A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 137 



earn at the harvest in the Lowlands, money sufficient to 

 clear with their landlord at rent-day. Their contributions 

 for ecclesiastical purposes make no great figure, therefore, in 

 the lists of the Sustentation Fund. But of what they have 

 they give willingly and in a kindly spirit ; and if baskets of 

 small trout, or pailfuls of spout-fish, went current in the Free 

 Church, there would, I am certain, be a per centage of both 

 the fish and the mollusc, derived from the Small Isles, in the 

 half-yearly sustentation dividends. We found the supply of 

 both, especially as provisions were beginning to run short 

 in the lockers of the Betsey, quite deserving of our grati- 

 tuda The razor-fish had been brought us by the worthy ca- 

 techist of the island. He had gone to the ebb in our special 

 behalf, and had spent a tide in laboriously filling the pail 

 with these "treasures hid in the sand;" thoroughly aware, 

 like the old exiled Puritan, who eked out his meals in a time 

 of scarcity with the oysters of New England, that even the 

 razor-fish, under this head, is included in the promises. There 

 is a peculiarity in the razor-fish of Rum that I have not 

 marked in the razor-fish of our eastern coasts. The gills of 

 the animal, instead of bearing the general colour of its other 

 parts, like those of the oyster, are of a deep green colour, re- 

 sembling, when examined by the microscope, the fringe of a 

 green curtain. 



We were told by John Stewart, that the expatriated in- 

 habitants of Rum used to catch trout by a simple device of 

 ancient standing, which preceded the introduction of nets into 

 the island, and which, it is possible, may in other localities 

 have not only preceded the use of the net, but may have also 

 suggested it : it had at least the appearance of being a first 

 beginning of invention in this direction. The islanders gather- 

 ed large quantities of heath, and then tying it loosely into 

 bundles, and stripping it of its softer leafage, they laid the 

 bundles across the stream on a little mound held down by 



