Reading over the foregoing paragraph, which the reader may see was written currente calamo—at a gallop, as it were, and without a check, as the foxhunter says—we find that we have used the often-quoted Latin phrase terra firma: words which rarely fail to make us smile in their connection with an anecdote current in St. Andrews in our early college days. It was to this effect: The driver of a two-horse coach that ran at that time between St. Andrews and Newport was a George Braid, a respectable old man, familiarly known to everybody, and notably to the University students, as "Geordie," a liberty with his Christian name which Mr. Braid in nowise resented, for he was intelligent and shrewd, and knew that he was thus spoken of and addressed out of goodwill and kindly regard rather than otherwise. Frequently patronised on his route by learned professors and lively students, Geordie had picked up many big words and learned phrases, which he was fond of using in his family, and, as the Catechism says, amongst his "inferiors and equals." In connection with frequent storm and shipwreck on the wild east coast, it was the most natural thing in the world that Geordie should often have heard from the lips of some of his learned "fare" the words terra firma, with which he associated a general idea of protection, comfort, and safety. One terrible night of snow and storm, having driven a large coachful from Newport to the city, Geordie, when he had duly seen to his cattle, and paid a short visit to the bar of the "Cross Keys" hostelry, wended his way by the West Port to his home, which lay beyond the old city walls. His wife, a brisk and eident bit body, had a roaring fire and a cheery welcome for her goodman on his entrance, while his children gathered round him to help him off with caps, coats, leggings, and all the other belongings of the outer man of a driver in the good old coaching days. Reduced at last to something like his natural dimensions, Geordie, having sufficiently rubbed his purple hands before the fire, looked benignantly around and exclaimed, "Ah! Meg, my woman, you and the bairns hae muckle cause to he thankful to your Maker that ye hae terra firma abune your heads this night! Its just awfu' out yonder by the Guard Brig and Strathtyrum." "We have met with not a few in our day with a strange craze for using words and phrases of which they evidently knew as little of the real meaning and proper application as honest Geordie Braid with his terra firma.

The new moon of the 5th, aided by a wind that at times almost amounted to a gale, gave us along the western seaboard three very high tides in succession ; that of the afternoon of the 6th, however, being the highest. The naturalist who is fairly diligent on such occasions is pretty sure to meet with more or less interesting matter for thoughtful study; nor, so far as our own experience extends, need the entries in one's note-book, even for what is called the "dead" season of mid-winter, be fewer in number, or less interesting or instructive than those of the pages devoted to the summer season itself. We have known naturalists whose note-books presented little but a dreary succession of blank pages for the winter half-year, and who thought it odd that we should be surprised at it. It has been said that the laws of disease are as beautiful as those of health, and that peace has its victories as well as war, and we have no hesitation in saying that to the true naturalist the winter season, if fairly and diligently encountered, is in its way just as interesting as the summer, and that the observer who has all his wits about him, and who goes to work with a will, may have his "victories" even in the season of the winter solstice—victories as important in their way and gratifying as are those of midsummer itself, when the days are at their longest, when summer seas are calm and summer woods are green. In the course of half an hour's ramble on the beach the other day, we fell in with some curious waifs, each of which might be made the text of an interesting monograph. Three drowned hedgehogs, for example, was a somewhat startling "find" to turn up in a swathe of seaware that the advancing tide was slowly rolling up the shingle. One was full-grown, a female ; the other two, both males, were but half or three parts grown. "What brought them there? was the natural question; for a hedgehog, dead or living, on the sea-shore under high-water mark, is as odd and out-of-place an object as would be a mackerel far up the hills amongst the heather. The following is probably a satisfactory enough explanation of the mystery :—Hedgehogs, which twenty years ago were quite unknown in Lochaber, are now plentiful. A pair, captured on Lord Abinger's lands at Torlundy, were sent to us some dozen or fifteen years ago as a great curiosity; and in this district then they were a curiosity, so much so, that we can recollect that during the time they remained in our possession as exceedingly tame and most interesting pets, people from all parts of the country used to come in order to have a close look at the black-snouted, spine-armoured hedge pigs, as Shakespeare calls them, the graineag or repulsive one of the midland Highlanders of Athole and Strathspey, where the animal has always been plentiful. They have now become so common in this district that a hedgehog is no more accounted a rarity than is a stoat or a weasel. Hedgehogs are fond of making their cozy nests of moss, grass fibres, and fallen leaves, near the roots of trees and bushes growing on the banks of rivers and mountain streams. These last have of late been frequently swollen beyond their usual bounds by the heavy rains ; and in a spate of this kind poor Mrs. Hedgehog and her youngsters were caught napping, and carried away by the torrent to the sea, and ultimately cast ashore by the wind and waves, where we found them- in their winding-sheet of slimy sea-wrack, and for a moment wondered how it came to pass that they lay there, like poor Ophelia, "drown'd, drown'd." One remarkable circumstance connected with these drowned hedgehogs was this : we found to our surprise that we could handle them with impunity; their spines, so formidable in the living animal, being quite soft and gelatinous to their very tips. This is by no means the case with the spines of such hedgehogs as are killed by trap, or otherwise on land. In this latter case the spines retain their point and prickliness, as in the living animal, till in the process of decay they separate from their sockets in the skin, and drop in brittle, broken fragments to the ground. A question, then, for future investigation is this,—Do the spines of all drowned hedgehogs lose their prickliness and point, and become soft and gelatinous 1 If so, has fresh water alone this effect, or is it necessary that the animal should be some time immersed in salt water

Within a short distance of the drowned hedgehogs, lay a large angler or fishing-frog, the Lophius piscatorius of ichthyologists, and a frequent waif on our shores after a gale. It had evidently been caught by the storm in shallow water, and been beaten to death by the weight and force of the waves, for it was in excellent condition, and there was nothing to indicate death in any other way. Why in this fish such a huge head, with its formidable array of recurved teeth, and such a cavernous, capacious gullet, should be joined to a body comparatively so diminutive, is a puzzle that has never yet been satisfactorily solved ; nor can we ourselves, up to this present moment, advance even a plausible conjecture in explanation of an anomaly that must have attracted the attention of thousands. The disproportion between the immense head and the small and slender body is as great as if you erected a porch lofty and wide enough to serve as the main entrance to a cathedral, and vestibule to correspond, in order to enter a dwelling consisting after all but of a single bedroom. Or, to put it in another way, it is as if you built a large mill, with the most powerful machinery possible, in order to grind sufficient meal for the daily consumption of a single dyspeptic customer. The-fishing frog, has, we believe, been of late successfully introduced into more than one of our many aquaria, but we are not aware that any satisfactory explanation of the difficulty which we are considering has as yet been arrived at. A full and sufficient explanation, however, you may be sure there must he, if we only knew enough of the animal's economy to get at it.

But we must stop ; for hark ! an itinerant fiddler has this moment struck up "Bob of Fettercairn" just in front of our study window. He plays admirably too, lovingly caressing the polished base of his instrument—his bread-winner, poor fellow—with his wan and withered cheek, and wielding a powerful, yet light and delicate, bow-hand; and we must go and have a crack with him. Nor must you sneer at us for so doing, gracious reader. The arrival even of a peripatetic, out-at-elbows fiddler is an event of some importance in such a place as this on a cold, grey November afternoon. We shall order him a big bowl of tea, with something to eat, satisfied that if in so doing we are not entertaining an angel unawares (though there is no reason that we know of why an angel should not appear in peripatetic fiddler guise, as well as in any other form), we are at all events entertaining one who by his appearance manifestly needs something warm and comfortable, and a little rest by a cheerful fireside at this season, not forgetting the while that he is a capital fiddler—of some intelligence, too, and full of capital stories we warrant him. Depend upon it that Homer, who was after all but an inspired gaberlunzie, has many a time and oft appeared in quite as sorry a plight, and with as little externally to recommend him as this same itinerant fiddler; and think how proud and glad you and we should be to have a chance of entertaining the blind old Chian, wandering ballad-singer as he was ! You must, therefore, let us have our way with this poor old man, who, by the way, is not blind, but, on the contrary, has a good large dark brown eye of his own, so common, wc have noticed, in people musically inclined, that it may be called the musical eye; and if he is all we take him for, and he and we got on well together, you may perhaps hear of him again.