LOCH MAREE AND WEST ROSS. 69 
birch, and give a delightful variety of foliage. The remains 
that we are assuming may date from a much earlier period 
are found imbedded in peat so wet and close that now even 
the hardy heather has a struggle for existence. 
In 1772 Thomas Pennant visited Loch Maree. “The 
islands,” he says, “have only a few trees Sprinkled over 
their surface,” and the shores “on the south are bounded 
with mountains adorned with birch woods, mixed with a 
few pines.” Probably there are more pines to-day than 
there were one hundred years ago, Some of the islands 
are covered with Scotch firs. His description of the north 
shore corresponds with the present conditions, He speaks 
of rowing “beneath steep rocks, mostly filled with pines 
waving over our head.” 
Probably, wherever the conditions are favourable, there 
has been a natural growth of the Scotch fir since the time 
of the iron works. That the area of favourable conditions 
must at one time have been very much greater than it is 
now, goes without saying. 
Scotland has not only recently awakened to the fact that 
her forests are decaying. As far back as 1503 an Act of 
the Scottish Parliament was passed, “ Anent the artikle of 
greenwood, because that the wood of Scotland is utterly 
destroyed.” 
It must be remembered that, however favourable the 
climatic conditions might be, a large portion of the area of 
West Ross is altogether unsuited to the growth of trees of 
any description. Even the hardy Scotch fir could not find 
a holding on the bare stretches of gneiss. It is only in the 
peat bogs that trees have disappeared. The mountains are 
bare and rocky and the peat bogs barren, but the margin 
of the loch is fringed with wood. And it is the combined 
beauty and grandeur of the scenery that is the most charac- 
teristic and most charming feature of Loch Maree, 
In a paper—* Contributions towards a Flora of West 
Ross ”—published in the Zransactions of the Botanical Society 
of Edinburgh, 1894, Mr G. C. Druce deals very fully with 
the flora of West Ross. 
After the publication of Mr H. C. Watson’s Topographical 
Botany, in which nine counties had no list of common plants 
