390 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



party contrived to keep abreast of me, and him I ulti- 

 mately distanced. But I cannot expect to rank with 

 the young men long. You are acquainted with the 

 decision of Burns, 



" For ance that five an' forty's speel'd," &c. 



The fall was in prime condition ; the sun shone, span- 

 ning the caldron with a very fine rainbow, and the 

 water, swollen by the late rains, covered in the preci- 

 pice and boiled in the hollow in its best and grandest 

 style. One of Byron's similes, descriptive of a water- 

 fall, if not indeed rather of that to which the waterfall is 

 compared, came athwart me as I looked : 



" Like the tail of the Pale Horse in the Revelation." 



I do not know what the botanist might think of the 

 plants and shrubs so immediately in the neighbourhood 

 of the cataract that they lie under a perpetual drizzle, 

 but to my very hasty survey the group seemed different 

 from what we find either on wholly dry or wholly wet 

 ground. Marsh plants draw their moisture from below, 

 and plants of the dry land get only occasional showers, 

 but here were plants living in never-ceasing rain. There 

 was, however, neither space nor opportunity for examin- 

 ation, and so hurrying back we got aboard a few min- 

 utes within time. 



' We made some stay at Tort Augustus in passing 

 the locks, and I rambled over the village and the Fort 

 for about three-quarters of an hour. The view from the 

 ramparts is exceedingly fine. Loch Ness is assuredly 

 the sublimest ditch in existence. The rectilinear sides, 

 parallel throughout its whole extent, and the extreme 

 steepness of the hills that rise out of it, in so many 

 places without skirt or margin, give it a very peculiar 

 character. The Eort and its immediate neighbourhood 



