Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 3.djvu/105





Among other matters I have reserved for this division of the present paper, the very little information which I was able to procure respecting the coal of Sky. Appearances of it are to be seen in several places in the trap, as I have already cursorily noticed, and among the rest a solitary mass of some thickness is found near Talisker, but in a part of the cliff nearly inaccessible. It is here as in most similar cases mixed with bituminous wood. Coal has also been found at Portree, and some fruitless and expensive attempts have been made to work it. Thin edges of seams of coal may also be observed in different places in the parish of Kilmuir, together with the carbonaceous rubbish which so generally indicates their presence. Under the direction of Lord Macdonald some borings and examinations have been made by coal surveyors, but, for reasons of too frequent occurrence among the itinerant professors of this branch of surveying, I found that no dependence could be placed on their reports, nor did my time permit me to institute such an examination as would have been required to ascertain the true state of things. The anxiety of the inhabitants and of the proprietors of the western islands in general for the discovery of this mineral is such that they are readily misled into the search, and coal mines have even been pointed out to me in micaceous schist. Nevertheless it is not unlikely that the district of Kilmuir may contain coal, since the sandstone and accompanying strata which I have already described are such as we should expect to find it conjoined with, and since in the island of Egg similar strata are actually accompanied by very minute laminæ of that mineral. But there is no great probability that this coal, even if it were proved to belong to these strata and not to the accidental fragments dispersed in the trap, like the one at Talisker, could be worked as a matter of