ZOOLOGY. 



GLEN TILT: ITS FAUNA AND FLORA. 

 By F. BUCHANAN WHITE, M.D., F.L.S. 



AN alpine stream for the most part dashing wildly amongst 

 water-worn boulders of all shapes and sizes, but here and 

 there resting awhile in deep, still, black pools ; rocky and fern- 

 clad banks rising high on either side, and crowned with a lux- 

 uriant and varied growth of trees and underwood ; beyond, 

 upland meadows and fields girt with dark masses of pine, or 

 the paler green of the larch and the birch ; above all, the brown 

 heather-clad tops of the lower hills : such is the first two or 

 three miles of Glen Tilt. 



Then the oak and beech, spruce and sycamore, give way before 

 the graceful birch, and the great wood of Blairuachdar fills up the 

 glen for a mile or two. 



Finally the birches disappear and are seen no more, save when, 

 with a few alders, elms, or willows, they clothe the precipitous 

 sides of some tributary burn. 



Now the whole aspect of the glen changes. The river, running 

 no longer between high and rocky banks, winds through grassy 

 meadows, which make on either side a haugh of varying width. 

 The sides of the glen sweep upwards in long green slopes almost 

 unbroken, except where the Allt Diridh, the Allt Mhairc, the 

 Allt Cruinnich, or some other stream, dashes through a rocky 

 defile to join the Tilt. 



Here and there along the top of the slopes a grey rock lifts on 

 high a serrated crest, and, towering above all, the great domes of 

 Ben-a-Ghlo raise sunwards their mist-swathed summits. 



At length the enclosing hills become less steep, and close to 

 the watershed of the Grampians we come upon Loch Tilt — a 

 small mountain lake with no peculiar features of its own — nestling 

 in the bosom of the hills. 



The course of the Tilt is about 14^ miles long; but if we 



