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THE CELTIC MAGAZ^E. 27Last year a Gas and Water Bill was carried through Parliament, involvingan expenditure of something like j£80,000, and at least doubletaxation. We have no doubt whatever very good and satisfactory reasonswill be given for this large expenditure, but hitherto not the slightest explanationhas been vouchsafed to the public, and we are, in common withfive-sixths oi the community, at present quite ignorant of the reasonsgiven for this enormous expenditure : that there must be unanswerablereasons we have no doubt Avhatever, for have not the Council been unanimousto a man throughout. Not a single protest was entered. !N"ot asingle speech was publicly made against it. But more wonderful still,not a single speech was made publicly in the Council in its favour. Thisdid not arise from want of debating power on the part of the members.It must have arisen from the unanswerable nature of the arguments deliveredin private committees, where, jjractically, no one heard them, or ofthem, except the members themselves. The only objection which can beraised to this theory is, that if the matter is so very clear and simple,and the expenditure so imperatively called for, it is most wonderful thatsome ingenuous simple-minded member had not thought of making himselfpopidar at one bound, by giving a little information to the public astlie matter proceeded, and so silence all the grumbling and general dissatisfactionfelt outside.The Gaelic Society of Inverness entered on its fifth session last month.The Society has of late sho"\vn considerable signs of popularity and progress; for close upon fifty members have been added to the roll during thefirst eight months of the Society's year, while only eighteen were addedduring the whole of the previous one. In 1873, seventy new members,were elected. The following five Clans are the best represented—Mackenzies,23 members; Erasers, 22; Alackays, 19; Macdonalds, 18;Mackintoshes, 14. This is not as it should be; for while the Mackaysonly occupy a little over a page of the Inverness Directory, the Mackintoshestwo, and the Mackenzies about three and a-half ; the ]\Iacdonaldsoccupy over four, and the Erasers seven pages. Wo would like tosee the Clans taking their proper places, by the " levelling-up" process ofcourse.We regret to announce the sudden death, on the 19th of August, of DrKermann Ebel, Professor of Comparative Philology at the University ofBerlin. He superintended the new edition of Zeuss's GrammaticaCeltica, and was one of the four or five leading Celtic scholars of the age.It wiU be seen that Logan's " Scottish Gael"—a book noAv getting veryscarce, and Avhich was never, in consequence of its high price, witliin thereach of a wide circle of readers—is to be issued by Mr Hugh Mackenzie,Bank Lane, in 12 monthly parts at 23 each, Edited, with Memoir andNotes, by the Eev. Mr Stewart, " Nether-Lochaber." In this way thework will be much easier to get. It only requires to be known to securethe demand such an authority on the Colt—his language, literature,music, and ancient costume— deeerves.