When we contemplate that little spot of earth which forms the Island of Barbados, perched, as it no doubt is, upon the top of a lofty submarine mountain, and consider the ages that must have been consumed in its formation with the myriads of little insects employed in its construction, we may indeed exclaim—“Great and marvellous are Thy works, O Lord!”

The mineralogy of the island is in no way interesting, and affords very little variety. In the calcareous formation there are only found a variety of sheik preserved, not petrified; but in the clay-deposit, within the district called Scotland, there are several substances, some of which I have already mentioned;—the brown and the black sandstone, the gypsum in fragments and crystals, nodules of flint and ironflint, with several iron-ores, such as clay iron-stone, compact black iron-stone, and brown ochre iron-stone.

In a hill named “Chalky Mount,” from its white appearance, there is a bed of porphyritic slate, or clink-stone porphyry, about eighteen inches in thickness, lying between beds of very loosely-cohering sandstone, and dipping to the north-east at an angle of thirty degrees. Rolled fragments of the calcareous rocks are found in endless variety throughout the clay-deposit, some of them at a considerable distance from their original situation, to which, however, they can generally be traced; indicating that they have been broken off by the violence of the waves, and carried to their present position, before the mud had become sufficiently solid to form the present soil.