pasture, which, unlike most of the Gaelic music, are joyous ditties appropriate to what was once, over all the Highlands, one of the happiest times of the year. A notable change among the cottages and houses in the Highlands during the last fifty years is to be seen in the disappearance of some of the old forms of illumination, consequent on the introduction of mineral oil. Candles of course remain, but in former days a common source of light was obtained from the trunks of pine-trees dug out of the peat mosses. The wood of these trunks, being highly resinous, burnt with a bright though smoky flame. Split into long rods it made good torches, or if broken up into laths and splinters, it furnished a ready light when kindled among the embers of a peat-fire. If a bright light was wanted, the piece of wood was held upright with the lighted end at the bottom, when the flame rapidly spread upward. If, on the other hand, it was desired to make a less vivid light last as long as possible, the position of the wood was reversed. Metal stands were made to hold these pine-splinters, the simplest form consisting merely of a slim upright rod of iron fastened below into a block of stone, and furnished with a movable arm which slid up and down, and was furnished at the end with a clip that would hold the wood at any angle desired. In Morayshire, these stands were known as ‘puir men.’ A few years ago, Mr. James Linn, of the Geological Survey, secured from the farms and cots of that district an interesting collection of these objects which had been thrown aside and neglected, after they were superseded by cheap oil-lamps. This collection has since found a place in the Museum of National Antiquities at Edinburgh. [Sidenote: DISPERSION OF THE CLANS] Another old Highland characteristic which has been constantly waning since 1745 has had its rate of diminution greatly accelerated since railways and steamboats were multiplied,--the localisation of clansmen in their own original territories. It is true that the clan name may still be found predominant there. In Strathspey, for instance, most families in the Grantown district are Grants; Mackays prevail in the Rae country, Campbells in Argyleshire, Mackinnons in Strath, and Macleods in the north of Skye. But in all these old clan districts there is a yearly increasing intermixture of other Highland names, together with many from the lowlands. The application of the clan name Macintosh to a waterproof, has sometimes given rise to odd mistakes, real or invented, as where an Englishman, who had got out at one of the stations on the Callander and Oban railway, is reported to have come back to the carriage from which he had descended, and into which four or five stalwart natives had meanwhile mounted, whom he asked, ‘Did you see a black Macintosh here?’ ‘Na,’ was the answer, ‘we’re a’ red Macgregors.’