to that of a man's head, occupying some larger vesicle or crevice of the amygdaloid, and all the smaller vesicles around it, for an inch or two, filled with what we may venture to term satellite heliotropes, some of them as minute as grains of wild mustard, and all of them more or less earthy, generally in proportion to their distance from the first formed heliotrope in the middle. No one can see them in their place in the rock, with the abundant green earth all around, and the chalcedony, in its uncolored state, filling up so many of the larger cavities, without acquiescing in the conclusion respecting the origin of the gem first suggested by Werner, and afterwards adopted and illustrated by M'Culloch. The heliotrope is merely a chalcedony, stained in the forming with an infusion of green earth, as the colored waters in the apothecary's window are stained by the infusions, vegetable and mineral, from which they derive their ornamental character. The red mottlings which so heighten the beauty of the stone occur in comparatively few of the specimens of Scuir More. They are minute jasperous formations, independent of the inclosing mass; and, from their resemblance to streaks and spots of blood, suggest the name by which the heliotrope is popularly known. I succeeded in making up, among the crags, a set of specimens curiously illustrative of the origin of the gem. One specimen consists of white, uncolored chalcedony; a second, of a rich verdigris-hued green earth; a third, of chalcedony barely tinged with green; a fourth, of chalcedony tinged just a shade more deeply; a fifth, tinged more deeply still; a sixth, of a deep green on one side, and scarce at all colored on the other; and a seventh, dark and richly toned,--a true bloodstone,--thickly streaked and mottled with red jasper. In the chemical process that rendered the Scuir More a mountain of gems there were two deteriorating circumstances, which operated to the disadvantage of its larger heliotropes: the green earth, as if insufficiently stirred in the mixing, has gathered, in many of them, into minute soft globules, like air-bubbles in glass, that render them valueless for the purposes of the lapidary, by filling them all over with little cavities; and in not a few of the others, an infiltration of lime, that refused to incorporate with the chalcedonic mass, exists in thin glassy films and veins, that, from their comparative softness, have a nearly similar effect with the impalpable green earth in roughing the surface under the burnisher.