The more one inquires the truer does he find the dictum of a philosopher of the last century to be, that "the superstitions, as well as the languages, of all lands and ages are linked together by mysterious bonds, which neither time nor distance seem able to destroy." In our immediate neighbourhood an instance of a very old superstition was brought under our notice a few days ago, such as, with all our knowledge of such matters, we had hitherto never dreamt of as existing in the Western Highlands. A man went to market at a considerable distance to sell a good strong two-year-old colt. He did not return on the day his wife expected him, and she became uneasy, not so much for the well-being of her laggard liege lord and master--he had often gone the same errand before, and had always returned safe and sound, even if a little later than his better half had a right to expect--but as to whether he had sold the colt, and if for anything like the price settled between the twain as being his fair price before he left home. She put on a large fire on her hearth, placing, when it had reached a certain stage of ignition, a bundle of green alder boughs atop. When the whole was fully ablaze, she went outside and watched the direction of the smoke issuing from her chimney. The smoke was carried in an easterly direction, a lucky quarter, and she returned to the house and told her daughter that, whatever had come over the father--and she threatened to tell him a bit of her mind as to his doings on his return--the colt at least had been sold, and well sold, for the alder smoke had gone in the best and luckiest of all directions, towards the east, in the direction of the rising sun; and she had never known the omen fail. The curious thing is that within an hour or so on that very evening the man returned, and counted into his wife's lap two pounds and four shillings sterling over and above the expected price of the colt, as agreed upon at home. The only other curious thing that we could gather in connection with the superstition is that the alder branches must be cut specially for the occasion, and by a virgin. It was so in this case; and we are gravely assured that, if it had been otherwise, the ascending smoke would either have drifted hither and thither without a purpose, unsteadily, or have uselessly intermingled with that of the neighbouring cottages. The superstition, you must know, is a very old one; the Greeks and Romans practised it, and from them it spread widely over the European Continent. In books on magic and divination it is called Capnomancy, derived, as our friend Professor Blackie could tell you better than anybody else, from the Greek Capnos, smoke, and manteia, divination, witchcraft. The ancients paid attention principally to the smoke of sacrifices, as well as to the briskness with which the fire burned. If the smoke ascended in a straight columnar body zenithwards, it was a favourable omen; if it was violently blown aside, or fell back over the altar and the sacrificers, it was of evil augury. Our Highland dame's notion of its taking an easterly course, towards the direction of the breaking day, of the dawn, and the morning sun, seems to us full of a rough and rude poetry such as you frequently meet with in carefully examining into the details of even the grossest superstitions. Having had occasion to be of some little service to the priestess in this rare act of divination, we had the whole from her own lips, though she was averse at first, as is generally the case when a clergyman is the inquirer, to entering upon the subject at all. How these practices root themselves among a people, defying eradication, is very extraordinary.