88 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Schieballion (3547 ft.) to the eouth. (I follow the spelling of 

 the ordnance map, though not without a suspicion that it is 

 pedantic.) High ground extending up to over 2000 ft. closes in 

 the valley to the south of the loch, but on the north side the 

 level descends consider abl}' to the westward. 



The Black Wood of Eannoch forms a tine feature half-way 

 along the southern side, one of the few remaining patches of the 

 "ancient Caledonian Forest, which at one time extended from 

 Glencoe to Braemar."* Near the loch it is almost wholly com- 

 posed of Scotch fir, but birches are intermingled as one ascends 

 the side of the valley. The trees are beautifully grown, though the 

 trunks rarely exceed 2 to o ft. in diameter, and are scattered, 

 fairly widely spaced, in a fine natural disorder (or order !). Near 

 the loch there is very little variety in the undergrowth, heather 

 predominating in some places, whortleberry in others, and it is 

 thrown into hummocks by the high domed nests of the wood- 

 ants. The general effect is large and simple and stately, though, 

 aB the wood is said to have been a main source of timber for 

 the neighbourhood, one cannot be sure that its characters are 

 wholly j)rimeval. 



Birches and alders grow to a great thickness of trunk and 

 are more or less closely scattered over the lower slopes of the 

 hills, and the bracken reaches up their sides to a height of about 

 1000 ft., to be succeeded by heather with tracts of dwarf willow, 

 bog myrtle and grass. The whole area is formed of " quartzite 

 and quartzite schists and schistose greywacke," being a member 

 of the great series of metamorphic rocks of the highlands, but 

 bands of a calcareous formation t)ccur here and there, so that 

 even a small scale geological map is useful in searching for A. 

 niedon var. artaxerxes, whose food-plant is limited to a calcareous 

 soil. 



We had rather strong westerly winds, much cloud and some 

 rain during our stay, which lasted rather more than a week, but 

 there were often spells of sunshine, and we managed to accom- 

 plish our purposes to our satisfaction, though we had to work 

 much harder than at Witherslack. 



(To be continued.) 

 • ' New Statistical Account of Scotland,' No. xix (1838), p. 527. 



