* 
PRINCIPAL GARDENERS—JOHN MACKAY. 25 
Mr. Mackay was to meet him; but being by some means 
detained a few days, they missed each other. Mr. Mackay, 
however, found no difficulty in tracing Mr. Don’s route; the 
great length of his botanical spade,! and the singularity of his 
occupation in clambering rocks and mountains to get at weeds, 
having arrested the attention, and excited the astonishment of the 
honest Highlanders. Altho deprived of the advantage of 
mutual communication, several rare plants rewarded their labours. 
Besides most of those previously discovered by Dickson of 
Covent Garden in 178g and 1790 (such as Draba stellata, phleum 
alpinum, cherleria sedoides, &c.,) they found several species new 
to the Scottish Flora, as juncus castaneus (Jacquini) and juncus 
biglumis, Saxifraga cernua, and Festuca calamaria.? 
This journey occupied sixteen weeks, which Mr. Mackay spent 
in unwearied botanizing. On the Highland mountains, when far 
from an inn, or other habitation he sometimes passed the night in 
a deserted shealing,? a temporary hut that had been raised by the 
native Highlanders some former season. In the Island of Sky Mr. 
Mackay discovered a scirpus, intermediate between S. pauciflorus 
and palustris, and which has received the name of multicaults.* 
The investigation and assortment of the ample stores of 
cryptogamia which he accumulated in this journey, occupied him 
during the evenings of the following winter. The mosses and 
lichens were all examined by candle-light, after the business of 
the day ; and too often were his investigations pursued through 
the greater part of the night. 
1 An ash rod, fifteen feet in length, with an iron spaddle fixed to its end. 
The spaddle has a notch, which serves as a hook to pull down plants from 
inaccessible crevices in rocks. 
® Statistical Account of Scotland, parish of Kenmore, by the Rev. Colin 
Macvean. The festuca calamaria is the non-descript grass referred to by 
the Reverend Author. 
® During winter the Highlanders are collected into villages in the valleys ; 
but they remove to the mountains every summer, in order to pasture their 
cattle. The whole family migrates: it is called the summer flitting. A 
temporary hut is reared on the hills: this hut is called a shealing. The 
term shealing is often used, also, to denote the range of summer pasture. 
4 Sir James E. Smith in Flora Britannica, I. (1800), p. 49, gives 1794 as the 
date of the finding of this plant, and this agrees with Dr. Neill’s date of this 
second Highland excursion arranged between Mackay and Don.—/. #. &. 
