severe on stock and bad for sheep. Keeps the yoke from coming up. All together a very backward season, the worst I have experienced in Hawkes Bay. Strangs Grove has not suffered much. Now to busness. I am happy to send you all the information I can as to the tribe we sprung from as far as Catherine & I knows, for you are deserving of it as you made all your honours to yourself but I consider you are quite intitled to use the true and proper crest of your house which is here and the drawing of it can be transfaired to a proper coat of arms which you now ought to have. It is more than some of them can boast of that got knighthood without doing for there adobted country what you have done for it. Now to commence at the beginning of the branch of Ardgour family that formed the Boorera branch from which Neil Bane the first came to Tyree and held the lands of Tyree and Egge & Muck on some tenure and land in Uist held from Neil Bane MacDonald of Slate who from childhood had been reared in MacLean of Ardgour's house. I think that it was held in paying a tax of keeping so many men at his expence to fight the battles on McDonald's of Slade side who came respo[n]sible to the Crown and was Lord of the Manor. This branc