"First the heel and then the toe, That's the way the polka goes; First the toe and then the heel, That's the way to dance a reel; Quick about and then away, Lightly dance the glad Strathspey. Jump a jump, and jump it big, That's the way to dance a jig; Slowly, smiling as in France, Follow through the country dance. And we'll meet Johnny Cope in the morning." It was very amusing. Where he picked up the uncouth rhyme we do not know, and it was bootless to inquire. Having ordered him some dinner, we bade him good-bye, when we caught hold of the following verse of Lachlan's favourite ditties as we disappeared:-- "Kilt your coaties, bonnie lassie, As you wade the burnie through; Or your mother will be angry If you wet your coaties now." Poor Lachlan, always cheerful and perfectly harmless, is a welcome guest at every fireside throughout the many districts which he periodically peregrinates. We may have something more to say of himself and his quaint scraps of songs on a future occasion. CHAPTER XLI. Plague of Thistles in Australia and New Zealand--How to deal with them--Cnicus Acaulis, Great Milk Thistle, or Stemless Thistle--Fierce Fight between two Seals, "Nelson" and "Villeneuve." It is true to a proverb that one may have too much even of a good It is true to a proverb that one may have too much even of a good thing. It was the most natural thing in the world, for instance, that our countrymen should have introduced the thistle, the national emblem, into the fertile plains and straths of Australia and New Zealand, to remind them of home, and to speak to them, even at the Antipodes, of memories and traditions that patriotism will in nowise "willingly let die." The inevitable result of such introduction, however, was not foreseen, or rather was never thought of. A correspondent in the province of Otago, in a very pleasant letter by last mail [August 1874] informs us that the "symbol dear" of Burns has so flourished and spread over large tracts of land in New Zealand as to be already an intolerable nuisance; so much so, that legislative enactments are being passed, in view, if possible, to its total extirpation. "You may think I exaggerate," says our friend, "but I positively do not, when I tell you that in the course of a fifty miles ride the other day I saw whole paddocks containing many hundred acres of splendid land quite overrun with thistles, so close, and thick, and formidable, that neither man nor horse could force a way through them. And such thistles, too! I measured several that were quite eight feet in height, and as thick in the stem as my wrist, with spikes on them as large as horse-shoe nails, and as sharp-pointed as the sharpest needle. The proprietor of one of the paddocks thus overgrown with thistles swore at them awfully--and most unpatriotically, too, you will say, for he