250 Rev. Dr Fleming’s Gleanings of Natural History 
ern limits of their British geographical distribution. The 
Escara cermcornis is common on the fishing grounds in about 
seventy fathoms. 
Leaving Loch Shell, we came to anchor in the south bay of 
Scalpa or Glass Island, on the morning of the 10th. In tra- 
versing the damp mossy surface of this island, which is inter- 
sected by numerous small lakfes, the following plants occurred 
in plenty. Schanus nigricans and albus, Drozera rotundifolia 
and Anglica, Nympheca alba , and Lobelia Dortmanna. 
Upon visiting Tarbert, and returning by Urga, we had an op- 
portunity of witnessing some interesting examples of the indus- 
try of the small farmers of Lewis. The surface of the ground 
is unusually rugged and naked. The inhabitants, however, col- 
lect the soil from those places where it is too thin, or even from 
the crevices of the rocks, sometimes in handfuls ; and, by pla- 
cing it on the more level spaces, make artificial fields, some of 
them not exceeding a square yard, in which they raise a scanty 
supply of winter-food for their cattle, which in summer enjoy 
an extensive range of hill-pasture. By the sale of their cattle 
and the produce of their fisheries, they contrive to live comfort- 
ably, and even to pay a considerable rent (on an average stated 
to us at L. 3 each farmer) to the proprietor, where neither re- 
sidence, comfort, nor rent, on a cursory view, would be consi- 
dered practicable. 
In the forenoon of the 13th, we rowed round the west and 
north sides of Scalpa. The state of the tide permitted me to 
perceive the riches of the submerged rocks along the shore, 
covered as they were with a great variety of molluscous ani- 
mals and zoophytes. Want of time, however, and a considerable 
swell in the sea, permitted only a casual glance. Trochus zi- 
ziphinus , Echinus esculentus , and Akyonium digitatum , ap- 
peared to be common. By the examination of one of the Echini, 
while alive in a glass of water, and afterwards of fragments of 
the crust preserved in spirits, I was able to satisfy myself 
that the three species constituting the genus Pedicellaria of 
Muller, (Zool. Dan. i. p. 16. tab. xvi. f. 1-15.), are merely 
external organs of the Echinus, in which light Munro (on Fishes, 
Tab. xliv.), and Cordiner (Remarkable Ruins, No. xiii.) had 
previously considered them. 
