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Rh its centre to work it rapidly round, and the ends were tapered. One end was exactly fitted into a hole in the perpendicular timber, and the other into some side support. All the neighbours were then collected; they carefully divested themselves of all metal—not even a button was left on any part of their clothes—and they set heartily to work, two by two, turning the end of the horizontal timber in the hole of the central and upright one, and rapidly relieving each other as they became tired, until by the violence of the friction, and assisted now and then by a little gunpowder and tinder, the wood began to blaze. This was the need-fire. Every fire in the farmer's house was immediately quenched, and others kindled from this need-fire: all the cattle were then driven in, and made to pass through the smoke of this new and sacred conflagration, and the plague was at once stayed. Old traditions say that the Druids used to superintend the kindling of a similar fire on the 1st of May. That day is still called in the Gaelic la-Beal-tin, i. e. the day of Baal's fire.

A remnant of this superstition still exists among those who lag a little behind in the march of improvement, and they are not a few. When a beast is seized with the murrain a few pieces of sooty divots (turf) are taken from a thatched roof (we have said that in some of the poor cottages there is no chimney) and put into a metal pot with a coal of fire, so that a strong sooty smoke ascends. The patient is then brought, and its nostrils are forcibly held in the smoke for a quarter of an hour. Then some ale with plaintain root is given, and the beast is cured. Some interesting resemblances to old customs in other parts of the world, and far earlier times, are evident.

and Caithness form the northern extremity of Scotland, the western coast of which is occupied by Sutherland. The western and northern coasts are bleak and stormy enough, and the mountains, of immense height, have not even a stalk of heath on their barren surfaces; but the south-eastern part of the country is more sheltered, and not a great deal colder, although rather more backward than some of the midland counties of Scotland.

The soil is as various as the climate. There are few or no artificial grasses, and the only natural meadows are the valleys formed by the rivers and burns; on them some cattle are fed, but on the higher ground, in Sutherland and Ross, and the eastern and central Highlands, the black cattle have given way to sheep. Although four times as large as Caithness, this county does not contain twice the number of cattle. It has never been calculated to possess more than 25,000, and, probably, there not now more than two-thirds of that number.

The statistical accounts of the numbers of horses, cattle, and sheep in Sutherland, in 1798 and 1808, will afford a convincing proof of the decrease of horses, cattle, and goats, and the wonderful increase of the sheep:—

If the value of each were the same at both times, we should find that 20,670l. less capital was employed in horses, 32,502l. less in cattle, 1532l. less in goats, and 34,806l. more in sheep. But the manifest improvement