CHAPTER XVI. 



DIFFICULTIES, DUMPS AND DIMPLES IN THE 

 JOINT STUDIES. 



BUT all was not smooth sailing with these self-taught 

 botanists, notwithstanding their enthusiasm. 



Having to pursue the science at that time altogether 

 unassisted, the difficulties they had frequently to encounter 

 in trying to decipher some of the rarer and more peculiar 

 species were very great, increased, of course, by the want 

 of the appliances of more favoured botanical students. 

 It took them two whole years, for instance, to discover 

 the Grass of Parnassus (Parnassia palustris). This, the 

 unbotanical reader should understand, is no grass at all, 

 but a plant with a beautiful large white flower, which is very 

 hard for young botanists to make out. This arises from 

 different causes, but chiefly from the existence of certain 

 stiff hairs symmetrically arranged within the petals in 

 elliptical curves, bearing on their summits semi-transparent 

 yellowish globes, very like stamens, which they are not. 



Charles Black had found the plant before John came, 

 beside a pond near the gardener's house at Castle Forbes, 

 and was charmed with its exquisite beauty ; for, along with 

 the European winter-green (Trientalis Europ&a), it is one 

 of the prettiest of our paler wild flowers, well deserving its 

 poetical name. He tried it frequently and failed, as many 



