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a task which, as far as we can judge from his present performance, he is likely to execute satisfactorily. The chief fault of his composition, particularly in the passages relative to the history and character of Ali Pacha, consists in a redundancy and want of condensation which are natural to a mind that is unaccustomed to writing, and impressed with the notion that a multiplicity of words is necessary to convey an idea in all its force. His map of Greece is one of the best and most comprehensive that we have happened to see: but, as it is not sufficiently minute, with regard to the northern part, for tracing all the military operations of the Romans, the reader is referred to the map of the dominions of Ali Pacha lately published by Cary, in the Strand.

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The translation is so defective that we should not, in critical justice, be authorized to pass it over without animadversion. What is a classical scholar to think of an account of Mycene disfigured with such name as Orestus and Thyestus; or what will the plain English reader say to such phrases as rivality for rivalship; a governmental system;' the most principal fault;' or of a harbour that is at all times by no means secure'? It is in the same spirit that the translator talks (p. 169.) of the Locrians Ozoles, (for Locri Ozola,) of the Epirus, of an animosity propagating' among families, and of that most singular of all countenances which is said (p. 263.) to wear the impression of frankness and honesty, and particularly of a profound wheedler.'

ART. II. Transactions of the November 13. 1807. Vol. III. pp. 450. 31. 13s. 6d. Boards.

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Geological Society, established
With Plates and Maps. 4to.
W. Phillips. 1816.

wo considerations forcibly recommend the proceedings of this learned body to our favourable notice; namely, their general tendency to promote the discovery and diffusion of truth rather than the maintenance or promulgation of preconceived theory, and their pointed reference to the geological appearances and mineralogical resources of our own country. In neither of these important respects will the present volume be found to fall short of its precursors. Of the fifteen articles which it contains, the first is intitled,

Sketch of the Mineralogy of Sky, by John Mac Culloch, M.D. F.L.S., President of the Geological Society, and Lecturer on Chemistry at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich.-Though this essay extends through a hundred and eleven pages, and is never busied with irrelevant matters, it by no means exhausts the subject. The President's short stay on

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the island, the wet and stormy weather which he seems to have encountered, the want of an accurate map of the surface which he explored, the deep indentations of the sea, which so abruptly break the continuity of strata, the nearly impassible state of some districts, and the inaccessible nature of others, conspired to abridge, impede, or arrest his observations, to the frequent and mutual regret of himself and his readers. Having stated the discouraging circumstances under which Dr. Mac Culloch prosecuted his researches, we may be allowed to express our surprise that he performed his task, incomplete as it unavoidably is in some particulars, with so much distinctness and ability. His highly interesting report, though not formally divided into parts, exhibits, in the first place, a general view of the island; secondly, its geological physiog nomy, or the constitution and arrangement of its rocks; and, thirdly, a description of the most remarkable mineral substances which attracted his attention.

When a stranger first approaches the Isle of Mist,' he perceives little else than tracts of dreary moor, bare and rugged rocks, a stormy sea, and almost incessant rains. A closer inspection, however, reveals scenes both of grandeur and beauty, and several spots marked by their comparative fertility and population. An area of nearly twenty square miles is occupied by the lofty Cuchullin, and the protracted ridge of Blaven, which form the principal mountain groupe; of which the dark sterility of its masses, and the rugged and spiry forms of its outline, singularly contrast with the tame and rounded contour of another large groupe, which the author calls the Red Hills. The inferior ranges, and the portions of alluvial soil, are comparatively inconsiderable. Of the towering and precipitous cliffs on the western coast of the island, it is remarked that most of them are too square and monotonous to afford fit subjects for the pencil; and even the detached pyramidal masses are rather singular than picturesque.

Though we cannot afford to keep close company with the intrepid President in the details of his peregrinations, we would not willingly withhold from our readers the following impressive paragraph:

Loch Scavig is an inlet of the sea about a mile in depth, formed by the Cuchullin hills, which rise with all their spiry and naked crags high towering above it. At the bottom of this bay they descend suddenly into the sea, brown and bare, with scarcely a spot of verdure to enliven their dark sides, the only semblance of life [which] they possess consisting in the motion of the few cascades which foam down their rugged declivities. Points of detached rocks, projecting into the sea from their base, produce foregrounds

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foregrounds for the use of the artist, and relieve that intense depth of shadow which seems ever to reign where the sun-beams can scarcely find access. But even the grandeur, the silence and desolation of this place are forgotten, when in a moment, on turning the angle of a huge rock, the spectator enters on a scene which suspends the recollection of all which had fascinated him before. He finds himself in a lone valley surrounded by a wall of dark and naked rock, of which the rugged summits are lost in the clouds, intercepting the light of day, and casting a twilight gloom over the seat of eternal repose. If ever a sound disturbs this repose, it is that of the wind which whistles against the rocks, or of the cascade which rushes down their sides; if ever vestige of life is seen, it is the lone sea-gull dipping its wing in the black still waters of Coruisk.* The valley once closed behind the spectator, he sees no more its egress, and calls to mind the tales of eastern fiction, where the victim of magic is for ever immured in some profound chasm of the mountains of Caucasus. The lake Coruisk is rather more than two miles in length, being fed by a powerful stream at its upper end, and discharging itself into the sea by a wide and rocky channel, a favourite resort of salmon. Its shores are every where covered with huge fragments of rock detached from the mountains above, and it contains two or three small islands which diversify in some measure the darkness of its surface. The nakedness of the rocks is not poetical. On the declivity of the mountain Garsven in particular, they rise from the base to the very summit, a height of at least 3000 feet, in huge smooth sheets at a very high angle, perfectly bare and of a dark iron brown colour, not chequered even by the growth of a single lichen or by one foreign tint to enliven the uniform gloom of the surface. This rock seems indeed absolutely inimical to vegetation, nor does it appear to undergo the slightest decomposition, or to admit of the formation of soil, the detached fragments showing as little tendency to waste as the mountain itself. Had the globe of the earth been entirely formed of this rock, it would still have been lifeless and void. It was among these fragments that I observed a rocking stone of considerable size and easily moved, having to all appearance fallen on such an edge as to allow of the conditions required for producing this effect.'

After having adverted to the numerous caves which have been observed to occur in the secondary strata, Dr. Mac Culloch proceeds thus:

Another has recently become the cause of great resort to Sky on account of its stalactitic concretions, and it is popularly distinguished by the name of the Spar Cave: it lies on the estate of Mr. Macalister, and is too well known to require any more accurate description of its locality. This cave is accessible from the cliffs above, for a short time only at low water, but by means of a boat it may be visited at any time in moderate weather, or with the wind off the shore. The entrance is little less striking

* Coruisk, the water of the mountain-hollow, not Coriskin.

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than the cave itself, and to the admirer of the picturesque it pre sents a scene even more attractive. It is formed by a fissure in the cliff, extending for a considerable way, and rising into high and parallel walls on each side, its gloom being partially illuminated by reflected light, and its silence scarcely disturbed by the wash of the surf without. A narrow and obstructed opening leads unexpectedly into the cave: hence for a distance of about an hundred feet all is dark, wet, and dreary, till we arrive at a steep acclivity formed of a white stalagmite. Surmounting this with some difficulty, the whole interior and ornamental part of the cave comes into view, covered with stalactites disposed in all the grotesque forms which these incrustations so commonly assume. Lively imaginations may here indulge in the discovery of fanciful resemblances, and the concretions have accordingly received names more descriptive of the fancies of the spectators than of their real forms. The dimensions of the fissure are in this place but inconsiderable, the breadth not being more than ten feet, and the height scarcely exceeding twelve: it is not long however before the height suddenly increases to forty feet or more, and a declivity of perhaps thirty feet in length, from the surface of the stalagmitical and cascade-like mount which forms the division between the sparry and the dark part of the fissure, conducts to a pool of water occupying a space of twelve or fifteen feet in length, dividing the cave into an outer and inner portion. The dimensions are here somewhat enlarged, and the height in particular is much more considerable. At a distance of about fifteen or twenty feet more from this pool of water, the stalactitical ornaments cease, and shortly after the cave terminates, the whole length from the entrance to the end being about two hundred and fifty feet. However beautiful the interior of the cave, from the white colour and ornamental effects of the stalactites which incrust it, the want of sufficient dimensions materially lessens the interest, which in all other respects it is calculated to excite. At the termination of the stalactitical ornaments, there is a dark descent for a few yards, filled with rubbish, the ruins of the roof above, which being here naked as well as accessible, is plainly seen to be one of the trap veins. This vein is here about ten feet wide, which is the general breadth of the cave itself, and it is easy to see how by the wearing out of that vein the excavation has been formed, having subsequently acquired its present degrees of ornament by the infiltration of carbonat of lime in solution.'

In his account of the rocks which predominate in the composition of this island, the author commences with that of mica-slate; which occupies the district of Sleat, stretching from that promontory to an irregular line between Lochs Eishort and Oransa; which offers no peculiarity of structure or aspect; and which is frequently observed passing into the argillaceous, talcose, or chloritic modifications of slate. The quartz-rock, which, in geographical position, follows the micaslate, and of which the main body occupies two hills situated

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above Ord, is extremely compact, highly crystalline, weatherbeaten to a snowy whiteness, and in some instances varnished with a siliceous mamel. At Ord, a considerable portion of it obviously rests on the beds of red sand-stone. In immediate contact with the white quartz-rock, is a compound series of beds, consisting of dark-blue quartz, interlaminated with thin layers of clay-slate. Rocks of this description form the high mountains above the Kyle r'ich: but the author had it not in his power to trace their connections and bearings throughout. The next rock in succession is the red sand-stone, between which and the blue quartz-rock a gradual transition may sometimes be observed. The beds of this red sand-stone, which succeed one another with much regularity, form a collective mass of great thickness, being, in some places, little less than a thousand feet; and they constitute a considerable part of the hills which rise on the north side of Loch Eishort, &c. The mineralogical character of this red sand-stone is very uniform, being of a moderately fine grain, of various degrees of hardness, and presenting most of the modifications and accidents of the old red sand-stone of the Wernerians, with which Dr. Mac Culloch has identified it. In one of its repositories, it is inter-stratified with a schistose matter; which sometimes assumes the character of fine clay-slate, and sometimes that of fine greywacke-slate, thus deranging the table of precedence propounded by the school of Freyberg. The Doctor deems it not improbable that the red sand-stone, which appears in various places on the western coast of Scotland, (extending, perhaps, to the eastern side of the island, and finally to Orkney,) may belong to the same series of beds. The next bed in order is lime-stone, of variable thickness, though in some places of several hundreds of feet; frequently stratified, and containing shells, but frequently also bearing every mark, except that of geological position, of such primitive lime-stones as occur in mountains of granite, gneiss, &c.: a most important fact, and which at first nearly bewildered the speculations of this acute geologist. Other stratiform lime-stones and sand-stones are specified, and their characters and relative positions at least partially ascertained. From the conformable order of the beds of blue quartz-rock, slate, and red sand-stone, and the same conformity for the whole way upwards, the corollary is deduced that those rules, which would define the secondary rocks by their want of conformity to the primary, either have not selected the first of these primary rocks as their basis, or, the law of non-conformity and of a thorough separation between the two classes is exceptionable.'

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