310 



" licences, to exercise any part of a patent privilege, to a 

 " number exceeding five, limited by covenant, be not such a 

 " sharing of the raonopcly as will jender the patent void P""— 

 He would have shown at once how far I may have presumed to 

 speak positively where it became me to doubt; and he might, 

 have set the minds of his subscribers at rest upwVthat point. I 

 have asserted, that if he has disposed of such licences, which 

 he very properly calls sharing the privileges, to a thousand per- 

 sons out of a limited twenty thousand, as he asserts, he has 

 annulled his patent. He will not find a lawyer who will 

 maintain the contrary. 



I am persuaded that the magnitude, as well as the philoso- 

 phical nature of the subject, and the interest which so large a 

 part of the manufacturers of the British empire have in patent 

 rights, will render the preceding observations of sufficient im- 

 portance to require no apology. 



VIII. 



Account of the Small Whales in the Seas tiear the Shetland Isles-. 

 % PATRrcK Neill, y/, iP/. Secretary to the Natural His f 

 tory Society at Edinburgh,* 



wlSL*?^ ''"^^^ -^^ ^ ^^^^^^ ^'■°"' ^ gentleman at Uvea Sound, Unst, I was 

 informed, that, '' on the 21st February, 1805, no fewer than 

 190 small whales, from six to twenty feet long, were forced 

 ashore at Uvea Sound ; and on the 19th March thereafter, 120 

 more at the same spot, in all, 310. In this second shoal there 

 were about 500, but very many escaped." To a series of 

 queries addressed to the same gentleman, I received in sub- 

 ,stance the following answers. "They measured from six to 

 Iwenty-four feet in length; the small ones appeared to be the 

 young of the others. They had two long and narrow pectoral 

 fins, from between four and five feet to even nine feet long. 

 They remained at the surface of the water ten or fifteen rai-» 



nute& 



# Frum his Tour to Ihe islands of, Orkney and Shetlancl, 



