RARER FLOWERS OF EAST RENFREWSHIRE. 49 



of them growing apart from the usual long white rhizome. There 

 is a small bed of this plant in Bardrain ("hill of the thorn") Glen ; 

 and another, the finest I have ever seen, on the Calder above 

 Lochwinnoch. 



Farther down the glen, growing with its feet in the burn, is a nice 

 bed of woody nightshade {Solatium Dulcamara). It bears a 

 strong family resemblance to the potato in the leaf, and especially 

 in the flower; but it is more slender and delicate in appearance. 

 Its poisonous berries soon disappear when ripe — the birds find 

 them innocuous and much to their taste. What is poison to one 

 is wholesome food to another. 



In the glen everywhere there is plenty of bitter-cress (Cardamine 

 amara). On its west edge are to be found a few plants of the 

 little pinky-red Centaury {Erythraa Centaurium). It is common 

 enough near the sea, on Irvine sands to wit, but this is its only 

 station hereabout. One shrub of the wayfaring tree or mealy 

 guelder-rose ( Viburnum Lantana) grows in the hedge here. Close 

 to this there is a rowan-tree which exhibits a curious and 

 interesting phenomenon. The tree is a twin one, i.e., two stems 

 of about the same size rise from the one root. At ten or twelve 

 feet from the ground two branches of the one stem clasp the other 

 tightly round the waist and draw it in against its breast. The farmer 

 has evidently looked upon the last stem as doomed to death by 

 the tightness of this embrace, and he has cut it quite through a little 

 above the ground to put it out of torture and to save the other. 

 At this stage he has failed to disentangle the cut trunk and has 

 left it standing held up by the embracing arms. Now comes in 

 the strange thing — the cut trunk is growing, leafing, and bearing 

 flowers as if nothing had happened to it — fed by the branches that 

 clasp it. One tree acting as wet nurse to another, feeding it with 

 its own heart's blood ! What a subject for a poem ; what a text 

 for a sermon on brotherly love ! 



Up the Aurs Burn. — Close to Darnley House the Aurs 

 Burn joins the Brock, and what a contrast this little stream 

 presents above and below Barrhead. Below, it is foul, foetid, 

 livid with dye, fermenting with filth and disgusting as the face and 

 breath of a besotted drunkard; above, it is pure, clear, sparkling 

 as ether as a stream ought to be, and like the smiling face and 



D 



