66 Transactions. 



nor a sub- A Ipine flora, but we have several plants of con- 

 siderable interest to botanists. But what chiefly gives 

 Colvend its character botanically is its lochs and its seashore. 

 At one time there were in Colvend some ten or eleven lochs 

 of different sizes, several of which have been drained for 

 agricultural reasons ; — but there are still six lochs undrained, 

 or only partially drained ; — and in these are to be found all 

 the ordinary, and not a few of the rarer Lacustrine plants. 

 Then Colvend has a long and varied outline of sea coast, 

 stretching from the mouth of the XJrr, near the village of 

 the Scaur, round by the Castle Hill, and Millstone Quarry, 

 Glenstocking, Port o' Warren and Whitehill, Portling, Torr 

 and Douglas Hall Heughs, on to Lot's Wife and Southwick 

 Burn ; consisting of high and precipitous cliffs, of deep 

 fissures and caverns, — of a shore, composed in one place of 

 mud or clay, in another of sand and broken shells ; — thus 

 furnishing the conditions favourable to the growth of mari- 

 time plants of different habits. A variety of hill, and lake, 

 and shore such as that which Colvend contains within itself, 

 I think, is not often to be met with ; — and coiTCsponding to 

 the variety of situation is the variety of plants which we 

 find scattered over the length and breadth of the parish, 

 embracing at once the plants of the north and of the south. 

 Before I became acquainted with Colvend, now nineteen 

 years ago, I had resided mostly on the east coast of Scotland, 

 or in the highlands of Invemesshire, — and with the plants of 

 those localities I was more particularly acquainted. When 

 I came to the south therefore, or rather to the south-west, I 

 was delighted to find a flora to me almost new ; and hardly 

 a year has elapsed in which I have not had the pleasure of 

 discovering something which I had not met with before, or 

 something which, if not new to me, was new to me in Col- 

 vend ; — and I have no doubt that there are many things yet 

 undiscovered, which would repay a careful search in the 

 different months of the year. — And this leads me to remark, 

 that it is not by any single excursion into a district that the 

 botany of that district can be known ; but by a residence on 



