Proceedings of Session 1883-84 (26th Session)

Abstract

Mr. John Cleland, B.Sc., C.E., 31 Bank Street, Hillhead, was elected an Ordinary Member of the Society. Mr. D. C. Glen, F.G.S., who had been appointed a delegate to represent the Society at the late meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Southport, gave a short account of his visit there, and of the more noteworthy papers read in Section C; also of several of the excursions, including one to the new Mersey Tunnel Works, near Liverpool. Mr. Murdoch called attention to the forthcoming series of Science Lectures to be given during the winter months in St. Andrew’s Hall, including one by Dr. Archibald Geikie, Director-General of the Geological Survey. Mr. John Young, F.G.S., exhibited a specimen of Scyelite, a new rock compound allied to Bastite or Schiller-spar, found near Loch Scye, Caithness, and associated with a vein of Hematite. This rock is of a dark blackish-green colour, and has a rude semi-crystalline structure, the facets of the crystals glistening with a coating of numerous small scales of a talcose-looking mineral. It has been named “Scyelite” by Dr. Heddle of St. Andrews, after a small loch in the district where it is found. An analysis by Mr. H. R. Mill, of the Chemical Laboratory, University of Edinburgh, shows it to be composed of Silica, Magnesia, Ferric Oxide, Lime, Alumina, Manganite, Potash, Soda, and Water, in varying proportions. The compound forms a very peculiar looking rock, which Dr. Heddle says he has never previously seen. Whether it This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract