18 BOTANICAL TOUR IN THE 



afternoon. Monday the 7th was a rainy day, a day of Highland 

 rain, so well described by Dr. M'Culloch, who recommends the 

 tourist in the Highlands, if he carries an umbrella, always to 

 carry it open ; for if he does not, he will be wetted to the skin 

 by a sudden plash or sheet of water before he has time to undo 

 the loop of his parapluie. In the Doctor's time umbrellas were 

 folded up in a ring, not by a loop and button as now, and the 

 time of slipping up the ring would not, at an average, be one- 

 tenth of that required for detaching the loop from the button; 

 yet in that short interval of time, a Highland shower found its 

 way through all the ordinary protective media, and reduced the 

 hapless pedestrian to the uncomfortable condition of " a hen in 

 a rainy day." For the benefit of future botanical tourists, we 

 subjoin the Doctor's rather exaggerated account of a Highland 

 shower.* 



In the evening we lectured on Botany to the boys and girls 

 of the school, and to one or two good-natured people who con- 

 descended to listen to what was expressly adapted to the capa- 

 city of a juvenile audience. On the 8th we paid another visit to 

 Loch Katrine, wandered along the shores of the lake an hour or 

 so, and retraced our steps to- Callander. The next day, which 

 was to be our last day at Callander, an expedition to Menteith 

 was both planned and executed by a walk over the hills, as nearly 

 as possible, in a south-westerly direction. The distance to the vil- 

 lage and Loch of Menteith from Callander is seven miles; half of 

 this distance was walked, before we saw either the lake or the 

 church, across a trackless, high, moory waste, with here and there 

 only a. sheep-track to guide us. From these hills we had very 

 extensive and some very interesting views. The chief of these 

 were the Ochils, the Fintry Hills, Stirling and its romantic 

 Castle, the Forth (with its widened expanse of water), glittering 



* Highland Rain. "I thought that I had known Highland rain in all its forms 

 and mixtures and varieties in Skye, Mull, at Trillin ? on the top of Ben Lawers ; but 

 nothing like the rain on Ben Ledi did I ever behold before or since. In an instant, 

 and without warning or preparation, the showers descended in one broad stream, 

 like a cascade from the clouds, and in an instant they ceased again. If the low- 

 lander carries an umbrella, it may be useful for him to know, that if there is a but- 

 ton to undo or a ring to slip off he will often be wet through before either can be 

 effected. There is an interval of fair weather ; even the cloud which is to produce 

 the rain is not very obvious, when, in an instant, and without a sprinkling or even 

 a harbinger drop, the whole is let go on your head as if a bucket had been emptied 

 on it." 



