226 SCOTTISH BOTANY. [Octobev, 



About the beginning of July a picnic to Castle Campbell was 

 proposed by the friends with whom I was residing at the time. 

 On the appointed day, the party, which consisted of several 

 ladies, three of the neighbouring proprietors, and myself, set out 

 from Hillside, about six miles from the scene of action, in two 

 dog-carts, which held us all comfortably, carrying with us all the 

 accessories of picnicking, and determined to throw aside for a 

 time the cares and conventionalities of life, and yield ourselves 

 up to the influences of nature. The day was very hot, — in fact, 

 one of those Indian days, in which one seems to breathe the 

 glowing sunshine, and feel it warm in the lungs and heart, in 

 which the poets are the only practical people, because the world 

 is full of poetry, — -when thought is arduous and exertion fatigu- 

 ing, and there is a pleasant hiatus in actual life which allows the 

 imagination and the feelings their full, uninterrupted sway. Not- 

 withstanding the intense heat however, we enjoyed our drive ex- 

 ceedingly, so beautiful was the aspect of the country through which 

 we passed, decked in all the rich green luxuriance of July, and 

 with its separate features so blended by the quivering sunshine, 

 that it seemed a voluptuous reverie of nature. The mossy walls by 

 the wayside were luxuriantly fringed with large clusters of Lady- 

 Fern and the delicate green tufts of the Polypodium Dryopteris 

 and Phegopteris, while recesses of the woods bristled with the 

 graceful plumes of the Equisetum sylvaticum and umbrosum, 

 which, at a little distance, looked like waves of green light, agi- 

 tated by a breeze. In these woods we discovered the very rare 

 and beautiful Moss, Hypnum Crist a-castrensis, and the still rarer 

 Lichen, Cetraria sepincola ; while the interesting little Malawis 

 paludosa grew sparingly in the bogs on the hill immediately be- 

 hind, which was perfumed with the honey- scented blossoms of 

 the Gymnadenia conopsea, and adorned with the stately golden 

 crowns of Trollius europaus. We observed the rarer Rumex al- 

 pinus in several places by the roadsides and on the edges of fields. 

 As it is grown in many of the cottage gardens in the district in- 

 stead of Rhubarb, it may have escaped from them to these loca- 

 lities, although it is found in several spots in the neighbourhood, 

 far removed from human habitations or from any place where it 

 ; is Ukely to have been formerly cultivated. On the heathy moor 

 which lies between Powmill and HiUside occurs also the very 

 rare Tragopogon porrifolius, conspicuous by its great height and 



