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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 feldfpar, 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 annexed 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 mineralogical guide, and a longer flay, I doubt not but I might have collected fome curious foffils, and have made fome interefling geognoftic 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
