After working at the job nearly half a day, a naturalist, who chanced to pass the way, astonished the farmer not a little by assuring him that some hogsheads of sea-water, and a single pocket-handkerchief full of manure from the nearest dung-heap, would fitly and fully represent all that he had on his land in the fifty odd carts of jelly-fish that had cost him so much labour! The story goes on to say that that particular farmer looked askance at jelly-fish ever afterwards, and didn't care much to have their natural history discussed in his presence at kirk or market, at bridal or funeral, all his life long. The fact is, that a mass of jelly-fish sufficient to load the "Great Eastern" wouldn't probably yield a peat creelful of solid serviceable matter for any purpose or purposes whatever. The jelly-fish is known to the Gaels of the Hebrides and West Coast by a curious name--Sgeith an Róin for the smaller ones, that is, the seal's vomit, and for the larger ones, Sgeith na Muicamara, the whale's vomit, in the absurd belief that they were the vomits respectively of the uncanny Sealchs, of whom the Highlander had always a superstitious dread, and of the largest of marine monsters, after they had gorged themselves to repletion on a shoal of extra-oleaginous herring or mackerel. These names for the jelly-fish are doubtless absurd enough, and yet, in defence of the good old Gaelic name-givers, let us observe that they are not a whit more absurd than the Caprimulgus (goat-sucker) of Linnæus as applied to the night-jar, or the Frugilegus (corn-gatherer) of the same high authority as applied to the common rook. CHAPTER LIV. Approach of Winter--Contentedness of the People--Poets and Wild-Bird Song--Differences in the Colouring and Markings of Birds' Eggs--Late Nest-Building--Anecdote of Provost Robertson of Dingwall, Mr. Gladstone's Grandfather.