302 Rev. Dr Fleming’s Gleanings of Natural History 
Leaving Kirkwall Bay, we reached the Pentland Skerries in 
the forenoon of the 1st of August, and came to anchor in the 
Bay of Wick in the evening. At this place, very extensive im- 
provements have been effected, in connection with the Herring 
Fisheries. The south side of the bay has recently been orna- 
mented with a new town of handsome houses. The neighbour- 
ing fields, at this time, exhibited crops much more luxuriant 
than any which we witnessed in the course of the season. This 
fertility of the soil (naturally poor, being a mixture of peat and 
sand, resting on sandstone), has been produced by the applica- 
tion of a compost , formed from fish-garbage, the refuse of the 
herring-curers, with peat- moss or soil. Ground which we wit- 
nessed, in the year 1810, producing only stunted heath, with 
many bare patches supporting a few dwarfish plants of the 
Primula farinosa 9 or the more humble Baeomyces roseus , now 
supported crops of oats, which, even in spite of the dry season, 
were of the freshest colour. The garbage, however, at that pe- 
riod, was in a great measure neglected. We mention this 
change, which has been produced at Wick by the application 
of this efficient manure, for the purpose of exciting the proprie- 
tors and farmers in Zetland, Orkney and the Hebrides, to avail 
themselves of a source of fertilising manure, which they have 
too long inconsiderately overlooked. Indeed, at all the stations 
where fish are cured, materials for the formation of a productive 
compost may be procured in plenty. At Sumburgh we saw a 
quantity of garbage left to be washed away with the tide, which, 
with proper management, might have served to fertilise an acre 
of ground. 
In going into Thurso Bay, on the morning of the 3d, a Me- 
dusa, probably belonging to the genus Eulimena of Peron, ap- 
peared to be abundant. It was transparent, about half an inch 
in breadth, by about one inch in length. The extremity at the 
mouth was truncated, the opposite one rounded. Eight mi- 
nutely ciliated ribs proceeded from the crown to the disk of the 
mouth. This disk was smooth, having the mouth in the form 
of a narrow transverse slit, leading into an apparently simple 
cavity in the interior. When active, the ciliae of the ribs were 
constantly in motion, and the body frequently assumed the form 
