y little cows in Barra, and very little horses in Rum, where
perhaps no care is taken to prevent that diminution of size, which must
always happen, where the greater and the less copulate promiscuously, and
the young animal is restrained from growth by penury of sustenance.

The goat is the general inhabitant of the earth, complying with every
difference of climate, and of soil. The goats of the Hebrides are like
others: nor did I hear any thing of their sheep, to be particularly
remarked.

In the penury of these malignant regions, nothing is left that can be
converted to food. The goats and the sheep are milked like the cows. A
single meal of a goat is a quart, and of a sheep a pint. Such at least
was the account, which I could extract from those of whom I am not sure
that they ever had inquired.

The milk of goats is much thinner than that of cows, and that of sheep is
much thicker. Sheeps milk is never eaten before it is boiled: as it is
thick, it must be very liberal of curd, and the people of St. Kilda form
it into small cheeses.

The stags of the mountains are less than those of our parks, or forests,
perhaps not bigger than our fallow deer. Their flesh has no rankness,
nor is inferiour in flavour to our common venison. The roebuck I neither
saw nor tasted. These are not countries for a regular chase. The deer
are not driven with horns and hounds. A sportsman, with his gun in his
hand, watches the animal, and when he has wounded him, traces him by the
blood.

They have a race of brinded greyhounds, larger and stronger than those
with which we course hares, and those are the only dogs used by them for
the chase.

Man is by the use of fire-arms made so much an overmatch for other
animals, that in all countries, where they are in use, the wild part of
the creation sensibly diminishes. There will probably not be long,
either stags or roebucks in the Islands. All the beasts of chase would
have been lost long ago in countries well inhabited, had they not been
preserved by laws for the pleasure of the rich.

There are in Sky neither rats nor mice, but the weasel is so frequent,
that he is heard in houses rattling behind chests or beds, as rats in
England. They probably owe to his predominance that they have no other
vermin; for since the great rat took possession of this part of the
world, scarce a ship can touch at any port, but some of his race are left
behind. They have within these few years beg