Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 3.djvu/22

 sake of perspicuity I shall distinguish by the name of the Red hills, a name very characteristic of their colour as contrasted with the livid black of the Cuchullin, and excusable in as much as it is applied by the natives to some of the principal hills of the group. I would gladly have given the name of each individual, but I was unable to procure them, no general surveys having been made, and the particular surveys of estates, either neglecting to notice them, or, like the shepherds, differing so much in opinion as to lead to inextricable confusion. Fortunately it is not material, as their uniformity of structure is so great, that the description of one is nearly applicable to the whole of the group. The general outline of these hills forms a character as highly contrasted to that of the Cuchullin as are their respective colours. In place of the lofty spires, the impending precipices and the almost unalterable rocks of those, we see in the Red hills a continued succession of tame rounded outlines, the effect of a decomposition which has covered them with ruins and almost every where concealed from view the natural rock. They also fall far short of the Cuchullin in elevation. Those which are entirely red, and which, as will be hereafter seen, consist of a syenitic rock, do not approach, within many hundred feet, the height of the former; and the loftiest of the group, among which that of Glamich takes precedence, will be found to consist of a mixture of the syenitic rock, and that clinkstone, which, as I shall hereafter show, constitutes a portion of the mass of the Cuchullin.

Comparing from the summits of any of the hills the general aspect of the two groups, the spectator is inevitably struck with the different powers of resistance which the two classes of rock offer to the efforts of time, and looks forward perhaps to a distant day when the red hills shall be levelled with the land below, while the Cuchullin shall still lift its iron summit to the clouds. There is yet another characteristic