do not know its habits and economy sufficiently to entitle us, much as we are inclined, to enter on its defence under such an indictment; but, from all we have been enabled to gather on the subject, we should meantime be disposed to record the tertium quid verdict of "Not proven." CHAPTER XLIV. A "Blessed Thaw" after a Severe Frost--Longevity in Lochaber--A ready "Saline draught--A probatum est Recipe for Catarrh and Colds--Egg-shell Superstition--Curious old Gaelic Poem. How intense was the recent frost [January 1875], and how hyperborean all our surroundings, may be judged of from the fact that on coming out of church yesterday, one of our people, a greyheaded, pious old man, spoke of the happy change to open weather and "westlan' breezes" very solemnly as "the blessed thaw"--an t'aiteamh beannaichte. Before any one else north or south of the Tweed made any reference to the coming winter, our readers may remember that we did, and that we inculcated on every one the wisdom of keeping themselves warm and comfortable, by means of good fires and otherwise, as the best way of being jolly in the best and truest sense of that much misapprehended and frequently misapplied term. It was, in truth, a trying season; but sensibly and thickly clad in many a fold of honest home-spun cùrain, or plaiding, our people for the most part got over it without any very serious ailments. Influenzas, catarrhs, and colds in every form were of course common, and, for a time, one was met on every side by an uncomfortable and sometimes disagreeable amount of coughing, expectoration, sniftering, sneezing, and nose-blowing; but now all this has almost or altogether passed away, and people are again going about as usual, clad no otherwise than ordinarily, and as becometh the inhabitants of a temperate zone: plaids, comforters, double-ply mittens, and "bosom-friends," having been laid aside as unnecessary incumbrances in weather that is now actually warm and spring-like, as compared with that dreadful month or six weeks of Baffin's Bay-like temperature, that, when it got fairly at you, and off your guard, seemed capable of making the very blood freeze in one's veins, even as it froze the water in our subterranean and best guarded lead pipes. Nothing, perhaps, could more pointedly illustrate the healthy vigour and vitality of our people generally than the fact that, although we have amongst us many who have arrived at extreme old age, and some who have been more or less valetudinarian for years, there has not been a single death in the district--a district which, as we look around us, contains some two or three thousand inhabitants--since the beginning of last December; a fact which, considering the inclemency of the weather, and the high death-rate everywhere else, is something surely worthy chronicling. We are probably correct in believing that the worst at least of winter is already past, but much cold and stormy weather