95 
with an Invariable Pendulum. 
We cannot avoid regretting, along with Captain Hall, that he 
was obliged to leave the neighbourhood of the Equator without 
making more numerous observations. It would have been highly 
desirable, as he states, to have swung the same pendulum at 
stations, remote from the Galapagos, but resembling them in in- 
sular situation, in size, and in geological character, such as the 
Azores, the Canaries, St Helena, the Isle of France, and various 
stations among the eastern islands of the Indian and Pacific 
Ocean, and we hope still to see this accomplished. 
It is scarcely necessary to remind our readers, how much this 
branch of science owes to the talents of Captain Kater, who in- 
vented the apparatus itself, and first pointed out the methods of 
using it. It has since been employed by Captain Sabine, at 
Melville Island, on the coast of Africa, and on the shores of 
Lapland and Norway ; while it has been used, with equal suc- 
cess, by Mr Goldingham, at Madras, by Sir Thomas Brisbane, 
in New Holland, and by Captain Hall, on the coast of the Pa^ 
cific. Captain Hall has, with much propriety, addressed the ac- 
count of his observations to Captain Kater, and has paid him 
the high compliment of stating, that, after many trials of 
fancied improvements, and simplifications of your methods, both 
in the conduct of the experiment itself, and in the subsequent 
computations, I was finally obliged to acknowledge, in every 
instance, even where I succeeded, that I had, by more labour, or 
by a more circuitous path, reached the same point to which your 
rules would at once have led me.” 
Art. XIII. — Gleanings of Natural History.^ during a Voyage 
along the Coast of Scotland in 1821. By the Rev. John 
Fleming, D. D., F. R. S. E., M. W. S. &c. (Concluded 
from Vol. IX. p. 254.) 
-L HE Isle of Glass or Scalpa, presents to the sea a broken ir- 
regular rocky shore, of no great height or boldness. The sur- 
face of the island possesses but little elevation, though it is un- 
even, and exhibits numerous, narrow, parallel transverse valleys, 
bounded by nearly perpendicular walls of rock. The prevail- 
ing minerals of this island are few in number. Gneiss may be 
considered as the ordinary rock. It is thick slaty, and includes 
numerous contemporaneous portions of hornblende rock, dark 
