if it was violently blown aside, or fell back over the altar and the sacrificers, it was of evil augury. Our Highland dame's notion of its taking an easterly course, towards the direction of the breaking day, of the dawn, and the morning sun, seems to us full of a rough and rude poetry such as you frequently meet with in carefully examining into the details of even the grossest superstitions. Having had occasion to be of some little service to the priestess in this rare act of divination, we had the whole from her own lips, though she was averse at first, as is generally the case when a clergyman is the inquirer, to entering upon the subject at all. How these practices root themselves among a people, defying eradication, is very extraordinary. Did you ever, reader, crack a nut? Not the aristocratic walnut or filbert over your wine, but the far superior, rich, ripe hazel nut in its season from off the hazel bough, when the bright autumnal sun was overhead, and the autumnal breeze stirred the leaves around you, their multitudinous murmur resembling the far-heard music of the restless sea. A ripe hazel nut is good anywhere, but best of all when gathered by your own hand in its native wild wood from the overhanging branch, whence the beautiful cluster nods at you as if soliciting your attention, now and again, as you approach to pull it, seeming to delight in playing a game of bo-peep with you among the leaves, like as you have seen the Pleiades at times when, though the night be clear, many blanket-like clouds are chasing each other in wild career athwart the starry blue. Throughout the whole range of poetry, the hazel nut, though often mentioned, has never perhaps had so much justice done to it as by the Gaelic bard Duncan Bàn Macintyre. In his Coire-Cheathaich, one of his finest poems, he says:-- Bha cus ra' fhaotainn de chnothan caoine, 'S cha b' iad na cacohagan aotrom gann, Ach bagailt mhaola, bu taine plaoisge, 'Toirt brigh á laoghan na' maoth-shlat fann: 'S rath nan caochan 'na dhosaibh caorainn, 'S na phreasaibh caola, làn chraobh a's mhearg; Na gallain ùra, 's na faillein dhlùtha, 'S am barrach dùinte mu chùl nan crann. Ewen Maclachlan, commonly styled "of Aberdeen," because he taught the Grammar School there, and there died, but who was, in truth, a Lochaber man--nay, a Nether Lochaber man, born and bred, and whose ashes rest in Killevaodain of Ardgour, without, we are ashamed to confess it, "One gray stone to mark his grave;" he, born at Tarrachalltuinn--the Height of Hazel Trees--in our parish, knew something of hazel nuts, and thus happily describes them in their season:-- 'S glan fàile nan cno gaganach, Air ard-Shlios nan cròc bad-dhuilleach; 'S trom fàsor am por bagailteach, Air bharr nam fad-gheug sòlasach; Theid brìgh nam fiuran slat-mheurach, 'An cridhe nam ùr-chnap blasadach; Gur brisg-gheal sùgh a chagannaich, Do neach a chaguas dòrlach dhin.