86 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



the flowering of tlie various trees and shrubs in the garden 

 over which he presided. 



Before saying anything of what I may call " the birds of 

 the season," I shall, in a very few sentences, notice one or 

 two features presented by the trees and plants of Islay. 



Forest trees in Islay, when properly cared for, reach fair 

 dimensions, and appear healthy and vigorous, yet I think 

 there must be a weakness of constitution somewhere, as they 

 lose their leaves a month sooner than they do here. Two 

 very different trees seemed to retain their leafy vitality longer 

 than the rest. These were the hard-grained oak and the soft- 

 fibred lime. 



Though I know I repeat what I once before said here, I 

 cannot leave the vegetable kingdom without again noting the 

 extraordinary growth of three of the natural plants of the 

 island. These are the honeysuckle, the brier, and the whin. 

 I wish some botanist would tell me why the long sinuous 

 branches of these briers are fanged with such murderous 

 thorns. If a divine were to say it was part of the original 

 curse pronounced upon the earth, I should be inclined to ask 

 if Islay sinned in any special degree, as these terrible briers 

 would seem to indicate. I have repeatedly found sheep 

 strangled by getting entangled in their serpent-like embrace. 

 But the most striking botanical feature of Islay is undoubtedly 

 its gigantic whins, the stems of which are tree-like in size, 

 whilst their rich and profuse blossoms far exceed in splendour 

 the flowering of any gorse I have elsewhere seen. It is in 

 the middle of October that these Islay whins burst into 

 bloom, and by the first week of November they are all one 

 blaze of glowing golden yellow. Each bush seems as if on 

 fire, till the whole bright array is generally destroyed in a 

 night by the first sharp frost of winter. 



To turn to the birds, I may remark, in the first place, that 

 the last breeding season has proved a remarkably favourable 

 one for all kinds of game and wild ducks. There is no doubt 

 that the numbers of all these were doubled, and in some cases 

 quadrupled, comparing 1878 with the previous year. It is in 

 some of the western islands that, alone in Great Britain, the 

 pheasant is an entirely self-sustaining bird, the mildness of 



