MR darling's address. ^ 7 



was a luxury to be in the open air ; and a stroll by the clear waters 

 with the angling rod, was the principal occupation of the members, and 

 enough for enjoyment. The fish, which, with a large measure of pa- 

 tience, were captured, furnished a dish for the dinner- table — spread out 

 for us on the green by the side of a trotting bum nigh to the ale- 

 house—our rendezvous — a very homely, artless, and yet a picturesque 

 scene, and where the honest angler, who may chance to wander hither, 

 in the pursuit of his avocation, will fare well if he meets with such 

 liberal entertainment as was our share this day. 



In such a locality as Abbey St Bathans, the Club finds the material 

 for forming a correct idea of the nature, extent, and composition of the 

 ancient forests in which their forefathei*s may, perchance, have hunted 

 the deer, with hound and horn, in the gallant company of a Douglas or 

 a Percy. There was around them a large extent of hilly moors 

 covered with brown heath, relieved, at intervals, with wide streams of 

 green rushy ground. In the many ravines which descended from the 

 moor above, and in whose bottoms a runlet had cut its way amid shel- 

 ving rocks, we found many springy spots occupied principally with some 

 shrubby willows {Salix aurita and cinerca)^ intermingled with arching 

 briars and wild roses. In others the alder grew predominant, while 

 rushes and meadow-sweet and marsh thistles filled up the under ground, 

 leaving often a middle space carpetted with mosses of yellow-green, and 

 too moist for the growth of other plants than the willow-herbs, the for- 

 get-me-not, the ranunculus, and other semi-aquatic herblets. But the 

 drier ground was mainly occupied with the birch, rising up from amid a 

 bed of tall heather or of blaeberries ; while a tree of oak, of ihe moun- 

 tain-ash, and of the tree willow (^Salix caprea) grew up among the 

 birches, marked, each of them, by its peculiar shade of green. Where, 

 again, the streamlet had cut its channel deeper, and at a lower level, 

 the vegetation became more free and various; the alder was more 

 common and luxuriant ; the rose and brier arched their bows wiih 

 gi*eater freedom ; the rowan-tree assumed a taller habit, and by its side 

 the hagberry grew, as if conscious Nature had pleasure in the augmented 

 beauty which each derived from the contrast between their intermingled 

 foliage, flowers, and fruit. Here all the underground was occupied 

 by luxuriant ferns, bending in graceful plumes over the shelving edges 

 of the banks, with tall nodding rushes and grasses, wild geraniums, 

 hypericums, and willow-herbs, and various umbelliferous and compound 

 syngenesious plants. Every spot is a picture, and every one so fertile in 

 flowers, that the botanist may cull there alone a richly varied herba- 

 rium, — from the green moss, through whose dense mass the spring filters 



