232 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 



althousih a tempting mountain to look at, is also practically 

 barren of the rarer alpine plants. 



Now let us turn to the south side of the river Dochart, and 

 examine that mountain which has always been considered 

 barren, we mean Ben More, taking with it Am Binnein, as the two 

 are really one. Here, again, although entirely clear of the phylite 

 schists, we see in its flora but little diflerence from that of many 

 mountains into which these schists largely enter; in fact, it is richer 

 than some in the commoner alpine plants, but there is a decided 

 fallin"- off in rare species. On the mountains westward between 

 this and those we have spoken of, we come across patches of 

 alpine plants, but none of the rare forms until we reach Beinn 

 Laoigh, a mountain that is in many respects much richer than 

 Ben Lawers, although its flowering plants are not of the very 

 rare class. Here we miss Draba rupestris, Sagina nivalis, 

 Arenaria sulcata, Saxifraga rivularis, S. cernua, Gentiana nivalis, 

 Myosotis alpesiris, while Arabis petraea, Dryas oclopetala, Bartsia 

 alpina, Juncus castaneus, Kohresia caricina, and Equisetum 

 alpestre are frequent. Here you see an erratic distribution of 

 flowering plants in a comparatively small area, and if we had 

 taken the rare cryptogams into considei-ation, we could have 

 shown that they too have no fixed law of distribution. 



In the tables given are four plants which have only been 

 recorded from one locality in Britain Arabis alpina, an arctic- 

 alpine plant, only found on the basalt in Skye, but on the granite, 

 »neiss, syenite, and trap in other countries. Saxifraga cernua, 

 another arctic-alpine plant, found only on the phylite schist of Ben 

 Lawers, but not reported from schistose rocks in any other 

 country in Europe. In the Dovrefjeld in Norway it grows by 

 the road sides, on the margins of cultivated fields, and in 

 situations similar to those in which we find Saxifraga granulata 

 in our own country. 



Carex ustulata is another arctic plant growing, not on the 

 phylite schist, but on the black schists, of which there is none on 

 Ben Lawers. Nyman in his " Conspectus Europea " mentions 

 this plant from Lawers, but I am inclined to think that this is an 

 error caused by the common expression " Scotch mountains," of 

 the older botanists. It is also a common wayside plant on the 

 Dovrefjeld. Bryanthus taxifolius, another arctic plant, is only 



