308 Geological Soctety :-— 
the Crystalline Rocks of the Highlands.”” By Sir R. I. Murchison, 
V.P.G.S., and A. Geikie, Esq., F.G.S. 
Allusion was, in the first place, made to the early opinions of 
Hutton and Macculloch, who regarded the gneissic and schistose 
rocks of the Highlands as stratified. Mr. Darwin’s views of the na- 
ture of the ‘‘ foliation”’ of gneiss and schist were then referred to ; 
and it was insisted that this condition was not to be found in the 
rocks of the Highlands,—the so-called ‘ foliation’”’ which the late 
Mr. D. Sharpe had described in 1846 as characterizing the crystal- 
line rocks of that country being, according to the authors, really 
mineralized stratification. It was then pointed out that, as Prof. 
Sedgwick had previously insisted on the wide difference between 
‘‘ foliated” or ‘‘ schistose’’ and ‘‘ cleaved” or ‘‘ slaty ” rocks, and as 
Prof. Ramsay had in 1840 recognized interlaminated quartz as being 
parallel to stratification in the Isle of Arran, ‘‘ foliation’’ should be 
regarded as coincident with stratification, and not with cleavage, in 
the Scottish Highlands. 
After some observations on the occurrence of cleavage in slates 
at Dunkeld, Easdale, Ballahulish, and near the Spittal of Glenshee, 
the authors stated their belief that all the ‘‘ foliation” of the ery- 
stalline rocks of the Highlands is nothing more than lamination due 
to the sedimentary origin of deposits, in which the sand, clay, lime, 
mica, &c. have subsequently been more or less altered, and that the 
‘arches of foliation” described by Mr. D. Sharpe (Phil. Trans. 
1852) correspond in a general way with the parallel anticlinal axes 
shown by the authors in a former paper to exist in the Highlands. 
They remarked that the synclinal troughs, however, are not expressed 
in Mr. Sharpe’s figures, and that he has omitted the bands of lime- 
stone which they refer to as an important evidence of the stratifica- 
tion of the district. They also pointed to the acknowledged difficulty 
which the quartzites presented to Mr. Sharpe, but which readily fall 
into the system of undulated strata that they have described. One 
of the quartzites having yielded an Orthoceratite, and pebbles being 
present in one of the schists of Ben Lomond, these facts were ad- 
duced as further evidences of the real stratal condition of the schists 
and quartzites of the Highlands. 
2. ‘On the Rocks of portions of the Highlands of Scotland South 
of the Caledonian Canal, and on their equivalents in the North of 
Ireland.”” By Professor R. Harkness, F.R.S., F.G.S. 
The author, having had an opportunity of examining the geology 
of the North-west of Scotland in the year 1859, and more especially 
the arrangement of rocks described by Sir R. Murchison as “ fun- 
damental gneiss, Cambrian grits, lower quartz-rock, limestones, 
upper quartz-rock, and overlying gneissose flags,” applied the results 
of his observations during last summer to portions of the Highlands 
lying south of the Caledonian Canal, and to the North of Ireland. 
Developed over a large portion of these districts are masses of 
gneissose rock, of varying mineral nature, and sometimes putting on 
the aspect of a simple flaggy rock. Where these gneissose masses 
