254 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 



flowers were only coming out ; however, I brought 

 away a branch for the purpose of exhibiting it at 

 this meeting. We were mucli grieved to find the 

 plant nearly extinct, four bushes being all we could 

 find after a prolonged search. At the time of Mr. 

 Ramsay's visit there were a great many plants ; 

 but since then the locality had been visited by the 

 botanical class from Edinburgh University, under 

 the guidance of a well-known local botanist, who 

 had ruthlessly rooted up, as far as we could see, all 

 but those four plants. Such wholesale and thought- 

 less destruction surely desei'ves the severest censure. 



My concluding remarks are of a more agreeable 

 character. Mr. Geddes informed me that he had 

 found the Ledum growing in Blairdrummond Moss, 

 which is on the west or opi^osite side of the River 

 Teith from Lecropt Moss ; and also that he had been 

 told by a hawker who called at all the outlying 

 farm-houses, and who had seen the plant in flower 

 in Mr. Geddes' window, that there was plenty of it 

 in the mosses up by way of Lake of Menteith. 

 And about five weeks ago Mr. Geddes himself saw 

 about half-a-dozen bushes of it in flower in Flanders 

 Moss, between Buchlyvie and Gartmore. I sent him 

 a map that he might mark the spot, and when re- 

 turning it he writes : " I am told that the Ledum is 

 found all through the Flanders Moss." 



It is a remarkable circumstance that a plant so 

 conspicuous when in flower should have remained 

 undit<covered by botanists. I can only attribute this 

 to its flowering at an earlier period of the year 

 than that at which botanists visit the mosses; and 

 when out of bloom it bears so much resemblance 

 to the Bog Myrtle {Myrica Gale) and other bushes 

 as to be easily overlooked. 



The whole of the valley from Stirling to Gartmore 

 has probably in remote tiraes beau one continuous 

 moss, of which the isolated fragment of about two 

 acres, where we first found the Ledum, is all that 

 now remains in the Carse of Lecropt, and will at 

 no very distant period disappear before the plough. 



