xxxiiiA] EXCURSIONS AND EXAMINATIONS 405 



celebrated. But we had little success because we had no guide 

 to the exact localities of the rarities. But we much enjoyed 

 the excursion and the wild scenery, though we had some diffi- 

 culty in getting the keepers to allow us to enter the glen. Being 

 at the inn on Sunday a number of farmers and their wives 

 came in after church to meet their friends and drink whisky, 

 and on listening to their very voluble talk I could not under- 

 stand a word that they were saying. I concluded, therefore, 

 that they were speaking Gaelic, and was much pleased to 

 have heard it. But the landlord's daughter told me afterwards 

 that no one spoke Gaelic there, and that all the people I had 

 heard were speaking English ! I could not have believed 

 that pronunciation and accent could have produced such 

 complete unintelligibility. On passing through Edinburgh 

 we called on the late Professor Balfour at the Botanical 

 Gardens, and he much regretted that he had not accompanied 

 us, as he could have shown us all the rarities of that botanical 

 treasure-house. 



In the spring of 1877 I accompanied Mr. Mitten to Spa 

 in Belgium, where he was taking his youngest daughter to a 

 school to acquire French conversation. We stayed a few 

 days there, botanizing on the moors and hills around, and 

 were interested in noticing some peculiarities of the vegetation 

 as compared with our own. Nowhere did we see a single 

 primrose, but its place was taken by the true oxlip (Primula 

 elatior\ so local with us. Our rare little fern, Asplenium 

 septentrionale^ was common by the roadsides. Our Swiss tour 

 has been noticed in Chapter XXXIII. Even during Mr. 

 Mitten's occasional visits to us in Dorsetshire, he had found 

 several plants new to the district or to the county. The 

 most notable of these were the crowberry {Empetrum nignim), 

 never before noticed in Dorsetshire, a quite large bush of 

 which was found on Studland Heath, a well-searched botanical 

 locality. Even more interesting was his discovery of the 

 rare aquatic grass, Leersia oryzoides^ which he thought 

 should grow in the ditches near Wareham, and knowing its 

 flowering season, he went there and found it, though the 

 very ditch had often been searched by other botanists ! 



