nosticator, it is perhaps unequalled by any other British plant, the sensitiveness of its involucral scales to the slightest weather changes being so extraordinary as to have from very early times attracted the attention and aroused the wonderment of those unacquainted with the fact that similar properties, in a greater or less degree, are common to all plants and flowers-to the whole vegetable kingdom indeed. The carline has a stem of some eight or ten inches in height, and bears many pretty purple flowerets set in the midst of straw-coloured rays. The carline's sensitiveness to weather changes continues long after it has been cut or pulled, provided the heads have not been much hurt or bruised in the process; on the same principle, we suppose, that some animals are known to manifest unmistakeable signs of muscular irritability long after they are otherwise, as we should say, to all intents and purposes dead. We have generally met with the carline thistle among sickly-growing oats, on poor, thin soil, and sometimes among other luxuriant weeds in a neglected potato field. It is amusing, by the way, sometimes to see bonnet-badges and pictorial representations of what you are supposed to believe is the Scottish thistle, evidently copied to the life from one of the carline family! which are but pigmies in stature and absolutely harmless in the matter of prickliness compared with the grand stately fellow bristling with prickles strong as darning needles, and sharp and venomous as the sting of a bee, with "Nemo me impune lacessit" in the very look of him-the true national emblem! You remember Burns' reference to it in a very fine stanza that has been often quoted, that indeed everybody has by heart "Even then, a wish (I mind its power)— A wish that to my latest hour Shall strongly heave my breast- THE DOG-RHYME. The rough burr-thistle, spreading wide I turn'd the weeder-clips aside, My envy e'er could raise; I knew nae higher praise.' -(Epistle to the Guidwife of Wauchope House.) 197 The true Carduus Scotticus is not fond of cultivated land, but is a tremendous fellow when he gets hold of a waste outlying corner to himself, sometimes attaining a height of four or five, or even six feet, with a stem as thick as your wrist, and prickles-no, spikes is the word-with spikes, then, as formidable as the bayonets of a kilted regiment going into action. An anonymous lady correspondent in London sent us a manuscript sheet of paper of the last century, containing a very old dog-rhyme. "The paper has been in our family as long as I can remember, and I have heard my grandfather repeat the lines often before we left the Highlands fifty years ago. The Ronald Mac Ronald Vic John mentioned in the rhyme was, I believe, one of the Glencoe family, a celebrated hunter of deer in his day. He was killed, as I have heard my grandfather relate, at the battle of Philiphaugh. It was the fairy dog-rhyme in one of your recent letters that brought to my mind that such a thing was in my possession." Owing to the faded state of the writing, and a very peculiar orthography, we had some difficulty in deciphering the lines; but, modernising the spelling a little, the following we believe to be an accurate transcript : An cù 'bh'aig Raonull-mac-Raonuil-'ic-Iain, Ceann leathan eadar 'dha shuil, ach biorach 's bus dubh air gu shroin. Mar fhrioghan tuirc nimheil nan còs. Donn mar àirneag bha shuil; speir luthannach lùbta, 'S faobhar a chnamh mar ghein. An cù sud 'bh'aig Raonull-mac-Raonuil-'ic-Iain, 'S tric thug e sithionn a beinn. Which, rendered as literally as possible, many stand thus in English Ronald-son of Ronald-son of John's good dog, He could bring venison from the mountain. He was broad between the eyes; otherwise sharp and black-muzzled to the tip of his nose. With a horse-like chest, he was small flanked, and his pile Was like the bristles of the den frequenting boar. Brown as a sole was his eye; Supple-jointed (was he), with houghs bent as a bow; All his bones felt sharp and hard as the edge of a wedge. Such was Ranald Mac Ranald vic John's good dog, That often brought venison from the mountain. CHAPTER XXXIII. A non-" Laughing" Summer-Rheumatic Pains-Old Gaelic Incantation for Cattle Ailments. THE best thing, perhaps, that can be said of our summer up to this date [July 1872], is that it has, upon the whole, been amiable and summer-like; has, after the manner of a love-lorn maiden, wept much and often smiled, although, until within the last day or two, it has never actually laughed. You loved it, and couldn't help yourself, but your love wanted warmth and fervour, just because of its want of jocundity and joyousness. Even in our climate, summer is not summer by the mere reading of the thermometer, however sensitive and delicate its mercurial indications; one wants brilliant sunshine, with cloudless, or almost cloudless skies, to make up a summer as a summer proper ought to be. The poets of the East and South always speak of summer and summer scenes as "laughing," while in more northern and less favoured lands your poet is content to describe otherwise exactly similar scenes and situations as simply "smiling," "gentle," "sweet," "quiet," and so forth, so that an acute critic, by attending to this alone, could tell, were other proofs entirely wanting, whether a poet was born under northern skies, or lived and loved, soared and sang, in sunnier and more southern climes. Horace has -“ mihi angulus ridet." His "corner," observe, does not merely smile; it "laughs" under the bright blue Italian sky. Lucretius has -" tibi rident æquora ponti; " which Creech and Dryden, bards of a colder clime, have rendered "smiles," but which literally and truly is honest, open, joyous "laughter" in the southern bard. Metaetasio has "A te fioriscono Nel mar placati.” "Ridono," observe-laughter again-like his earlier countrymen, Horace and Lucretius. Our British poets rarely venture to make spring or summer do more than smile; they are afraid of the laughter of the south, as being quoad hoc an over-bold hyperbole. We can only quote at this moment two instances in which the laughter of more favoured lands is boldly introduced. John Langhorne, a poet and miscellaneous writer of the last century, author of the Fables of Flora, very beautifully says— "Where Tweed's soft banks in liberal beauty lie, And Flora laughs beneath an azure sky." And Chaucer, the father of English poetry, has the following:"The busy larkë, messager of daye, Salueth in hire song the morwe gray; Very finely modernised by Dryden thus : "The morning lark, messenger of day, Saluted in her song the morning grey; And soon the sun arose with beams so bright Our summer, then, thus far, has not been a "laughing," but, at the best, a merely smiling summer. There has been but little actual sunshine, rarely such a thing as a blue, unclouded sky; but, if we do not err, if the wish be not altogether father to the thought, a splendid autumn, glad and golden-summer and autumn |