1904 - 5 .] 
Flora of Scottish Lakes. 
1015 
maximum and minimum being about 22 feet. Now the water 
of this loch is so dark that I should imagine no plants could 
exist at a greater depth than 10 to 12 feet. The consequence 
therefore of an extra 20 feet of this dark water was to kill out the 
whole of the aquatic flora of the original lochs, and the ever- 
changing level has not favoured the introduction of a new flora ; 
in fact I doubt if a flora could exist there under the present 
conditions. Not only were all the aquatic plants destroyed, but 
the entire littoral flora was also extinguished by drowning, so that 
when the water is low the remains of the old littoral trees and 
shrubs form a desolate picture of death and destruction. Fig. 87 
shows the shore of the present loch with the water fallen about 
20 feet ; amongst the mud and stones are the remains of alder and 
birch. Fig. 88 is from another portion of the loch showing 
remains of birch, ash, and alder trees ; the shore is here of sandy 
mud and has been washed into terraces by the receding water. 
Another view is represented in fig. 89, where the peat covering 
has been washed from the underlying rock, the latter bearing 
evidence of glacial action. 
Loch Kemp is beautifully situated amongst hills, some of the 
lower slopes being wooded with birch. Its shores are mostly 
rocky, the water is very peaty, and vegetation extremely scanty. 
On the north-east side the bottom, within the photic zone, is to a 
great extent incrusted with a hard brittle layer, about half-an-inch 
thick, resembling moor-pan ; no plants grow in this substance. In 
other places there is a bottom carpet of Lobelia, Littorella, and 
Isoetes to about 12 feet deep; beyond this depth I could obtain 
no evidence of plant life. The photic zone here cannot extend 
beyond a depth of 12 to 15 feet. When looking over the side of 
a boat, the bottom was quite invisible at a depth of 5 feet. A 
small shallow bay with a sandy bottom on the west side has 
Potamogeton natans, not intermingled and covering the surface 
with their leaves in the usual way, but each plant quite isolated 
(fig. 90). With the latter are a few Castalia speciosa, with 
Equisetum limosum and Carex rostrata about the shores. Similar 
conditions also exist at the estuary of the inflowing burn from 
Meall na Targuid (fig. 91). Beyond those already mentioned, the 
only plants that I found here were Utricularia vulgaris, Callitriche 
