350 



Crithmum maritimum, and the dark green fronds of the elegant Asple- 

 niura marinum, although both, but especially the former, are in most 

 cases provokingly out of reach ; particularly about the mouth of the 

 Piper's Cove, one of the lions of the shore, the name of which, ac- 

 cording to a veracious legend, is derived from the adventure of a mu- 

 sician, whose progress (although he seems to have been unable to find 

 his way back, or to have been so well treated where he got at last that 

 he remained) was traced by the sound of his instrument some five 

 miles across the country, and finally lost under the goodwife of Barn- 

 barroch's hearthstone. The cove is in reality an ancient copper 

 working, this metal being found all along the coast in veins which 

 penetrate the greywacke, and the miners having taken advantage, 

 in their labours, of a natural fissure in the rock as far as it went. 

 A little farther, where the waves have worn an arch in the opposing 

 rocky rampart, the cliffs attain their maximum height, and their pic- 

 turesque appearance here is greatly enhanced by the presence of one 

 or two cream-coloured goats, the property of a neighbouring farmer, 

 but of 



" The wild flock that never needs a fold," 



reposing midway upon a narrow ledge, poising themselves on a mere 

 point of rock at a dizzy height, or, in following one another with the 

 most perfect nonchalance across or adown precipices, performing feats 

 beyond the ability of the most agile mountebank in the world. Be- 

 low Port Ling there is another break in the rock-bound coast. Here 

 I found, growing among heaps of boulders, chiefly granitic, Rubus 

 csesius and R. suberectus, Geranium sanguineum, Solidago Virgaurea, 

 &c, among which and side by side with the dark shining fruit of the 

 blackthorn, and of Rosa spinosissima, both of a large size, hung fes- 

 toons of honeysuckle in flower. Both the brambles are, I think, pretty 

 common between the cliffs and the sea all along the shore westward 

 from this point, especially R. csesius. In boggy ground, here, also, 

 adorned with the contrasted blue and white of Scabiosa succisa and 

 Parnassia palustris, I observed plenty of the foliage of Anagallis 

 tenella, not a common Scottish plant, but far from scarce both on this 

 shore and that of the estuary of the Nith, with a good few plants of 

 Lycopodium selaginoides. Beyond Port Ling, for some distance, the 

 rocks become more distinctly granular, and at Blackneuk have all 

 the appearance of a coarse sandstone, containing fragments of a 

 more compact structure, and seamed in such a way both in a hori- 

 zontal direction and vertically, that at a little distance they look like 



