376 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



this part of the country is bitterness itself. Servants 

 dismissed, labourers thrown out of employment, angry 

 interviews between landlord and tenant, we hear of little 

 else in this corner. The poor in Cromarty who go to 

 - for assistance from the parish are invariably asked 

 as a first question, " Do you belong to the Free Church?" 



' Tuesday afternoon. 



' I have been spending a few hours very pleasantly. 

 Before leaving Edinburgh I mentioned to you my inten- 

 tion of digging into the floor of the large Pigeons' Cave 

 to see whether shells or bones might not be found in it, 

 as in some of the caves of England and the continent. 

 I procured, through Andrew, a small boat and a crew 

 of young lads, Andrew's contemporaries and companions, 

 and providing ourselves with tools and candles, we set off. 

 We went careering along the rocks at two oars' length 

 from the shore. I saw the little rock where you first said 

 yes to a certain interesting question, the said important 

 yes bearing reference to a log-house in the back-woods. 

 I saw besides, the two beech-trees where we were so 

 foolish, you know, as to spend a great many hours to- 

 gether, and so exclusive that the company of any third 

 person we could not have endured. We landed at the 

 cave, drew up our little boat, and then commenced dig- 

 ging about twenty feet within the opening. We found 

 for two feet and a half pure guano, the same umbery 

 sort of mass you saw in the museum of the Highland 

 Society, but without the overpowering stench, a differ- 

 ence which may possibly arise from the circumstance 

 that the guano of South America is an accumulation of 

 the dung of predacious birds, whereas the guano here 

 was an accumulation of the dung of pigeons. We took 

 home some of it with us, and James Ross is to trv its 



