seen above the middle, death is not to be expected for the space of a year, and perhaps some months longer: and as it is frequently seen to ascend higher towards the head, death is concluded to be at hand within a few days, if not hours, as daily experience confirms. Examples of this kind were shown me, when the person of whom the observations were then made was in perfect health. "It is ordinary with them to see houses, gardens, and trees in places void of all these, and this in pro cess of time is wont to be accomplished; as at Mogslot, in the isle of Skie, where there were but a few sorry low houses thatched with straw; yet in a few years the vision, which appeared often, was accom plished by the building of several good houses in the very spot represented to the seers, and by the planting of orchards there. "To see a spark of fire is a forerunner of a dead child, to be seen in the arms of those persons; of which there are several instances. To see a seat empty at the time of sitting in it, is a presage of that person's death quickly after it. “When a novice, or one that has lately obtained the second sight, sees a vision in the night-time without doors, and comes near a fire, he presently falls into a swoon. "Some find themselves as it were in a crowd of people, having a corpse, which they carry along with them; and after such visions the seers come in sweating, and describe the vision that appeared. If there be any of their acquaintance among them, they give an account of their names, as also of the bearers; but they know nothing concerning the corpse." Horses and cows (according to the same credulous author) have certainly sometimes the same faculty; and he endeavours to prove it by the signs of fear which the animals exhibit, when second sighted persons see visions in the same place. "The seers (he continues) are generally illiterate and well meaning people, and altogether void of design: nor could I ever learn that any of them ever made the least gain by it; neither is it reputable among them to have that faculty. Besides, the people of the isles are not so credulous as to believe implicitly before the thing predicted is accomplished; but when it is actually accomplished afterwards, it is not in their power to deny it, without offering violence to their own sense and reason. Besides, if the seers were deceivers, can it be reasonable to imagine that all the islanders who have not the second sight should combine together, and offer violence to their understandings and senses, to enforce themselves to believe a lie from age to age. There are several persons among them whose title and education raise them above the suspicion of |