say a score of years ago. This may seem a startling assertion, but any one who deigns to turn his attention to the subject will find that it is true. The cock-crowing and wing-clapping of the House of Commons when in the humour is no doubt highly creditable to that august assembly. (It was Boswell, if we recollect well, who imitated the lowing of a cow to admiration, and was naturally very proud of so rare an accomplishment.) But the march of civilisation, and cross-breeding, which you may call "internationalism" if you like, have been the ruin of our cocks, so far as crowing is concerned. They may weigh more than they did a score of years ago, and present a plumper form on the table, but their crowing is gone: at the best it is but a harsh, spasmodic, unmusical half-scream half-wheeze, altogether unlike the loud and lusty, the clear, ringing notes of the cock-crowing of our boyhood days. Our cocks are no longer chanticleers, but chantiqueers. If you have occasion to sit up at night, or to start on a journey betwixt midnight and morning, the cock no longer lends you any countenance or aid in the matter--he sleeps on his perch in utter oblivion of the passing hours, and as heedless of the "watches of the night" as the brooding hen in the coop beneath him. The day may dawn, and the sun may flood the mountain peaks with light, glad and golden, without a note of welcome or recognition on the part of the bird that, from the earliest ages until recent years, was known as the herald of the dawn, and deservedly held in high honour and esteem as the vigilant sentinel of the homestead throughout the midnight and early morning hours. Any convivial "Willie" whom it so pleases may now brew his "peck o' maut," if the Inland Revenue will let him, and sit down to enjoy it with his boon companions into all the hours of the night and morning, unwarned of the flight of time by anything like a cock-crow. The moon may fill her silver horn, and shine bright as aforetime, "to wile them hame," and the day may "daw," but the cock's "crawing" will no longer convey its notes of warning and expostulation. If the bird crows at all, it is sometime throughout the day, generally, we have noticed, in the afternoon, when nobody thanks him for it, and then in notes so discordant as to make your teeth water, as if you had suddenly bitten deep into an unripe apple, with the chance of a headache for the rest of the evening. The last time we heard a cock crow in the good old fashion was in an out-of-the-way corner of Arisaig, some three years ago. Being a stranger in the place, and having to sleep on a "shake-down" on the floor of our room, our sleep was less sound than usual, but throughout the night we were cheered by the companionship of a cock that was roosting in an out-house not far from our window. Shortly after midnight he announced the first watch of the night as ended, and afterwards at intervals, of as nearly as