The leaving of offerings at wells finds a parallel in the practice, at one time common, of depositing gifts in consecrated buildings. The chapel of St. Tears, in the parish of Wick, Caithness, used to be visited on Childermas (December 28th) by devotees, who left in it pieces of bread and cheese as offerings to the souls of the Holy Innocents slain by Herod. This was done till about the beginning of the present century. Till even a later date it was customary for the inhabitants of Mirelandorn to go to the Kirk of Moss, in the same parish, on Christmas before sunrise. They took bread and cheese as offerings, and placed them along with a silver coin on a certain stone. The Kirk of Moss was dedicated to Duthac, patron saint of Tain; and the gifts were doubtless destined for him. On Eilean Mòr is a chapel said to have been built by Charmaig, the tutelar saint of the island. In a recess in this building is a stone coffin, anciently used for the interment of priests. The following statement occurs in the "Old Statistical Account of Scotland":--"The coffin, also, for ages back, has served the saint as a treasury; and this, perhaps, might be the purpose for which it was originally intended. Till of late, not a stranger set foot on the island who did not conciliate his favour by dropping a small coin into a chink between its cover and side." When we examine the motives prompting to the practice under review, we can discover the working of a principle, vaguely grasped perhaps, but sufficiently understood to serve as a guide to action. This crude philosophy was two-fold. On the one hand, the gift left at a loch or spring was what has been facetiously styled a "retaining fee." It secured the goodwill of the genius loci, and thereby guaranteed to a certain extent the fulfilment of the suppliant's desire. This desire, as we have seen, was commonly the removal of a definite disease. On the other hand, the disease to be removed was in some mysterious way identified with the offering. The latter was the symbol, or rather the embodiment of the former, and, accordingly, to leave the gift was to leave the ailment--the patient being thus freed from both. The corollary to this was, that whoever removed the offering took away also the disease represented by it. According to a well-established law of medical science, infection is transferred from one person to another by clothing, or indeed by whatever comes into contact with the morbid particles from the patient's body. But infection in folklore is something different from this. Disease of any kind, whether usually reckoned infectious or not, passed via the offering to the person lifting it. Hence such gifts had a charmed existence, and were as safe as if under the sweep of the "Ancient Monuments Protection Act." The Rev. Dr. Gregor thus expresses the feeling on this point, as it prevailed till lately in the north-east of Scotland:--"No one would have been foolhardy enough to have even touched what had been