GREAT GLEN OF SCOTLAND. SOI 
been observed by the visitors of this romantic district, but 
its relations to the neighbouring strata (owing to the natural 
difficulty and extent of time requisite for the investigation 
of the subject) have not yet been properly ascertained. It 
wuld, in fact, require a person resident in the country, 
and well acquainted with its geography, to undertake such 
a labour with any hopes of success. 
The outline of this chain is of a smooth conoidal shape, 
with regular and nearly equally undulating hills, which rise 
to a great height, and are extremely bare, from the thin- 
ness of the soil, and the hardness of the strata. 
The quartz-rock possesses in general a brecciated or 
conglomerated character, and consists of portions of granite, 
gneiss, mica-slate, quartz, and felspar, united either by a 
white or a brownish basis of hard cj^uartz ; they also simply 
adhere or penetrate each other. In some instances, chlorite 
occurs instead of mica-slate ; and it is not at all improbable 
that a minute examination would detect large beds of that 
substance. 
Small specimens are seldom found to illustrate the dis- 
tinguishing characters of this quartz-rock; but in large 
masses, the imbedded portions, both round and angular, 
are easily observed, and are seen to vary from the size of a 
pea to several feet in circumference. This conglomerated 
rock differs from the corresponding member of the red 
sandstone formation, by a fresher and more crystalline ap- 
pearance, by a want of the general dark-red colour, by 
forming mountains of a higher and more broken outline, 
and by not containing any portions of true sandstone. I 
have only farther to remark, that this chain is also con- 
nected with the central ridges tending towards Badenoch ; 
but that, in the direction of Loch Ness, it stops near the 
above mentioned village of Dores, which lies at the south- 
ern extremity of the lake. 
