316 Proceedings of the Royal Physieal Society. 



To the south of the farm buildings, and sloping gradually 

 southwards, is a continuous chain of cultivated fields occu- 

 pying a narrow hollow. These, along with two gardens, 

 enclosed by high stone walls to protect the produce from 

 the salt sea-brine, which sometimes sweeps over the whole 

 breadth of the island, are worked and cropped by the men 

 upon the lighthouse staff. 



About the centre of this belt of fields, which is also sur- 

 rounded on all sides with solid stone walls, are the ruins of 

 the old Chapel and Priory of the Isle of May,^ amongst the 

 broken walls and crevices of which the Blackbird and the 

 Thrush breed annually. Outside the extreme south wall, 

 and close above the sea, is the Ladies' Cave and Well, and other 

 caverns on the S.W. side, formerly the reputed haunt of 

 water kelpies and smugglers {see " Key of Firth of Forth," 

 pp. 27, 29). 



Besides affording a certain amount of garden and agricul- 

 tural land, — which, however, as I have said, is carefully 

 protected by high stone walls, — the Isle of May affords 

 abundant and sweet pasturage for some sixty sheep — when 

 fully stocked — and six cows, the property of the three light- 

 house-keepers who form the staff, besides a Clydesdale horse 

 and three very purely bred donkeys, the property of the 

 Commissioners. In the hollows amongst the rocks, and near 

 the cliff edges, in which are often considerable areas of deep 

 loamy soil, numbers of rabbits are seen ; and during our visit 

 in 1884, my friend and myself added many of these to our 

 somewhat precarious larder of fresh meat. 



An old burial-ground of the farmer inhabitants lies in one 

 of these hollows near the high cliff edge to the S.W. of the 

 lighthouse. About 100 yards north of the lighthouse stands 

 the rain-gauge of the Scottish Meteorological Society, to 

 w^hich our party attached a carboy for the purpose of catching- 

 cosmic dust for the Zoological Station at Granton. 



A well-made road connects the lighthouse with both land- 

 ing places, — that on the W. side near the N. end of the 

 island, and that on the E. side near the S. end of the island, 

 the former near the place marked on the map as " The 



1 For the history of wliicli see " The Kej^ of the Firth of Forth," p. 150. 



