reports that about sixty years ago a small anchor
was found at Megginch. More recently a boat-hook
was found about eighteen feet below the
surface, sticking among the gravel as if left by
the water. About twenty years ago the remains
of an anchor were found below Craig Flaw, a
cliff which overlooks the Carse between Kinnaird
and Fingask. Craig Flaw, and the rock on
which Castle Huntly stands, contained, it is
said, until a very recent period, rings to which
boats were formerly tied. The title-deeds of
estates, now separated by the whole breadth of
the Carse from the firth, contain rights of
salmon-fishing. These rights might become of
some use, if the Scotch salmon would learn from
certain Asian species of fish how to travel over
dry land, or how to fall in showers from heaven!

In 1819, at Airthrey, near Stirling, in land
twenty-five feet higher than the level of the
spring tides in the river flowing a mile off, there
were found the bones of a large whale. Seven
miles further up the Carse there were found, in
1824, on the estate of Blair-Drummond, the remains
of another large whale. The bones rested
on the lower of two mosses. In each of these
cases there were found among the bones fragments
of stags'-horns containing perforations
about an inch in diameter, and evidently the
work of man.

Innumerable illustrations of these changes of
sea-level may be found in geological works. The
dry land, indeed, consists chiefly of ancient sea-beds
and the matter of igneous irruptions.

STARTING FOR SIBERIA.

MY dreams had been of the knout, and the
clacking of that detestable torturing whip had
awoke me before daybreak.

The fact was, that two nights before, my excellent
and learned friend, Monsieur Ivan Bibikoff,
Professor of International Law at the
University of Moscow, had been explaining to
me the shape of the knout, and the mode of
using it, and both together, over a bottle of
Crimean champagne, had rejoiced with flowing
glasses over the discontinuance of such a cruel
mode of punishment.

"Ha, my dear friend," said the admirable professor,
looking up at me from his spectacles,
"we are a young people. You lucky English
must not be impatient with us. We move on
as fast as we can. "You shall see our prisons;
we are not so brutal as you think us. We go
on; we have done away with the knout; punishment
of death is almost unknown among us;
no criminal can be executed till he has himself
confessed; soon we shall have trial by jury—
God hasten the day; in time we shall throw
open our courts of justice. Patience, mon cher
monsieur. Keep constantly before you the fact
that our civilisation is but of yesterday. You
must not expect of the boy the wisdom that you
demand of the man."

"Well said," I replied. " But to return to
the knout. Please to draw me on this envelope
(pushing one towards him) the shape of this
barbarous whip."

The professor drew, with the painful care of
an amateur artist, the shape of the savage relic
of a bygone cruelty.

"The knout," he said, "had a short massive
handle, and a heavy leather lash about eight
feet long. It resembled those tremendous whips
with which the Cossacks of the Ukraine, when
they have brought a wolf to bay, can kill him
at a single blow. The lash was formed of
leather, curved so as to give two sharp edges
along its whole length, and sometimes bound
with wire thread, the end terminated in a little
iron hook. It had no handle, but one end was
left supple, so that the executioner could wind
it round his wrist. At every blow the sharp
edges of the stiff curved lash fell on the criminal's
back, and cut him as with eight yards
of a pliant double-edged sword. The executioner,
subtle in his cruelty, had learnt not to
roughly withdraw the lash, but to draw it
towards him, so as to remove long flaky bands
of flesh, the hook being devised with devilish
ingenuity for this detestable purpose. The
lash was also purposely long, that it lapped
round the body and cut deep into the chest at
the same time that it destroyed the whole of the
back. Indeed, to tell you the frank truth, my
dear sir, it was well known that the executioner
could, if he chose, kill any man at one blow of
the knout, by lapping him round the lungs and
heart; but, as the 'Bourreau' was generally
bribed, he seldom put forth his whole force.
When the knout was honestly used, the criminal,
if he survived the first blow, usually fainted at
the third, and died about the fifth. A ukase of
Peter the Great fixed the maximum of blows at
one hundred and one (we Russians have a superstitious
respect for odd numbers); but whether
the knout became heavier, or we became more
effeminate, the hundred and one blows— which,
of course, implied death— were never given in
the Emperor Nicholas's time. But I tire you.
Thank you, I prefer a papiross (cigaret) to a
cigar."

"Quite the contrary, you interest me extremely,"
I replied, ringing the hotel bell for a
bottle of Château Margeaux. "And how did
they fasten up the unhappy wretch during this
horrible punishment, the abolition of which does
so much credit to your present emperor?"

"To a sloping plank, to which they bound
him, bare backed, by the hands and feet, tying
his arms round the plank. But your English
travellers often confound the knout with the
plete— a dreadful but still a much less terrible
weapon. The plete was a whip of three leather
lashes, tipped with small leaden balls. It weighed
about five pounds; it did not strip the flesh, but
bruised the ribs, detached the lungs from the
pleura, and induced consumption. To gain
strength, the Bourreau made a spring forward,
and did not strike till he was close to the criminal.
If he was bribed sufficiently, the Bourreau would
remove his little finger from the handle of the
plete, and that deadened the blow of the lash.