This pith is inserted in the same manner as wick in the lamp, and answers its purpose admirably. We recollect seeing the thing before, but it is many years since, and we had thought that cotton had everywhere, even in the remotest parts of the Highlands, long since superseded the primitive rush pith as wick for lamps. "All the people about me," said the old man, "now use paraffin lamps and cotton wicks, but although perhaps I could afford these as well as they can, I prefer the good old rush-light of my boyhood. I remember," he continued, "when all the people in our hamlet gave a day's work to the tenant of the adjoining farm for leave to gather rushes for their lamps in the proper season. Fish oil of our own manufacture was always used, and you will perhaps be surprised to hear, sir, that the lamp was often a "buckie shell." "A buckie shell!" we exclaimed, "how did you manage to fix it properly? You probably glued its keel to a piece of wood or something of that kind?" "No, sir," was the response, "we did not fix it at all. It was suspended from a cromag or hook of wood or iron projecting from the wall near the fire-place by a string, one end of which was firmly tied round the hollow dividing the whorl at the smaller end of the shell, and the other round the furrow at its larger circumference near the lip. The loop of the string was then thrown over the hook, and thus suspended, the shell was filled with oil and a rush pith inserted as wick, and it made a very good lamp indeed, at once economical and serviceable. I recollect," said the old man with a smile, "that my father, God rest him! who was a very economical man, and hated everything like extravagance or waste, allowed us just a shellful of oil for the winter's night. When that much was spent, we had to tell our tales, sing our songs, and go on with the work we might have in hand by such light as was afforded by the blazing peat-fire, or let it alone till the next evening, just as we pleased." Our friend concluded by declaring in very emphatic phrase that "the people now are less industrious than they were then; have more money in their hands, but use it less wisely; are less truthful, less honest, less to be depended upon in every way than were the people of his boyhood and their immediate predecessors." "Laudator temporis acti," but there is some truth in it. You should have heard how grandly and with what an air of dignity the old fellow spoke that concluding sentence in the most beautiful and rhythmical Gaelic. The buckie shell referred to above is the Buccinum undatum, or common whelk, constantly to be met with on almost every shore. It is to be understood, we suppose, that the larger specimens only would be used as lamps in the manner described by our venerable friend.