of Edinburgh, Session 1878 - 79 . 
119 
and reddish, because of the felspar in it. Preparations were being 
made for blasting the boulder. As Captain Stewart was well 
acquainted with this huge block, he had been probably thinking 
of it when he saw the Iona Boulder, and compared it to Coll 
granite. 
4. Macculloch, in his account of the geology of Coll, refers to a 
“ block of augit ” which, he says, he found at a great distance from the 
shore, and which he thought must “ be a transported block,” as he 
had seen no such rock in situ in the island, and he throws out a 
conjecture that it may somehow have come from Rum, of which 
island augit, he says, forms a large portion. This block of augit 
the Convener did not meet with. 
The island of Rum is situated north by east of Coll, and distant 
about twenty miles. 
5. It is somewhat curious that two of these Coll boulders should 
be described in Dr Johnston’s narrative of his tour through the 
Western Highlands, and in Boswell’s Diary. The passages are as 
follows : — 
Johnston says: — “For natural curiosities, I was only shown 
two great masses of stone, which lie loose upon the ground — one on 
the top of the hill, and the other at a small distance from the 
bottom. They certainly were never put into their present position 
by human strength or skill ; and, though an earthquake might have 
broken off the lower stone and rolled it into the valley, no account 
can be given of the other which lies on the hill, unless (which I 
forgot to examine) there be still near it some higher rock from 
which it might have been torn. All nations have traditions that 
their ancestors were giants, and these stones are said to have been 
thrown up and down by a giant and his mistress. ” 
Boswell, in his notes referring to these boulders, says : — “ Coll 
and I passed by a place where there is a very large stone — a vast 
weight for Ajax. The tradition is, that a giant threw such another 
stone at his mistress up to the top of the hill at a small distance, 
and that she, in return, threw this mass down to him — all in sport. 
Mato me petit lasciva puella.” 
Again Boswell writes, 9th October 1784: — “As in our present 
confinement, anything which has even the name of curious was an 
object of attention, I proposed that Coll should show me the great 
