Highland Insects. 125 



pilgrims (including the writer of these notes), the result being 

 evident in the addition of many species to our fauna, some of 

 the most startling kind. About nine miles from Kinloch, on 

 the south side of the loch, and stretching down to its shore, is 

 a patch of thick pine-forest, about four miles square, known as 

 the Black Wood, on account of the dark colour of the trees, 

 some of which are of great age and size, being indeed 

 occasionally so large, as to require the outstretched arms of 

 two men to span their trunks. This forest must once have 

 extended beyond the village of Camachgouran (prononcez 

 " Camhouran," Gaelice), as the black soil is evidently composed 

 of comparatively recent vegetable detritus, interspersed with 

 knotted and gnarled stumps. Behind, is a wide-spreading flat 

 of heather, Sphagnum, and pools, shut in by (C Cross Craig," a 

 mountain some three thousand feet high, its feet clothed with, 

 birch trees, and its top often snowy in summer, and nearly 

 always wrapped in mist. To the west the view is closed in by 

 more birch- scattered hills, at the foot of which a wide, steep, 

 and rapid burn dashes along, with alternations of wavelets 

 flashing over white boulders, black, sullen eddies, and leaping 

 falls. This burn takes the drainage of the mountains on the 

 flanks of Rannoch Moor, a vague, pathless tract, reaching to 

 misty Glencoe, and is fed notably by a streamlet from " Gray- 

 vel" (Gaelic for "rough," and well deserving the epithet), a 

 mica-capped and white marble studded peak, with precipitous 

 crevasses, higher than and behind Cross Craig. On this 

 mountain, in mid July, with cloudless skies and unbearable 

 heat, I have seen patches of snow, five feet deep, and more 

 than a hundred feet long, evidently destined to remain 

 unmelted until increased by the next winter's fall. Here, also, 

 ptarmigan are found among the peaks, on the lichen level. It 

 will be noticed that in this district the conditions for the pro- 

 duction of insect-life are extremely favourable ; the heat being- 

 intense while it lasts, and alternated by a period of undisturbed 

 rest (not the undecided winters of the south, which often allow 

 insects to come to maturity prematurely, or tempt them from 

 their torpid condition to an unseasonable and self-destructive 

 activity), — the supply of vegetable pabulum unlimited, and in 

 all stages, from soundness to decay, — and the atmosphere 

 tempered by an-almost constant dampness, in itself a necessary 

 to most insects. 



The Black Wood — however it and its neighbourhood may 

 abound in insect-life — is nevertheless no place for drawing-room 

 entomologists. There is a road along part of its skirts, cer- 

 tainly, but with that one road ends all approach to civilization. 

 Once having left it, the collector must shift for himself — knee 

 deep in wet Sphagnum, stumbling over vast decayed and 



