for all other cattle, but July cut ferns, green, juicy, and unripe, should never be used for bedding milch cows. I do not pretend to tell you why they should produce the evils I have mentioned, but I do know that if I had fifty cows I had rather have them without bedding at all than put such green, fresh ferns as those under them." We stood for the moment aghast at this piece of information, which was perfectly new to us, and from the positive and decided tone of the old lady, a shrewd intelligent woman of her class, we felt that there must be something in it. On inquiry we have since found that the old lady's belief in the evil of ferns--green, unripe ferns, that is--as bedding for milch cows, is common among the people of this part of the West Highlands. Whether the whole affair is a mere superstition, the fern having always been accounted a sacred plant in the Highlands, or whether there is really some foundation in fact for the belief that a bedding of green ferns causes the udders of cows to swell and fester as is alleged, we are not at this moment prepared to say; perhaps some of our readers may be able to throw light on the subject. It is just possible that green-cut ferns, when pressed by the recumbent animal, may exude an acrid juice that, coming in contact with the tender udder, may be absorbed with the effects alleged. Meantime we doubt it. One thing we know is this, that cattle are fond of lying down among growing ferns in their every stage, and that both roe and red deer frequently make their lair among growing ferns at this season. Do you remember, by the way, Scott's magnificent description in Marmion of a fern-couched deer roused from his midnight lair by the awful tolling of the passing-bell over the living entombment of poor Constance in the monastery of Lindisfarne?-- "Slow o'er the midnight wave it swung, Northumbrian rocks in answer rung; To Warkworth cell the echoes roll'd, His beads the wakeful hermit told. The Bamborough peasant raised his head, But slept ere half a prayer he said; So far was heard the mighty knell, The stag sprung up on Cheviot Fell, Spread his broad nostril to the wind, Listed before, aside, behind, Then couch'd him down beside the hind, And quaked among the mountain fern, To hear that sound so dull and stern." Than the whole of the trial and doom of poor Constance, who "loved not wisely but too well," in the second canto of Marmion, even Scott never wrote anything more solemn or terrible. CHAPTER XXVI. Harvest--Scythe and Sickle v. Reaping Machines--Potatoes--Garibaldi and Potatoes at Caprera--Fishing--Platessa Gemmatus, or Diamond Plaice--Mushrooms--The Poetry of Fairy Rings--Harvest-Home.