We have said above that the winter has thus far been almost unprecedentedly open and mild, by which we mean only that the temperature throughout has been unusually high, not, by any means, that it has been calm. The very contrary is the case. It has been one continued storm, with an occasional breathing time, so to speak, of a fine day at rare intervals, for upwards of eight consecutive weeks. But the storms have, as to temperature, been rather the storms of early summer or autumn, than the boisterously cold and burly shriekings of the lone winter "Storm King," as we used to know and fear him. The reader will best understand what we mean, when we say that, notwithstanding the storminess, anemometrically, of the season, not a single snowflake has fallen in the lowlands of Nether Lochaber this winter, except a little which fell last night, but of which there are no traces again this morning; nor, except twice, and then only for an hour or so, has the thermometer touched the freezing-point. We much doubt if the thickness of a sixpenny piece of ice could be gathered at any one moment from pool or puddle in our district of Lochaber during the present winter. The consequence is, that in all our gardens flowers are at this moment in bloom that perhaps were never known to be in bloom at the same date before. Our privet and elder hedges bear quite a close green vesture of young leaves; the columbine has already reached an April altitude of growth, and a woman who happened to walk from Fort-William early last week brought us a small bouquet of primroses that she had picked up while passing through the woods of Coirrechaorachan, as beautiful and perfect as if it were in truth the proper season of these favourite flowers, instead of the last days of the first month of the year. We shouldn't wonder, however, if we have to pay for it all yet, ere the truant schoolboy again begins to imitate the cuckoo's note, or "the voice of the turtle is heard in our land." There is at this moment sitting in our kitchen a poor, half-witted natural, "Lachlan Gorach," from Mull, whose conversation is always garnished with "Davie Gelletly"-like snatches of quaint song. Sometimes the rhyme is in English, and sometimes in Gaelic, and frequently has no connection whatever with what may be the immediate subject of conversation. On going up to have a crack with him a few moments ago--for poor Lachlan is, in a way, a great favourite of ours--he returned our friendly greeting of "Well, how are you, Lachlan?" with a hearty shake of the hand, and a bow that, for close proximity of forehead to the ground and duration, might have graced the court of Louis the Fourteenth, and immediately on regaining the erect position, struck, to an air that was probably original, into the following verse, which we took down on the spot:--