Our nuts are unusually plentiful this year, and of a size and flavour that we do not recollect ever to have seen equalled. They are now at that stage of ripeness when they are most delicious to the taste, and one may indulge in any amount of them with perfect safety. Most people are fond of nuts, but if the reader wants to enjoy the full flavour, to get out of a nut all that is in it, let him take the following recipe:--"First of all, let the nut be cracked, if possible, between your own molars, for these are, after all, the first and most natural and best of all nut-crackers, better quoad hoc than an instrument of the purest silver or steel; and there is besides, remember, something pleasant to the palate in the feel and flavour even of an uncracked nut. Having cracked your nut, then--and fairly placed between the grinders, a really good nut is not difficult to crack, the worst nuts being always the most difficult to deal with, for the more insignificant the kernel the thicker and dourer the shell--having cracked your nut and extracted the kernel, whole if possible, introduce it into your mouth, not per se, by itself, as is commonly done, but with a small fragment of the shell,--a bit of pin's head size will do. Proceed now to masticate the delicious morsel, and confess that there is a delicacy and flavour about a hazel nut that you knew not how to extract in full, although in your day you had cracked your bushels of them, until you were taught it from Nether Lochaber. The philosophy of the thing is that the particle of shell introduced with the kernel causes the act of mastication to be performed more thoroughly than it otherwise would be, setting free the full flavour and aroma--all, in short, that a nut has to give.
Strength of Insects--Necrophoris Vespillo, or Burying-Beetle--Foetid smell of--How Willie Grimmond earned an Honest Penny in Glencoe.
The strength of insects, proportionably to their weight and size, was probably the first characteristic in the minor world to arrest the attention and call forth the admiration of entomologists; and soon afterwards, we may believe, the ingenuity, patience, and perseverance displayed by these pigmies in dealing with any self-imposed piece of labour, must have made the intelligent observer feel and acknowledge, even if he could not repeat and had never heard of the mad-wise Hamlet's dictum, that--