420 NOTES ON THE FLORA OF BRAEMAR. [-^^^j 



by dark precipices, and apparently containing within its bosom 

 one of the small deep lochs so frequent in the Grampians, out o§ 

 which a small stream issues to feed the Callater burn. This is 

 the corry of Loch Ceander, and a strangely wild spot it is, — the 

 lake is so completely shut in on all sides that there is not a 

 glimpse of it to be obtained till we approach within twenty yards 

 of its margin, while the solemn stillness of the whole scene is 

 indescribable. The " bold Sir Bedivere " tells King Arthur, on 

 his return from his mission, 



" I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, 

 And the wild water lapping on the crag ;" — 



and such are the only sounds that meet the ear of the solitary 

 traveller as he stands on the margin of Loch Ceander. 



For the benetit of the geological readers of this journal I will 

 here quote Macgillivray's description of the spot. " The rocks 

 in the corry of Loch Ceander are various. The mountain, in 

 which it is excavated, is mostly composed of micaceous slaty 

 quartz, minutely granular, but laminated, and of a greyish or 

 bluish-white colour, with dark bluish-grey laminae, and some- 

 times with hornblende and actinolite interspersed. The preci- 

 pices, on the southern side, immediately above the lake, are of ^ 

 minutely laminar, undulated, and contorted quartzose mica- 

 slate ; more eastward, on the same or south side, is a ridge of 

 hornblende rock, which descends from the brink of the corry, 

 and is composed of irregularly-aggregated imperfect crystals of 

 dark greenish-grey hornblende, intermixed with granular felspar, 

 and resembling a trap-rock in appearance and in being unlami- 

 nated.^ It is, however, continuous with stratified and laminated 

 hornblende slate, which forms the face of the promontory, on 

 which is the conspicuous and somewhat celebrated ' break-neck 

 waterfall.^ The brook, forming this little cascade, comes tumbling 

 down the rocks, and has ploughed a large groove in the detritus 

 at their base." J 



Besides Carex rupestris, the corry of Loch Ceander produces 

 the very rare Salix lanata, also Eriget'on alpinus, Cerastium 



* I heheve this to be the rock wliich Mr. Backhouse has wi-ongly described as 

 serpentine, on which Carex rupestris is so abundant. ( Vide Phyt. o.s. iii. 769.) 

 I searched very carefully for traces of serpentme, but never found anything like it, 

 nor is it marked in Professor Nicol's Geological Map of the district. Serpentme 

 does occui' at the summit of some liills in Glen Javar, but nowhere else in the 

 Braemar district that I am aware of. 



