B Dr. Mac Culloch's Sketch of tht 



well known and celebrated breed of black cattle which forms the 

 staple produce of Sky. 



The stony district about the Kyle ric'h produces like the CuchuUia 

 hills but a scanty covering of heath and grass, and is perhaps among 

 the most unproductive of the island, since the decomposed quartz 

 rock of which it consists, yields a soil even worse than the syenite 

 of the Red hills, or the rocks of the Cuchullin group ; yet on \hs. 

 sea shores a few fertile spots are found in cultivation. 



The great northern division consists of one entire mass of trap, 

 with the exception of a few narrow lines of limestone and sand- 

 stone to be found on some of the shores. In various parts of this 

 tract there are to be seen districts of considerable fertility, admitting, 

 under the highland system of cultivation, a perpetual rotation of 

 corn, with no alternation of green crops or fallow except the occa- 

 sional one of potatoes j the hay as is usual under the same system 

 of farming being collected from wet meadows and waste patches of 

 land. The most considerable of these corn districts is in Trotter- 

 nish, which for many miles displays an extent of cultivation ex- 

 ceeded by few highland tracts, and is emphatically called the granary 

 of Sky. The aspect of loch Uig under the new crofting system is 

 in this respect highly interesting. In various parts of the sea shore 

 about loch Snizort and loch Follart, as well as in the vicinity of 

 loch Bracadale, similar fertile tracts occur, and the little retired 

 valley of Talisker might in a drier climate compare in fertility with 

 the most chosen spots of our own southern counties. 



Since chemistry has lately, although perhaps hitherto with little 

 success, lent its speculative aids to the improvement of agriculture, 

 it will not be foreign to the views of the geologist to examine how 

 far his science also may bear upon this first and fundamental of all 



