A tolerably perfect, though not very large specimen of the sword-fish, the Xiphias gladius of ichthyologists, was cast ashore in our neighbourhood during an unusually heavy midsummer gale from the south-west last week. The length of the elongated snout, commonly called the sword or dagger, was two feet seven inches, a really formidable weapon, with which it has been known, whether willingly or unwillingly it would be difficult to say, to perforate the bottom timbers of the stoutest ships, the sword in such cases luckily breaking off as a rule, and thus becoming an immediate as well as an efficient plug or stop-gap to the perforation. It is a more frequent visitor to our shores than our natural history books would lead one to believe, hardly a summer passing but you hear of one or more being caught or cast ashore somewhere. This is the fourth specimen that within twenty years has come under our personal inspection here on the west coast. The largest and finest we ever saw was captured by a well-known Fort-William fisherman, Iack Crùbach, or Lame Jack. If we well remember, we think he told us that somebody gave him a sovereign for it. Its flesh is said to be excellent eating, while its liver affords an oil equal to eel oil in transparency, and of marvellous virtue, it is said, as a medicament. The favourite habitats of the sword-fish are the Sicilian and the Italian shores of the Mediterranean, where, at certain seasons of the year, it is caught in great numbers, the average weight being quite a hundred, and sometimes two hundred pounds or more. We have it in our Common-Place Book that Major Healy, of the yacht "Wildbird," informed us in Fort-William (August 1869) that he had just returned from the Mediterranean; had called on Garibaldi at Caprera, and dined with him on potatoes and sword-fish steaks, which the gallant Major pronounced excellent. We may state, as something curious, that while the Major at said dinner had his choice of very good wines, with lots of capital bottled "Bass" from England, the General himself drank a funny decoction composed of Marsala and water--half-and-half--in which a large onion, sliced lemon-wise, had been steeping for the whole previous night--a drink which the Major tasted, and in very emphatic phrase declared to be "beastly," but which he shrewdly guessed had something to do with the General's rheumatism and gout. Any of our readers having a tendency thitherwards might do worse than take the hint. There may be something in it, for we recollect, when a little boy in Morven, that an onion was somehow considered a panpharmacon, a perfect panacea--good for any and every ailment. That the mediæval herbalist, like the mediæval alchemist, was often a quack is very likely. In many instances he could hardly be otherwise when his profession was in such repute; but it is a question if our revulsion has not gone too far; if our modern medicinists do not rather much overlook, too contemptuously ignore,