The peli can. white; excepting only a circle of black on its throat; which looks like a necklace. The eyes are blue and large: the legs red and short, and placed fo far backward, that it appears almost on its tail, when it stands. The tail confists of fixteen fhort black feathers. The bird was made for skimming swiftly on the furface of the water, and has little fhort wings which affift it in its rapid progrefs. This bird will not fit on more than one egg, and never lays more than fix, in cafe five be taken away. The egg is of the fize of a duck egg, and an excellent morfel. They are to be seen all winter, on fome of the western iflands; and Dr. Hill muft have been mifinformed in the account he had of them. Gefner calls them Puphinus Anglus. Clufius, Anax Arctica. The flesh is fishy, but eats like a fine herring. The pelican is as large as a fwan, and its plumage a fine filvery grey. The wings are large and long, and have a few black spots towards the ends of them. The head is large. The eyes big, and of a bright grey. The beak is fourteen inches long in the full grown, and several inches thick: the under chap is ribbed; the upper, broad and flat: the color of its ledd; but it has a yellow tip. The head is naked on both fides, but has a creft of feathers on the crown. The legs are fhort and strong, the fame colour of the bird; and the feet are very broad. They are webbed thick and ftrong. This bird Alys with the greatest ftrength and celerity; but is feen more frequently, like the swan on the water. Dr. Hill hath not had the best information as to this bird. The gentlemen who were with us fhot feveral of them, as they did of all the kinds I mention, and this enabled me to be exact. The flesh of the pelican is not good. The shovel. er. The Shoveler is as big as our wild duck, 1741. and, in color, like the common drake, ex- July 3, 4cepting a broad circle of white at the bottom of the neck. The wings are very large, and the beak more than as long again as the duck's. The beak of the duck is broadeft at the bafe; but the beak of the fhoveler is twice as broad at the extremity as at the base. It is all over fat, and delicious eating. This bird is the Anas Platyrinchos Major of Gef ner. eye. The golden eye, fo called from the Iris, The golden which looks like burnished gold, is the Clangula of Aldrovand. The back of this bird is black; its breaft and belly the pureft white: and its head and neck black, mixed with a bright prevailing green: The leg is orange: the claw black. It is a beautiful creature, while living and roafted, rich and fine. It is of the fize of our wild duck: but the foot as large again, and deeply webbed. Some Some people have named this bird the foureyes, because at the angles of its black beak are two round spots, which refemble the eye. The Spoon-bill is a milk white bird, bright and elegant as the swan, but not so large. It is of the fize of the wild goofe, but shaped like the ftork. The head is large, and the eyes small; the neck and legs are very long : the beak is a foot in length, has an appearance like the bowl of a large fpoon towards the extremity, and from that bowl the beak, for two thirds, is like the narrow handle of a fpoon to the angles. It is for this reafon called the fpoon-bill. It is the Leucoradios of Aldrovand. This creature is not eatable, but beautiful to look at. It keeps on the lochs in Lewis, and feeds on fish and frogs, and every animal it can take with its great fpoon. It has a strange and loud cry, as it ftalks along the fhores, and as it fwiftly flys from bank to bank of Carlvay waters. Ornithologists fay, it builds its neft on the highest trees, contrary to all other waterfowl: but I doubt this very much, tho even Dr. Hill fays it. There are no high trees in Lewis. It makes its neft in that ifland, at the bottoms of fome low birch, and hazletrees, which copfe the fides of Carlvay loch. up The On the shores of Carlvay, and of Lochgrace, there are fome furprifing caves; and one of them exceeding in wonders and beauty, the natural the finous grotto I defcribed in the moun- A beautiful tains of Ofervaul: Yet all Dr. Martin fays of grottto, by it is, "the cave in Lochgrace, hath feveral the fide of pieces of a hard fubftance in the bottom, which diftil from the top." The cafe is this: In the fide of a range of cliffs by the loch, in the midst of a little grove of dwarf yews and hollys, there is a floping descent that winds intricatly for a hundred yards, till it brings you to a spacious cave of a bright glittering ftone, which is full of entrochi * and foffil fhells; amaffed in the fubftance of it. In this cavern, which would hold feveral hundred men, the pure ftalactical fpar, which separates or difengages it felf from the drops of water that fall from the fine arched roof, hath formed figures more beautiful than those in the caverns of Harts foreft in Germany +. There are pillars, pyramids, and statues, which look like parian marble from the hand of the ableft artift. Thefe adorn the room in a wonderful manner, and as the vault and *Entrochi are foffils of parts of marine crustaceous animals, crabs, etc. but principally of the ftar fifh and fea-hedge-hog. The oifter, fcallop, etc. are teftaceous marine animals. Thefe caverns are the mines in the mountains of Hartz, which was part of the old hercynian foreft. The mountain is fifty miles from Hanover. The grottoes in the archipelago mentioned by Mrs. Benlow, are in one of the Cyclades called Antiparos. N walls Lochgrace. An account man monu Lewis. walls are decorated with entrochi and shells, There is a warm fpring in the corner of That the Romans were in Lewis, is exof fome ro- tremely evident from several Roman monuments in ments Mr. Bannerman dug up near his house; urns, altars, coins, and facrificing inftruments. In digging the foundation for an octogon open fummer-house, this gentleman has in his delightful gardens, he found several sepulchral ftones; fome facrated to the ghosts of the de1741. ceased; fome to the infernal Gods; and others July 5, 6. to the genii they supposed to attend mortals from their birth through this world into the next. He fhewed us one that pleased me much. It is a small marble ftone, and has this inscription on it: Dis manibus Juliæ Soranæ. Confenfit Tribunus cohortis dicavit. Imp. Domitiano. that is, This monument is facrated by Julius Flo H |