A similar vandalism overtook the library of the Macvurichs, seanachies of Clanranald, who had been accumulating material for seventeen generations, from the time of Muireach Albanach, about 1200. There were many parchments, according to the testimony of a recent illiterate descendant, and among them the Red Book made of paper, but none of these are now to be found, because, when deprived of their lands, his family lost their literary taste and zeal. He knew not what became of the parchments. Two or three he saw cut down by tailors to make measuring tapes, and although he himself fell heir to some after his father’s death, being without education, he set no value upon them and they disappeared. Dr. Skene has prepared a general catalogue of the Scottish collection. But half of the documents have never been read or described. No Zeuss or Zimmer has yet arisen in Scotland with leisure or patience enough to decipher them. Strange that the cry “Made in Germany” should apply even to the key to the ancient Gaelic, that the Continent had to come to our aid to interpret our own literature, and that now, the key having been handed over, these remaining relics should continue, hieroglyphically locked in the land of their nativity. Yet it is so. With the exception of a few specimens culled here and there, we have no English rendering of some of the finest pieces of this MS. literature. Though poor in history and law, and destitute of dramatic writings, the collection is fairly rich in the poetic, the heroic, the legendary, and more wonderful still, the medical. The latter treatises have a quaint interest of their own, and offer a basis of comparison for measuring the progress in the medical department of science. What would our modern savants, for example, think of the “Notes according to Jacques de Forli”? Even the old-fashioned doctor himself might be puzzled to get at their meaning. Jacques de Forli says that there are two ways of administering an electuary; according as it is intended for the vitals or the extremities. For the extremities there is tria sandaili for the side, and diamargariton for the head, and pliris for the brain, and sweet electuary to strengthen the parts of the bladder, and diacostum in the folds of the diaphragm, and each of these is to be given before food, that they may affect the part at a distance from the stomach; for the food prevents the moving of the electuary towards the parts which it is necessary to invigorate.