came on, that they are absolutely the poor now;--they have
dissipated the last remains of capital possessed by the _people_ of the
Highlands.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Appended to their joint paper on the "Deposits contained between the
Scottish Primary Rocks and Oolitic Series," and interesting, as the
first published geological map of Scotland to the north of the Firths of
Forth and Clyde.

[5] There are only two of these exclusively west-coast shells,--_Trochus
umbilicatus_ and _Pecten niveus_. As neither of them has yet been
detected in any Tertiary formation, they are in all probability shells
of comparatively recent origin, that came into existence in some western
centre of creation; whereas specimens of _Trochus magus_ and _Nassa
reticulata_, which occasionally occur on the eastern coasts of the
kingdom, I have also found in a Pleistocene deposit. Thus the more
widely-spread shells seem to be also the shells of more ancient
standing.

CHAPTER XIV.

"Edina! Scotia's darling seat!
All hail thy palaces and towers!"--BURNS.

There had occurred a sad accident among the Cromarty rocks this season,
when I was labouring in Gairloch, which, from the circumstance that it
had nearly taken place in my own person about five years before, a good
deal impressed me on my return. A few hundred yards from the very bad
road which I had assisted old Johnstone of the Forty-Second in
constructing, there is a tall inaccessible precipice of ferruginous
gneiss, that from time immemorial down to this period had furnished a
secure nestling-place to a pair of ravens--the only birds of their
species that frequented the rocks of the Hill. Year after year,
regularly as the breeding season came round, the ravens used to make
their appearance, and enter on possession of their hereditary home: they
had done so for a hundred years, to a certainty--some said, for a much
longer time; and as there existed a tradition in the place that the nest
had once been robbed of its young birds by a bold climber, I paid it a
visit one morning, in order to determine whether I could not rob it too.
There was no getting up to it from below: the precipice, more
inaccessible for about a hundred feet from its base than a castle wall,
overhung the shore; but it seemed not impracticable from above; and,
coming gradually down upon it, availing myself, as I crept along, of
every little protuberance and hollow, I at length stood within six or
eight feet of