Page 148 Note * Jameson quits the Orkney Islands with a warm acknowledgement of a hospitality which was "confined to them "—a hospitality which " seemed to look for no return ;" while of Caithness he has no hospitality to record; he designates it a "mean looking country, the tedious unformity of the bleak scene being only varied by the appearance of old ruinous castles, or recluse gentlemen's seats situated amid brown desert heaths." We find him say in one place—" we could get little to satisfy our craving hunger."

Page 149 Note * Jameson divides the beds into sandstone, sandstone.flag, schistose-clay, and indurated clay. Jameson's sandstone.flag he defines as schistose sandstone with a argillaceous cement.

His " schistose-clay" he thus defines.

"This rock has a black colour ; is always intermixed with mica; and passes on the one hand into sandstone slate, and, on the other, into clay, where the schistose character is more dlfficultly distinguishable. It acquires by the action of the weather, an ironbrown covering; so that the rocka at a distance have much the appearance of the weathered serpentine rock in the Shetland Islands. It is quarried to a considerable extent in different parts of the island, particularly near to Stromness, and the slabs are used for roofing houses, but they are vastly inferior in every respect to the ardesia which is raised at Ballyhullish and Easdale."

This is the description of perhaps an unusually bitumenous variety of what is now called Caithness-flag, and it unquestionably passes into " sandstone.flag." Jameson makes it also pass into 'indurated clay."

Page 155 Note * I am indebted to Dr. Joass, of Golspie, for pressing upon my attention this toomuch disregarded fact,—it is far from universal, but is very general. The explanation is patent.

Page 155 Note † The Rev^d.. Dr. Clouston thus describes the aspect of an ordinary gale at this spot. "During a storm from the west the scene is awfully grand. The large accumulations of water that then roll after each other, foaming with terrible violence to the shore, impress the mind with irresistible power, and might well give a stranger a feeling of insecurity ; and, when they dash themselves against the precipice, it seems half sunk, for a time, like a wrecked vessel amid the waves ; sheets of spray are thrown far up into the air, and carried over all the country, making springs a mile from the coast brackish for some days, and encrusting everything with salt, even fifteen or twenty miles off. I am told by those living a few hundred yards from the spot, that the floors of their cottages are shaken by the violence with which the waves strike the crags, and I have seen innumerable sea insects alive on their summits, and even a limpet adhering to them after such a storm also numerous fragments of slaty stone, some of them a foot long which had been whirled into the air, and had penetrated six inches into the soil in falling.

On the top of one of these crags I once picked up a lump of India-rubber covered with barnacles.

Not far from Rowe, is an immense rock which is well known to have been carried a considerable distance by the sea ; it is 16 feet long, 6 broad, and 3 thick, and weighs, according to my calculation, 24 tons.

Page 163 Note * This Röst has thus been described by Gorrie in his " Summers and Winters in the Orkneys."

"Listen ! and you hear a roar from the nor-west, as if the Atlantic were about to burst down upon us with the thunder and tramp of irresistible waves. It is the Roost of Enhallow, swirling, tossing, and boiling in the ebb-tide—a terrible sea-cateract from which unskilled navigators might well pray to be delivered ; happily for us our course did not lead us near the foaming lips and roaring throat of this Maelstrom of Enhallow."

Page 163 Note † Dr. Scoresby measured, in the Hibernia Atlantic waves 33 feet in height. In the Royal Charter he measured waves at the Cape of Good Hope 45 feet in height. The highest wave which the writer measured during several months in the Atlantic was 21 feet.

Page 175 Note * Mr. Gorrie seems to think that it may come to be the source of other and greater troubles, for he writes,—" There are volcanic indications about the island of Rousay, and the inhabitants need not be greatly surprised although they should find themselves and their belongings tilted up fifty or sixty yards, some fine morning before sunrise." Notwithstanding the precision of this prophecy, both as regards time and space, we would venture to assure the islanders that the foundations of Rousay are somewhat sounder than Mr. Gorrie's geology

Page 176 Note * Through the courtesy of Col. Burroughs, the proprietor, I am able to subjoin analyses of the galena and "copper ore" The first by Dr. Macadam, the second by Mr. Andrew Aitken. The galena yielded Lead, 79572; Silver, 047; Antimony, 014; Copper, 013; Sulphur, 12352; Gangue 8002. As this percentage of silver is equivalent to over 16 oz. to the ton, this comes to be a most valuable ore. The "copper ore" yielded— This(of course presented as a mere commercial analysis,) affords hardly sufficient data whereon to speculate upon the grouping of the components. It however gives some ground for supposing that what I had from ocular inspection set down as Smithsonite, is calamine ; and what I supposed to be pyromorphite may be the much-rarer mimetite. "Concretions," similar to those of North Ronaldshay but of larger size—some singularly resembling the cast of a human foot—have been sent from this island to the Industrial Museum in Edinburgh, by Col. Burroughs.