On the Age of the Altered Limestone of Strath, Skye

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Abstract
The alteration of the Lias limestone of Skye into white marble by the intrusion of masses of eruptive rock has been long regarded as one of the most interesting features of that attractive island. The first announcement of this metamorphism was made by Macculloch, in a paper read by him before this Society in the beginning of the year 1815. He there described the transition from ordinary unaltered shelly Secondary limestone into an irregular shapeless “marble limestone” in which all semblance of stratification had been lost, and of which the general structure resembled that of the Assynt limestone of Sutherland. He was at first inclined to regard this massive rock as a “primary” limestone, which it had naturally been supposed to be; for he found it exactly to resemble the limestones associated with schists and granites in various parts of the Highlands. But he discovered what he considered to be a regular alternation of the marble limestone and shell-limestone, which removed “the last shadow of a doubt” from his mind as to the real identity of the rocks. The obliteration of the stratification and the assumption of a more crystalline texture he believed to be not improbably due to the invasion of the limestone by eruptive masses of “syenite” * Four years after the appearance of this memoir, Macculloch gathered together his numerous observations on the geology of the West of Scotland, and published them in his classic work on the Western Islands. Among the sections of that book which

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