1857.] SCOTTISH BOTANY. 359 



here, in a little wild ravine, thickly and beautifully wooded, and ' 

 enlivened by a very romantic waterfall, we found the Mountain 

 Dewberry {Rubus saxatilis), creeping over the stony spots, the 

 Paris quadrifolia luxuriating in the shady recesses, and the lovely 

 Menyanthes trifoliata decking the marshes with its great trefoil 

 leaves, and snowy, delicately-fringed blossoms. In the immedi- 

 ate neighbourhood we observed a quarry, composed of calciferous 

 sandstone, abounding in Sigillarias, Stigmarias, Ferns, and other 

 coal-plants, to such an extent that the walls around, which are 

 built of the material, are literally black with their remains. 

 Emerging from this picturesque retreat, we commenced the as- 

 cent of the hill, which, like all the other ranges in the district, 

 is covered with a rich carpeting of excellent pasturage, and ex- 

 hibits no rugged, rocky features, such as distinguish the gloomy 

 peaks of the Grampians; and hence the plants with which it 

 abounds are very little different from those of the plains, making- 

 no approach whatever to an alpine vegetation. Lingering now 

 and then to admire the rosy blossoms of the Sedum villosum, ex- 

 quisite flowers of the Parnassia palustris, and the other moorish 

 plants which we met on our way, we at last reached a point be- 

 low the summit, where the hill all at once becomes rocky and 

 precipitous. Here, amid the loose fragments that had gradually 

 fallen from the basaltic cliff above, and which were either bare 

 and covered with Lichens, or partially clothed with vegetation, 

 we found the Allosorus crispus growing in immense profusion ; 

 its clustering tufts looked so lovely in their perfect symmetry and 

 fresh greenness, illumined as they were by the mellowed light of 

 sunset, that we experienced, in its full force, the feeling which 

 prompted Wordsworth to exclaim, when gazing with a friend 

 upon a similar spectacle, on the mountains of Ambleside, where 

 it occurs more frequently than with us, " How perfectly beautiful 

 that is!" The fir-like spikes of the Lycopodium Selago, and 

 the trailing wreaths of its more common congener, the L. cla- 

 vatum, abounded in the immediate neighbourhood; while the 

 brilliant Uosebay {Epilobiwn angustifolium) waved its willow- 

 like leaves and bright crimson flowers on the ledges of the over- 

 hanging rocks. A short distance above this garden in the wil- 

 derness, rose up the green summit of the hill, from whence a 

 magnificent and wide-spreading prospect unfolded itself to our 

 admiring gaze. On the one side stretched out the vast fertile 



