1857.] SCOTTISH BOTANY. 289 



which, though rare elsewhere, appear to be unusually abundant 

 in the counties of Clackmannan and Kinross. This sequestered 

 little village, seldom visited except when some chance passenger, 

 diverging from the high-road, wanders to the spot, is beautifully 

 embosomed among plantations at the base of a range of green 

 but moorish hills, and looks down, over sylvan slopes and varie- 

 gated fields, upon the fertile vale of Kinross. Although in itself 

 possessing no claims to the notice of the visitor beyond those 

 presented by almost every solitary country village, it is yet in- 

 vested with considerable interest on account of the associations 

 connected with it. It was there that Mary Lundie Duncan spent 

 her peaceful and eminently Christian life, — diflFused, as the wife 

 of the parish minister, her own heavenly happiness among the 

 primitive inhabitants, and furnished those simple incidents which 

 have been woven into a biography as affecting and interesting as 

 any that have ever issued from the religious press ; and it was 

 there, in the little school-house near the farmstead of Gairney- 

 bridge, that the amiable and highly-gifted Michael Bruce, the 

 Henry Kirke "White of Scotland, like him in his genius and in 

 his early and melancholy death, taught the village-school for se- 

 veral winters while struggling under the pressure of poverty and 

 constitutional disease. Recalling these interesting and affecting 

 associations, which seemed to have left their rich perfume in the 

 place, we entered the grounds of Cleish Castle, which, with a 

 liberality worthy of more general imitation by proprietors, are 

 open to public inspection. The castle itself is a plain, unpre- 

 tending Gothic structure, with the usual zigzag gables, narrow 

 and irregular windows placed at uncertain intervals in the thick 

 walls, and round projecting turrets ornamenting the corners. It 

 was rebuilt by its present proprietor in the original style, and is 

 now apparently a comfortable residence. It is completely sur- 

 rounded with woods, composed of various trees, whose huge lichen- 

 covered trunks and magnificent canopies of foliage, carry back 

 the imagination to a remote antiquity. Few or no traditions 

 are connected with it; but.it possesses sufiicient interest in the 

 eyes of the botanist, in the great number of rare plants that are 

 found in its vicinity, to compensate for the want of every other. 

 One of the laboiu'ers employed in cutting the grass around the 

 castle, conducted us, on inquiring where these rare plants might 

 be found, to a perfect wilderness of luxuriant weeds^ among 



N. S. VOL. II. 2 p 



