Vol. 52.] BASALT-PLATEAUX OF SOETH-WESTERN EUROPE. 337 



various points that I could satisfy myself that they are really 

 banded lavas. 1 



On a first inspection any one of the great basalt-precipices seems 

 to consist of regularly persistent sheets, which are continued from 

 headland to headland, like strata of sandstone or limestone. I have 

 dwelt on the deceptive nature of this apparent continuity, and have 

 shown that when more closely examined these cliffs contain many 

 proofs that, while the general bedding of the basalts is prolonged 

 with much regularity, individual sheets may be seen to die out or 

 to begin. I have insisted that these cessations do not occur in any 

 general direction, that they furnish no evidence of any great central 

 vents from which the lavas proceeded, but that on the contrary they 

 show the eruptions to have probably taken place from many scattered 

 vents and in every direction. 



My recent journeys have furnished many additional proofs of the 

 truth of this generalization. Closer scrutiny of the western cliffs 

 of Skye last year, and again this summer, has brought to light 

 numerous examples of the gradual or rapid disappearance of lava- 

 beds, now in one direction, now in another. I may especially cite 

 the great headland south of Talisker Bay, which reaches a height of 

 400 feet, and where, in the pile of nearly horizontal sheets, two beds 

 may be seen to die out, one towards the north, the other towards 

 the south. Farther north, in the cliff of the Hoe of Duirinish, 759 

 feet high, a similar structure presents itself. Owing to their greater 

 exposure of bare rock, the sea-walls of the Faroe Islands furnish 

 even more striking examples of discontinuity. On the western side 

 of Sudero, lenticular beds of basalt form a conspicuous feature in the 

 precipices that stretch northward from the highest headland. On 

 Stromo the same structure occurs. Similar features arrest the 

 attention on the precipices of Sando, where, though at first sight 

 the basalts seem to be regular and continuous, a nearer view of 

 them reveals such sections as that shown in fig. 3, p. 338, where a 

 group of sheets rapidly dies out towards the north against a thicker 

 band that thins away in the opposite direction. Farther north we 

 come upon other examples in the range of low cliffs between 

 Kirkebonaes and Thorshaven, and more impressive still in the 

 rugged precipices that face the Atlantic on the western front of Hesto 

 (fig. 4, p. 338), where the disappearance is in a northerly direction. 



But it is in the northern part of the Faroes, where the basalt - 

 plateau has been so deeply trenched by parallel fjords as to be 

 broken up into a group of long, narrow, lofty, and precipitous 

 insular ridges, that the really local and non-persistent character of 



1 It is not necessary to give here a synopsis of the geological literature of the 

 Faroe Islands. I may, however, refer to some recent papers, particularly to 

 one by Prof. James Geikie (Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin. vol. xxx. 1880, p. 217); one 

 by Prof. A. Helland (Dansk. Geografisk Tidskr., 1881) ; R. Breon, ' Notes pour 

 servir a I'Etude de la Geologie de l'Lslande et des lies Faeroe,' 1884 ; and one by 

 Mr. J. Lomas, Proc. Geol. Soc. Liverpool, vol. vii. (1895) p. 292. Various 

 writers have treated of the petrography, particularly A. Osann, Neues Jahrb. 

 1884. vol. i. p. 45. and Breon. Banded lavas are noticed by J. Geikie, op. cit. 



