to make myself acquainted with the structure of so singularly looking a
hill to neglect the only opportunity that in all probability would ever
occur. It looked exactly as i f a large rectangular block of stone, covering
49 square miles, had been brought from a distance and placed upon
the level gneiss, which constitutes the basis o f the country. The top
of this hill is a flat plane covered with wood. But as the ridges are
quite bare, nothing is easier than to ascertain its constituent rocks.
The base o f these hills consists of a bed of sand-stone which lies immediately
over the gneiss. It can be seen very distinctly between the
two hills, but not so well upon the south side of Hunneberg. I saw
a bed o f it in one place nearly 24 feet thick. It is of a pearl-grey
colour, pretty hard, and appeared to me to be composed entirely of
grains of quartz. When exposed to the light it assumes a light
yellowish colour. This sand-stone has no resemblance to grey-wacke,
the only sand-stone among the transition rocks. I was tempted at
first to. suspect that it might be a primitive rock, and consist o f a
granular quartz, in which the quartz was crystallized as happens in
granular lime-stone. But the want o f any appearance o f crystallization
in the quartz grains obliged me to give up that opinion. Though the
stone was hard I could perceive no traces o f any other cement than
quartz itself: as it is too soft for such a cement, we must conceive the
real cement to be clay, though in too small a quantity to be perceived.
I f this be a sand-stone, as I think it is, we can only refer it to the class
o f floetz rocks; and this is one of the reasons which induces me to believe
that these hills belong to the floetz rocks. For the same sandstone,
as we shall see, constitutes the base of all the hills,
I was told that immediately over the sand-stone there was a bed of
iron-shot slate clay, intermixed with particles of pyrites. But the rubbish
was so thickly laid over that part o f the bottom of the hill, that I
was not able to examine it. This bed is said to be a foot thick.
Next over that is a bed o f alum-slate much mixed with pyrites^
and about one foot and a half thick. This slate burns when kindled,
and is.employed by Mr. Bagge for burning his limestone. I saw one
of his lime kilns at work, and satisfied myself by the smell and colour
of the flame, that the combustible was sulphur. I should have liked
to have got some specimens of lime burnt in this way to try its degree
of causticity, and whether it had imbibed any sulphurous or sulphuric
acid. But I had no means of making such experiments on the spot,
and to have brought away a piece o f such lime would not have
answered the purpose. It was the existence of alum-slate in this and
several of the other hills in West Gothland, that induced the Swedish
mineralogists to consider these rocks as transition. But I do not consider
it as a sufficient argument. It is true, that alum-slate has hitherto
been observed only in primitive and transition countries, but the
places where it occurs have seldom been examined. It is very improbable
that thè alum-slate of Whitby, in Yorkshire, is either primitive
or transition ; the whole o f Yorkshire, as far as I have seen it;
consisting of floetz rocks.
Over the alum-slate lies a bed of : fibrous limestone o f a black colour
and containing pyrites; this bed is only a few inches thick. I f I recollect
right it contains petrifactions, but, not having the specimens, I
cannot be positive whether they occur in this or in a subsequent
bed : over this bed is another o f thick layers o f slate-clay some feet
thick.
Lastly, lies a bed of alum-slate mixed with nodules and thin layers
of stinkstone. This bed is several fathoms thick, and contains petrifactions
; the only petrifaction that I remember distinctly is the entomoli-
thus paradoxus.
Mr. Bagge informed me, that the alum-slate o f Hunneberg would
not answer for making alum, that the experiment had been tried
without success.; but that when burnt it formed an excellent subsitute
for puzzolano in water mortar.
The top of the hill consists of a bed o f a rock, which assumes a
columnar form, and constitutes more than three fourths ò f the whole
height of the hill. This rock is of a dark grey colour, with a shade of
blue, and the particles of which it is composed are so small that it is
difficult to make out what they ate by the naked eye. I conceived
at the time that the constituents were augite or hornblende (I could