Mineralogy of Sky. 97 



Among other matters I have reserved for this division of the 

 present paper, the very little information which I was able to 

 procure respecting the coal of Sky. Appearances of it are to be 

 seen in several places in the trap, as I have already cursorily 

 noticed, and among the rest a solitary mass of some thickness is 

 found near Talisker, but in a part of the cliff nearly inaccessible. 

 It is here as in most similar cases mixed with bituminous wood. 

 Coal has also been found at Portree, and some fruitless and 

 expensive attempts have been made to work it. Thin edges 

 of seams of coal may also be observed in different places in 

 the parish of Kilmuir, together with the carbonaceous rubbish 

 which so generally indicates their presence. Under the direction 

 of Lord Macdonald some borings and examinations have been 

 made by coal surveyors, but, for reasons of too frequent occur- 

 rence among the itinerant professors of this branch of surveying, 

 I found that no dependence could be placed on their reports, 

 nor did my time permit me to institute such an examination as 

 would have been required to ascertain the true state of things. 

 The anxiety of the inhabitants and of the proprietors of the 

 western islands in general for the discovery of this mineral is such 

 that they are readily misled into the search, and coal mines have 

 even been pointed out to me in micaceous schist. Nevertheless it 

 is not unlikely that the district of Kilmuir may contain coal, since 

 the sandstone and accompanying strata which I have already 

 described are such as we should expect to find it conjoined with, 

 and since in the island of Egg similar strata are actually accom- 

 panied by very minute laminse of that mineral. But there is no 

 great probability that this coal, even if it were proved to belong to 

 these strata and not to the accidental fragments dispersed in the 

 trap, like the one at Talisker, could be worked as a matter of 



Vql. III. N 



