HEATHER BELLS IN SCOTTISH SCENERY. 



Among the many tributes of tender sentiment 

 cherished by the late Queen Victoria, stored away in 

 her private album, was a spray of Heather, "which," 

 says Helene Vacaresco, the Roumanian poetess and 

 Maid of Honor to the Queen of Roumania, "was 

 taken from the wedding bouquet presented by Prince 

 Albert to his wife." 



Other writers have beautifully sung the praises 

 of Scotland's mountain grandeur. A most charming 

 description of a Highland landscape appears in "Corn- 

 hill": 



"But a Highland landscape is of itself sufficiently 

 beautiful. It merely requires Heather to give it the 

 predominant tone and to interest the beholder by means 

 of many associations sure to suggest themselves when 

 he sees the purple braes. Take, for instance, the val- 

 ley of Garry in mid-July. It possesses a charm of its 

 own, and yet Scotland owns a thousand more valleys 

 which to a casual observer appear very similar when 

 they are flooded with Heather bloom, such is the magic 

 of this humble shrub. The prevailing colors in the 

 open country on either side of the Garry are reds and 

 purples, derived mainly from Heather, largely rein- 

 forced by clover and vetches. These tints are set off by 

 the flaunting blossoms of the broom on every neglected 

 corner, while the tender waxen Erica tetralix gathers 

 round the head of each mimic burn that cleaves the 

 moorland. Every here and there are batches of turnips, 

 while above them on the crags and below toward the 

 waste spots an ocean of Heather surges in like a flood 

 tide swallowing up as it were one by one the number- 

 less great black trap boulders which are piled up in 

 128 



