Aurora Borealis--Unfavourable weather for Birds about St. Valentine's Day--The Water-Vole in the Rhi--In the Eden in Fifeshire--In the Black Water, Kinloch Leven--Does it feed on Salmon Fry and Ova?--The Kingfisher--Character of the Water-Vole--Note about the Hedgehog. A brilliant display of aurora borealis on the early morning of the 8th [February 1871] led us to conclude that a change of weather was not far distant; and before sunset of that same day the wind had gone round from east by south to south-west, and a drizzling rain, with a very much milder temperature than we had known for three months, told us that, for the present at least, King Frost had agreed to suspension of hostilities. Since then it has been mostly wet, with occasional hailstone showers, and turbulent withal, if not actually stormy. The revictualling of Paris under the terms of the capitulation and armistice was not a more sensible relief to the starving inhabitants than was the recent thaw to our wild birds on sea and shore. The moment they became convinced that it was no sham, but a real, veritable thaw, they revived amazingly. Shaking off the torpidity in which cold and want had so pitilessly bound them, they took heart, and bustled about in search of such food as might now be procured by diligent seeking in copse and hedgerow, by pool and stream. An occasional strophe, sadly inconsecutive and discordant, may now again be heard when the sun shines out and the storm has lulled, from some of our hardier warblers, and we have observed that in some instances rooks have begun to pair; but our bird-world, upon the whole, is far from what it should be at this date; more taken up, like vanquished France, with the thought of the mere necessities of life and the reestablishment of their exhausted energies, than with love or music, or the gaiety and abandon so characteristic in ordinary seasons of our feathered friends on the back of St. Valentine's Day. The meridian sun, however, is now steadily climbing zenithwards, and the day perceptibly lengthening apace, so that our wild birds, rapidly gathering strength, and daily improving in tone and tune, may, after all, arrive at their day of jollity and joyousness sooner than we anticipated. We captured a beautiful Scarlet Emperor butterfly a few days ago, as brisk and lively as possible, on a window pane in Ardvulin Cottage, Ardgour. How beautiful, by the way, and how suggestive of spring and vernal delights in a land of plenitude and peace, is the following from the Song of Solomon:--"For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell."