Mineralogy of Sky^ 7 



sublimity exceeded by no part of Scotland, abounding as it does in 

 the picturesque and romantic, and a more accurate survey of the 

 island shows spots with a fertility and population surpassed by few of 

 the highland districts ; together with a climate nearly as mild, and 

 a temperature as equable as that of the western parts of England. 



The district of Sleat, consisting of decomposed schistus, possesses 

 along its eastern shore a highly fertile tract with an excellent and 

 deep soil, adapted to the growth of all kinds of grain, and display- 

 ing pastures of perennial verdure. Similarly fertile soils are found 

 in the vallies on its western side,, while the central division, formed 

 of syenite or quartz rock, produces the usual covering of those rocks, 

 heath. In Strathaird, nearly the whole peninsula of which con- 

 sists of secondary strata, we find a soil as fertile as we should ex- 

 pect on such a basis and in such a climate ; a soil however owing 

 less to art than to nature, whose bountiful efforts are seldom much 

 assisted by highland industry or knowledge. A great part of the 

 district of Strath lies on a bed of limestone, and appears from its 

 natural grasses and its general aspect to possess all the requisites for 

 culture, or at least for an improved system of pasturage. But it 

 has hitherto been much neglected, and remains an almost useless 

 tract of wasted and scanty herbage encumbered with rocks and 

 stones, undrained, unfenced, and untilled. 



Nature may be said to have denied a soil to the mountain tract 

 which I have before described as forming the centre of the island, 

 and these hills adapted for no other system are imperfectly occupied 

 by sheep, of which from their rocky and sterile nature they can 

 maintain however but a scanty proportion. A few stags yet remain- 

 ing in these almost inaccessible regions divide with them this barren 

 range. The lower pastures are more advantageously occupied by the 



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