CHAr. XXXIII 
HISTORY OF INVESTIGATION 
109 
As a consequence of their greater freshness and wider extent, and largely 
also because of the way in which they have been exposed along many leagues 
of picturesque sea-cliffs in the North of Ireland and the West of Scotland, 
they attracted attention at an earlier time than the less obvious volcanic 
memorials of older ages. The gradual development of opinion regarding the 
nature and history of volcanic rocks is thus in no small measure bound up 
with the progress of observation and inference in regard to the Tertiary 
volcanic series. I shall therefore begin this narrative by offering a rapid 
sketch of the history of inquiry respecting the Tertiary volcanic areas of 
the British Isles. 
The basaltic cliffs of Antrim and the Inner Hebrides had attracted the 
notice of passing travellers, and their striking scenery had become more or 
less familiar to the reading public, before any attention was paid to their 
remarkable geological structure and history. In particular, the wonders of 
the Giants Causeway and the Antrim coast had already begun to draw 
pilgrims, even from distant countries, at a time when geology had not 
come into existence. The scientific tourist of those days who might care to 
look at rocks was, in most cases, a mineralogist, for whom their structural 
relations and origin were subjects that lay outside of the range of his know- 
ledge or habits of thought. In the year 1772 Sir Joseph Banks, together 
with Solander and a party, visited Staffa and brought back the earliest 
account of the marvels of that isle as they appeared to the sober eyes of 
science. His narrative was communicated to Pennant, together with a 
number of drawings of the cliffs and of Fingal’s Cave. These were inserted 
by that geographer in his Second Tour, published in 1774, and from their 
careful measurements of the basaltic pillars and their delineation of the 
basaltic structure, are of special interest in the history of volcanic geology. 
An intelligent appreciation of some of the geological interest of the 
region is to be found in the writings of Whitehurst, 1 who gave a good 
account of the basalt-cliff's of Antrim, and regarded the basaltic rocks as the 
results of successive outflows of lava from some centre now submerged 
beneath the Atlantic. More important are the observations contained in 
two letters of Abraham Mills.' 2 3 This writer had been struck with the dykes 
on the north coast of Ireland, and was led to examine also those in some of 
the nearer Scottish islands. He believed them to be of truly volcanic or min 
and spoke of them as veins of lava. A few years later, Faujas St. Fond 
made his well-known pilgrimage to the Western Isles. Familiar with the 
volcanic rocks of Central France, he at once recognized the volcanic origin 
of the basalts of Mull, Staffa and the adjoining islands. 8 His account of 
the journey, published in Paris in 1797, may be taken as the beginning of 
the voluminous geological literature which has since gathered round the 
subject. Three years afterwards (1800) appeared Jameson’s Outline of the 
Mineralogy of the Scottish Isles. Fresh from the teaching of Werner at 
1 Inquiry into the Original Slate and Formation of the Earth, 2nd edit. 1786. 
2 Philosophical Transactions for 1790. 
3 Voyage en Angleterre, en heusse et aux lies Hdlrides. Paris, 1797. 
