EXCURSIONS AND EXAMINATIONS 239 



at the inn on Sunday a number of farmers and their wives 

 came in after church to meet their friends and drink whisky, 

 and on listening to their very voluble talk I could not under- 

 stand a word that they were saying. I concluded, therefore, 

 that they were speaking Gaelic, and was much pleased to 

 have heard it. But the landlord's daughter told me afterwards 

 that no one spoke Gaelic there, and that all the people I had 

 heard were speaking English ! I could not have believed that 

 pronunciation and accent could have produced such complete 

 unintelligibility. On passing through Edinburgh we called 

 on the late Professor Balfour at the Botanical Gardens, and 

 he much regretted that he had not accompanied us, as he 

 could have shown us all the rarities of that botanical treasure- 

 house. 



In the spring of 1877 I accompanied Mr. Mitten to Spa 

 in Belgium, where he was taking his youngest daughter to a 

 school to acquire French conversation. We stayed a few 

 days there botanizing on the moors and hills around, and were 

 interested in noticing some peculiarities of the vegetation as 

 compared with our own. Nowhere did we see a single prim- 

 rose, but its place was taken by the true oxlip (Primula 

 elatior), so local with us. Our rare little fern, Asplenium 

 septentrionale, was common by the road-sides. Our Swiss 

 tour has been noticed in chapter xxxiii. Even during Mr. 

 Mitten's occasional visits to us in Dorsetshire, he has found 

 several plants new to the district or to the county. The 

 most notable of these were the crowberry (Empetrum nigrum), 

 never before noticed in Dorsetshire, a quite large bush of 

 which was found on Studland Heath, a well-searched botanical 

 locality. Even more interesting was his discovery of the rare 

 aquatic grass (Leersia oryzoides) , which he thought should 

 grow in the ditches near Wareham, and knowing its flowering 

 season he went there and found it, though the very ditch had 

 often been searched by other botanists ! 



My Experiences as an Examiner. 



It was, I think, in 1870, that I heard from Bates of the 

 examinations in Physical Geography under the Science and 



