Approach of Winter--Contentedness of the People--Poets and Wild-Bird Song--Differences in the Colouring and Markings of Birds' Eggs--Late Nest-building--Anecdote of Provost Robertson of Dingwall, Mr. Gladstone's Grandfather, 341
Spring--Hood's Parody of Thomson's Invocation--The excellence of Nettle-Top Soup--Cock-crowing--Birds'-nesting--Professor Geikie--Curious Story of an old Pipe-Tune, 348
Rain in Lochaber--An Apple Tree in bloom by Candle-light--Mackenzie the Bird-catcher--A Badenoch "Wise Woman" spitting in a Child's Face to preserve it from the Fairies, 355
Caught in a Squall on Loch Leven--Potatoes and Herrings: How to cook them--A day in Glen Nevis--A visit to Uaimh Shomhairle, or Samuel's Cave--The Cave-Men, 361
Showers in Harvest Time--Magnificent Sunset--Night sometimes seeming not to descend but to ascend--Death of M. Leverrier--The Discovery of Neptune--Pigeon cooing at Midnight--The Owl at Noon--Cage-Birds singing at Night, 370
October Storms--Cablegram Predictions--Indications of coming Storms--Geordie Braid, the St. Andrews and Newport Coach-driver--The Naturalist in Winter--Drowned Hedgehogs: Spines become soft and gelatinous--Lophius Piscatorius--Disproportion between head and body in the Devil-Fish a puzzle--An Itinerant Fiddler, 379
A Trip to Glasgow--Kelvin Grove Museum--Highland Association--A run to Rothesay--Rothesay Aquarium, 387
Overland from Ballachulish to Oban on a "Pet Day" in February--Story of Clach Ruric--Castle Stalker: an old Stronghold of the Stewarts of Appin--James IV.--Charles II.--Magpies--Dun-Mac-Uisneachan, 394
Nest-building--Cunningham's objection to Burns' Song, "O were my Love yon Lilac fair"--Birds and the Lilac Tree--Rivalries of Birds--Birds and the Poets--The Nightingale, 402
March Dust--Moons of Mars--Planetoids--Occultation of Alpha Leonis--Zodiacal Light--Snow Bunting--Old Gaelic Ballad of "Deirdri:" Its Topography, 410
Primroses and Daisies in early March--"The Posie"--Burns--"The Ancient Mariner"--William Tennant, Author of Anster Fair--Hebridean Epithalamium--A Bard's Blessing--A Translation--Macleod of Berneray.
The weather [March 1868] with us here still continues wonderfully genial and mild: taken all in all, the season may be noted as in this respect perhaps without precedent in our meteorological annals. The sun, with nearly eight degrees of southern declination, is not yet half-way through Pisces; we are still three weeks from the vernal equinox, and yet on our table before us, as we write these lines, there is as pretty a posy of wild-flowers as you could wish to see, consisting of daisies, primroses, and other modest beauties, the "firstlings of the year," culled from bank and brae at a date when in ordinary seasons the country, snow-covered or ice-bound, is but a bleak and barren waste. Older and wiser people than ourselves confidently predict "a winter in mid-spring" as yet in store for us; but meliora speramus, we had rather believe that to one of the mildest winters on record will succeed a genial spring, a splendid summer, and an abundant harvest. In any case, as somebody said of Scaliger and Clavius, Mallem cum Scaligero errare quam cum Clavio rectè sapere: I had rather, that is, be a partaker in the errors of Scaliger, than a sharer in all the wisdom of Clavius. Even so, we had rather err with the optimists than be ranked with the pessimists, even when their predictions turn out the truest. In our forenoon ramble on Friday last did we not find a merle's nest in the close and well-guarded embrace of an old thorn root, with its pretty treasure of four brown-spotted, greyish-green eggs? and with our wild-flower bouquet before us, are we not better employed in crooning one of Burns' sweetest lyrics than in predicting evil, even if we were certain that our prediction should become true?--said lyric being that entitled The Posie, which, dear reader, if you do not know it already, you should incontinently get by heart. Here is a verse or two:--