minute Ammonites, sorely weathered; in the sandstone, Belemnites, some of them of great size; and dark carbonaceous markings, passing not unfrequently into a glossy cubical coal. At the foot of the cliff I picked up an ammonite of considerable size and well-marked character,--the _Ammonites Murchisonae_, first discovered on this coast by Sir R. Murchison about fifteen years ago. It measures, when full grown, from six to seven inches in diameter; the inner whorls, which are broadly visible, are ribbed; whereas the two, and sometimes the three outer ones, are smooth,--a marked characteristic of the species. My specimen merely enabled me to examine the peculiarities of the shell just a little more minutely than I could have done in the pages of Sowerby; for such was its state of decay, that it fell to pieces in my hands. I had now come full in view of the rocky island of Holm, when the altered appearance of the heavens led me to deliberate, just as I was warming in the work of exploration, whether, after all, it might not be well to scale the cliffs, and strike directly on the inn. It was nearly three o'clock; the sky had been gradually darkening since noon, as if one thin covering of gauze after another had been drawn over it; hill and island had first dimmed and then disappeared in the landscape; and now the sun stood up right over the fast-contracting vista of the Sound, round and lightless as the moon in a haze; and the downward cataract-like streaming of the gray vapor on the horizon showed that there the rain had already broken, and was descending in torrents. We had been thirsty in the hot sun, and had found the springs few and scanty; but the boy now assured me, in very broken English, that we were to get a great deal more water than would be good for us, and that it might be advisable to get out of its way. And so, climbing to the top of the cliffs, along a water-course, we reached the ridge, just as the fog came rolling downwards from the peaked brow of the Storr into the flat moory valley, and the melancholy lochans roughened and darkened in the rain. We were both particularly wet ere we reached Portree.