these are now nearly ripe, and of the best quality, stronger too, and in every way better able to resist the attacks of blight--absit omen!--should it unfortunately come their way, as we hope it won't; while the still green and half-ripe tubers of later plantings would probably suffer largely under a similar visitation. Not even when it is quite ready for the sickle do people generally cut their corn timeously. Too often it is allowed to ripen overmuch, till the straw is over-dry and sapless, besides the inevitable loss of grain in the stooking and subsequent ingathering. It is very much the same with hay. As a rule, it is left too long uncut, by which its quality is sadly deteriorated. Nor is this mistake in haymaking peculiar to the west coast, but much too common over all the country. Even in Morayshire and about Inverness the hay crop is, as a rule, allowed to ripen over-much. If it were cut ten days or a fortnight earlier it would weigh more, smell sweeter, be more nutritious, and better every way than under the present system, which allows it not merely to ripen, but to more than ripen, to wither up and lose most of its sap and seed before it is cut and secured. It may, perhaps, be laid down as an axiom that root crops cannot be allowed to ripen over-much; cereals and grasses most certainly may. Cavill's recent attempt to swim the Channel, in rivalry of Captain Webb's feat, was a failure, and had medical aid not been so opportunely at hand when the swimmer, comatose and unconscious, was lifted out of the water by his friends in the attendant lugger, the venture, noteworthy, though unsuccessful, for its pluck and daring, would probably have resulted in something far more serious than mere failure. In accounting for his non-success, and his state of extreme exhaustion when taken out of the water, Cavill largely blames the jelly-fish or sea-blubber, through perfect shoals of which he had once and again to force his way; and although he wore a thin jersey, which must have been some protection, enough of the bare skin was exposed to contact with the cold, clammy, slimy Medusæ, to make him exceedingly nervous and generally uncomfortable throughout a full third of the distance covered. The number of these Medusæ to be met with at certain seasons all along the British shores is enormous; and towards the close of summer and early autumn they are more abundant, perhaps, in our western lochs than anywhere else. Looking over the boat's side on a fine day, we have seen them in our own Loch Leven in incalculable numbers, thick as autumnal leaves in Vallambrosa, or the stars in the Milky Way--of all shapes and sizes too, swimming about aimlessly by a slow but constant contraction and expansion, regular as the beat of a pendulum, of their umbrella-like bodies, fringed like a lady's parasol, with a close edging of thread-like cilia, and frequently having long, pendulous tentaculæ attached to their under surface,