128 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY ; OB, 



ceivers of a laboratory, have been vessels in which some cu- 

 rious chemical process has been carried on. Many of them 

 we find filled with a white semi-translucent or opaque chal- 

 cedony ; many more with a pure green earth, which, where 

 exposed to the bleaching influences of the weather, exhibits 

 a fine verdigris hue, but which in the fresh fracture is gene- 

 rally of an olive green, or of a brownish or reddish colour. 

 I have never yet seen a rock in which this earth was so abun- 

 dant as in the amygdaloid of Scuir More. For yards toge- 

 ther in some places we see it projecting from the surface in 

 round globules, that very much resemble green pease, and 

 that occur as thickly in the inclosing mass as pebbles in an 

 Old Red Sandstone conglomerate. The heliotrope has formed 

 among it in centres, to which the chalcedony seems to have 

 been drawn, as if by molecular attraction. We find a mass, 

 varying from the size of a walnut to that of a man's head, oc- 

 cupying some larger vesicle or crevice of the amygdaloid, and 

 all the smaller vesicles around it, for an inch or two, filled 

 with what we may venture to term satellite heliotropes, some 

 of them as minute as grains of wild mustard, and all of them 

 more or less earthy, generally in proportion to their distance 

 from the first formed heliotrope in the middle. No one can 

 see them in their place in the rock, with the abundant green 

 earth all around, and the chalcedony, in its uncoloured state, 

 filling up so many of the larger cavities, without acquiescing 

 in the conclusion respecting the origin of the gem first sug- 

 gested by Werner, and afterwards adopted and illustrated by 

 M'Culloch. The heliotrope is merely a chalcedony, stained 

 in the forming with an infusion of green earth, as the co- 

 loured waters in the apothecary's window are stained by the 

 infusions, vegetable and mineral, from which they derive their 

 ornamental character. The red inottlings which so heighten 

 the beauty of the stone occur in comparatively few of the 

 specimens of Scuir More. They are minute jasperous forma- 



