In the parish of Larbert, the working class enjoys the means of comfort, to as great an extent as in any part of Britain. The people are well lodged,* fuel is cheap, the schools are admirably conducted and the markets are reasonable as to price, and very abundantly supplied. The people are on the whole intelligent. They have one bad habit, a propensity to drinking, and, like its sister fire, a good servant but a bad master; many a clever fellow falls a victim to whisky.

The houses of the country people, which are now building from time to time to replace the old and decayed dwellings, are more roomy and more convenient,-better built and better roofed,-the walls and the doors higher, and the windows larger then they were in the old houses.

The house of the country people generally consist of a ground floor, without any upper floor. A laigh house it is called in Scotch. This ground floor is about 30 feet by 15, divided by a transverse wall into two rooms of about 15 feet square each.

The entrance is in the middle of one of the 80 feet sides, The outer door enter, Into a small lobby. From this lobby there is on one hand a door into the kitchen, and on the other liand a door into the other room. In the old dwellings of the country people in this part of the country, the outer door was near one end of the house, and gave entrance to the first room; from this first room there was a door which led to the inner room. The house consisted of a but and a ben in the language of the country. The but, (be out, i. e. towards the out,) was the outer room. The ben (be in, i. e. towards the in,) was the inner room. A few of the present dwelling-houses are larger, and have two floors, a ground floor and an upper floor. The roofs are now seldom covered with straw thatch ,- they are most commonly covered with pan tile, and many of the new ones are covered with slate.

A thick thatch of straw laid upon the roof of a house is a good non-conductor of heat, and consequently keeps out the cold and keeps in the warmth produced by the fire, and by the inhabitants; and also keeps out the heat of the sun better than a covering of tile; but has the disadvantage of being apt to take fire by sparks falling an it from the chimney.

Wheat straw is preferred to other kind, of straw for thatch. Straw from which the ears have been Cut without threshing, is better than threshed straw. But this operation is too troublesome, and, therefore, threshed straw is usually employed. The sheaves should be threshed with the flail, taking care not to bruise the straw, or at least as little as possible. Straw from the threshing mill is bruised and unfit for thatch.

The stalks of lint are sometimes used in some parts of the adjacent country as thatch. The stalks of brakens(Pteris aqulina) are used as thatch in some parts of the Highlands; heather also. Reeds are used in some places. In tropical countries the leaves of palms of different kinds, &c are used for thatch. The older kind of thatched roof, which is still used in some parts of the adjacent country, is made by laying sticks upon the roof. The sticks are pretty close together and parallel to the rafters. On these sticks, which are undressed, straightish branches of trees, there are laid thin turfs, called divots, pared from the surface of an old pasture. These divot, are laid like tile in an imbricated form, and under each divot is laid the end of a handful or wisp of straw, which straw forms the thatch. The divot, serve to keep the straw fixed to the roof. The rafters, called in this part of the country the couples, and the other timbers of these old roofs, consist of round unsquared sticks.

In the newer method of thatching, and which is now more generally used than the other in this parish, there are laths nailed to the rafters transversely, and to these laths the straw is tied by tarred rope yarns. This is done by passing the rope yarn through the straw and round the lath by means of a long iron needle a foot or more in length.

Thatch, and the equivalent word in the language of this part of the country, theek. are of the same etymological class of words, as theacus, Anglosaxon, to cover ; theac Anglosaxon, a roof; dach, German, a roof; tego, Latin, to cover; tedam, Latin, a roof.