Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 4.djvu/180

 without detailing the history of all the islands in the vicinity which partake of and elucidate the structure of Sky, no adequate conjecture can be offered respecting it. There is here no room for such a description, but I hope on some future occasion to give a collective view of the whole group, and thus to render the geological history of the principal island less incomplete than I am still compelled to leave it. The connections of the western islands with each other and with the main land are so intimate, and the light obtained from one portion is so necessary for the elucidation of others, that the separate description of any individual of the group must always be imperfect.

The account of the limestone which is found near Ord on the southern shore of Loch Eishort was in the original paper imperfect, as well in respect to its topography as its mineralogical description. It occupies a small hill which includes the house of Ord, and is singularly irregular in its position, as well with respect to its own arrangement, as to its connection with the neighbouring rocks, among which, as I have already shown, there occurs a great degree of confusion. Notwithstanding this irregularity, a careful and close investigation of it will leave no doubt respecting the superiority of its position to the sandstone with which it is associated, and however widely separated from the more regular beds on the opposed shore, there is no want of indications to prove that it forms a portion of the limestone of Strath; its present confusion appearing, like that of the neighbouring sandstone, to have arisen from some common cause acting on both, to which also we may perhaps attribute the peculiarities which its structure and composition present. Its stratification is in general sufficiently apparent on the great scale, although in the more detached portions often invisible,