448 NOTES ON A BOTANICAL TOUR 
Plenty of Geranium pyrenaicum was observed in a very elevated 
part of St. Leonard’s or Salisbury Crags, the part next to the 
palace (we are not quite clear about the nomenclature of these 
far-famed localities). On going up to the summit of Arthur’s 
Seat we collected a few stunted and deformed examples of 
Astragalus hypoglottis. 1 believe this is the entire result of 
our botanizing in the King’s Park; yet this locality, though 
rugged enough to please a hunter for the picturesque, is far from 
being a barren tract. The turf is close, and the herbage is as 
green “as grass can be,” and the colour is a sufficient proof 
of the succulency of the pasturage. Yet the whole has, to eyes 
accustomed to the luxuriancy of the sweet south, a desolate, 
bare, and unpleasing aspect. That trees would grow here is 
very evident ; for just outside the park wall, where the locality is 
more exposed to the unfriendly effects of the sea-breezes, there’ 
is a belt of thriving trees. A few trees scattered here and there 
would improve the landscape. They would break the long rigid 
lines of frowning, beetling rocks, and hide the somewhat dreary 
aspect of the bare hills. The greatest of Scotia’s poets petitioned 
for trees to clothe the naked wildness of Bruar Falls. He gave 
utterance to what Bruar water might have said through its 
water sprite, if gifted with a sense of the beautiful and endued 
with the gift of song. Would that he, the poet, had petitioned 
in behalf of Arthur’s Seat, which is seen by hundreds of thou- 
sands who never heard of Bruar and its grand Falls! 
We next visited Roslin Castle and Chapel, together with Haw- 
thornden, places eminent in the early history and classical re- 
miniscences of this ancient kmgdom. The very names of these 
places will cause life’s current to swell in the hearts of all lovers 
of Scottish melody, song, and poetry. But our business is with 
the botany; and the antiquities and the poetical associations 
therewith connected must be left untold, as here they would be 
as much out of place as trees are out of the King’s Park at 
Edinburgh. If we were disappointed in realizing our botanical 
expectations about Auld Reekie, the woods of Roslim and groves 
of Hawthornden made*ample amends for the meagre results of the 
earlier part of the day. The Roslin railway-station is within 
less than half a mile of the woods, and not a mile from the 
Chapel, which is one of the celebrities of Scotland’s metropolis. 
We reached the ground about twelve o’clock, and had six or 
seven hours to spend in botanizing. 
