November Rains: 1500 tons per Imperial Acre!--Rainfall in Skye--An old Gaelic Apologue--The Drover and his Minister--Grand Stag's Head--Scott as a Poet--Mr. Gladstone and Scott--An old Lullaby from the Gaelic. With the exception of two, or at most three, tolerably fine days at the beginning of the month, December [1870] has been hardly less rainy and generally disagreeable than November itself, and this, although in November a fall of 18 inches--1500 tons of rain water to the imperial acre--was duly registered. A recent communication from Skye went to show that in the matter of rainfall that island is far ahead, not only of Lochaber, but of every other station in the kingdom--a pluvial pre-eminence which we had really thought belonged to ourselves, but which, claimed for Skye on the impartial authority of the rain-gauge, we give up ungrudgingly, simply exclaiming with Meliboeus in the Virgilian eclogue-- "Non equidem invideo, miror magis." (In sooth I feel not envy, but surprise.) "With such a rainfall as is claimed for Skye, one only wonders how it is that the inhabitants of the island seem not to suffer a whit because of it. As a rule, they are a robust and remarkably long-lived people; and, what is even more surprising, they are exceedingly good-humoured and cheerful--the pleasantest people in the world to meet with, whether at home or abroad. There is an old Gaelic apologue current in Lochaber, which may perhaps have some bearing on the point:--"It was long, long ago that, in the grey dawn of an intensely cold January morning, after a wild night of drift and snow, the heathcock of Ben Nevis clapped his wings, and, in a loud, prolonged, interrogative crow, addressed his first cousin by the father's side, the heathcock of Ben Cruachan--'How do you feel yourself this morning, dear heathcock of Cruachan?' 'So, so,' with a feeble attempt at wing-clapping, responded the heathcock of Cruachan; 'So, so; miserable enough, believe me, after such a night as last night was. And if I am thus miserable down here, it only puzzles me to understand how you can at all endure it, and live up there on Ben Nevis.' 'Thanks, my dear fellow,' with a second vigorous clapping of his wings, quoth the Ben Nevis bird; 'Thanks, my dear fellow, for your kind and cousinly solicitude for my welfare. Know this, however, that, bad as it doubtless is up here on Ben Nevis, I am made to it.'" We can only suppose that our friends in Skye bear this prodigious rainfall with such philosophic equanimity and impunity because, like the heathcock of Ben Nevis, they are "made to it." The first time we heard this apologue was many years ago, in the cabin of one of the Messrs. Hutcheson's steamers. A rubicund visaged drover--a fine-looking man, of burly frame and Atlantean shoulders--had just swallowed quite half-a-tumblerful of potent and unadulterated "Talisker" at a gulp rather than a draught,