We were recently shown a great curiosity--a dirk sheath said to be made of human skin. Its history, as related to us by the owner, is as follows:--In the summer of 1746, about two months after the battle of Culloden, a detachment of Saighdearan Dearge, red (coated) soldiers, or Government troops, was passing through Lochaber and Appin on its way to Inveraray, the men amusing themselves, and enlivening the tedium of the march, by burning and plundering as they had opportunity. When passing through the Strath of Appin, a young woman was observed in a field, busily engaged in the evening milking her cow. A sergeant or corporal of the band leaped over the wall into the field, and putting his musket to his shoulder, shot the cow dead upon the spot; after which gallant exploit he began the most brutal ill-treatment of the woman. She, however, defended herself with great courage, and as she retreated towards the shore, she picked up a stone, which she hurled at her persecutor with such good aim that it struck him full on the forehead, stretching him for the moment senseless upon the grass. She then fled towards a boat that was afloat on the beach, and leaping in, rapidly rowed towards Eilean-bhaile-na-gobhar, an island at a considerable distance from the mainland, where she was safe from further annoyance. The tradition is so minute and precise that the heroine's name is given as Silas-Nic-Cholla, or Julia MacColl; and our informant declared himself to be her great-grandson. The sergeant, stunned and bleeding, was picked up by his comrades, and carried to the place of halt for the night, near Tigh-an Ribbi, where, before morning, he died of his wound. His body was buried in the old churchyard of Airds, but was not allowed to rest there. On the disappearance of the soldiers from the district, the body was exhumed by the people, and cast into the sea; not, however, before a brother of Silas-Nic-Cholla flayed the right arm from the shoulder to the elbow, and of the skin thus flayed was made a dirk sheath, and this sheath we saw and handled with no little curiosity a week or two ago. The sheath is of a dark brown colour, limp and soft, with no ornament except a small virle of brass at the point, and a thin edging of the same metal round the orifice, on which is inscribed the date "1747," and the initials "D. M. C." There is no reason, we suppose, to doubt the genuineness of the article, though we hardly expected to find human skin--if it be human skin--of such thickness. It may, however, be partly the result of the tanning process which it probably underwent, and of time. In connection with this strange relic of a past age may be stated the extraordinary fact--incredible, indeed, if it were not thoroughly authenticated--that during the horrors of the French Revolution there was a tannery of human skins for many months in operation at Meudon. The raw material, so to speak, of this strange manufacture, was the skins of the scores and hundreds