Oldal 23 [23]
DORA | 273
On the back of this hill, towards the top, which is covered, not
with vines, but with under-wood, I found a great many loofe
blocks of a very remarkable kind of Pitch-fone Porphyry. Its bafe,
or ground, is a black Pitch-flone, containing red feldfpar, chiefly in
fragments, or in very irregular fhaped parallelopipedal cryftals : this
is the beft characterized. But this foffil by degrees changes materially
its nature ; the feldfpar becomes more terreous and of a duller colour ;
and the black pitch-ftone lofes its fhining glafly appearance, and
only forms fpots andı ftreaks mixed with red matter. The red feld¬
fpar, under the blowpipe, melts into a white enamel: the pitch-ftone
likewife melts, and forms a black glafs. The Botanift might have
amufed himfelf here as well as the Mineralift. 1 found three fpecies
of Linum, exotics of our ifland, the birfutum, tenuifoltum, and flavum,
and fome other plants; and fome of the infects mentioned in the an¬
nexed catalogue I collected here. From this hill there is a very fine
extenfive profpe& of the neighbouring hills, and of thofe which
run towards Marmarufs: thefe fkirt the great plain on this fide,
which lies below like the bed of the retired ocean. With a good mi¬
neralogical guide, and a longer flay, I doubt not but I might have
collected fome curious foffils, and have made fome interefling geo¬
gnoftic remarks,
An immenfe quantity of falt comes here down the river from the
county of Marmarufs, Near a hundred thoufand hundred ‘weight is
Na annually
21