gigantic Ben More attained to its present altitude of two thousand three hundred feet over the sea-level, and the sandstone, borne up from beneath like floating sea-wrack on the back of a porpoise, reached in long outside bands its elevation of from six to eight hundred. And such is the piece of history, composed in silent but expressive language, and inscribed in the old geological character, on the rocks of Rum. The wind lowered and the rain ceased during the night, and the morning of Monday was clear, bracing, and breezy. The island of Rum is chiefly famous among mineralogists for its heliotropes or bloodstones; and we proposed devoting the greater part of the day to an examination of the hill of Scuir More, in which they occur, and which lies on the opposite side of the island, about eight miles from the mooring ground of the Betsey. Ere setting out, however, I found time enough, by rising some two or three hours before breakfast, to explore the Red Sandstones on the southern side of the loch. They lie in this bar of the frame,--to return once more to my old illustration,--as if it had been cut out of a piece of cross-grained deal, in which the annular bands, instead of ranging lengthwise, ran diagonally from side to side; stratum leans over stratum, dipping towards the west at an angle of about thirty degrees; and as in a continuous line of more than seven miles there seem no breaks or repetitions in the strata, the thickness of the deposit must be enormous,--not less, I should suppose, than from six to eight thousand feet. Like the Lower Old Red Sandstones of Cromarty and Moray, the red arenaceous strata occur in thick beds, separated from each other by bands of a grayish-colored stratified clay, on the planes of which I could trace with great distinctness ripple markings; but in vain did I explore their numerous folds for the plates, scales, and fucoid impressions which abound in the gray argillaceous beds of the shores of the Moray and Cromarty Friths. It would, however, be rash to pronounce them non-fossiliferous, after the hasty search of a single morning,--unpardonably so in one who had spent very many mornings in putting to the question the gray stratified beds of Ross and Cromarty, ere he succeeded in extorting from them the secret of their organic riches.