Nest-building--Cunningham's objection to Burns' Song, "O were my Love yon Lilac fair"--Birds and the Lilac Tree--Rivalries of Birds--Birds and the Poets--The Nightingale, 402 CHAPTER LXIII. March Dust--Moons of Mars--Planetoids--Occultation of Alpha Leonis--Zodiacal Light--Snow Bunting--Old Gaelic Ballad of "Deirdri:" Its Topography, 410 NETHER LOCHABER. CHAPTER I. Primroses and Daisies in early March--"The Posie"--Burns--"The Ancient Mariner"--William Tennant, Author of Anster Fair--Hebridean Epithalamium--A Bard's Blessing--A Translation--Macleod of Berneray. The weather [March 1868] with us here still continues wonderfully genial and mild: taken all in all, the season may be noted as in this respect perhaps without precedent in our meteorological annals. The sun, with nearly eight degrees of southern declination, is not yet half-way through Pisces; we are still three weeks from the vernal equinox, and yet on our table before us, as we write these lines, there is as pretty a posy of wild-flowers as you could wish to see, consisting of daisies, primroses, and other modest beauties, the "firstlings of the year," culled from bank and brae at a date when in ordinary seasons the country, snow-covered or ice-bound, is but a bleak and barren waste. Older and wiser people than ourselves confidently predict "a winter in mid-spring" as yet in store for us; but meliora speramus, we had rather believe that to one of the mildest winters on record will succeed a genial spring, a splendid summer, and an abundant harvest. In any case, as somebody said of Scaliger and Clavius, Mallem cum Scaligero errare quam cum Clavio rectè sapere: I had rather, that is, be a partaker in the errors of Scaliger, than a sharer in all the wisdom of Clavius. Even so, we had rather err with the optimists than be ranked with the pessimists, even when their predictions turn out the truest. In our forenoon ramble on Friday last did we not find a merle's nest in the close and well-guarded embrace of an old thorn root, with its pretty treasure of four brown-spotted, greyish-green eggs? and with our wild-flower bouquet before us, are we not better employed in crooning one of Burns' sweetest lyrics than in predicting evil, even if we were certain that our prediction should become true?--said lyric being that entitled The Posie, which, dear reader, if you do not know it already, you should incontinently get by heart. Here is a verse or two:-- "Oh, luve will venture in where it daurna weel be seen; Oh, luve will venture in, where wisdom ance has been; But I will down yon river rove, amang the wood sae green-- And a' to pu' a posie to my ain dear May.