WHICH FELL IN ORKNEY. 191 



mind to weigh the instruments of destruction. He describes 

 the hailstones as being generally of a greyish-white colour, not 

 unlike fragments of light-coloured marble. 



The terrified black cattle and horses, which had broken 

 their tethers, and been observed, at the beginning of the fall 

 of hail, running violently backward and forward, galloping and 

 flinging, had now collected together in a herd. Caithness at 

 length made his way to them through the half-melted ice : they 

 still trembled exceedingly ; some of the horses had lain flat down 

 on the grass, with their heads stretched out ; and all of the ani- 

 mals were more or less cut, and bleeding. Some of the weaker 

 horses, the farmer says, will never recover : the milch cows, 

 he adds, were " struck yeld" or gave no more milk, and in- 

 deed would not suffer the people to attempt to milk them any 

 more. 



On the links or downs, at some distance from Caithness's 

 house, a large flock of tame geese had been feeding : these, 

 he remarked, seemed to remain motionless on the turf; 

 and on proceeding to the place, he found no fewer than sixty 

 wholly deprived of life ; a few were still living, but so much 

 injured, that all of them pined away and died in a short time. 

 Some of these poor birds had their bills split; others had an 

 eye struck from its socket, and hanging by the nerve ; and the 

 brains of some were fairly knocked out : many had either a leg 

 or a wing broken. 



The weather being warm, the ice soon disappeared ; and 

 Caithness's fields, which, less than an hour before, had been 

 covered with corn-crops * just beginning to come into ear, and 

 superior in luxuriance to what had been seen in Orkney for 



many 



* Grey oats, Avena strigosa> L. ; and bigg, a small variety of Hordeum te- 

 trastichon ; which are the only kinds of white crop cultivated with success in these 

 islands. 



