A discount for cash is still given there by some (or all?) of the merchants; but it has not been shown, nor I think alleged, with regard to Lerwick, that the principal merchants now avowedly sell their goods at different prices for cash and for hosiery. There are, however, passages in their evidence which create a strong impression that the custom described by Mr. Sinclair as a thing of the past is not yet entirely obsolete, even in the capital. Thus Mr. Sinclair himself has now two drapery shops in Lerwick, in one of which no hosiery is bought at all, all the dealings being for cash. He admits that in some things, <e.g.> calicoes, there is 'a very small shade of difference' between the prices there and in his other shop, which is his principal one. Mr. Johnstone's reason for ceasing to issue lines was simply that people used to come to his shop and bargain for articles as for cash, and end by presenting one of his 'lines' in payment, which would not have been felt as a grievance if the principle of having only one price were rigidly adhered to. The evidence as to the general prices at the shops which take in knitted articles also leads to the conclusion that, although articles are nominally for sale at one price, a purchaser for cash often succeeds in getting a reduction if she is a shrewd bargainer. The shopkeeper classifies some articles as 'money articles,' which is a convenient reason for not giving them in exchange for hosiery; and the impression seemed to exist in the minds of some keen purchasers examined as witnesses, that goods are sometimes rather rapidly transferred into that category, when it is unexpectedly discovered, after the negotiations have reached a certain point, that the intention is to pay for them otherwise than in cash. [T. Nicholson, 3586; R. Sinclair, 3229; W. Johnstone, 2280; Mrs. Nicholson, 3510; L. Leslie, 5093.] In the rural districts, the custom of selling goods at two prices, according as the payment is in money, or in knitted articles or yarn, still prevails. By Messrs. Pole, Hoseason, & Co., it has been given up quite lately. [P. Blanch, 8578; G. Scollay, 8639; J. S. Houston, 9715; Rev. J. Fraser, 8039.]