1 



DESCRIPTIVE CHAPTERS. 



charming illustratious for the ends or beginnings of chapters — head- 

 pieces and tail-pieces ad infinihtm. My difficulty lies in the wealth 

 of subjects and in the selection of the fittest. We passed Trinity 

 College, Glen Almond — where in my school-time I was one of our 

 ^lerchiston School Eleven which played the Trinity College Eleven ; 

 and I can remember the peculiar cricket-field we played upon, perched 

 as it was on the summit of a steep hill, the top of which had been 

 sliced off and levelled for the purpose. But the fielding of long-leg 

 and cover-point was sometimes — to use an expressive Americanism 

 — " indeed a caution." I could, in passing on our drive in 1905, only 

 see the fringe of pine-wood which surrounds the cricket-field on 

 three sides, and the spires and higher roofs of the college itself. 

 But one bright episode came under notice — a lovely pair of Gold- 

 finches fiew accommodatingly along the hedgeside before our 

 horses, and then crossed our path and flew into a belt of hard-woods 

 by the roadside. / vms pleased, because many though the years 

 have been that I have searched for our Scottish birds, of almost no 

 species of our indigenous birds have I seen so few in all other parts 

 of Scotland. I had been told before of their presence in this district, 

 and this added another point of interest to my seeing them myself. 

 The remainder of our drive was along a straight and dusty and 

 rather uninteresting road by the Carse-side to Crieff. 



GLEN DOCHAET. 



On the 20th May we pursued our route by the newly opened 

 railway line along the north side of Loch Earn; and from Balquhidder 

 Station went on to Tyndrum for the purpose of getting photographs 

 of the old Black Wood, which represents the farthest point of 

 advance of the Capercaillie to the west inside the limits of our area, 

 and of the patch of similar forest near Crianlarich where the first 

 Capercaillie of the advancing host was shot, as I have already illus- 

 trated in my monographic account of that species.^ 



On a later date, having made previous arrangements for trap and 

 boat on Loch Dochart, photographs were obtained of the several 



^ The Capercaillie in Scotland, etc. 



