OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 2j 



others have a cairn commemorating some historic 

 event; others show the residues of bonfires; others, 

 again, have strange cup-marked stones going back into 

 very remote antiquity; others bear the marks of the 

 industry of the Ordnance Survey map-makers. In 

 two or three places in Scotland there is a flat stone 

 with two human footprints carefully carved on it, 

 depressed for about a quarter of an inch. A learned 

 naturalist in Inverness was fortunate enough to find 

 one of these, and it may be seen in the museum there 

 a great treasure. For it seems that when the old chief 

 died, the young chief was conducted to the stone to 

 receive the promises of fealty, and to pledge himself to 

 do justly. He placed his feet in the two prints and 

 took the oaths. But, to tell the truth, we cannot find 

 anything on this hilltop. The view is good, the air is 

 good, but we discover no trace of previous human 

 visitors. 



In the Far North, beyond the last stunted trees but 

 before the region covered with ice, there is the Tundra, 

 or Barren Desert. Part of it is covered with mosses, 

 but part of it is covered with encrusting lichens, such 

 as are seen on the rocks on the summit of this hill. It is 

 a good exercise to try to find in this country the coun- 

 terpart of the vegetations of other countries, finding 

 desert vegetation, for instance, among the sand-dunes, 

 and seeing in our moorland a relic of the Great Heath 

 of Northern Europe. Now, the top of this hill with its 

 lichen-encrusted rocks is, if we could flatten it a bit, a 

 picture of the Lichen-tundra of the Arctic. But what 

 are these lichens ? 



Lichens are double plants, or partner plants, con- 

 sisting (i) of a green plant or Alga, like the simple 



