334 FERNS OF ABERDEEN AND KINCARDINE. [February, 



on the eastern aspect of Lochnagar^ where the good plants grow^ 

 and along which the botanist must needs risk his neck in gather- 

 ing the many rarities for which this mountain is botanically cele- 

 brated. The Fern however may be reached by ascending from 

 the loch below ; and in scrambling across the rocks that lie be- 

 tween these two points, wonder it is if you do not disturb and 

 send skipping and mewing before you a genuine specimen of the 

 British tiger (Catus ferus), which every Highland tourist is so 

 anxious to see in its native haunts. But never mind him : pass 

 onwards. " Excelsior !" be your cry, and the filling your vasculum 

 with the rarity your object; which done, cast your eyes up- 

 wards and around on these gigantic battlements of Nature, which 

 rise perpendicularly from the loch below, at least 1500 feet in 

 many places, and present, from the well-known peculiarity of 

 weathered granite, an appearance more likely to recall certain 

 hazy conceptions of what Cyclopean walls were like, than any 

 modern figure either of speech or of architecture could convey an 

 impression of. It occurs also by most of the watercourses in 

 the higher grounds, as at wells of Dee, — by the way, a most ro- 

 mantic and sublime spot, — at the top of Glen Callater, on Ben 

 Aan, etc. 



Cystopteris fragilis, E. Fl. St. Cyrus, Den Fenella, Kincar- 

 dineshire; at Fintray, Den of Craig, and other situations in 

 Aberdeenshire ; and often running into the other species or varie- 

 ties, as you choose to call them. — Var. /3, angustata, in Braemar. 

 — Var. 7, dentata, most plentiful in upland and alpine places. — 

 Var. S, Dickieana, at two or three places on the seacoast, at the 

 Cove, Kincardineshire. In one at least of these places almost 

 extirpated, and that was the situation where the most typical spe- 

 cimens were got ; in the other places there is a tendency to be- 

 come identical with dentata. 



Polystichum Lonchitis, Both. Carr Bocks and Craig Hoy- 

 nach, Braemar; Morven; so that it is a somewhat uncommon 

 species in Aberdeenshire. Its head-quarters appear to be Can- 

 lochan, Forfarshire, and there it is very abundant. 



Polystichum lobatum, Swz. Kincardineshire, in the Corbie 

 Den, and that other lovely spot in St. Cyrus, to the south of the 

 county. Den Fenella ; common in the higher parts of Aberdeen- 

 shire. — /3, lonchitidioides, Corbie Den. — Is this the var. which 

 Continental botanists mean under this name ? 



