COEEOUE 



Cloudy sky, can only find escape by gravitation. 

 Consequently, the first requisite in creating a garden 

 in a waterlogged region like Corrour is special provi- 

 sion of rapid drainage. Sir John Stirling Maxwell 

 kept this wisely in view when he chose a site for his 

 shooting lodge at the foot of Loch Ossian. The old 

 lodge, now pulled down, stood 1723 feet above the 

 sea, too high for the growth of the potato, although 

 rhubarb, a true alpine, flourished vigorously in the 

 patch of kitchen garden. The site of the new house 

 is 500 feet lower, built on a terminal moraine, which, 

 by damming back the streams in the strath, has 

 created Loch Ossian, a beautiful sheet of water 

 between three and four miles long. Even at this 

 lower level, corn never ripens, though oats are sown 

 to supply green fodder ; whence it may be understood 

 that the creation of a flower garden here was an 

 experiment of no small uncertainty. 



Advantage was taken of every natural facility in 

 the ground. The moraine whereon the house stands 

 consists of a vast jumble of granite boulders, ice-borne 

 from the neighbouring mountains. Many of these 

 boulders having crumbled into coarse sand after the 

 peculiar habit of granite, the whole mass was porous, 

 although thickly coated with a mantle of wet peat. 

 That mantle having been got rid of, and a terrace 

 formed along the south front of the house, it was 

 easy to establish a thorough system of drainage, and 

 to maintain it by timely removal of sphagnum. 

 Below this terrace, on the knolls between it and the 



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