THE needle's eye. 
545 
gnostical relations. These strata, as we approach Crif-Fell, 
are succeeded by transition rocks, of which the best section 
I had an opportunity of examining, is in the burn of 
Kirkbean, in which the following arrangement is distinctly 
seen. In the burn immediately above the inn of Kirk- 
bean, the rocks are of a greywacke, more or less inclined 
to sandstone ; these are succeeded by a thick bed of por- 
phyry, and this bed by an alternating series of beds and 
strata, of which the direction is NE. and SW., the dip to 
SE. These extend upwards for above SOO feet to their 
line of junction with the granite and syenite, of which the 
Grif-Fell is principally composed, and consist of slaty syenite 
and compact gneiss, which alternate with beds of coarse 
granular syenite. All above the line of junction just men- 
tioned is granite and syenite. The syenite is sometimes 
slaty, and these slaty varieties resemble coarse granular 
gneiss. Contemporaneous veins of syenite, granite, and fel- 
spar, varying in magnitude from half an inch to two feet 
in width, are met with; and imbedded contemporaneous 
masses of various sizes and forms of syenite, and of greyish- 
black porphyry, coloured with hornblende, make their ap- 
pearance in many places. 
The rocks extending from Kirkbean to the neighbour- 
hood of General Dunlop's, as far as they could be seen, 
were transition. About a mile beyond General Dunlop's, 
the syenite of Crif-Fell crosses the high road which leads to 
Colvend Kirk, and a by-path leads from this point down 
to the alluvial land of the Carse, and to a perforated rock 
named the Needle's Eye^ concerning which some interest- 
ing details are given by Sir James Hall, in the Trans- 
actions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The rock is 
composed of syenite and of slaty felspar, which are 
variously intermixed with each other. The syenite is red, 
