34 LOCH CRERAN. 



streams of broken rock that a careless step would set rolling 

 indefinitely.- Here is a bit on which the heath has got a 

 partial foothold, and has tied the stones together, and 

 from this vantage ground we can now reach the plants 

 we are in search of, whose fronds in enticing bunches 

 now peer from the loose stones alongside. Plenty of 

 them and to spare, and, by carefully removing the stones 

 around, the whole plant, and all the soil it has gathered 

 about its roots, can be safely carried off. We are very 

 busy, and the rolling stones tell of the whereabouts and 

 the progress of the one to the other. Greedier, too, we 

 grow as we proceed, for no sooner have we removed one 

 plant than another far more beautiful is sure to appear. 

 Oh ! that bird in the bush with the brilliant plumage, 

 while our poor little friend in the cage there is dull as 

 peat water ! As we crawl carefully downward, with our 

 backs well laden, clutching anxiously at the rotten 

 heather, and dragging with us the wild thyme, the blae- 

 berry, and the wild strawberry, we have the consolation 

 of knowing that according as our eyes have been greedy 

 our backs will be bent. What a power is water, and what 

 a water power is there; and what a force, too, is a 

 simple idea, that has dragged us through the muir and 

 over the mountain debris in search of the successful 

 imitator of one of our commonest garden vegetables, 

 known to the initiated as Allosoms crispus, and to lovers 

 of a simply beautiful form by the much more euphonious 

 title of the parsley fern. 



AUGUST, 1 88 1. 



It is odd how one sometimes comes upon a " find " in 

 one or other domain of nature, and blindly, almost with 



