SCOTLAND.
Reapers are busy on almost every field in the Alloa district. The wheat is excellent, oats a light crop. At Moffat, harvest operations have been carried on with great vigour : the crop is good, and the weather fine.
In Ayrshire the crop is good, the weather has been changeable, and the harvest will extend over an unusual amount of time. In Berwick- shire the weather has been splendid, and three-fourths of the grain crops are down. From Selkirkshire, Boxburglishire, Stirling, Inverness, Elgin, Moray, and Aberdeenshire, the accounts are satisfactory—crops fully up to the average. The harvest, indeed, was proceeding briskly throughout the greater part of the grain growing districts.
The brilliant weather on the moors has enabled sportsmen to shoot over the entire bounds of their shootings. On most of the moors a very decided increase has taken place in the quantity of grouse—the bags are larger than any season since 1855, and the proportion of young to old birds at least five to one.
"The Sinclair Fountain," in Princes' Street, Edinburgh, was opened on Saturday morning. Miss Catherine Sinclair gave 1001. of the 1801. sub- scribed to build it. The height of the erection from the level of the street is nearly fifteen feet, and the diameter at base is five feet. Descending through the building unseen, the water emerges through an ornamental pipe, of thistle shape, at which pendant ladles are filled by human drinkers, thence to a trough for horses, and finally at the street level into another for dogs. It is altogether a beautiful work of art and lighted by gas at night. During the day 15,000 persons and 500 horses in cabs and carts were re- freshed with its waters.
Mr. John Blyth, shipmaster, accompanied by four ladies, on Thursday, last week, endeavoured to find the way to Boehm Castle through a by-path ; but they lost their road, and found themselves suddenly attacked by John Aitchinson, farmer, for trespassing on his domains. He forced them to re- trace their steps, and dealt blows amongst them promiscuously and un- sparingly. He seized Blyth violently by the breast, pushed one of the ladies head foremost over a style, within a few feet of a dangerous decli- vity; and drove Blyth before bin, with blows, to the gamekeeper's house, at Hawthornden. When in the clutches of the law, he brought a counter charge of assault against hisprosecutor, but failed to prove it; and he pur- chased the indulgence of his ferocity at a penalty of 101.
" Madge Wildfire" has gone to her last home. The Border Advertiser announces the death of Elizabeth Graham, the original of that celebrated unhappy one in Sir Walter Scott's Heart of ift'd-.Lothian. She was known to thepeople of Galashiels and Melrose by the various cognomens of Black Bess, Bet Gramsley, and Daft Bess. The poor wretch had been mad for years peat, and died on Sunday, on the road near Ellwand )3ridge. There is a striking coincidence, says the writer of the notice, between the facts of her life and the incidents in the novel.
William Cousins escaped from Falkirk prison on Friday morning, last week. Cousins was ill, went to bed with his trousers on, when the jailer brought him his breakfast, Cousins was well enough to jump out of bed, and once outside the door, he locked the jailer inside and escaped. He was not caught on Friday night.
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