986 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
the coniferous or deciduous wood. Far above, the purple heather 
and the sombre greens of the various grass-like formations lend a 
beauty to the whole, so charming that we are apt to ignore the 
never-ceasing antagonism urging on the mighty gladiators of 
nature — moorland and forest, for instance — to unrelenting mortal 
combat. All this grace, further embellished and emphasised by 
the magnificent sky effects that obtain here so frequently, 
gives this superb lake a high position among the gems of 
Scottish scenery. Abundant and beautiful as is the terrestrial 
flora, that of the water is extremely scanty; the cause of this 
paucity has already been mentioned (p. 967). One may 
traverse miles of the shores of this lake and find scarcely an 
aquatic plant, unless it be the lithophilous bryophyta or algae, 
that defy the erosive power of the waves (fig. 5). The only 
places in Loch Ness where aquatic plants are abundant are 
Urquhart Bay, Inchnacardoch Bay, about the south-west portion 
from Borlum to the railway pier, where the water is comparatively 
shallow with a pebbly, sandy, or muddy bottom ; also, but more 
scantily, about the estuaries of the rivers Moriston and Foyers, 
and in a few small sheltered bays here and there about the 
lake. Generally the shore is so steep that deep water occurs 
immediately. Opposite Invermoriston, for example, a depth of 
652 feet occurs at 120 yards from the shore. This great depth so 
near the shore is of course exceptional, but it serves as an 
example to show the impossibility of there being an abundant 
bottom flora of the higher forms under such conditions. The 
limit of the photic zone is therefore reached, as a general rule, 
within a few feet of the shore. During the past summer (1904) 
Sir John Murray afforded the staff of the Lake Survey the 
exceptional opportunity of dredging the bottom of Loch Ness 
and the other lochs forming part of the Caledonian Canal, by aid 
of the fully equipped steamer Mermaid , of the Millport Marine 
Biological Station. The result of several days’ dredging in the 
deep water of Loch Ness* — 100 feet to 750 feet deep — fully 
corroborated the results previously and subsequently obtained by 
hand-dredging from a row-boat. No living, light-demanding, 
* The physical and zoological results, obtained by aid of the Mermaid , 
-will be treated by other workers. 
