SCOTTISH GARDENS 



cheese. One of the birds was so tame as to take 

 a piece of this delicacy from the very lips of the 

 lady ; but the favourite exhibition is obtained by 

 flicking a morsel of cheese over the parapet, when 

 the chaffinches dart in pursuit, one or other of 

 them never failing to catch it before it reaches the 

 water eighty feet below. 



But our main business at Barskimming lies 

 to-day in the garden, where Miss Bertha Anderson 

 reigns supreme, and thither she now guides us, 

 through the pretty gate mentioned above. Miss 

 Bertha's collection of flowering plants has gained 

 wide repute, but before examining it in detail, a few 

 words must be devoted to describing the pleasaunce 

 wherein they flourish, for it is quite distinct in 

 character from any other depicted in this book. 

 Through the heart of it the Powkail 1 has cleft a 

 deep canon in its haste to join the river which 

 bounds the garden on the south. With dubious 

 taste, Lord Glenlee, the Scottish Lord of Session 

 who laid out these grounds 140 years ago, caused 

 this stream to run for some distance through a 

 tunnel, filling up the dark gorge and levelling the 

 surface as a bowling green. The lower part of its 

 course, which remains open, shows how much 

 natural beauty was sacrificed in this costly opera- 

 tion. However, there it is ; a fair space of level 

 turf, partly shaded from the south by splendid oaks 



1 Celtic names cling closely to the topography of the Lowlands. Powkail the 

 narrow stream from the Gaelic pol caol, containing the same word as has been 

 used for centuries to denote the Kyles that is the Narrows of Bute. 



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