Burnside. 103 



into the spray that it throws up, as it dashes over a larger 

 rock than usual which lies in its bed and tries to bar its 

 progress. The water is merry yet, noisy as a child at play ; 

 but the bed widens out, the steep banks fall back on the 

 Donich side. A large clump of birches, looking, if possible, 

 more beautiful than those we have just seen, rises from a 

 little island in the centre of the bed ; the burn suddenly 

 divides, to flow round the island, and passes out of sight 

 on either side before we can see whether the branches 

 join again lower down. 



A sudden descent bars our way. We must go back a 

 little and make a d&tour ; as we do so, we find ourselves on 

 a little heathery knoll rising out of a sea of bracken, which 

 attains a height almost as great as our own, whilst the tops 

 of the birches by the burn below are now only a few feet 

 above us. This knoll is a very enticing spot in our present 

 mood, and we gladly seize the opportunity to linger awhile, 

 and soon our minds are concentrated on the birch trees here. 



The oak has been well termed the " monarch of the woods," 

 the ash, the " queen of the woods," but the birch 



" Most beautiful of forest trees, 

 The lady of the woods " 



and, with its upright trunk of silvery whiteness, its pendent 

 boughs and drooping twigs, its tiny leaves, through which 

 the sunlight shimmers and falls in dancing rays upon the 

 ground, it well deserves the title. Beautiful as is the birch 

 in its woodland haunts, it is when it rises tall and erect 

 from some sheltered nook by the side of a mountain burn, 

 with its overhanging branches and green leaves sprinkled 

 and bedewed by the foaming spray, when (as Burns writes) 



