burning it about her ears, not caring very much either even if the "evil-eyed witch" herself, as they called her, should be buried under the burning rafters of her cottage. As the young men noiselessly surrounded the hut, they found that the old woman was just about retiring for the night, and as some of them stood at her window, and looked and listened, they could see her, by the light of a bog pine fire, kneel at her bedside, and after a little they heard her repeat the following prayer : "Tha 'n la nis air falbh ùainn, Tha 'n oidhche 'tighinn orm dlùth ; 'S ni mise luidhe gu dion Fo dhubhar sgiath mo rùin. O gach cunnart 's o gach bàs, 'S o gach nàmhaid th'aig Mac Dhe, O nadur dhaoine borba, 'So choirbteachd mo nàduir fèin, 'Sge b'oil leis an t'sàtan 's le phàirt Which, literally rendered into English, will read thus: "The day has now departed from us ; Dark night gathers around, And I will lay me safely down (to sleep) That shall protect me from all assaults: The old woman's confidence in the Divine protection was not misplaced; the heart of youth is generous, and the beauty and solemnity of the scene carried it captive. The young men felt that one who could thus, on retiring to rest, commend herself to EVIL INTENTIONS FRUSTRATED. 177 God and God's Son, could not be the "evil" old woman they had thought her. Awed and impressed, silently and on tip-toe, they departed for their homes, leaving the old woman in peace. By-andby things went well again with the cattle of the hamlet, sickness disappeared from the district, and the old woman continued to live the same quiet, unobtrusive life a few years longer, and was as much respected and loved latterly, the story says, as she was at one time hated and feared. Nor did she ever know of the young men's midnight visit to her hut on an errand so happily frustrated. The following are a couple of that were sent us a few days ago. will afford some amusement to our idle half-hour very excellent "toimhseachan" Finding the correct solutions Gaelic readers during the first Chi mi, chi mi thar an eas, 'S ceum an cirinnaich fo choïs. A mhuc a mharbh mi 'n uiridh М CHAPTER XXX. Midges and other Bloodsuckers-The Tsetse of South Africa-The Abyssinia Zimb― Livingstone-Adders and Grass Snakes-Lucan's Pharsalia-Celsus-Legend of St. John ante Portam Latinam ALONG the west coast the weather is now [May 1872] as mild and May-like as you could wish; the swallow twitters gaily in the sunlight, and when he ceases his zig-zag flight for a moment to rest on chimney-top or house-ridge, he sings a gladsome song, low and faint indeed, and frequently lost on that account in the general chorus, but exceedingly sweet and musical, as you will find if you give it the attention it merits; while in the distance you hear the cheery notes of the cuckoo, wild and startling as yet, as they burst suddenly upon the ear from out the woodland glade or from the old rowan tree that finds root room, you wonder how, in yonder crevice in the rock above the foaming waterfall, but soon to become familiar as the season advances, and pressed upon your notice whether you will or no, and at all sorts of impossible times and places, by the truant schoolboy's oft-repeated, though rarely successful, attempts at imitation. For the first week in May the temperature is unusually high, and we do not recollect ever before. having seen insect life so plentiful so early in the season. Midges, gadflies, and other bloodsuckers are already astir in their thousands, their taste for their favourite fluid keen and unabated, as they fail not abundantly to manifest by an activity that one cannot help admiring, even while wishing that it could possibly be directed to a more legitimate and less personally annoying end. But "'tis their nature to," as the hymn-book says, and we must grin and bear it, ADDERS AND GRASS SNAKES. 179 protecting ourselves from their assaults as best we may, thankful the while that the evil is no worse. Our winged pests are innocence itself compared with their congeners in other lands. Our midge, for instance, is to the mosquito as the dog-fish is to the shark, as the domestic cat is to the tiger; while our gadflies and Æstri, though sufficiently annoying to our cattle at certain seasons, are to be regarded as absolutely harmless if we compare them with the venomous Zimb of Abyssinia, or the still deadlier Tsetse of Southern Africa. The Abyssinian insect, by the way-the Zimb-is probably the Zebub of the Hebrew Scriptures, the estimation in which it was held from the earliest ages being clearly enough indicated by its place in the word Beelzebub, "the prince of devils." Livingstone's account of the Tsetse is one of the most interesting chapters in his Travels. Shall the intrepid explorer be restored to us? We are afraid not. It is only too probable that, as Scott said of his protegé and friend, the author of the Scenes of Infancy "A distant and a deadly shore Has Leyden's cold remains!" The districts of Ardgour and Sunart have always had an unenviable notoriety for the great numbers of adders and grass snakes to be found in them, the reptiles frequently attaining to a size unknown, we believe, anywhere else in the West Highlands. Within the last two or three years we have noticed that they are rapidly becoming numerous in Lochaber, much more so than they used to be, though the general opinion, in which we heartily concur, is that we were getting on very well without them. During an ornithological ramble among the hills a few days ago, we knelt to drink at a fountain that we fell in with, welling up cool and sparkling beside a large moss-covered drift boulder among the heather, when we were not a little startled by the presence of no less than three adders that lay coiled together in a sort of Gordian knot on a patch of green moss close by the fountain's brink. The day was hot and dry, and they had probably come there to drink and bathe; but we were very thirsty, having just smoked a pipe on the top of the hill, and there being no appearance of water anywhere else for miles around, and knowing, besides, that there could be really no danger, even if the vipers had been ten times larger and more venomous than they were, we drank a long draught of the pure sweet water, and then proceeded with the stick in our hand to attack the enemy, and soon had the satisfaction of knocking them into wriggling, writhing bits, and crushing their heads under our heel. Our assault was so sudden and unexpected that they had no time to show fight; otherwise an adder, when his blood is up and thoroughly on his guard, is an ugly customer to attack with no better weapon than a walking-stick, and nothing can be imagined more deadly, wickedlooking, and savage than such an animal, as with erected crest and flashing eye he steadies himself in act to strike. It is curious that the poison of these reptiles, though certain death if commingled in sufficient quantity with the blood through an abrasion or wound, is perfectly innocuous if taken into the stomach-a fact, by the way, that has been known from very early times. On taking our drink, for instance, from yonder viper-guarded fountain, we recollected that Lucan had something on a somewhat similar circumstance in his Pharsalia. Describing Cato and his soldiers coming to a fountain of water in the desert, and how horrified they were to find innumerable serpents of the deadliest kind-asps and dipsades-disporting themselves in and around the pool, he has the following fine passage, the finest indeed in the poem, which we took care to turn up when we reached home :— "Jam spissior ignis, Et plaga, quam nullam superi mortalibus ultra, A medio fecere die calcatur, et unda |