HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



219 



Alpine snow wreath and moving ice, when we dis- 

 sociate it from the erroneous conception of eternity ; 

 what but a frozen mass of water inspiring certain 

 chemical notions and inscribed over with certain 

 illustrious names ? How poorly when the sunlight 

 is within the cloud does it affect the imagination, in 

 comparison with those round smooth bosses among 

 the heather bloom, and those U-shaped gullies with 

 their terminal rubbish banks and perched boulders, 

 so long the source of an unfathomable mystery. The 

 same work of ice you feel is here, but the genius 

 has flown, and in place of the soft voice of the 

 falling snow crystals a rich carpet of verdure now 

 clothe* the strath interspersed with spare Alpine 

 blossoms. 



Few of the world of dilettanti but have visited the 

 Island of Arran, to dredge for starfish in Brodick 

 Bay, to seek out the royal and hart's-tongue ferns — • 

 (Note : the only example of the Scolopendrium 

 vulgare I ever saw in these parts was a singular 

 broad-leaved and dock-like variety, found on the 

 coast near Fairlie ; quite unlike the south of England 

 type) — to hunt vainly for the Arran brown butterfly, 

 to analyse the rocks or sketch the little fishing-coves 

 which impart a life to the prevailing desolation. 

 Yet how few of these probably have ever grasped the 

 complete isolation of this beautiful island they so 

 much admire and the tameness of the surrounding 

 scenery ; or ever thought to seek the reason, in the 

 antiquity and violence of the volcanic outburst that 

 formed its wild rocks ! Nor is this at once realised. 

 I had myself looked towards the fantastic and 

 splintery peaks of this little gem from the coasts of 

 Ayre and of Bute, from above Roseneath, and from 

 various points of vantage along the Kilbrannan 

 Sound. I had mused over its granite monsters under 

 every circumstance of light and shade, as now they 

 lay sweltering in summer mist, and now wrapped 

 about with driving scud ; still from no point of view 

 was I really impressed with their true character, 

 until I one evening climbed .the gentle undulations 

 that rise along West Loch Tarbet. From these 

 grassy slopes the entire northern portion of the 

 island lies in prospect as a single group of huge 

 craters, which when their cups or corries lie sharply 

 pencilled against a clear autumn sky, are quite as 

 hideous as anything to be seen in the Gallic group of 

 Puys. Indeed they have a remarkable resemblance 

 to those more modern caldrons as depicted in Louis 

 Figuier's "World before the Deluge" — (Note : has 

 any one ever proved from the Vulgate, Septuagint, or 

 Chaldee text, that the Biblical Deluge was a Glacial 

 Period ? I have fancied sometimes a fluvial_inundation 

 is indicated) — and taken as would seem from a similar 

 western aspect. To the north lifts the bold and 

 splintery hollow of Tornidneon, where the white 

 thunder-clouds repose when they rise to a height of 

 1500 feet, exactly as in the other case towers as I 

 take it the conical Dome. To the south in either 



view, lay two fine old furnaces well-known to the 

 eagle and lammergeyer, but rarely visited by the 

 autumnal tourist. The Pays, like old dragons 

 yawning black and threatening in the bright sky, 

 their older coarse grey granite prototypes, seamed 

 and chiselled by frost and mist and beggared of the 

 rough garb of plant life on the summits around, 

 unveiling their craters bald and barren, the embodi- 

 ment of ages of desolation. 



After my first discovery of this physiographically 

 artistic point of sight, I had from time to time, as 

 the mountain rainfall permitted, gone to take the 

 view of these wizards of the north, until one day 

 determining to have a drawing of the finest before 

 leaving, I mounted the return post cart from White- 

 house, and drove over to Skipness, which lies just 

 under them on the opposite shore. The afternoon, 

 at the commencement of the grouse season, was fine, 

 and the driver of course intelligent ; as the hills 

 had to be walked up, I was enabled to collect some 

 pieces of peat from bog cuttings and cottage stacks 

 to examine for beetle elytra, and these when dissected 

 at leisure, proved the bare sheep-fed knolls through 

 which I drove were once rustling with groves of silver 

 birch, long since burnt up by the cottars for firewood. 

 I also remarked that where the damp grass around 

 had been drained by cultivation, the common heather 

 was appearing in patches ; the gramineoe and erica- 

 cex here evidently owing their respective distri- 

 bution to the moistness of the ground. On arrival 

 at my destination I found a bed in the telegraph box, 

 where an elderly matron gave me Gaelic for French ; 

 the language spoken in Paradise, as the native preacher 

 pleasantly denominates it, having about as much ia 

 common with polite Parisian as the kindred cries of 

 the Bedouin Arab have. I learnt, however, bhata 

 was bateau, and Usige, Usk, (the name of a town and 

 river in Wales) was water ; neither of these jwords 

 appearing in Necker's Tables ("Voyage en Ecosse," 

 t- 3) ?• 325) ; and then my mind wandered back over 

 the " whusky toddy," to the low German salutation 

 on the road of a droughty day, luitil I fairly tucked 

 myself into a sweet dream of antiquity beneath the 

 gloom of the eternal hills. 



When the sunlight and patter of the "lassie wiring " 

 awoke me, I wandered out in the quiet of the morning 

 up towards the ruined castle, where I pricked my 

 fingers among some furze bushes, a plant often noticed 

 from the deck of the pleasure steamers as forming 

 a yellow zone at some altitude on the slopes of Loch 

 Fine, and the Gare Loch, and yet somewhat strangely 

 termed by Hooker, who ought to know, rare in 

 the Scottish Highlands ; in Sweden, of course, this 

 obstruction of the flycatcher does not occur. The 

 rest of the morning was occupied among the sea- 

 wrack at the water's edge, making the very prosaic 

 sketch of my crater which heads this article. On 

 completing the same I ventured to inquire its name, 

 but the obliquity of the Highland mind that arises 



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