indicated, for this last is not properly a Scotch plant at all, it being rarely, if ever, found growing wild anywhere north of the Tweed, though comparatively common in England. The first public and properly authenticated mention of the thistle as the national badge is, we believe, in an inventory of the jewels and wardrobe effects of James III., about the year 1467. Whether there was an "ancient" Order of the Thistle seems doubtful; what is commonly called the revival of the order dates from the reign of James the Seventh of Scotland, Second of England, in 1687. A more natural and less apocryphal combat than the recent dwarf and bulldog business at Hanley is the following. Be not alarmed; ours is simply a brief account of a fight, fierce and furious enough to be sure, but very natural--for of the Phocidæ, we suppose, as of the "bears and lions" in the well-known hymn, it may be predicted that "'tis their nature to"--a fight, then, between a pair of dog-seals in the bay under our house a few evenings ago. In nothing else are the results of the Gun Tax Act so pleasantly manifest as in the increased, and still increasing, confidence and friendly relations now so happily established between seals and sea-birds of every kind and the sea-side naturalist, as, throwing books and papers for the time aside, he takes his evening walk abroad within sight and sound of the setting sunlit sea, that gently murmurs the while, as if for very gladness, in response to the rosy smile of the departing god. Ever since the beginning of summer, a large dog-seal, recognisable as such by his immense, square, bulldog-like head and fierce hirsute beard, has made our beautiful Onich Bay his favourite evening fishing-ground, until we have come to know him perfectly; no difficult matter either, for he has a curious grey patch, larger than one's hand, on his left cheek, and, unlike most seals, sinks, not log-like, when he disappears under water, but almost always with a lively "header," in which the whole back, arched and shining, is brought to view, as if for our special delectation, as we sit and watch his graceful motions with a glass powerful enough to detect the wary and intelligent glance of his beautiful dark-brown eye, and count, if need were, every separate bristle in his moustache. He is a big and powerful animal, and when in our bay doubtless accounts himself lord of all he surveys, for, of the hundreds of seals in Loch Leven, he alone constantly frequents this particular semi-oval, sandy-bottomed inlet, his size and strength probably ensuring it to him as a sort of reserve, in which woe unto the interloping poacher caught sight of flagrante delicto by the bright eye of "Lord Nelson," as we have long since called him, and all the people about call him, for he is now known to everybody in the hamlet, and frequently spoken about with all the interest attached to a wild animal, actually suspicious and shy, but perfectly harmless,