strong, prickly sticks that they sometimes brought to it jointly, one at each end, pulling it along, when they were not able to lift it from the ground. I gave the poor people's children a shilling each, because they had not robbed nor disturbed the magpies.

The same poor people, having one year lost the mother of some chickens, the cock became their protector, took them under his wings in the nighttime, and whenever it was cold, and continued this paternal care, notwithstanding that his wives often tried to seduce him from the chickens, to attend to themselves. Here too I was informed, a pigeon took care and fed the young himself; his wife, and the mother of the young ones, having been seized and carried off by an insidious cat.-Who is not tempted to exclaim, with the philosopher, DEUS EST ANIMA

BRUTORUM!

HILL OF NOTH.

My next route was to the top of Noth, a hill not far from Huntley, where they report there was once a volcano. I examined this place very minutely. Many of the stones around this hill, not only near the top, but all around its base to a considerable distance, appearing partly to have been in a state of fusion, no doubt serves to support this opinion; but I am rather inclined to think that these stones have assumed this appearance from having been built up in the form of a wall or rampart, and wood having been set on fire, piled up on each side of them, to smelt them, and make them run together,

and consequently to form a stronger fence and more durable than if built with the strongest cement. Some of the stones of this country evidently contain iron and ores of various kinds, and consequently by being put between fires, might easily be made to run together, and thus form a fence of stones run together, and capable of continuing in that state for thousands of years.

A few miles from Huntley I passed a rill, scarcely a foot deep, that conveys water to drive a mill. A cat, sunning herself, and purring one day by the side of this rill, seeing a salmon in it, leaped on its back; but not being able to pull it out, she continued crying in an uncommonly curious manner, and held it till a person ran to her assistance. The salmon, which weighed eight pounds, musthave lost its way, being more than two miles from the water of Bogie, and thirty from the sea.

KILDRUMMIE CASTLE.

Between the rivers Dee and the Spey, at the foot of the Grampian Hills in Bræmar, is situate Kildrummie Castle, an old and extensive ruin, once the seat of the earl of Mar. It was in Kildrummie Castle, then deemed impregnable, that the heroic and great king Robert Bruce lodged his family, while he himself, with about two hundred followers, fled for safety after the unfortunate battle of Methven, near Perth, to the lakes and recesses of the Grampian mountains and the Western Islands. It is situated on a rising ground projecting into a deep glen.

It is of a pentagonal form, the angles defended by very strong and lofty towers, one of which is still fifty yards high. The court enclosed within this massy pentagon takes up an acre of ground.

Besides the impression made by the vast extent of the ruins, I was much struck with an arched way under ground more than a mile, by which, in antient times, when necessary, they could leave or enter this castle. I proceeded some yards in this subterraneous passage, but finding it wet and disagreeable, I returned.

In almost all parts of Scotland, if the people dislike the established clergyman of the parish, they find dissenters of various kinds ready to increase the dislike; but in some places the people are so thinly scattered, and so poor, that they are not able to support dissenters; and in others, the landholders neither will allow them to build places of meeting for dissenters, nor to attend such without incurring their displeasure. In such cases, when the patron appoints a minister that the people dislike, they must either go and hear him on Sunday, or stay at home, there being often no other place of public worship within a dozen or even twenty miles. Having no other place of public worship but the parish church, and not choosing to go there, a number of people in the upper part of the county of Bamff agreed to meet at a central house, and read Flavel's works. A dozen of them having met at the same hour with the parish church, they opened the book, which was a large folio, and looked at the fron ispiece, a print of the author. Having done this, the master of the house proposed, that before they be