"I think, whatever mortals crave With impotent endeavour, A wreath--a rank--a throne--a grave-- The world goes round for ever; I think that life is not too long, And, therefore, I determine, That many people read a song, Who will not read a sermon." At a bridal, baptism, or other merry-making, such a song as the above is calculated to do more good than the most laboured, well-meant, and goody-goody sermon that ever was preached. As we rode away from yonder cottage door, the woman resuming her task, and chanting a gay and lively air in accompaniment, we were reminded of a verse quite apropos to the occasion:-- "Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound: All at her work the village maiden sings; Nor while she turns the giddy wheel around, Revolves the sad vicissitude of things." And we also thought of the simple and beautiful epitaph on the tomb of a nameless Roman matron:-- "Domum mansit, lanam fecit," which old Robertson of Strowan has so admirably rendered into our Scottish Doric:-- She keepit weel the house, and birlt at the wheel! A discovery of considerable archæological interest has recently been made by some people employed in trenching the moss of Ballachulish in our neighbourhood. At a depth of ten feet in the "drift" subsoil, underlying six or seven feet of moss, only removed within recent years in the ordinary course of peat-cutting, was found the remains of what, in the far past, must have been a flint instrument manufactory on a large scale. Within an area of twenty or thirty square yards was disclosed several cartloads of flint chippings, manifestly broken off in the manufacture of flint instruments, for we have been able to secure several arrow heads, two roughly finished chisels, and a hammer head of curious shape, with a hole in the centre, which must have cost the maker no small amount of time and trouble in the manipulation. What renders this "find" more interesting is the fact that the material must have been brought to the place of manufacture from a considerable distance, flint being of rare occurrence anywhere in Nether Lochaber. Underlying such a depth of solid moss and drift, such a discovery necessarily carries us back to a race of men who lived in a very remote period indeed; how remote, even geology is as yet unable absolutely to say. We were unfortunately from home at the time the discovery was made, and were thus prevented from examining the whole in sitû. This much, however, is certain, that under a diluvial bed of drift, gravel, and sand of upwards of two feet in thickness, underlying a thickness of at least six feet of solid moss, a flint instrument manufactory is found, the work of a people who lived before the deposit of that drift and the growth of that moss. How many thousands and thousands of years ago lived that flint-working race, who, in view of the extreme slowness of