310 The Scottish Naturalist. 



gar and Glen Callater come next, with the Braemar mountains 

 generally, including the Cairngorm range, although Ben Mac- 

 dhui, notwithstanding its great height, has comparatively few 

 alpine species. The same may be said of Ben Nevis, Ben 

 Lomond, and Ben Voirlich, the number of species seeming to 

 decrease rapidly on the way south-westward from the Ben 

 Lawers range to the Clyde mountains, till, on Goatfell in Arran, 

 so rich in its flora generally, only six or seven alpine species 

 exist. 



Coming back to the two principal centres of distribution in 

 Scotland — viz., in the counties of Perth and Forfar — in each of 

 them Ave find 73 species ; but a comparison of these by no 

 means shows that they are identical, as there are seven species 

 present in Perth which are absent in Forfar, and, vice versa, 

 seven species are wanting in Perth which are present in Forfar. 

 It may be worth while looking at some of these in detail, as they 

 are among the rarer or more interesting" of our alpines. Taking 

 the Perthshire species which are absent from Forfar : among 

 the rocks near the summit of Ben Lawers, and one or two others 

 of the Breadalbane hills, is found the Draba rupestris, a very 

 dwarf species with small white flowers, which occurs in one 

 other county in Britain — viz., Sutherlandshire. It is a truly 

 arctic species, not being found on the Alps. Another plant is 

 Saxifraga cernua, found growing in company with the preceding 

 on Ben Lawers. This is its only British locality, and the most 

 southerly in Europe. Near the summit of one or two of the 

 Breadalbane mountains is found the Alsine rubella, a tiny in- 

 significant-looking plant with inconspicuous flowers. There is 

 one other locality for it only in Scotland — Ben Hope, in Suther- 

 land- — and it also reaches its most southerly limit in Breadalbane. 

 The next plant is the Myosotis alpestris, or alpine Forget-me-not, 

 and is plentiful at a height of 3000 feet on Ben Lawers. It is 

 a plant not less beautiful than rare, there being only one other 

 locality for it in Britain — viz., Micklefell in Teesdale. Its centre 

 of distribution is the European Alps. Another remarkable Perth- 

 shire plant, found in this country only on the Sow of Athole, 

 where it is now rarely met with, is a species of heath with a 

 large purple bell, the Menziesia aerulea, or Phyllodoce casrulca, 

 its exotic distribution being the Arctic regions, Pyrenees, Siberia, 

 and North America. 



The alpine plants found on the Forfarshire hills, but absent 

 from Perthshire, are the Lychnis alf>iua, having pretty rose- 



