ZOOLOGICAL AND BOTANICAL ASSOCIATION. 19 



strings, and is really a good thing for travelling over rocks. The 

 women's dress is very peculiar almost all through the county of Gal- 

 way and places thereunto adjacent; it is simple, and looks well. Tho 

 great majority wear only a jacket and petticoat of a red crimson, sub- 

 dued, coloured woollen stuff; their hair Madonna style, twisted up at 

 the poll ; feet bare ; a few of the richer wear shoes, and stockings of a 

 kind of powder-blue colour, and cloaks to match. These harmonize very 

 well with the red garments, and give a picturesque effect." 



" "We arrived at 5 o'clock a.m. in the island of Arran, and found a 

 fleet of boats just going to fish. The women, in their reds, coming 

 down to the shore with tubs, &c, for the salt we had on board, had a 

 fine effect. The morning clear and fresh, the sea as transparent and 

 smooth as glass, and nothing to break the silence save the noise of the 

 sweeps (large oars) of the boats going out, and the Irish jargon of the 

 women announcing how many pounds (they are too ignorant to count 

 larger weights) of salt they had got, to their friends on shore ; the men 

 were all at sea. 



" The island consists of a barren and in most cases a naked rock. 

 Each house has, in consequence, one advantage over any elsewhere : it 

 is, that the floor is invariably a single flag; as, indeed, are many of the 

 fields, which, strange to say, are walled-in with great care. It cannot 

 be for the trifling herbage that springs from cracks or fissures, generally 

 many feet asunder ; it should rather be ascribed to the desire man has 

 of asserting his right of property, the more strongly as the matter in 

 question is least worthy of contention. I must now describe our hotel : 

 it was a cottage of three rooms and a set-off, with a courtyard in front. 

 "We became the tenants of the principal room, from which an officer of 

 the Waterguard was ejected without ceremony. This room contained 

 two beds, built into the wall after the fashion of the berths of a ship ; 

 a dresser, with a teapot of awful dimensions, and two or three glasses 

 and plates upon it ; a table and two chairs of deal, beautifully perfo- 

 rated by that most ingenious chap, the Teredo navalis. The ornamental 

 part consisted of a chaplet or necklace of sea-fowls' eggs. This hotel is 

 like an expanding portmanteau, and accommodates inmates ad infini- 

 tum ; as the landlady told us she had seventeen, besides herself and six 

 children, in it a few nights before ; and while we were there, there was 

 a considerable influx of visitors, who were at oneo taken care of, but 

 did not encroach on our territory. 



