448 BOTANICAL TOUR IN THE 
much fewer than England. Annuals are however on the increase 
in both kingdoms. Only Scleranthus annuus and Chrysanthemum 
segetum were collected in our morning’s walk between Dunblane 
and Doune, the latter not in flower. By the margin of the Teith, 
between Doune Inn and the Castle, we noticed Geum rivale, 
(nanthe crocata, and Atgopodium Podagraria, a plant constantly 
present about hedges and waysides; also several Ferns; but no- 
thing interesting was collected here. 
Doune, as has been already stated, is only four miles from 
Dunblane and eight miles from Callander. The road to Cal- 
lander lies along the left bank of the Teith, and passes through 
natural scenery which is passably pretty,—much more so than 
that between Stirling and Doune. But the weather was very 
unfavourable: only a few drops fell before six o’clock, but by: 
eight o’clock the rain commenced in right earnest, and there 
were no tokens of its abatement. We might have remained at 
Doune, but the inn where we breakfasted had no attractions even 
on a rainy day. <A rainy day at an inn, even if a comfortable 
inn, is one of the disagreeables which pedestrians sometimes 
experience. This inn at Doune was as uncomfortable as the 
weather. This, we can say from experience, is “the exception, 
not the rule.’ The inns in Scotland are as comfortable as 
the hosts are courteous. We say nothing about their charges: 
every man should live by his calling, and summer is the time 
when inns are most needed, because in this season travellers 
abound ; it is the time of the innkeepers’ profit, and a rainy season 
to them is like rain in harvest. It might be unsafe to publish a 
catalogue of the miseries of an inn of the bad sort, and yet it 
would be cruel to wish even our enemy to learn them experimen- 
tally ; therefore let those who wish to know what Highland inns 
were less than fifty years ago, read Dr. Macculloch’s account of 
the inn at Callander which he visited sometime in the first quarter 
of the current century. The inns at Callander have fully kept 
pace with the advancing civilization, conveniences, and elegances 
of the country in general, and of the Highlands in particular ; 
but the inn at Doune still remains to convince the incredulous 
Southrons that the Doctor was a faithful narrator of what he saw 
and what he suffered. It exists, it is to be hoped, as the solitary 
evidence that the accounts given of the Highlands, not more 
than thirty or forty years ago, were neither caricatures nor exag- 
gerations. 
