BARSKIMMING 



AYRSHIRE 



T is a fancy of certain writers to give 

 freak headings to their chapters, cryptic 

 enough, sometimes, but connected more 

 or less vaguely with the nature of the 

 contents. Were that example to be 

 followed in the present unimaginative work, this 

 chapter might be entitled " Cheese and Chaffinches/' 

 to commemorate a pretty little scene enacted in that 

 fairyland which mortals call Barskimming. 



The river Ayr winds through the park, having 

 cut for itself a profound channel through the red 

 Permian rock which overlies the carboniferous beds 

 in all this part of Ayrshire. The sides of the 

 gorge are richly clothed with oak and ash, which, 

 as appears from Timothy Font's survey, executed 

 in 1595-1600, are survivors of the primitive Cale- 

 donian forest ; but here and there the sides are 

 sheer precipice, affording no foothold for trees, the 

 crags standing out bare, silvered with lichen or 

 glowing with Venetian red and rose where the 

 rock has crumbled away. In front of the mansion 



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