Download Volume 12 here

Old Highland Industries. 387
and clear, asked and entreated; that ye treat our contryman, now
recommended, Sir Alexander Munro, dear to us on so many
accounts, conspicuous for so many lights of virtures, with all offices
of civility, love, honour, and dignity, craving again the like favour
from us, if in anything ye wish to use our assistance; which things,
as they are all true and sure in themselves, that likewise they
may be better attested, and more certain to all and sundry, and
be known to all men as manifest, we have, without reluctance,
granted these our ]jetters Patent to tlie foresaid Alexander
Monro: For giving full faith also, to which among all men, we
have commanded our narrower seal to be appended hereto.
Given at Edinburgh, the day of the month of September,
the year from the Virgin's birth, one thousand six hundred
and sixty three, and the fifteenth year of our reign"
"By Act of the Lords of Secret Council"
28th April 188G.
On this date William Millar, auctioneei", Inverness, was
elected an ordinary member of the Society. Thereafter, Mr
Alexander Ross, architect, Inverness, read a paper on the " Old
Industries of the Highlands." Specimens of native art and industry
were exhibited and highly admired. Mr Ross's paper was
as follows :
—
OLD HIGHLAND INDUSTRIES.
In these days of great factories and concentration of labour
in the production of articles required for the dail}^ use of man, it
may be interesting and profitable to recall some of the old and
peculiar modes employed by our country uien for providing food,
clothing, and implements, but which modes have now almost
di'^xppeared.
^lachinery, driven by steam, has doiie away with much hand
labour, and, under the guiding hand of man, does nearly all the
work, where mechanical power is required, and thus gets i-id, in a
large degree, of the gi'eat waste involved in manual labour. This
centralised production has tended to enlarge and extend our
towns and seats of industry, and to produce articles for the
million at a relatively much less cost than could be done by
hand labour, and, by means of transport and commerce, to send
machine-made articles into the furthest corners of the earth, civilised
and uncivilised; hence we find ranged alonsside stone and