In the first place, a work on this plan is inevitably voluminous. The territorial divisions submitted to distinct treatment are about nine hundred in number, and the matter is still further augmented by the occasional assignment to different hands of different parts of the survey of a single parish. In proportion to the descent of the details, is the bulk of the production; which we suppose to be an evil in the same measure in which it exceeds the necessity of the case. Now the _New Statistical Account_ is at once seen to contain not a little matter of merely local interest, and of the smallest value considered as pertaining to a body of national statistics; and here, if anywhere, it is apt to be regarded as at fault. It is right, however, to recollect the privilege of every work to be judged according to the conditions of the species to which it belongs. The present is not set forth as a statistical account of Scotland, but as a collection of the statistical accounts of all the parishes in Scotland; for this, we perceive, is not merely implied in the plan of the work, but is declared in the prospectus, where the hope is expressed that, by exhibiting the actual state of the parishes, with whatever is therein amiss, it may lead to parochial improvements. It does not appear, therefore, to have been from any miscalculation of their worth, that matters of merely local interest have been so liberally admitted; and, all things considered, more of that nature might have been expected. Let us quote again from the best theory of statistics that has ever been produced. "An object may be deserving of remark in the description of some particular portion of a country, and at the same time have no claim to notice in any general account of that country at large. In the former case, the rivulet is not to be omitted; in the latter, any allusion to it would be a defect, for it would be matter of unnecessary and trifling detail."[7] It is recorded, in the _New Statistical Account_, that "Will-o'-wisp had never appeared in the parish of South Uist previous to the year 1812." Nothing, in a national point of view, can be conceived more insignificant than this fact; but, taken in connexion with a notable superstition in that district, its local importance appears.[8] To the credit of this method, it may be noticed, that the accounts which are most parochial are, at the same time, among those which have been drawn up with the most general intelligence; and, this being the case, it is not a strange wish that the accounts, in general, had been somewhat more parochial than they are. [7] Schlozer.