30 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF ABERDEEN AND DISTRICT 
though a considerable part of Deeside is floored by gneisses and schists, 
the Dee drains a more extensive area of granite than any other British 
river. For the most part the soil of Deeside is light and sandy, and better 
suited to sylviculture than to agriculture, while that of the moors and hills 
is more favourable to the growth of heather than of grass. One version 
of a familiar couplet-— 
‘The River Dee for fish and tree, 
The River Don for horn and corn,’ 
pithily expresses the greater agricultural richness of the valley of the Don. 
The Dee valley, particularly the upper portion, is well wooded, but 
except for the Ballochbuie Forest on the Balmoral Estate, and the giant 
pines which still survive in Glen Lui and Glen Quoich, the woods are all 
plantations or have grown from seed naturally sown by planted trees. 
Extensive felling of timber, during and since the war years, has led to a 
great increase of secondary moorland, and a marked difference on the 
plant life of these areas. Fortunately all but a few of our characteristic 
woodland flowers thrive on heath and either survive there or in patches 
of standing timber, whence they subsequently spread to new plantations. 
The most interesting of our Deeside woodland plants are the Pyrolas and 
three species which are often associated—Linnea borealis, Trientalis euro- 
peus and Goodyera repens. The Goodyera—as much a lover of old pine- 
woods as the Crested ‘Tit—seldom survives the removal of overhead cover, 
and has thus a more limited range than the others. Repeated search has 
failed to locate it west of Ballochbuie Forest or at a higher elevation than 
about 1,000 ft. Of the wintergreens, Pyrola secunda, P. media and 
P. minor are widely diffused, though the first is seldom found in the lower 
parts of the valley. A new station for Moneses grandiflora (1931), the 
first for the Braemar district, is probably the only one in the North-east 
outside Morayshire where this rare and beautiful wintergreen is still 
growing. 
The limestones of Braemar account for the richer flora at the base of 
Morrone, where birch and poplar replace pine-woods. ‘There the botanist 
will find plants characteristic of moor, marsh and meadow as well as 
woodland. He will further recapture spring even after midsummer, for 
Orchis mascula, Anemone nemorosa and Caltha palustris may be found in 
flower in July, while the variety minor of the last mentioned lights up the 
higher rills evenin August. ‘The flowering of Ranunculus ficaria at 2,500 ft. 
on the southern slope of Little Craigandal (late July 1928) is worthy of 
note not because it was a new record for Braemar, but because the eleva- 
tion is 2,000 ft. above the highest of Dickie’s records. In Morrone 
woods along with three wintergreens grow Trollius europaeus, Arabis hirsuta, 
Vicia sylvatica, Sanicula europea, Habenaria conopsea, H. albida, H. viridis 
and Listera ovata, while Malaxis paludosa, Listera cordata, Orchis incarnata 
and Tofieldia palustris grow on the adjoining moors. 
THE CaIRNGORMS AND LOcCHNAGAR.—Since George Don, that pioneer 
discoverer of our Alpine flora, first explored ‘ with a botanical eye the lofty 
mountains of Cairngorm and the great hills of that neighbourhood ’ in 
1801-2, Braemar has year after year been the Mecca of distinguished 
