AN OWL'S HEAD HOLIDAY. 249 



rods " have betrayed me into saying more than 

 I intended. It would have been enough had 

 I mentioned that the way is in many places 

 steep, while at the time of my visit the con- 

 stant rains kept it in a muddy, treacherous con- 

 dition. I remember still the undignified and 

 uncomfortable celerity with which, on one oc- 

 casion, I took my seat in what was little better 

 than the rocky bed of a brook, such a place as 

 I should by no means have selected for the pur- 

 pose had I been granted even a single moment 

 for deliberation. 



" Hills draw like heaven " (as applied to 

 some of us, it may be feared that this is rather 

 an under -statement), and it could not have 

 been more than fifteen minutes after I landed 

 from the Lady of the Lake — the " Old Lady," 

 as one of the fishermen irreverently called her 

 — before I was on my way to the summit. 



I was delighted then, as I was afterwards, 

 whenever I entered the woods, with the ex- 

 traordinary profusion and variety of the ferns. 

 Among the rest, and one of the most abun- 

 dant, was the beautiful Cystopteris hulbifera; its 

 long, narrow, pale green, delicately cut, Dick- 

 sonia-like fronds bending toward the ground at 

 the tip, as if about to take root for a new 

 start, in the walking-fern's manner. Some of 

 these could not have been less than four feet in 



