, separated as they are now, by 

 other causes on which I need not here again enter. 

 On the east side of the same country, the similar de- 

 posit, skirting the shores of Sutherland, has escaped 

 the interference of trap ; but in all other respects the 



