Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 2.djvu/511

 XXII. On Staffa.

By, M.D. F.L.S. Chemist to the Ordnance, and Lecturer on Chemistry at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich.

V. Pr. Geol. Soc.

the “Description and Natural History” of Staffa, by Faujas de St. Fond, or the various other descriptions which have been published of this island by naturalists and by tourists, had exhausted the subject, I should have forborn to have troubled the Society with any remarks on a place which ought now to be well known.

But a visit to this celebrated island having given me an opportunity of remarking a circumstance before unnoticed, and of some importance in its natural history, I think it my duty to lay it before the Society. In so doing, I find it difficult to avoid entering rather minutely into the general description of the island, particularly since a second examination, besides confirming the remarkable fact I at first noticed, has enabled me to investigate its structure more completely. I shall doubtless still leave something to be corrected by those who may come after me. A multiplicity of objects pressing at once for regard, a visit always necessarily hurried from the impossibility of remaining long on the island, a boisterous sea, and a stormy atmosphere, are hostile to that accuracy of observation which may preclude future corrections.

The circumference of Staffa is estimated at about two miles. It forms a sort of table land of an irregular surface, bounded on all