TAB. LXXIX. 



CALX carbonata ; var. petrosa. 

 Variegated Limestone ; or Tirie Marble. 



Class 2. Earths. Order I. Homogeneous. 

 Gen. 3. Lime. Spec. 4. Carbonate of Lime. 

 Var. 3. Amorphous. 



Syn. Common compact limestone. Syst. Mm. Jame- 

 son, 477. 



This beautiful variegated limestone comes from the hill of 

 Belephetrich in Tirie, one of the western islands of Scot- 

 land. It is said to be a primitive limestone, but is not 

 mentioned in Mr. Kirwan's Geological Essays. It has all 

 the common characters of a limestone, with a fine splintery 

 fracture*. It is admired for the white and red, blending 

 and softening into spots, blotches, and undulating striae, 

 more or less interrupted by bright little red stones sticking 

 within it like little garnets f, which are somewhat trans- 

 parent, smooth, irregular, and seem to be quartz (see the 

 lower red- coloured figures): also white transparent calca- 

 reous spar with the common rhomboidal lamellar fracture 

 is occasionally mixed with the stone \ but more especially a 

 light or dark olive green substance, either of an earthy or 



* Primitive limestone is not always white, nor is the grain of it always very 

 perceptibly scaly or lamellar; but approaches, by reason of its minuteness, so 

 nearly to the compact as to pass for such: nay, it is said sometimes to discover 

 2. splintery fracture, but very rarely ; sometimes its texture approaches to the 

 fibrous. Kirwan's Gcol. Ess. 215. 



f Jameson says it contains little garnets : we do not find any in the quantity 

 of some tons which*we have had the opportunity of examining. 



