The French consul at Mosul has been making further researches in the Ninevitish ruins, and has discovered, among other curiosities, the wine-cellar of the Assyrian kings, with large jars, in which the royal beverage was once contained, ranged along the sides. They are now filled with dust and rubbish, but on emptying them, a dried purple deposit was found at the bottom of each, thus testifying to their former use. If this deposit is in sufficient quantity to be submitted to chemical analysis, we might learn something respecting the nature of really old wine. Apropos of this matter, Dr Buist says, that while we are digging up antiquities in Mesopotamia, we are neglecting those, not less valuable, which we have at home, particularly the Runic stones found in Scotland. Two hundred of these are known to exist between Edinburgh and Caithness, but some have been used as gate-posts to a church-yard, or, as near Glammis, rubbing-posts for cattle. Sueno's pillar, in Morayshire, is the finest. The remarkable fact concerning these stones, is the similarity, in numerous instances complete, of the sculptures graven on them to those at Nineveh, as though the hyperborean and the Oriental had a common origin. 'Surely,' adds Dr Buist, 'coincidences such as these can neither be fanciful nor accidental; they carry us far back beyond the ages of those we call the aborigines of Britain, as the pyramids and sculptured stones of Yucatan precede the days of the Red Men whom Cortes found peopling America.'