100 BOTANICAL LETTERS FROM ARGYLESHIRE, \_AprU, 



subject of a botanical excursion as the season advances. It is a 

 locality that will amply repay an excursion to it. 



This bay presents a magnificent beach of fine pebbly sand and 

 shells, backed up in the rear by great hills of sand covered with 

 Sea Bent, Arundo arenaria ; and leaving the public road a few 

 more paces enables the botanical rambler to place his foot on the 

 shores of Machrihanish, which, if it has happened to be the first 

 time that he has visited it, he will in all likelihood stand gazing 

 for a moment on the vast mountain waves as they roll inwards 

 towards where he stands, with their snowy crests and phospho- 

 rescent shades. Presently, however, other objects attract his 

 attention : vast heaps of drifted seaweed line the tide-mark : to 

 search these heaps he now proceeds. Some are decayed, and 

 have evidently been there since the last storm, but the greater 

 portion are fresh, sent in by the preceding day's gale, and a con- 

 -siderable quantity left by the last tide. He turns and returns 

 the mass, from which he picks up specimens of Fucus nodosus, 

 Fucus vesiculosus, Padina pavonia, Chylocladia ariiculata, Coral- 

 Una vulgaris, Fucus serratus, Delesseria Hypoglossura, Delesseria 

 sanguinea, Ulva latissima, Plocamium coccineum, Dictyota dicho- 

 toma, Bryopsis plumosa, Chondrus crispus, Flustra foliacea,Clado- 

 pliora ardica, Iridcea edulis, Porphyra laciniata, Ectocaryus silicu- 

 losus, Laminaria digitata, with its roots like great claws, eaten 

 much on the coast by youngsters, as well as the dulse; Nitophylluni 

 punctatum, Ptilota plumosa, Rhodymenia bifida, Enteromorpha 

 compressa, Zostera marina, S er tularia filicula, "with many others 

 which memory fails to furnish. Many years ago, some distance 

 northwards from this locality, on the same coast, I picked up a 

 most beautiful zoophyte : I did not know it, and transmitted the 

 same to the late Dr. Johnston, Berwick-upon-Tweed, who very 

 kindly returned it to me named, with the additional remark that 

 I was to take care of it, being one of the rarest of the British 

 zoophytes ; but alas ! by the time it reached me, the ponderous 

 stamp of some post-oflfice official had crushed it into dust. 



But a lurid glare of sunshine gilds the dark frowning headlands 

 of Antrim ; and to the far west, beyond the entrance to Lochfoyle 

 towards Sligo, the Isle of Kathlin, lying low, skirting the Irish 

 coast, is seen close at hand, in the peculiar transparency cast over it 

 by the mocking glare of sunshine, invariable precursor of a coming 

 storm. Our botanist, who has some knowledge of meteorology. 



