HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



173 



all those graceful things I used to find in the crannies 

 of the waterfalls when ascending Glen Turret, seemed 

 sadly wanting on bare Schiehallion. A gentleman I 

 met indeed assured me certain prizes could be gathered 

 up a burn at the south side of the loch : he showed 

 me in proof, I remember the filmy fern, green spleen- 

 wort, oak fern, and a few others. Still, I suspect, 

 after all, many of these fairy things we are accustomed 

 to call alpine, would appear only to be highland in a 

 secondary sense ; often loving better a shelter in the 

 wooded eminences to the south of the main chain of 

 the Grampians, than the stern reality of the wild 

 heights. 



much struck with the profile of a large dyke rolling 

 down its eastern declivity (a in view) ; that plainly 

 suggested the idea of lava flowing from a crater, such 

 as I pictured to myself might have existed to the east 

 of the present summit ; but the wind meanwhile had 

 grown chill, so filling my pocket with pieces of 

 coloured volcanic stone from a heap of macadam at 

 the roadside, I was compelled to give up philoso- 

 phising, and to move on. 



My next visit was to have been to the Scotch Firs 

 of Dall, the reputed vestiges of that old British forest, 

 where three hundred years ago and more, wild boars 

 were known to rustle, beavers to build, and wolves to 



Fig. 121. — View of Schiehallion. 



Redescending the gully to the foot of the mountain 

 the search for plants was in turn discarded for a 

 hunt after any insects that might be reposing in the 

 shadow of the walls and tree trunks. Although the 

 gems of the Rannoch fauna had now left the valley, 

 we were here rewarded by finding certain well-known 

 moths that come with the fall of the leaf ; and, strange 

 to say, the wings of the thick bodied individuals were 

 nearly without exception crippled — I allude to exam- 

 ples of Orthosia maciknta and IfaJcna protea — and 

 this circumstance I conclude to be the result of the 

 unusually wet season. Stopping to take a last look 

 of Schiehallion, lit by the gleam of the sun plunging 

 behind Glen Coe to the islands of the blest, I was 



make night hideous with their howls. (Proc. Nat. 

 Hist, Glasgow. Soc. 1876, p. 138-9 ; Ray's Discourses, 

 p. 174.) Black's Guide Book further informs the 

 ignoramus that these gnarly groves have conferred 

 fame on some species of insect. I know it not, but 

 why should we moth-catchers not have our Alclethas, 

 Allonas and Degrenas, and we grasshopper-hunters 

 and paleontologists, our Vinvelas and Loras ? But, 

 gentle reader, to return, why I did not visit the forest 

 of Dall and catch this new beauty myself, the sequel 

 will, I think, sufficiently reveal. Only the morning 

 after my ascent of Schiehallion the scientific, when 

 sitting at breakfast in the hotel, I heard a gentleman 

 read out from the newspaper, that the winter isotherm 



