A VISIT TO GLEN CLOVA AND CALLATER. 129 



A VISIT TO GLEN CLOVA AND CALLATER. 



BY G. CLARIDGE DRUCE, K.L.S. 



Read hefon' the Sncieti/ Doccinlwr 19th, 1882. 



To the Botanist the name Clova is one of the most interesting 

 amonf; the many rich and fertile places which still remain in Britain, 

 and I derived such pleasure from a recent visit, that I thought it 

 probable some of the members of this Society interested in Botany 

 might care to hear the results of a few days" botanising in a district 

 discovered, I may say, by Don, a florist of Forfar, who began a rough 

 and hard life's labour by an apprenticeship to a watchmaker, after- 

 wards removing to Glasgow, where he obtained a situation as assistant 

 to the Professor of Botany. He then went to Edinburgh, where he 

 eventually made the acquaintance of Sir James E. Smith, who 

 frequently quotes him in his " English Botany ; " but, as with Murchi- 

 sou's friendship with Robert Dick, no pecuniary advantage acci'ued to 

 Don from it. 



Don returned to Forfar and obtained a small piece of ground, which 

 he turned into a botanic garden, and in which he grew a great collection 

 of the rarer alpine plants : this garden he called Dovehill. To obtain 

 the plants he made long excursions over the country, his favourite 

 ground being the hills of Clova, and to these, some thirty miles from 

 Forfar, he would walk with no provisions besides some oatmeal or 

 bread and cheese, and no shelter save his plaid, loaded with his paper 

 and bag. 



For living plants he would ransack the rocky glens and bleak moors 

 and spongy morasses, adding to our British flora that most lovely 

 willow Salix lanata, with its leaves covered with golden-coloured 

 down, the pretty little pink-flowered Li/chnis alpina on Cuh'aunoch, 

 the graceful alpine Cotton Grass at Restennet, the rare grass Calama- 

 fjrostis stricta, and Caltha radicaiis, near Carse, which, since 1790, when 

 he found it, had disappeared, till recently it has been refound in the 

 vicinity by my friend Mr. Peter Graham, who kindly showed it me 

 this summer. 



Besides the above, Don added a willow, Salix Doniana, about which 

 there is some doubt as to its indigenity. With the mosses he was almost 

 equally fortunate, the little moss Gijiniiostomuvi Doniaitum, Sm., being 

 by found him, I am informed, when he was only fifteen years old, 

 Splachnum tenue, S. ampuUaceuiii, Didijmodon inclinatus, Wei is id nijirita, 

 Bryum trichodes, and other mosses being added to the Forfarshire flora 

 through his industry. 



A life of privation and hard work at length told upon his 

 constitution, and a severe cold, caught on one of his excursions, turned 

 to a putrid sore throat, to which he eventually succumbed, leaving his 

 family in extreme poverty. From the enormous amount he collected, 

 and the few facilities he had for keeping his specimens in order, there 



