8 
A VISIT TO GLEN CLOVA AND CALLATER 
equally fortunate, the little moss Gyvuiostoiiium Doniaiium, Sm., being 
found by him, I am informed, when he was only fifteen years old, 
Splachnum tenue, S. ampullaceum, Didymodon inclinatus, IVeissia nigrita, 
Bryum trichodes, and other mosses being added to the Forfarshire flora 
through his industry. 
A life of privation and hard work at length told upon his 
constitution, and a severe cold, caught on one of his excursions, turned 
to a putrid sore throat, to which he eventually succumbed, leaving his 
family in extreme poverty. From the enormous amount he collected, 
and the few facilities he had for keeping his specimens in order, there 
is no doubt that occasional mistakes were made in his records ; but I do 
not think he deserves the great contempt which some “arm-chair” 
botanists, such as Arnott, cast wholesale upon him, since several 
plants recorded by him and long treated as errors have eventually been 
rediscovered : for instance, Hierochloe borealis was said by Don -to be 
found in Glen Gaily,—now that glen, or at any rate the head of it 
(the least likely part), has been searched unsuccessfully; but then 
possibly the search had been made too late in the year. At any rate, 
the Hierochloe was treated as one of Don’s reputed discoveries, till 
another poor working botanist, Robert Dick (since rendered famous by 
Smiles), discovered it near Thurso, thus showing there was no great 
improbability in the Glen Gaily record: and further search may 
rediscover some of the other plants which now figure only in the list of 
“ ambiguities ” or “ impositions ” in our British list. It is said that 
his Moss records have all since been verified. 
When I started for Clova it was just after revelling in the sylvan 
glades and sphagnum bogs of the New Forest, gathering in the one the 
splendid crimson spikes of Gladiolus, and the delicately lovely 
flowers of Melittis, while in the other the tiny orchis Malaxis, the rare 
lihynchospora fusca, the Isnardia, and other rarities offered a great con¬ 
trast to the Gentiana venia, Fotentilla fruticosa, Folygala. uliginosa, 
Ahine strieta, llelianthemum vineale, and Viola areiiaria of that strange 
sugar limestone district of Teesdale, which had tempted me to linger on 
my northward journey, and perhaps dulled my appreciation for all but 
the rarer plants ; yet, despite these rich treasures, I longed to get to 
the little inn at Clova, where it is best to bespeak rooms a week 
previously, and also to obtain a pass from the owner of Glen Dole—Mr. 
Gurney, of Norwich—a permission obtainable, I am told, not later than 
June, since the Dole is unfortunately now a deer forest, and the 
generosity sometimes shown to botanists by landowners is not, I am 
afraid, conspicuously developed in the present owner of the Dole. 
After leaving the train at Kirriemuir, sixteen miles south of Clova, 
a conveyance was hired, and a pleasant drive it was up to the kirktown 
of Clova, Once there, the first walk was by the river side to gather 
Carex aquatilis var. JVatsoui, which occurs about half-a-mile from the 
inn. lurning eastwards from the river the road is soon met with, 
fringed here with that lovely Umbellifera Meum athamanticum, while the 
