102 ODD HOURS WITH NATURE 



system is restored the instant the gust has 

 passed. 



I brave the elements, and pass over to examine 

 the hill -face. At the bottom of each scar I find 

 a rushing burn, which in two or three cases can 

 only be crossed at a more than ordinarily boulder- 

 blocked part of its course. Looking up, each 

 important thread in the lace system is seen to be 

 a deeply cut gully, down which the stream comes 

 in a long series of leaping cascades. 



Returning, I resume the more distant examina- 

 tion of the whole with the aid of a glass, and 

 note that the notches that break the sky-line are 

 of very diverse degrees of importance. The chief 

 of them is, in reality, the opening to the main 

 slope of a little glen cut into the tableland on the 

 top, and the gully through which its burn descends 

 is a glen in the making. Over a part of its 

 course this gully-glen has widened its sides so 

 far that it has captured to itself the waters of 

 three smaller gullies. Each of these starts on its 

 own course straight down the hill, and about half- 

 way down is deflected abruptly to the larger gully, 

 whose lateral erosion has cut into the channel of 

 the smaller neighbour. It is still possible to detect 

 the now streamless lower part of the gully whose 

 water has been arrested. By this process of 

 annexing neighbours the stream in the big gully 

 is gathering power, and its manifest destiny in 

 the course of ages is to cut into two hills -the 

 single hill down whose face it is now tumbling 

 and leaping. At both ends the hill is separated 

 from neighbouring hills by deep glens cut down 



