174 



HA RD WICKE' S SCIENCE- G OSSIF. 



of snow and storm liad moved southward to the 

 Tyrolese Alps, and this sudden aerial rarefaction, I 

 found to my chagrin to be the accepted signal for 

 the children of the mist, who had long been gathering 

 at the pibroch of the winds, to come careering wildly 

 up the loch. Tlie succeeding days therefore proved 

 nothing but a series of darlc sleet showers, alleviated 

 with a fitful glow of mocking rainbows : until, awaking 

 one morning, I was surprised by seeing all the stony 

 summits of the Grampians sheeted in their winter 

 snow, and ranged spectredike against a pall of storm 

 and gloom. As a parcel of old witches they had 

 arisen overnight, and were frowning the southerner 

 away to a climate somewhat less stern, fearful and 

 desolate. Such warning was not to be wasted, and 

 mounting the coach amid a parting salvo of hail and 

 mist, I was soon speeding along the smooth green 

 basin that marks the ancient extension of the loch 

 eastward (indicated in the view). Here I encountered 

 most congenial and seasonable food for rumination, in 

 some of those wild moraine heaps so plentiful at this 

 elevation. One of these in particular that had been 

 cut through by the road, was especially interesting on 

 account of its situation at the foot of a waterfall that 

 was roaring down in brown flood ; and which, by its 

 proximity, plainly demonstrated the burn had run on 

 nearly in its existing stream since those ruthless old 

 glacial days. 



A fugitive glimpse of sunshine then cheered the 

 road onward to the savage pass of Drumochter, where, 

 entering the bleak Highland railway at its highest 

 point, I was soon flying swiftly along beside the 

 sparkling foam of the torrent Garry ; rattling to the 

 tune of Bonnie Dundee, where slow and darkly it 

 passed beneath the sylvan echo of the pass of Killie- 

 crankie, draped thickly with the blood-red and yellow 

 leaf ; and then emerging to bound over the forgotten 

 blairs and scenes of contest between Gael and Saxon, 

 while the telegraph wires projected on the window 

 panes, rose and sank in giddy dance. As the valley 

 widens, there comes a faint rustle on the ear from the 

 woods of Birnam and Dunsinane, and we are arrived 

 at Scone and Perth. East of Perth, as is known, lies 

 the far-famed Carse of Gowrie : the first notch in 

 the terraced slopes according to Robert Chambers 

 ("Ancient Sea Margins," p. 30), by which we may 

 hope eventually to reckon how deep the mighty 

 Grampians once lay sunk in the icy flood. Half- 

 an-hour, however, spent at the Perth refreshment 

 room left little margin for physiography ; and 

 as I looked at the waiter's coat-tails, I could" 

 only wish in my heart some field club of the future 

 might discover sea-shells on the higher ledges in 

 the Tay valley, and in this way furnish us good 

 evidence for their being considered beach lines. 

 And there is a reason for the wish. We believe that 

 the Carse of Stirling, or more familiarly the valley of 

 the Forth, was an arm of the sea even in historical 

 times ; for beneath the peal moss on the plain the 



remains of two whales, associated with implements 

 said to be harpoons of deer's horn, have been exhumed. 

 In the same way the sister valley of the Clyde has 

 yielded from beneath its green sod, several canoes or 

 coracles ; and if we would penetrate still farther into 

 the mist of time, we may discover running along its 

 banks a series of raised beaches, the highest pitched 

 up in places five hundred and twenty feet above sea 

 level, which yet contain as a pledge of their 

 genuineness the remains of certain sea shells, TcUina 

 proxiiiia. Thus I think it must become plainly 

 evident, that the old red sandstone basin or country 

 south of the Grampians and north of the Cheviots, 

 was really depressed and elevated previous to the 

 arrival of the Gaelic hunter, flushed in quest of his 

 reindeer, mammoth, elks and oxen ; so that the ques- 

 tion only remains, how far did the force of the earth- 

 quake and volcano sway at this period. 



But the land of raised sea-lines was not doomed to 

 be traversed wholly unmarked. The shallow Earn is 

 bounded with a slope that leaves between it and ihe 

 stream a green ribbon, marking a former broadening 

 of the flow ; and as we rushed along on fire and wheels, 

 this old earthwork threw out its angles salient and re- 

 entering ; as it had been the relic of some garden 

 terrace, digged on the edge of that bare and desolate 

 wilderness we had left behind. Here, then, on the 

 waveless shore of that Clyde and Forth basin, the loch 

 Caledonia of yesterday, from whose western limits I 

 set forth ; wrapped up against the mournful blast 

 from my old summer acquaintance Benchonzie, on 

 whose bleak brow nives iiiiuquaiii liqiiescunt* I close 

 my note book and the natural history jottings of a 

 pleasant northern tour. 



A. H. SWINTON. 



NOTES ON THE DIPPER {CYNCLUS 

 A QUA TIC US). 



By \V. Duckworth. 



THE dipper is such a great favourite with me, that 

 I would willingly be at some trouble to make 

 more widely known, how innocent it is of the crime 

 laid to its charge of poaching on salmoii ova. Mr. 

 Kerr and others have noticed that it is fast disappear- 

 ing from the banks of some of our streams ; happily 

 my own experience does not agree with Mr. Kerr, as 

 for some years past the dipper has certainly increased 

 in numbers on many of our Cumberland streams. 

 This fact I believe is owing to the gun licence, and 

 to its not being persecuted here as a poacher, though 

 many dippers are shot in winter, when they often 

 leave the higher reaches of the rivers for the lower. 



The following note from the pages of the " Newcastle 

 Weekly Chronicle," which bears well on the subject, 



* I found a patch of snow by the cairn, on its summit, at 

 midsummer in the year 1874. 



