On the stormy coasts of the Hebrides, amongst seaweed and shells, fishermen and kelp-burners often find certain hard light floating objects, somewhat like flat chesnuts, of various colours —grey, black, and brown, which they call sea-nuts, strand-nuts, and fairy-eggs. Where they are most common, they are used as snuflf- boses, but they are also worn and preserved as amulets, with a firm or sceptical belief in their mysterious virtues. Old Martin, who wrote of the Western Isles in