HIGHLANDS OF PERTHSHIRE. 15 



the northern and most picturesque of the two roads leading from 

 Callander to this celebrated locality. The northern road was 

 not new to us, and the one we chose was not only so, but it 

 shortened our journey two miles. The road skirted along the 

 eastern shore of Loch Vennachar, and we were induced to look 

 into the lake for aquatics. None however were visible, except a 

 few plants of Littorella lacustris. On the roadside, where the 

 road impinges on the wooded hill, a solitary plant of Hypericum 

 Andros&mum was observed, the only example of this fine species 

 noticed by us in all our walks onward and aside, forwards and 

 backwards, and these amounted, on a rough calculation, to up- 

 wards of 250 miles. 



The absence of wayside (viatical) plants, which abound in the 

 south of England, was one of the singular features of all our walks 

 in Scotland. A botanist could scarcely walk twenty miles in 

 England without seeing some examples of Hypericumperforatum, 

 the most common of tne genus in the midland and southern 

 counties. Hypericum pulchrum, in Scotland, takes the place 

 which H. perforatum holds in England. H. pulchrum is not un- 

 common in the south and centre of our island, but the localities 

 where it is found, heathy, bushy, open places, are the exception 

 and not the rule in England. In travelling from London to the 

 south and south-west, where heaths abound, Hypericum pulchrum 

 also abounds ; but in travelling from London to the north and 

 east, the same plant is scarce, because heathy places are so. H. 

 perforatum is not uncommon in the east of Scotland; yet in 

 Perthshire it was so uncommon that a single example was not 

 seen in walks amounting in all to 250 miles, as has been already 

 stated. Again, an Orchis by the wayside in England is about 

 as rare as a white crow : this phenomenon is occasionally seen 

 in chalk- districts ; but to meet with half-a-dozen species of this 

 Order in Scotland, either on the roadside or in the adjoining 

 pastures, within a few yards of the road, is as common an occur- 

 rence as blackberries in September. 



The Brig o' Turk (by the way, there are two Brigs o j Turk, like 

 the Twa Brigs of Ayr and the two bridges of Stirling, the an- 

 cient and the modern one, we stick to the former), the Trosachs, 

 and Loch Katrine are classical objects, scenes that have been 

 described by the greatest master of descriptive poetry ; our puny 

 attempts at description would be an impertinence, or something 



