ightened age--an
age in which every trace of the barbarism of our early ancestors is fast
disappearing; and were we but more zealous in immortalizing the public
benefactors who efface such dark memorials of the past as the tower of
Dunaliscag and the promontory of Loch Shin, it would be, doubtless, an
encouragement to others to speed us yet further on in the march of
improvement. It seems scarce fair that the enlightened destroyers of
Arthur's Oven or of the bas-relief known as Robin of Redesdale, or of
the Town-cross of Edinburgh, should enjoy all the celebrity attendant on
such acts, while the equally deserving iconoclasts of Dunaliscag and the
tower of Loch Shin should be suffered to die without their fame.

I remember spending one singularly delightful morning with Cousin George
beside the ancient tower. He pointed out to me, amid the heath, several
plants to which the old Highlanders used to attach occult
virtues,--plants that disenchanted bewitched cattle, not by their
administration as medicines to the sick animals, but by bringing them in
contact, as charms, with the injured milk; and plants which were used as
philters, either for procuring love, or exciting hatred. It was, he
showed me, the root of a species of orchis that was employed in making
the philters. While most of the radical fibres of the plant retain the
ordinary cylindrical form, two of their number are usually found
developed into starchy tubercles; but, belonging apparently to different
seasons, one of the two is of a dark colour, and of such gravity that it
sinks in water; while the other is light-coloured, and floats. And a
powder made of the light-coloured tubercle formed the main ingredient,
said my cousin, in the love philter; while a powder made of the
dark-coloured one excited, it was held, only antipathy and dislike. And
then George would speculate on the origin of a belief which could, as he
said, neither be suggested by reason, nor tested by experience. Living,
however, among a people with whom beliefs of the kind were still vital
and influential, he did not wholly escape their influence; and I saw
him, in one instance, administer to an ailing cow a little live trout,
simply because the traditions of the district assured him, that a trout
swallowed alive by the creature was the only specific in the case. Some
of his Highland stories were very curious. He communicated to me, for
example, beside the broken tower, a tradition illustrative of