caulker every day is turned over to our health, a libation which we cordially return. This year we were somewhat apprehensive, for his sake, of the prevalent fever and influenza; but M'Tavish escaped both, and is, at this moment, as hearty as a kyloe on the hills of Skye. The vice-president, oddly enough, had backed a superannuated chairman who is stated to be a native of Clackmannan. He is so extremely aged that the precise era of his birth is unknown; but he is supposed to have been, in some way or other, connected with the Porteous mob. With accumulations, there are about five thousand pounds at stake upon the survivorship of these two. Twice, in the course of the last ten years, have each of them been seriously ill, and precisely at the same time; and twice has the milk of human kindness been soured between the worthy vice-president and ourselves. Should the invisible and mysterious sympathy between M'Tavish and Hutcheon operate again--should Celt and Lowlander alike be stricken with sickness, the contested point between us will, in all probability, be brought to an issue. Both have taken effectual measures to have the death of his neighbour's nominee noted with accuracy to a second. Now, if Hutcheon were to die to-day in Edinburgh at twenty minutes past eleven according to the present regulation of the clocks, and if the next post brought intelligence that M'Tavish had given up the ghost at Greenwich precisely five minutes sooner, which of us two would be entitled to the stakes? On the twenty-ninth of January, when the old and true time was in observance, there could have been no doubt about the question. We should have been the winner by seven minutes and a half. Hutcheon would have died, like his forefathers, at seven and a half minutes after eleven, and M'Tavish at the quarter past. But, as it is, the life of M'Tavish has been cut short, or what is the same thing, that of Hutcheon has been preposterously prolonged. And so, if the alteration made by the Town Council be legal, we may be defrauded of five thousand pounds--if not legal, what pretext have they for making it?