1863.] NOTES or a botanical tour in BANFFSHIRE. 499 



the rain was falling heavily. Every sound was dead at times but 

 the rush of the waters. It was like the noise of the sea in a 

 storm — deep calling unto deep. At last the " Shelter Stone " 

 was reached, and we laid ourselves to rest on a scanty bed of 

 heather, and were soon asleep. Morning dawned gloomily, and 

 having resolved to return to Tomintoul at once, we breakfasted, 

 and then fell to and burned our bed. We had qualms of con- 

 science in doing so, because other travellers might arrive in a 

 storm, and then they would have no bed at all. But adversity 

 often makes us selfish. We returned by the Cairngorm side of 

 the loch, and this is the side the traveller should take for reach- 

 ing the "Shelter Stone" with most ease when he comes from 

 Tomintoul. The morning was calm, the hills were cleared of 

 mist, the sky was covered with clouds. The streams from the 

 hills were smaller than when we reached the loch the night be- 

 fore. Still they were pouring down through the masses of broken 

 stones, their waters clear as crystal and cold as ice. Not a 

 sound was to be heard but the noise of many years, hastening 

 back to their parent sea. The hills stood calm in their mighty 

 grandeur, here flushed with a bloom of heather, there throwing 

 up their bare ribs, crusted over with Lichens (for nature here, as 

 elsewhere, "abhors a vacuum"), there broken into splinters, and 

 the masses heaped together in every variety of form, — 



" Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled, 

 The fragments of an earlier world." 



Such a lonely scene calmed and cheered the heart. 



Our route lay over a ridge of the Cairngorm range, and in 

 passing along we noticed among the plants formerly spoken of, 

 a beautiful little Willow, Salix herbacea. It grows only on the 

 hills, and at considerable elevations. Among the Ferns we ob- 

 served Lastrea Oreojjteris (Mountain Shield-fern). On the 

 higher ground Carex rigicla makes its appearance, as also Luzula 

 spicata (Spiked Hairy Rush), a genus of plants resembling the 

 Grasses. Several other species grow in the county, — L. sylvatica, 

 L. campestris, and L. pilosa. The generic name Luzula is de- 

 rived from the Italian word lucciola, a glowworm, from lucco, 

 to shine, and this idea has its origin in the following way. The 

 leaves are fringed with long hairs, and these, when carrying a 

 globule of dew each on its tip, glittering in the sun, suggested 

 the name of ' glowworm plant ' to the poetic Italian. 



