Island Of Mull Research Articles

Unusual Occurrence of Squamous Carcinoma of the Upper Alimentary Tract in Cattle in Britain

Squamous carcinoma involving the oral cavity, the pharynx, and the oesophagus is described in 6 cattle. One animal had a squamous carcinoma of the base of the tongue co-existing with a squamous carcinoma of the oesophagus and a haemanoioma in its urinary bladder. In this case and one other papillomas were found in the oesophagus. The animals were all old hill cows, 5 of which had had access to bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum), and 3 of these were from the island of Mull.

THE SYSTEMATICS, LIFE HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF THE BANK‐VOLE CLETHRIONOMYS TILESIUS IN NORTH‐WEST SCOTLAND

Collections of Clethrionomys glareolus Schreb. have been made from the mainland of north‐west Scotland and the Islands of Mull and Raasay. The skull of the Raasay vole is larger than that of the other two sub‐species although the proportions of all three are similar. The number of re‐entrants on the inner margin of the third upper molar declines as the tooth wears. On the islands, a higher proportion of newly erupted teeth have three re‐entrants.The three collections differ little in coat colour.Life expectancy is higher and breeding less intense in north‐west Scotland than further south. Comparatively little reproduction is performed by Scottish animals in their first year.There appears little basis for separating the Mull and mainland subspecies of Clethrionomys.

On the Form and Mode Of Emplacement of the Ben Buie Intrusion, Island of Mull, Argyllshire

AbstractField evidence and theoretical arguments are used to elucidate the form of the intrusion. In the absence of a more accurate term this is described as chonolithic. Passive injection of the magma into a potential vacuum has enabled control to be exercised on the intrusion-form by the country rocks and their structures. The effects of this control are discussed.

The Polecat (Mustela putorius) in Wales

The British race of Mustelaputorius, almost if not quite extinct in the English Counties away from the Welsh Marshes, and apparently nowadays equally scarce throughout Scotland, has proved remarkably successful in maintaining itself in Wales where the native stock has never quite been killed out in spite of persecution and the gin trap. The species has undoubtedly profited by the reduced intensity of game preservation since 1914 and may be said to have taken a new lease of life, and the opportunity to increase its range, in most parts of the Principality with the exception of the county of Anglesey. Occasion was taken in 1950 to obtain reports from the Forestry Commission's areas concerning the present status therein of this interesting survival among the members of our native Mustelidae, and from the resulting review of the position in the forests I am indebted to the willing co-operation of Mr A. P. Long, O.B.E., the Commissioners' Director of Forestry from Wales, and Messrs F. C. Best and W. D. Russell, Forest Conservators, and their resident Forester staffs. Polecats were formerly sufficiently numerous in most parts of Great Britain to support an active trade in their pelts. Ritchie (1920) gives records of large numbers of polecat skins offered for sale in the south of Scotland in earlier years. But the polecat falls rather an easy victim to the steel trap and it is to this fact, and the apparently incurable tendency of gamekeeping interests to destroy all carnivorous species that come within their purview, that its disappearance from the greater part of Great Britain is due. During the past two or three decades polecats have, from time to time, been reported from the island of Mull, in the Inner Hebrides, but specimens examined have been classified by zoologists as the progeny of escaped 'polecat' ferrets gone feral, or as crosses with the common ferret. Reports have also given indication that the polecat may continue to occur in parts of East Anglia and elsewhere. It is, however, only too clear that the last real stronghold of this native species is now in Wales. Specimens measured and weighed by Mr Charles Elton, M.A., of the Oxford Bureau of Animal Population, whose help and encouragement I also gratefully acknowledge, vary from 374 to 425 mm. (body length) with tail length, to the end of the bones, from 123 to 140 mm., weights varying from 830 to 1160 g. The pelage shows considerable variation in coloration, in general being yellowish to cream with dark, sometimes almost black, guard hairs on the upper parts of the body and dark hair on the face and ears, legs and feet, and on the tail. In the Tregaron district of Cardiganshire a local race has developed a distinctly rufous coloration. Formerly the polecat or foumart (in Welsh the ffwlbart) was frequently hunted with hounds. Several authorities testify that the species was still common in the first decades of the nineteenth century particularly in Wales and the Welsh border counties. Forrest (1899, p. 57) states that polecats were not rare in Shropshire in 1850 and also,

A re-examination of tobermorite

Tobermorite, a hydrated silicate of calcium, was described by M. F. Heddle in 1880 from three Scottish localities: two near Tobermory in the island of Mull, and the third a quarry near the pier at Dunvegan in Skye. Further localities for the mineral are Sgfirr nam Boc, Loch Eynort in Skye, and Ardtornish Bay in Morven (Morvern), Argyllshire.Because of marked similarity in chemical composition it has been suggested that tobermorite might be identical with gyrolite. In view of this and of the current interest in hydrated calcium silicates in cement chemistry the species has been re-examined.

Optically uniaxial Augite from Mull

The mineral hero described was recently collected by the officers of the Geological Survey during their work for the six-inch map of the Island of Mull. It is present as minute phenocrysts in a dark, glassy, magnetite-bearing rock/which is intruded as sheets in the Tertiary lavas nearly one mile south-south-west of Pennygael.The small rounded crystals of augite are seldom more than ½ mm. in diameter and are traversed by irregular cracks. They contain a few negative crystals, and are occasionally darkened, probably with included magnetite. They appear to have been reabsorbed to some extent by the matrix.

III. Boulders and other Evidences of Ice-action in Lochaber

The chief evidence of ice-action in Lochaber, as elsewhere throughout Scotland, is, perhaps, the configuration of its glens and valleys, caused in large measure by the denuding action of the glaciers of which they were at one time the beds. The district is intersected by two main valleys, the best known, Glen More, which extends from the Argyllshire coast in the west, with the Island of Mull on one side and the district of Lorne on the other, to the Moray Firth on the east, lies along an anticlinal axis, with its two extremities occupied by the sea. The middle is partly occupied by a chain of lakes, Loch Ness on the eastern slope and Loch Lochy on the western. Loch Oich is really on the watershed, though it is naturally connected with the eastern slope, and artificially by the Caledonian Canal, with the basin of the Lochy in the west. The summit-level of the canal is only 100 feet above that of the sea, and the watershed at the bottom of the valley is some 20 or 30 feet higher. Loch Ness and Loch Lochy are both very deep—about 90 fathoms, and they are evidently due, in part at least, to the action of the ice, which first largely scooped out their beds, and then excluded from the depressions the detrital matter which now blocks the lakes at their outlet, and gradually, as the ice melted, gave place to water. The general direction of this valley is from S.W. This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract

Notice of a Bronze Penannular Brooch from the Island of Mull

Notice of a Bronze Penannular Brooch from the Island of Mull

Notes on some Ancient Chapels and other Remains in the Island of Mull

The author describes some sites of historical interest on Mull, including standing stones, chapels and tombstones. Other sites on Mull, such as castles, are noted by the author by not described.

1. On the Tertiary Volcanic Rocks of the British Islands

This paper was in continuation of the series of memoirs on the volcanic rocks of Scotland previously read by the author before the Society, and contained the first portion of the results of a survey of the western region, extending from the south of Antrim to the north of Syke. The districts more especially dwelt upon were the islands of Mull, Eigg, and Staffa. After alluding to the writings of previous geologists upon these tracts, more particularly to the discovery by the Duke of Argyll of tertiary leaves under basalt at Ardtun Head, in Mull, the author remarked that up to this time the great mass of volcanic rocks in the Western Islands has been usually regarded as of Oolitic age—an opinion in which he himself had shared. His object in the present communication was to show that as regards Mull and the adjoining islets this opinion was erroneous, that the enormous volcanic accumulations of these islands belonged in reality to the Miocene period, and that, in all likelihood, the long chain of basaltic masses, extending from the north of Ireland along the west coast of Scotland to the Faroe Islands, and beyond these to Iceland, was all erupted during the same wide interval in the Tertiary periods.

1. Notice of a Tertiary Fossiliferous Deposit, underlying Basalt, on the Island of Mull.

This paper, in its perfect form, appears in the Transactions of the Geological Society. The abstract read by His Grace on this occasion was illustrated by a number of drawings and specimens.

On Tertiary Leaf-Beds in the Isle of Mull

The Island of Mull is deeply indented in a direction nearly east and west by two long arms of the sea, Loch na Kael and Loch Scridden, forming the three natural divisions described by Macculloch as the Northern, the Middle, and the Southern Trap Districts. The Northern division is of comparatively low elevation, and composed chiefly of terraces of trap. I am not aware that it has ever been carefully examined in detail; but it has been understood not to present any features of remarkable geological interest. The middle division is a lofty and rugged tract, containing the fine summits of Ben Tulla and Ben More, the latter being one of the highest mountains on the western coast, and visible from a great distance among the Hebrides. These mountains are raised far above the highest level to which the traps of the island attain. A portion of it is coloured by Macculloch as syenite, and specimens in my possession from the Peak of Ben More belong to this class of rock. But the whole of the long and high promontory stretching westward from the flank of Ben More, and lying between Loch na Kael and Loch Scridden, exhibits great terraces of trap, piled one above the other, and terminates in that striking headland of Bourg or Gribon, whose lofty horizontal lines rise from the ocean with almost perfect regularity in a pyramidal form, until the final cap attains an elevation of about 2000 feet. The southern division has been long