VOL. X.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 127 



me, at Tarbut, there is a plot of ground, less than one acre, out of which for 

 these many years past earth has been dug for that use; and in two years time it 

 will grow up again, and fill the excavated place; so that it continually furnishes 

 soil for the adjacent lands. Another, like this, I have in a farm belonging to 

 myself, twenty miles distant, of the same nature and quality. Both are a stiff 

 clayish earth, of a dark colour and moist. Both these places I have viewed these 

 several years, and have discerned them. It will grow a foot high in two years. 

 Nothing makes our land give greater increase of barley than sea-weed. But 

 lands that are often used to this manure yield but bad oats, and small quantity, and 

 the husks both of the barley and oats that grow on such lands, are thicker than 

 those that grow on other lands, and these grains have also greater mixture of 

 darnel. 



The increase in some places in the isles is almost incredible, considering the 

 climate and soil. For some will ordinarily yield l6 or 18 fold. And most of 

 those lands that yield so well, are of a veiy sandy soil, and only manured with 

 sea weed. I have a piece of land in Lochbroom parish, that yields continually 

 every year plentiful crops of barley, without ever having so much as one load of 

 manure, or any kind of addition laid on it: and this it has done for time imme- 

 morial. Whether it be, that rains wash down matter equivalent to manure from 

 the adjacent hills, which yet cannot be discerned, though looked after; or whe- 

 ther its fertility proceeds from prolific exhalations from a subterraneous cause, I 

 will not determine. 



There are also some fields that appear to be nothing else but a gathering of 

 small pebbles, insomuch that earth cannot be well discerned amongst them ; yet 

 do they yield abundance of good corn, especially of barley; and more than conti- 

 guous lands that are not stony. 



As for our herbs, I have nothing extraordinary. All I find here are in history 

 excepting one, which grows on stony shores ; but because it is not near me, I 

 will not venture to give you its description now, lest it should be too imperfect. 

 One particular I took notice of, which perhaps is no novelty to you, as it is none 

 to our highlanders; but since it is to me, I shall relate it. When they want ink, 

 they take the root of the iris palustris lutea (yellow water flower-de-luce) and 

 infuse it 24 hours in clear fountain- water; others boil it a little. Then they 

 take a rough white pebble, and rub it continually in the water on a knife or any 

 piece of clean steel ; and in less than an hour's time the water becomes very black, 

 and tolerably good ink. 



Our foresters allege, that when deer are wounded they lie on a certain herb, 

 which grows plentifully in our forests, and that by its virtue the bleeding is 

 stanched, and the wound healed. I took a quantity of it, and reduced it to a 



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