An interesting quote from the Shetland list. I wonder if it is true. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY AUSTEN BRUCE, ONE OF HER MAJESTY'S PRINCIPAL SECRETARIES OF STATE. Second Shetland Truck System Report by William Guthrie 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. 'Drainage is wholly unattended to, and the dunghill is invariably found at the very door. As the house is entered, the visitor first comes upon that part allotted to the cattle, which in summer are out night and day, but in winter are chiefly within doors. Their dung is frequently allowed to accumulate about them; and I was told that this part of the house is sometimes used by the family in winter as a privy. Passing through the byre, the human habitation is reached. The separation between it and the part for the cattle is ingeniously effected by an arrangement of the furniture, the bed chiefly serving for this purpose. The floor is of clay, and the fire is nearly always in the middle of it .... 'In some respects, however, the Zetland dwellings stand a favourable comparison with those of the Western Islands. There is a bareness and desolation about the misery of a Harris house that is tenfold more depressing. It is a poor house and an empty one - a decaying, mouldy shell, without the pretence of a kernel. Whereas in Zetland there is usually a certain fulness. There are bulky sea-chests, with smaller ones on the top of them; chairs, with generally an effort at an easy one; a wooden bench, a table, beds, spades, fishing-rods, baskets, and a score of other little things, which help, after all, to make it a domus. The very teapot, in Zetland always to be found at the fireside, speaks of home and woman, and reminds one of the sobriety of the people - that very important difference between them and the inhabitants of the Hebridean islands. I think the Zetlanders, too, are more intelligent, and more inclined to be industrious, and give greater evidence of the tendency to accumulate or provide. 'Instead of describing the house occupied by each patient, I have given this general account of the average Zetland dwelling, and then, in my individual reports, I have spoken of the special houses as of, above, or below the average.' *Different terms signifying varieties of sod. Since 1860, the dwellings of the people have undergone considerable improvement, especially in the more advanced districts, such as Unst; but the description given of them by Dr. Cowie,* the latest writer on Shetland and himself a Shetlander, and my own observation so far as it went, enables me to state that Dr. Mitchell's description of the average cottage of the fisherman-farmer is still substantially correct. Cottages to which the description exactly applies may be found within a mile of Lerwick. In Lerwick, the capital, the poorer dwellings are, to say the least, not better than those of the same class in other towns of its size. [D. Edmonstone, 10,683; Rev. W. Smith, 10,718; Dr. Cowie, 14,745.] *<Shetland: Descriptive and Historica>l. By Robert Cowie, M.A., M.D., Aberdeen. 1871. See p. 91. Edmonstone's <View of the Zetland Islands>, vol. ii., p. 48. <New Statistical Account of the Shetland Islands>, p. 138.