692 FOURTH REPORT — 1834. 



Notice of the ' New Statistical Account of Scotland.' By Mr. 

 Gordon, Secretary to the Committee. 



There is now in progress and in the course of publication a 

 periodical work descriptive of the parochial statistics of Scot- 

 land at the present time, under the title of The Neic Statisti- 

 cal Account of Scotland. 



A similar work was produced upwards of forty years ago by 

 the exertions of Sir John Sinclair, Bart,, to whose enlightened 

 enterprise so many of the most useful institutions in this country 

 owe their existence or their improvement. 



The two works resemble each other in the important circum- 

 stance that every parish has been treated by itself, and that the 

 parochial accounts have been furnished by the ministers of the 

 respective parishes. They resemble each other, also, in incor- 

 porating, as a relief to matters more strictly statistical, detached 

 notices of the chief historical events, of the eminent characters, 

 ajid of the remains of antiquity connected with the parishes. 

 They differ from each other, 1st, in the arrangement, which in 

 the new work presents the parishes placed together under their 

 respective counties, while the matter of each parochial account 

 is treated under the same heads in uniform succession ; 2nd, in 

 the greater expansion which the whole department of natural 

 history, under the several branches of meteorology, hydrogra- 

 phy, geology, zoology, and botany, has received in the new 

 work J and, 3rd, in the statistical details themselves, which, 

 from the changes that have taken place within the last forty 

 years, are found to be so different from those of the former work 

 as to render the present almost entirely new. 



It may be added, that each parochial account in the new work 

 observes the following general divisions : 1. Geography and Na- 

 tural History; 2. Civil History; 3. Population; 4. Industry; 

 5. Parochial CEconomy. That the first and second of these 

 divisions have the advantage of elucidation from county maps ; 

 that to each county there is appended a tabular summary of 

 whatever particulars belonging to the several parishes are capa- 

 ble of being exhibited in a tabular form, together with some 

 general obsei-vations applicable to the whole county, and not an- 

 ticipated under individual parishes. 



To this useful labour the clergy of the Church of Scotland 

 have on this occasion been invited, not, as formerly, by an in- 

 dividual, but by the Society instituted to pi-omote the interests 

 of their sons and daughters ; and it is honourable to the clergy 

 that they have not only been cordially disposed to return to the 



