all over the Highlands since ever we could remember, and that we had never known or heard any of the evils stated to result from the use of them. What says the reader? It is true, no doubt, that the potato belongs botanically to a family of plants many of whom are highly poisonous--such as the common deadly nightshade of our lanes and roadsides, for example--and it is averred that, although the tuber of the potato is healthy and nutritious when cooked, it is a poison in its raw state, and that its stem, leaves, flower, and "apple" are all more or less poisonous; and yet we have known boys, while the blight was yet unheard of, and when potatoes were more prolific of apples or plums than they have ever been since, eat the large, soft, full, ripe apples with relish, and they never suffered the slightest inconvenience in consequence that ever we heard of. As a boy we have often ate them ourselves, and very saccharine, juicy, and pleasant flavoured we recollect they were, not at all unlike the purple plum of our gardens in taste and flavour, and hardly inferior to it as a pleasant succulent bonne bouche. Cattle, as we know, will greedily eat the fresh shaws, as they will a decidedly poisonous plant, the hemlock (Celticè, Iteotha); and it is a well-known fact that in severe cases of scurvy on board ships that have to go long voyages a feast of raw potatoes is an immediate and certain cure; so that after all it would seem that if the potato is originally a poisonous plant, cultivation has eradicated all, or almost all, traces of the evil. As to the deleterious effects of the shaws on the milk of cattle we have our doubts, our amiable and learned friend above mentioned to the contrary notwithstanding. And while on such subjects let us record a piece of information received from an old woman in our neighbourhood a few days ago. We were cutting some green ferns on the hillside, when the old lady in question, who happened to pass the way at the time, stood to have a crack with us about the weather and crops and things in general, said crack concluding somewhat as follows:--"You are cutting ferns, sir," said the old lady, "what are you to make of them if you please, sir?" "They are for bedding," we replied, "bedding for the cows and pony." "Well, sir," she rejoined, "there is no harm in bedding the pony with them; they will do him no evil; but take an old woman's advice, and don't put them under your cows." "Why so," we asked in astonishment. "What can be cleaner, fresher, fragranter for bedding, whether for horse or cow, than these nice green ferns? Just look how beautiful and soft they are." "Still, sir," she persisted, "you must not place them under your cows, particularly your milch cows; if you do, their udders will assuredly fester, and they will go wrong in their milk. I have known it happen often, and no sensible person in the country ever does such a thing now-a-days. Ferns cut in autumn when brown and ripe make excellent bedding for milch cows as