* This does not accurately describe the present mode of paying rents. The rent is always nominally a money rent, although it may be paid in account, as will afterwards be shown ** It would be out of place to make extensive quotations from this valuable work. But I refer to it as containing discussions the social state of Shetland, showing that many of the questions involved in the present inquiry required an answer seventy years ago. See also Hibbert's <Description of the Shetland Islands> (Edin. 1822) The enclosed lands were formerly runrig, <i.e.> held by the inhabitants of the township in scattered allotments, at different places within the dyke or enclosing wall,-the allotments being made, apparently, in such a manner as to give the tenants equal shares of the different qualities of land. In late years, however, much progress is said to have been made in dividing the farms and throwing the ground of each tenant into one lot. [J.S. Houston, 9654; W. Stewart, 8992; A. Sandison, 9993.] DWELLINGS. The following description of the Shetland hut or cottage is written by Dr. Arthur Mitchell, now one of the Commissioners of Lunacy for Scotland, a very accurate and careful observer (Appendix to the Second Report of the General Board of Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland, 1860):- 'The Shetland cottage or hut is of the rudest description. It is usually built of undressed stone, with a cement of clay or turf. Over the rafters is laid a covering of pones, divots, or flaas,* and above this again a thatch of straw, bound down with ropes of heather, weighted at the ends with stones, as a protection against the high winds which are so prevalent. Chimneys and windows are rarely to be seen. One or more holes in the roof permit the escape of the smoke, and at the same time admit light. Open doors, the thatched roof, and loose joinings everywhere, insure a certain ventilation, without which the dwellings would often be more unhealthy than many in the lanes of our large cities. To this, there is no doubt, we must attribute the comparative absence of fever, the occasional presence of which, I think, is greatly due to that violation of the plainest law of nature, the box-bed. This evil is often intensified in Shetland by having the beds arranged in tiers one above the other, in ship fashion, with the apertures of access reduced to the smallest possible size.