FLORA OF ARRAN. 235 



campestris, Erytltraea centaurium, Habenaria viridis and 

 albida, Orchis maculata, and many other handsome plants. 

 Nestling among the heather we may find Circaea alpina, 

 Listera cordata, with its slender stem and minute yellowish 

 flowers, the taller Galium boreale, and the tender green of the 

 oak fern, Polypodium Dryopteris. Rubus saccatilis here and 

 there trails its long stems over the stony ground, while the 

 viscid leaves of the sundew, Drosera rotundifolia and anglica, 

 the tiny cream-coloured flowers of Pinguicula Litsitanica, 

 and straggling yellowish-green stems of the little Lycopodium 

 selaginoides, mix with the moss that grows thick round the 

 margin of the springs and rivulets. Supposing the glen, 

 whose botany we have been describing, to be in the southern 

 division of the island, we shall, on ascending still higher, find 

 ourselves, after a stiff climb, on a wide expanse of undulating 

 moorland, covered by a thick deposit of peat bog, interrupted 

 here and there by a rocky hill-top, or the deep cut channel of 

 some mountain burn. These moors, varying in height from 

 900 to 1400 feet, have little to interest the botanist. He 

 may travel over them for a whole day without meeting more 

 than two or three species among the coarse grass and heather, 

 mixed with rushes and cotton grass, which clothe the surface 

 of the peat moss. Generally it may be said that the flora of 

 the higher grounds in Arran is inferior to that of the low 

 country. The granite mountains in the northern part of the 

 island rise quite into the alpine region, and are covered with 

 snow for seven or eight months in the year. Yet, when 

 compared with the mountain tracts of the central Highlands, 

 they will be found to possess few alpine plants. This fact 

 seems to be in some measure owing to that predominance of 

 bare rock over grass and heather, which gives them, at some 

 distance, the appearance of an unbroken mass of gray granite. 

 Besides the stony character of the mountain slopes, the thin- 

 ness and ungeniality of the soil furnished by the decomposed 

 granite, the absence in the higher regions of springs and 

 streamlets, and perhaps the very steepness of the loftier 



