ryo LOCH CRERAN. 



careful way over an apparently-burned grey stem when 

 our heart fails us, and we creep slowly backward afraid 

 of the rotten footing. So we turn into this great lime- 

 stone-like cave, like a bit of Derbyshire, almost feeling as 

 if we slipped on the white marble-like footing, and were 

 suddenly arrested by the gleam of sunlight on an iridescent 

 surface. This proves to be a rich film spread across the 

 inner mouth of the cavern, and reflecting the rays in rain- 

 bow tints ; while all around are the huge cottony tufts of 

 of what ? Well, you see we have been in fairyland a 

 land anyone can enter at the very smallest cost, and 

 where they will find such endless sources of amazement 

 and interest that they may employ themselves for weeks 

 without moving very far, and not only add to their own 

 knowledge, but the knowledge of the world. For there 

 are explorers in all departments of nature, and all we have 

 done is to bring our lens to bear on a few big tree trunks, 

 and the great cotton tufts are the cocoons of a small 

 insect on the trunks of the spruce, and the same in char- 

 acter with the blight we have observed so frequently on 

 the branches of the larch in the summer. The brilliant 

 opalescence, stretching from mouth to mouth of the 

 cavernous depths of the cracked bark, is simply the shiny 

 track of a small mollusc, that little knew of the beauty 

 and wonder it had left behind to tell of its progress. The 

 whitish marble pavements are smooth lichens, and the 

 burnt branches are grey lichens, while the lovely greenish 

 ones are those of the more feathery mosses, covering the 

 wrinkled hides of the vegetable giants. You cannot walk 

 far, my friend, to enjoy nature and you grieve over your 

 deprivation ! You, my little fellow, are too poor to travel 

 into far lands ; and our gentle sister there cannot handle 

 the geologist's hammer, or tug at the rope of a heavy 



