802 
NATURE 
[JUNE 16, 1923 

patiently accumulating facts until, in middle life or 
past it, some happy accident brings their work to the 
knowledge of those whose scientific standing enables 
them to advise and assist. Probably there are and have 
been many “‘ mute, inglorious” Tyndalls and Huxleys 
to whom such chance never came; but just as the 
labours of Robert Dick of Thurso on the Old Red Sand- 
stone were recognised and redeemed from oblivion by 
Hugh Miller and Sir Roderick Murchison, so when 
Dr. Buchanan White started in 1872 to investigate the 
mycology of Perthshire he found that Macintosh, a 
humble rural postman on a weekly wage of 12s., had 
gone far to make a complete collection of the Basidio- 
mycete, and straightway enlisted him as an auxiliary 
and correspondent of the Perthshire Society of Natural 
Science. 
Charles Macintosh was born in 1839, the son of a 
handloom weaver in the village of Inver, near Dunkeld. 
When he was sixteen years old he obtained employment 
in a sawmill, and two years later met with an accident 
that deprived him of all the fingers and the thumb of 
his left hand. In 1858 he was appointed post-runner 
in the district between Dunkeld and Ballinluig—a 
sylvan and riparian region most congenial to one with 
his bent for botany and natural history. His daily 
round afoot was about 16 miles, enough, it might 
be thought, to abate inclination for serious work when 
off duty ; but 
““ingenium res 
Adversae nudare solent,”’ 
and Macintosh’s appetite for knowledge was insatiable. 
With the aid of a very imperfect microscope and a few 
antiquated works on botany, by the time he became 
acquainted with Dr. Buchanan White in 1872 he had 
made a very extensive collection, not only of the flower- 
ing plants, but also of the ferns and other cryptogams 
of Strathtay. After that, having supplied himself out 
of his savings with better instruments and modern 
books, he contributed several additions to the flora of 
Perthshire, including seventeen species of fungus hither- 
to unrecorded in Britain, of which four were new to 
science, namely, Curreyella aucuparie, Melogramma 
elongatum, Ascobolus Carletoni, and Ombrophila megalo- 
spora. He finished 32 years’ service under the Post 
Office in 1890, and died in 1922. 
Mr. Coates has done full justice to the subject of this 
memoir, which is very fully illustrated, the frontispiece 
being an exceptionally interesting photograph of 
Macintosh. We have noted very few slips: the great 
oak at Birnam may possibly be a survival of the 
primeval forest, but not so the sycamore (p. 60), for 
that is not an indigenous species. Both trees are well 
known to the present writer, and to estimate their age 
at one thousand years is to disregard what is obviously 
No. 2798, VOL. 111] 

their vigorous prime. To describe a family bible as 
“a human document” (p. 11) is grievously to mis- 
apply a metaphorical phrase. Lastly, widely as the 
spurious adjective “ phenomenal” has come into use 
in the sense of “ extraordinary,” to describe the Tay as 
having been reduced by drought to “‘ almost phenomen- 
ally small proportions ” (p. 221) is surely neither sense 
nor English ! 
(4) A certain German philosopher is credited with 
the doctrine that every object of interest should be 
inspected from its proper point of view—a church from 
the outside, a tavern from the inside, and a mountain 
from the bottom. Whatever may be Dr. Ernest 
Baker’s opinion about churches and taverns, he holds 
emphatically that the worst aspect of a mountain is 
from the bottom. Its only legitimate purpose is to be 
climbed on its most difficult side. The first fifty pages 
of his treatise on “‘ the excellent sport of rock-climbing ” 
are applied to a denunciation of Highland landowners 
for putting difficulties in the way of tourists and trippers, 
but for which he is confident that the Scottish Highlands 
would attract as many holiday folk as Switzerland 
does. 
Dr. Baker’s own narrative testifies to the fact that 
the summer climate of the Highlands is scarcely so 
serene as that of Switzerland. In his adventures 
among the Highland hills he encountered many spells 
of dismal weather. 
“We were awake betimes, but rain was falling, and 
for three long days the weather remained too bad 
for serious climbing. Stob Dearg was continuously 
swathed in mist ; and the gullies, as we could see afar 
off by the tracks of white, were spouting water amain ” 
(p- 78). 
As for landowners, there are no doubt surly ones as 
well as others of milder mood ; but the powers of both 
in preventing access to their estates are more strictly 
limited than Dr. Baker explains. They can only 
proceed against trespass by obtaining interdict against 
individuals. “Trespassers will be prosecuted” ‘is 
brutum fulmen unless damage can be proved. It may 
be doubtful whether a judge would decide that damage 
had been done in the incident described as follows ; but 
the immediate consequences might have been serious 
if the Highland glens had been as full of holiday-makers 
as the author would like to have them. 
As usual on a new climb, we found many splinters 
hanging in dangerous places, and the worst of them we 
cleared away. One big lump of porphyry, caught in 
unstable equipoise on the bevel-end of a ledge, gave 
rise to a memorable incident. I was held from above 
by the rope while I gave the rock a final shove that 
released it. Thirty feet below, a pinnacle stood out 
from the face, a squarish mass some twenty-five feet in 
height and about sixteen in girth. It is discernible in 
the photo taken near the foot of the climb, but its 
place knows it no more. . . . We calculated afterwards 
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