
PROFESSOR HEDDLE ON THE MINERALOGY OF SCOTLAND. 307 
of the overlying diallage and diorite. These rocks, there is every reason to 
believe, have, by the action of carbonated waters, been transmuted into beds of 
serpentine and calcite. The beds of serpentine all show themselves in the north 
in the neighbourhood of Portsoy, in Banffshire; they hold a parallel and 
generally a closely united course as far as the head of the Blackwater in the 
same county,* there they appear to separate or trifurcate. One, which continues 
to hug the quartzite, is, according to MaccuLLocu, seen in the Ky Forrest—this 
probably loses itself in the serpentinous marble of Glen Tilt. Another, seen on 
the Kindy, the north-east shoulder of Culbleen, the Coyle, and little Kilrannock, 
is lost among the cliffs of the Canlochan of Glen Isla. While the third, 
associated almost throughout with diorite and true syenite, crosses the Alt 
Dovern at Redford in the Cabrach, skirts the north foot of the Buck, forms 
the hill of Tombreck or Towanrieff, reappears at Knockespock, Chapeltown, 
Premnay, Barra Hill, Beauty, and Belhelvie,—passing five miles north of Aber- 
deen into the German Ocean as the Schiller-spar of the Black Dog Rock. 
Throughout the whole of this extended reach the serpentine is so com- 
monly associated with limestone that, where they do not appear in company, 
they may be said mutually to vouch for the near presence of the other; both, 
more or less included in the gneissose rocks, share the vicissitudes of dip, 
strike, and plication to which the including rock has been subjected ; and these 
limestones offer a marked contrast in almost every respect to the undisturbed 
and comparatively barren bed first mentioned as occurring in the argillaceous 
schist. 
It is in those portions of the limestone beds which are not associated with 
serpentine, but which lie among the most highly plicated, disturbed, and 
fractured strata, that the largest number and the largest amount of mineral 
bodies are found. Doubtless the fact of one stratum having an argillaceous 
and the other a gneissose matrix cannot be without influence ; but the absence 
of minerals in the gneissose beds, when these are either small in quantity or 
unplicated, shows the amount of that influence to be but small. 
The following contrasted columns present these differences to the eye :— 
* The localities where it may be seen are Damhead, with steatite, on the east side of Durnhill ; 
Badenochs, north of Knockhill; Limehillock, over lime, north of Grange; Rothiemay Station ; Drum- 
head, near Ruthven ; the hill of Sockach, south of Glass ; Craig Carnie, near Baldornie ; southward of 
this it forms a serrated ridge to the west of Boghead and Greenloan, till it reaches the larger mass of Craig 
Lui; it appears along with diorite in the east and west bends of the Blackwater ; again assumes the form 
of a ridge till it reaches the Blackwater Lodge; and lastly, forms finely buttressed cliffs and castellated 
pinnacles which overhang the Scores-burn,—the source of the Blackwater. 
VOL. XXVIII. PART II. 4. 
