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Wild Flowers of Scotland

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Wild Flowers of Scotland

By J. H. CRAWFORD, F.L.S.

AUTHOR OF " WILD LIFE OF SCOTLAND," ETC.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN WILLIAMSON

LONDON: JOHN MACQUEEN

MDCCCXCVII

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 9

I. THE FLOWERS OF SPRING . . . . . 17

II. THE BLUE BELLS ....... 29

III. THE GARDEN -AND THE WILDS . . . 41

IV. WHIN AND BROOM ...... 55

V. THE FLOWERS OF SUMMER 65

VI. MARGUERITES AND POPPIES 78

VII. THISTLES ........ 89

VIII. IN THE WOODLANDS 100

IX. ON THE LINKS HI

X. THE PATH THROUGH THE CORNFIELDS . . . 122

XI. FLOWERS OF THE FAR NORTH . • . 134
XII. UP THE GLEN 147

XIII. THE HEATHER . 161

XIV. ON THE MOUNTAINS 174

XV. ON THE MOUNTAINS 187

XVI. THE SAXIFRAGES 200

XVII. AMONG THE SOUTHERN UPLANDS .... 213

7

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C1 0 Q

INTRODUCTION

*

T ESS has been said in a pleasant way about
^^ the wild flowers than about the wild
animals of Scotland.

Yet our four-footed creatures are few, and their
tale easily told. Our wild birds, too, have been
sadly thinned out, with the exception of sea forms ;
and these belong to other coasts as well. Birds
have wings, and can cross water.

Whereas the many wild flowers are well-nigh
untouched. Nor do they fly about from place to
place, but remain pretty much where they have been
all along. They are ours, in a sense in which
other living things are not.

Moreover, they are out of fellowship with the
wild flowers of other lands. There is no common
border across which they mingle with kindred

9

io WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

forms. Like ourselves, they have a semi-island
character, and have grown into what they are by
long ages spent within the Channel. They have
been shaped and coloured here.

If the quest is not exciting, it is not therefore
less interesting. Some of the ruder elements of
sport are absent. We do not shoot them, nor do
we hunt them with dogs.

Nevertheless, it is not all dainty basket-work in
shaded woodland glade, or on sunny bank, seeing
that Scotland is not made up of such mild features
as these. To the venturesome there is abundant
opportunity of showing what is in him.

If the ledge of coast-cliff, where the peregrine
builds, is bad to get at, either from the grassy top,
or from the bottom where the water gurgles, the
crack in which the rare seaside flower roots itself
is still more puzzling. It needs a cool head as well
as a rope and a belt.

If only a bold man dare take the golden eagle's
eggs from the face of a Grampian precipice, it
needs a bolder one still to rob that little colony of
alpines, faintly glowing, through the field -glass,
five hundred feet above or below.

INTRODUCTION n

It thus appears that in a land like this the pur-
suit of the rarer wild flowers need not be lacking
in manliness. If they do not run away, it is
because they are safe from all but the boldest,
who will blench at nothing, in some giddy place
which no blue hare could reach, and where no
mountain bird could perch.

Where wild animals thin out towards the tops
of mountains until, it may be, only two are left,
wild plants climb on ahead, scaling everything by
the way, so that one who would follow them must
be at least as hardy as a ptarmigan shooter. No
scene so rude as to deter them, or so lofty as to keep
them back. If they are not higher, it is because
there is no greater height to reach.

They are in all sorts of cunning places, where a
false step or too long a reach might be awkward.
They hide in the shadow of the boulder, or peep
from the crevice of the rock to see who may be the
strange visitor, in solitudes so seldom disturbed by
human footstep.

And the results at the close of a long day, when
one has dropped down the mountain-side and per-
haps got into his slippers, are certainly not less a

12 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

matter of boast than the bag of game. One has at
least the satisfaction of feeling that he has been
among genuine wildlings, that have been left in
those out-of-the-way places to fight their own
battle with natural enemies.

I have followed both plant and animal, with no
view of taking either egg or flower out of its
picturesque or wild setting, and I owe more of
my delight in wild nature and my knowledge of
Scotland to the former than to the latter.

The quest for flowers has led me by the seaside,
within the spray of the breakers ; inland — over
spring meadows passionate with blossoming,
through brakes glowing with broom, along lanes
scented with the May ; upland, beyond the purple
and pink heather zones, to where the mountain
breezes play most freely.

My wish is to take those who care to follow,
by the same pleasant ways, to the same goal.
I shall begin low down, and among familiar
things, only so far Scots, that in some cases
they have had to harden themselves to our
soil and climate.

INTRODUCTION 13

" You are not going to give us everything found
here ? " said one.

" Oh clear, no ! Nothing is further from my
thoughts."

A few typical forms in a natural setting,
livened by some incident or course of events in
which I shared, or stood by to witness ; and that
is all.

Among others, the wild flowers of these benty
sea-coast stretches, known in their natural state as
links ; and that for a certain reason, which I shall
proceed to give.

No pleasanter way can there be of spending the
hot hours of a summer day than on some royal
mantle of purple thyme, or some humbler couch of
yellow bed-straw, looking away over the lit and
shaded grasses ; and, yielding to the drowsy influ-
ence, to tilt the cap over the face, and to go to
sleep to the whispering of the sea within the shell
of the ear.

Of seaside thyme, or humbler bed-straw, there
will soon be none. As these scenes are being
invaded and re-turfed, this sketch may come to
be interesting as a picture of what used to be.

14 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

In St. Andrews — that Mecca of golf — until the
other day, a margin of natural bents was left
between the new course and the sea. Visitors will
recall the bright picture on the sunny afternoons
of their stay, filled in by attractive groups, of
which they may have formed one.

Even this strip has been taken away. And a
whisper is passing round that the lack of walking-
room may be supplied by wounding the sides of
perhaps the most picturesque sand-dunes in the
country. This would be worse even than driving
away the links flowers, and denying an afternoon
siesta in the hot sun to all who are not prepared
for a rude awakening.

From the seaside and the plain, where so
much is common, I shall enter the fastnesses in
search of what is peculiarly Scots, and wade
through the belt of shrubs to the alpine region
beyond.

From the mountain-top, as a coign of vantage,
I shall gaze away north, over the milder Shetlands,
to where mountain forms with us grow at sea-
level, and are known no longer as alpines, but as
arctics.

INTRODUCTION 15

From Nansen's Farthest North I borrow a
nearer view of these arctic lowlands.

" In the evening we at last reached the islands,
and for the first time for two years had bare land
under foot. The delight was indescribable, and
was not lessened when, in a little sheltered corner
among the stones, we found beautiful poppies and
snowy saxifrages."

WILD FLOWERS OF
SCOTLAND

THE FLOWERS OF SPRING

THE daisy never dies. The eye of the winter
as of the summer day, it is bellis perennis,
in a double sense : a thing of beauty, throughout
the year, and throughout the years.

So early do some plants flower, that they seem
to belong as much to the past as to the coming
season. Among such is the furze or whin. On
any open winter day it may be traced, by its
cocoanut scent, to where it lights up the leeside of
turf dyke, or wood strip with its dark yellow
blossoms. But for the bareness of the willow,
which has not yet hung out a single catkin, the
stillness of the woods, broken only by the drowsy

i8 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

noises of the gold-crests in the fir-trees, and the
midday shadows falling down the coloured sun-
light of the fallow field, one might be lulled, for a
time, into forgetfulness of the season.

With little shelter except the sand-dunes, the
whin is known to flower as early as November.
Thenceforward it continues to make the desolate
places of the land rejoice, until the golfers come
out on the links, and the linties begin to build
inside.

Daisy and whin have no other message than
the mildness of the air : it may be before or after
Christmas. Neither takes any part in Nature's
calendar, so that one can tell what time of year
it is.

The earliest flower with a definite beginning,
whose appearance one knows when to look for,
is the colt's -foot. It is not much of a flower
in appearance : not unlike a rather indifferent
dandelion, and of the same order. It is also a
plant of somewhat evil omen, showing poverty
or neglect. But it is without a rival when, with
its * bright rays and disc of still warmer hue, it
touches up the faded grasses ; and where there is
no choice, one is not disposed to be critical.

The spring note of the missel -thrush would

THE FLOWERS OF SPRING 19

miss its welcome if it came a little later, when
the air was already thrilling with richer melodies.
By the way, the singing came before the budding.
The birds, and not the flowers, are the true heralds
of spring. Ere the date of the colt's-foot, say in
early March, the mavis has eclipsed his bigger
cousin, and the blackbird has trolled out his first
mellow note. Nevertheless, this somewhat squalid
forerunner of the flowers, like the earliest of the
birds, has a welcome all to itself.

The colt's-foot is yellow. The first crocus to
touch the dark soil of the garden is yellow. The
beauty with which the daffodil takes the winds of
March is yellow. Whatever plant has more hues
than one, likes to show the yellow first.

Yellow is said to be the primitive colour : that
which broke out over the prevailing green of the
ancient earth, and began the long and increas-
ingly close fellowship between bright insect and
bright plant.

Spring is an early season. Before those who
have eyes to see, each year repeats the story of the
earth. Yellow is the complexion of spring, steal-
ing over the prevailing green of our moist winters.
The languid bee crawls from straw hive or hole
in the turf dyke, and, shaking out his cramped

20 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

wings, makes, with uncertain aim, begotten of
lessened use and vitality, for the yellow spot.

The lesser celandine is also yellow when it is
young and fresh, though it soon bleaches into
white. Its star-like appearance is borrowed from
the many -pointed rays — eight, or nine. This
feature marks it out among the flowers, were
there any so soon besides the colt's - foot to
confuse it with — gives it, so to speak, a certain
individuality.

By the high roads, which, happily at the time,
are not quite so dusty as they afterward become,
it grows in a stunted form, and wears an away-
from-home look.

It belongs to the burn-sides, where it brightens
the broken passage of the angler from current to
current and from pool to pool. Its associations
are with running water and early trouting. Only
those who have seen the dark green leaves against
the reddish brown bank, and the yellow star
against the dark green leaves, or both leaf and
star standing out against the neutral-tinted stream,
can tell all the celandine is. Only those, too, who
know it as one of many pleasant impressions.

Nor is it the only flower which one has learned
to like, less for itself than because of scene and

THE FLOWERS OF SPRING 21

surrounding. One who has been abroad, rod in
hand, can never afterward separate the spring
celandine from the flushed stream, such as we
have at that season, the long shadows, the pink
and black spots of the newly-landed trout, and
all the fresh emotions attending the first cast and
catch after a winter's fast.

It is known as Wordsworth's flower. Had he
been an enthusiastic angler we could have under-
stood the choice, because, for reasons just stated,
all the members of the fraternity are disposed to
appraise it beyond its merits. But being only an
unattached admirer in search of beauty, the pre-
ference is more puzzling. He expressed his
admiration in a sonnet which I would rather not
quote. The Ayrshire poet moralised over the
daisy, and Tennyson had the taste to follow so
good an example. The Westmoreland poet must
needs moralise over something else. I question
whether the reputation, either of flower or poet, is
very much bettered thereby.

The place of the fading celandine is filled by the
anemone. Beginning with a pink bud, it opens
into a white flower. It has a tendency to grow in
patches, netted by underground stolons. The
delicately cut foliage is in itself a delight. It is

22 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

called nemorosa because it is found in woods, and
anemone because it is found in windy places.
Thus we get the singular combination " anemone
nemorosa," which seems rather a contradiction in
terms. The wood is still. The woodland storm
no more troubles the sheltered glades where the
anemones dwell, than the lash of waves reaches
the depths of ocean. Far overhead the wind
bends the topmost branches, and sings a spiritual-
ised version of the ruder song of the sea. Those
who find it growing in the wilds may call it
anemone, and those who come upon the self -same
plant in the woods may call it nemorosa ; and both
will then be satisfied.

The wood anemone creeps up the hillsides. On
that playground of theirs the breezes deal gently
with their favourite, fanning it into healthy
motion, without scattering its loose flower. There
it may chance to meet a sister.

The blue mountain anemone takes wood or open
with equal thanks. No other anemones grow wild
in Scotland. The summer pasque flower keeps to
the chalk downs, of which we have none.

At much the same time, in much the same places
as the anemone, appears the primrose ; at least it
shares the shadier half of the wind flower's domain.

THE FLOWERS OF SPRING 23

More impatient of the wind, it may be called a
shade flower. It loves the woods where the sun-
shine is broken into patches, and finds out all sorts
of sheltered corners, or primrose niches. Some-
times it gets its roots into a crack of the rock
overlooking a woodland pool, in which it can see
itself.

It is by no means the first rose, as its name
would seem to imply ; nor is it a rose at all, any
more than a jelly-fish is a fish. The only explana-
tion I can offer of this second double name is that,
whereas the earlier forms grow in out-of-the-way
places, are scentless, and appear when out-of-door
life has scarce as yet begun, the primrose is by
the brookside, where the girls play ; in the strip
of wood, where the boys go a-nesting; and all
on those bright days when the sun has taken the
chill off the air and sufficiently dried the natural
playgrounds.

Well do I remember finding my first thrush's
nest, under the green rosette with its crown of
yellow. The spotted breast of the sitter, the
spotted blue eggs when she arose, the crossing
shadows, and the prattle of the burn, form a
picture which has not yet perceptibly faded.

This fixes the date of the flower, according to

24 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

my favourite way of reckoning, at the nesting-
time of the song thrush ; or, to descend to plain
prose, somewhere between March and May. Im-
patient thrushes build, and early primroses blow,
sooner; and I have found both eggs and flowers
later. But the nesting and the blossoming reach
their height together; so that on the day one
gathers the largest handful of flowers, he will
startle most sitting birds among the bushes.

This is the first flower to attract attention : the
first scented flower; and as every flower is a rose
to the vulgar, so this is the primrose.

The primulas — of which our primrose is one —
range from the deepest dells to the highest
mountains. Strangely enough, none of the strictly
mountain primulas appear in Scotland, the home
of British alpines. Our colour is yellow — in the
primrose of a very pale cast, indefinitely sweet,
like the scent of the flower; deepening in hue
in the cowslip. According to their wont, the
yellows come in spring.

We have two lilacs later in the season. One
is in the north, and the other in the south. Both
are very local. So very slight is the hold of the
southern species that it can scarcely be regarded
as Scots. The other we shall meet again. Both

THE FLOWERS OF SPRING 25

are moorland, or sub-alpine. Lilac and purple are
the mountain colours. Happy is the man who,
in garden, rockery, or greenhouse, gathers the
primulas of Europe round those of Scotland.

Commonest of a lovely family, the dog violet
shares the windy and exposed half of the anemone's
domain. I like to think of it on the bank, sloping
down to ditch or stream, with the nest of the
yellow-hammer hard by. There it so overtops the
short, fresh grass, that every tiny speck of blue is
seen. Hand in hand, like sisters born, it climbs
the slope with the anemone, and goes just about
as high.

It passes under the shadow far enough to join
the primroses. There it grows larger, if more
faintly hued flowers ; and changes its name to the
wood violet. The smaller, deeper blue bank violet
is better. Whereas the shade-loving primrose
sometimes wanders out into the open, the violet of
the open enters the shades. Together with the
anemone, primrose and violet make fairy glades
worth searching out.

The three-coloured violet gets the credit of being
parent to our garden pansies. A little later than
the first appearance of the dog violets, — for it will
save space elsewhere if I chat about some of the

26 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

summer friends of these spring flowers, — heartsease
scatters over the drier turf. On climbing the
dykes into the grain field, it grows a long stem, at
the expense of the blossom. There is some reason
to suppose that the climbing has been the other
way. Introduced with the grain, it may have
crossed to the meadows, where it shortened its
stalk, to the benefit of the flower.

Does heartsease climb the mountains, away
beyond the utmost limit of the dog violet ? Does
it there drop white and blue — all its shades save
one — and become the yellow mountain violet ?
If I am justified in linking the three-hued violet
of the plain with the one-hued mountain violet,
across the gap between where neither grows, then
the heartsease may be a native after all : may have
come down the slopes, and not over the dyke. The
ascent, if such there was, must be pretty far back.

Still another violet haunts the marshes : not
simply wet places, but genuine old bogs, which
have never been reclaimed, and whose date must
be primeval.

It recalls ankle-deep wading through mossy
and peaty stretches, with frequent quickening of
the motion, and jumps, lest the sinking should be
inconveniently deep.

UNIVE

THE FLOWERS OF SPRING 27

Never shall I forget one sunrise two thousand
feet among the Perthshire hills, in a haunt of the
marsh violet — the soaking mosses, the deep black
pools which no summer heat could dry up ; nor the
plight I was in ; nor the comments passed when,
toward six in the morning, I appeared at my
lodging by the Ardle side.

Blue in colour like the dog violet, it differs
mainly in the roundness of the leaf — rounder even
than that of the sweet violet.

A fancy sometimes helps one. I have never been
able to disassociate the violets, so strangely perfect
among the native wild flowers, from the tits, so
strangely perfect among the native wild birds.
Blue is the predominant colour in both ; the number
of species is the same ; and the moist stretches
which yield the marsh violet yield also the marsh
tit.

Still in wet places, though not so old, nor wild,
nor far away, appear two other moisture lovers,
familiar to those who never heard of the marsh
violet, and chiefly to all readers of The May
Queen.

By the meadow trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo flowers,
And the wild marsh marigold shines like fire in swamps
and hollows grey.

28 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

Permanent pasture is not common in Scotland.
Few dry meadows lighten at spring-time with the
passionate blossoming of those in the South. Our
green stretches are mainly the overflow of streams
— marshes rather than meadows.

Raw enough at other times, and in winter often
impassable, such scenes become charming when, in
April, a bright sisterhood of flowers is let loose
over them. Here and there, among the pinks are
glowing yellows.

Then the spring buttercups come out among the
daisies of the bank, yielding the most charming
effects with the simplest touches. The first is that
with the bulb at the roots, to make it independent
of the niggardness of the season ; and the pale
sepals, bent back so quaintly against the stem.

The later fibrous-rooted buttercups follow; the
taller of them to o'ertop the lengthening grasses,
and glisten among the brown panicles with a
second effect, not less simple or charming than that
among the daisies.

While this lasts, Spring is abroad as if she had
taken lovely shape, visibly scattering from her
lap ; and he who would find her will do well
to go to such grassy banks, and look there. If the
beauty is not passionate, it is altogether satisfying.

II

THE BLUE BELLS

FORTNIGHT after
have gathered the
last handful of perfect
flowers from the fading anemones, and looked on
the primroses at their best, I return to the woods.

30 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

A blue mist steals over the bank running down to
the stream. There is a sheen through the under-
growth, as of beauty in hiding.

It is an April day, somewhat past the middle of
the month, between the leafing of the sloe and the
blossoming of the hawthorn. The walk across the
country by the bursting hedgerows was delightful.
A sky broken with clouds, the fields with shadows,
and a sun warm enough to make the shelter of
trees grateful. Just the day when one has only
to step into the shade to be cool, and out into
the sunshine to be warm: when one cheek is in
the pleasant sunshine, and the other in the cool
shadow.

On the way, the birds were alert and busy. The
gush of song on either hand was incessant, ever
breaking out afresh and ahead, as if I were passing
along a lane bordered on either side by melody; or,
rather, through an arch, of which the lark's song
was the highest part. Flashes of fresh colour
appeared for a moment, as the greenfinch passed
from tree to tree, and the yellow-hammer from
hedge to hedge. Beauty as well as melody
bordered and arched the lanes. One cannot mis-
take the presence of spring in April.

The dry slope of woodland bank is inviting.

THE BLUE BELLS 31

One can drink in the exceeding loveliness of such
surroundings better when he is lying down. The
shadows over the current, and up the far bank fall
so pleasantly across the spirit. Only in so far as
there are spirit shadows can we see their beauty.
No tracery in Nature is more delicate than that
above, except that shadow tracery of twigs and
bursting buds below. One can scarce help being
beautiful in soul while he lies here. He is only
reflecting.

The chaffinch, without whose spring note the
budding woods would scarcely seem themselves, is
now in full song. If the lay is not sweet, it is
woodland, which is far better, and shows how
much music owes to the scene in which we delight
to hear it. No other song would please so much.

The scent as well as the complexion of the den
has changed. It is no longer the spiritual essence —
so faintly sweet when diffused through the outer
air — of primrose. At least not altogether ; though
there, it is hard to detect. Something heavier —
too heavy in the concentrated sweetness into which
it is gathered in the close defile between the banks
— overpowers the rest.

The primroses are still abroad among the wood
grasses, or beside the mossy stump, or under the

32 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

bole of the fallen tree. Scattered here and there,
according to their wont, they charm the eye that
wanders over the woodland floor, with their
picturesque setting and frequent surprises. No
two are placed exactly alike.

The habit of the hyacinth is different. With
less genius for setting, it becomes picturesque only
when seen at a distance. More prodigal of its
favours, it spreads out in sheets, broken only by
the tree boles under the lights and shadows.

O

Within its areas, nor blade nor leaf of aught
else is suffered to appear. I am crushing scores
of them where I lie ; and I am lying here simply
because I could find no other place where they
were not.

All round about me, within easy reach of my
hand, the pendent blossoms hang down the stalks,
so that I can see all I want without pulling or
breaking. When I lay my head back, a flower
ripples over either cheek in hyacinthine locks of
blue.

That it belongs to the lilies is made plain even
by the grass-like leaves. And, like the rest of that
lovely family, it is able, by a certain natural
providence, to make an early start. I cut a little
square in the turf round the stem, and dig the

THE BLUE BELLS 33

whole plant out. And there, half a foot down in
the brown mould, is the store of food laid up in the
past season against the spring.

Several flowers are so closely woven-in with the
name of our country, that we, who were born here,
can scarcely recall the day we thought of them
apart. When we begin " the blue bells," we feel
as if we had not said enough till we add " of
Scotland."

The blue bell has found its way into song, as
blooming more distinctly than any other wild
flower in the author's mental picture of the land.
Others have had some favourite object chosen from
amid the scenes where they were reared, some
symbol of so much combined love of nature and
patriotism as they possessed. An exile passion-
ately recalled Scotland by " the broom that hung
its tassels on the lea," and, among birds, by the
" lintie's sang." Being destitute of imagination
or the power of expression, we borrow from the
more gifted. And it is amusing how fervently
some of us, when in poetic vein, sing of what we
never saw, and exult in what we never cared for.

In the esteem of this man, the blue bell is not
only worthy of Scotland, but also more to be proud
of than the "jasmine bowers and rose-covered
3

34 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

dells " of sunnier lands. And we echo the senti-
ment, without being quite sure what is meant.

There happen to be two bells, or rather bell-like
flowers, each of which might well advance its
claims. And the unstinted praise may well lead to
a battle or duel of the flowers. The earlier in the
field is the wild hyacinth.

I bend one of the stalks gently toward me.
The petals close, and turn out at the tip into a
delicate vase shape. It is a Scots bell, although
not distinctively so. And there is no valid reason
to be found in the beauty of the plant, in the
charm it lends to hundreds of our dells, in the
character it gives to our spring woodlands, in the
delight it yields to all lovers of nature, and in the
gap it would leave if it deserted its haunts — for
what else would fill up the space which divides the
primrose and the summer flowers ? — why it should
not be the Scottish Blue Bell.

True, it is not found everywhere. Many country-
sides are without it. Many shady places may be
searched without the tell-tale odour revealing its
presence, and guiding to its twilight domain.
Many dells as promising as this have to supply the
want as best they can.

But wherever it is, it can scarcely escape the

THE BLUE BELLS 35

attention of the least observant, or fail to awaken
the enthusiasm of the least impressionable. Every
schoolboy on the Saturday half-holiday visits its
haunts for the nests of the rarest birds, and gathers
handfuls to scatter on the way home. Every
country maiden from the surrounding cotter
houses pushes it among her locks.

" My little girl with the golden hair and the soft
eyes, what do you like ? " " To be among the wood
hyacinths."

Beyond the margin of the wood, the hyacinths
flow over the bank among the brambles and trail-
ing roses. The white-throat and rose linnet weave
their nests among the scented twigs ; and the
yellow-hammer builds among the grasses, where
the long pleasant days of sitting may be shaded by
the bells.

A fortnight or so after the blue hyacinths have
faded, — say about the end of June, when already
every egg has been chipped, and the birds are busy
feeding their second brood amid the thickening
undergrowth, — a second flower of Scotland makes
its appearance.

It is no longer vase-shaped, but bell-shaped ;
indeed, it is one of the true bells, with all its petals
joined into one. If there is anything lovelier than

36 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

a lily, it is a campanula, which is just another
name for bell. And this is the most delicate of the
graceful family to which it belongs.

Here everything is etherealised, only sufficient
substance being used to indicate and preserve the
form. If it were not prejudging the case, one
might be disposed to pronounce it the most perfect
in shape of all flowers, either wild or cultivated, in
Scotland or elsewhere.

There is no stiffness about it, like the other ; no
stout stem whereon to suspend heavy-textured
blossoms. If ever bell were tremblingly hung, this
one is. It vibrates to the slightest stirring of the
air ; and when is the air still in its exposed
haunts ? It seeks the open wastes, as pleasanter
for the breathless days than the sheltered wood-
lands.

Not yet has it been decided how the name arose ;
and the spelling is left very much to individual
imagination and taste. Where the choice is
between two such names, equally poetic and
suggestive, there is really no hurry. The pity
would be to lose either of them.

If it is hair bell, the reference is to the exquisite
poising of the blossom on the hair-like stem. If
hare bell, still fresher associations with the moor-

THE BLUE BELLS 37

land are conveyed. It must mean that the hare
has its form where the flowers grow ; and, on its
passage to and fro, rings from the fairy bells —
Their wandering chimes to vagrant butterflies.

The extreme delicacy lends not only grace, but
safety as well. Whereas other moorland plants
protect themselves from the unchecked storms, or
the tread of animals, in various coarser ways, this
has learned from nature the gentler art of conquer-
ing by knowing when to yield.

E'en the slight hare bell raised its head
Elastic from her airy tread.

Scott meant this as a compliment to the grace of
Helen Douglas; but half of it belongs to the
flower. Clumsier feet by far than those of the
Lady of the Lake may tread, and the stem will spring
back again uninjured. The bell, so fragile seeming,
has simply sunk among the soft grass or moss, and
will shake itself into perfect form again as soon
as the pressure has passed, and it is lifted into air.

I have seen a limb torn from the tough birch,
or a moorland pine uprooted, but I never saw a
hare bell crushed — beyond the power of rising and
shaking out its creases again — by anything lighter
than a cart-wheel ; and not always by that.

This bell has no scent. No second inducement is

38 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

needed to those vagrant butterflies. So far, it
stands at a disadvantage with its rival. Growing
singly or in clusters, and not in masses, it does not
attract the eye from a distance, as a glow of colour.
But it is almost everywhere, which the other is not.
It fringes the edges of the cornfields, climbs the
mountain-sides till it meets the lower alpines,
where I have seen it white as the mountain
hares of winter ; and runs down to the coast till it
is washed by the salt spray, where I have also seen
it white : on either site, when bleached, it scarcely
looks like itself.

Chiefly is it a moorland wildling, companion of
the meadow pipit and the nesting plover. And
in such moors Scotland abounds. From June on-
ward, every golf-ball driven on St. Andrews links
rings the wandering chimes to the blue seaside
butterflies. Levelled for a moment, it swiftly
rises again, and, ere the golfer passes, it is already
trembling in the light breeze as if nothing had
happened.

It is gathered by school children, in those
delightful autumn weeks spent by the seaside or on
inland moor. It blooms for a while along with the
marguerite, to whose calm beauty it adds fairy-
like grace. And when the reign of marguerite

THE BLUE BELLS 39

is over, it fills the vases of aesthetic maidens,
adding to, and borrowing the delicacy of the
lighter grasses which tremble beside it. Thus it
has all the claims of its tenderer loveliness, of its
wider-spread, arid its closer sympathy with the
genius of the land to be recalled, whenever Scotland
is named.

But why worry oneself between two such fair
claimants ? Why not, with honest Cassio, confess
each to be more excellent than the other ? A queen
may surely reign in Spain while another reigns in
England, and the earth prove large enough for
both. In like manner two fairy queens may reign
at once, so long as one holds her court on the moor
and the other in the woods. Why not pay devoirs
to the hare bell in the open, and change our
allegiance on passing beneath the branches. Two
fairy queens can reign in different places at the
same time, and all beauty is not gathered into one
bell, any more than into one face.

But even this is not a full statement of the case.
Both are not abroad on the earth, even in their
different scenes, at the same time. Then what
excuse is there for rivalry ? Who wants a cessation
in the reign of beauty, or even an interregnum ?

Let us divide the kingdom between them, mak-

40 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

ing the hyacinth queen for life. All the spring
we shall feel at liberty to pay court to her, lying
out among the trembling shadows, changing as the
buds open into leaves. Until the shilfa's song
begins to lose its early freshness, and the warbler's
lay awakens, we shall make the rocky den echo to
our tuneful song, " The Blue Bells of Scotland."

And when at length the woods become faint
with heat : then on the breezy moor, or near " the
beached margent of the sea," where dance our
ringlets to the whistling wind, to the wandering
chimes of that other bell we shall finish our song,

" The Scottish Blue Bells."

Ill

THE GARDEN AND THE WILDS

THE garden is a natural nursery ; and the older
it is, the larger its share in the wild flowers of
the surrounding country-side is likely to be. Only
by canopying the whole over and setting guards
at the gate could escapes be prevented, and the
line between native and cultivated kept sharp and
distinct.

Seeds rise on the lightest breeze, and may be
borne miles away before they come to rest.
And if by field-side, or the margin of the wood
they find conditions to suit them, they will spring.
At the autumn thinning, clumps are thrown over
the wall, which take root on the other side and
spread away outward, surely if slowly.

Sometimes an aesthetic member of a family will
plant a cutting of some favourite flower in one of
her woodland or stream-side haunts. And, long

42 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

after, the touch of a vanished hand is seen there
by some curious passer-by.

It is not many years since gentle hands scattered
English wildlings over a Scots park, and planted
garden flowers in a Scots woodland. And there
they are now to witness if I lie. I could take any-
one to the scene and point them out. By the
somewhat sad fortune which banishes daughters
from their homes when a property changes hands,
the planters are no longer there to watch their
coming and going, as they did for many
seasons.

And there they are likely to remain. I thought
at the time that greater care might have been
taken in the choosing : that double flowers and
those of strange hues might have been left out.

But nature will be sure to put that right by
and by. The plants will revert to the simpler
state : will yield up all their petals save one outer
rim ; will agree on some single hue, probably that
they wore before their captivity : and so recover
their lost likeness to their wild brethren. And, in
years to come, delighted wanderers over the grass,
or within the shades, will wonder why this corner
is so much richer than the rest of the scene of
which it forms a part. -

THE GARDEN AND THE WILDS 43

Frequently I come upon a curious patch of
confusion, where a few cultivated plants are
struggling and fairly well holding their own, amid
a promiscuous crowd of such pushing plebeians as
groundsel, chickweed, and purple dead nettle. A
ridge, not more than a foot high, enclosing a space,
is all that tells of the site of some peasant's cottage,
pulled down, not too soon, probably, for the well-
being of its inmates.

In one of my walks I saw a daffodil growing on
the banks of a rill. The leaves were long and
green, the flowers large, yellow, and single. The
whole plant was so healthy and happy-looking
that I thought I had never seen a daffodil before.
Plainly it was better satisfied with its fresh sur-
rounding, than if it had been in some dry and
dusty enclosure. No wonder, seeing that it is
naturally a lover of such moist places.

The scene was shut in from the world on every
side by a tree-crested ridge. Few came by in a
day. The nearest cottage was a long field's-
breadth away. I looked for some trace of recent
planting. The turf was firm, as though long
undisturbed.

For miles around there was no wild daffodil
besides. I question if the county, had it been

44 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

searched from end to end, — I had been over most
of it, — would have yielded such another clump.
In some strange way, the flower had got there.
The scene suggested an aesthetic origin.

Only yesterday I plucked a crimson sprig from
a wild American currant, to lighten up a little
natural bouquet of brown wood moss and green
hawthorn leaf. The bush was growing vigorously
and flowering freely in the middle of a wood, a
mile and a half from any town.

How far this element goes to swell the sum of
our wild flowers it were extremely difficult to say.
But it seems fairly certain that, were all the
escapes from gardens deducted, a less bulky
volume would contain the natives.

To those who have watched the process — who
have all but seen the flight of the seeds over the
garden wall ; who have certainly been at the birth
of the strange seedlings, under the shadow of the
wood, or on the moist stream-side bank ; who have
traced, season by season, the creeping of the
garden parings away from the wall — the possible
additions from this source will seem scarcely
capable of exaggeration. And, on each discovery,
they will turn over the pages of their handbook
with fresh interest and curiosity.

THE GARDEN AND THE WILDS 45

I have seen many such escapes, both swift-
winged and slow-footed, that are likely to make
good their hold and increase their distance from
the source, until the connection is broken. I could
run over many more that happened not so long
ago. These are now as well able to look after
themselves as their neighbours, and are securely
sandwiched in print, between two of the oldest
inhabitants.

The pace would be quickened, and many another
surprise greet one by the way, but that a garden
flower in the wilds is no sooner detected than
uprooted, and transferred within some other en-
closure. I have often marked the showy fugitive,
and next time I came by have missed it. A
check on the too rapid increase of quickly- spread-
ing species is not altogether a disadvantage, and a
second check on the less ready admission of aliens
might be a further benefit. It seems a pity to
confuse, so as almost to lose sight of, our native
lowland flora.

But for this acquisitiveness there is no reason
why " none - so - pretty," which is at once the
commonest garden plant, and one of the three
British alpines absent from Scotland, should not be
familiar at the roadside. Almost invariably it

46 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

marks the site of abandoned cottages, and blooms
round the outside of old garden walls ; and so far
from being discontented, it seems rather glad to
get back to a wild state again.

I find the neighbourhood of ancient fortresses
often rich in their wild flowers.

Within the enclosure of Craigmillar Castle grows
the French sorrel. Thence it seems to have spread
into the south of Scotland and the north of England.

THE GARDEN AND THE WILDS 47

The date of its coming was the sixteenth century.
The vanished hand, in this case, that of Mary
Queen of Scots. Amid her amiable weaknesses,
Mary seems to have included a liking for plants,
and may almost be traced from place to place by
the relics she has left behind. Archangelica
appeared in 1568, a year or two after the
return from France, and may with some prob-
ability also be credited to Mary.

A Forfarshire den which I am in the habit of
visiting, is noted among dens for its depth of shade,
and the wealth of the flowering and flowerless
plants. There true wildlings grow along with
many a suspicious native. Everyone knows that
Solomon's seal is much more difficult to get rid of
than to plant. On being carried or thrown out of
the garden, it will run its stolons under the outside
soil in quite a get-rid -of -me-if-you-can sort of way.
At one time it must have been placed there with a
view of enriching the flora of the den.

Now it chances that on the top of the rock, a
hundred feet or more above, there stands a castle
of more than ordinary interest, as contesting with
another the honour of being " The bonnie house o'
Airlie." The vanished hand may have stretched
from there. We cannot now deny the plant a place

48 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

among our Scottish wild flowers, without including
many another of the same den in our Index Ex-
purgatorius.

A defile of much more modest dimensions seems
even richer than this, inasmuch as the many rarities
are gathered into a narrower space. It has been
called a paradise of flowers. I always suspect these
paradises, where the wildlings I had searched for,
separately, over many miles, are all huddled within
a few yards, and mingled with other flowers not
growing elsewhere outside an enclosure. I find
myself asking for a reason.

Early in the year the rocks dipping steeply down
to the cool water are covered over with the great
heart-shaped leaves, and brightened with the big
yellow flowers of Leopard's bane. A faint sweet
smell woos me aside to the violets growing among
the grasses of a bank. Though acquainted with
every yard of the country, I know no other bank
on which the sweet violet nods. Why should it be
here ?

Not fifty yards away, on the very edge of the
rocks o'ertopping the Leopard's bane, is another
castle of sixteenth-century date, once in possession
of the Grahams, kinsmen of "Bonnie Dundee."
Not much more than a stone's - throw away,

THE GARDEN AND THE WILDS 49

a quaint building marks the site of Claver-
house itself.

It may be that there were hands gentle enough
for the work even in that rude fortress, and that

these things may have been planted much
about the same time that Mary was enriching
the garden of Craigmillar Castle. At all
events, this place was inhabited, and either
4

50 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

the gentle or the simple must have placed
them there.

If one looks for rare things in the neighbour-
hood of castles, the rude engagements of whose
inhabitants left them neither time nor taste for
trifles, and whose women had often to unsex them-
selves; much more confidently may he turn to
the peaceful surroundings of monasteries, and the
placid lives of monks. So much is said against
these persons, who, if the truth were kown, were
probably neither better nor worse than modern
divines, that it is pleasant to record something in
their favour. And naturalists have reason to be
grateful to them for more than one service.

On the north bank of the Tay, not far
from the bridge, there are certain banks and
woods widely known for the luxuriance of their
flowers. The primroses are taller and more
sweetly pale and scented than elsewhere, and,
contrary to their habit, grow so close together,
as to preserve through April and May an
almost unbroken sheet of colour. The atmo-
sphere is delightful.

Hither the Dundee maidens appear, to gather,
not one by one, but in handfuls ; and, furnished
all too soon with what they come for, linger about

THE GARDEN AND THE WILDS 51

until the evening, and return with baskets which
freshen the streets and the jaded passers-by.

Above the pale and lowly primroses rise, upon
their stalks, the darker-coloured cowslips. Now,
the cowslip is not nearly so common in Scotland as
in England ; partly, perhaps,
jg^^to for the want of dry per-
manent
pasture.
Such
cowslips,
as we
have, fre-
quently find
niches for them-
selves in the curi-
ous corners of woods.
Nor do the Scots cowslips
look quite the same as those
found growing on the English
meadows. The smaller paler flowers of the latter
give it a more truly wild look. Here the whole
plant is larger, and more like the garden variety.
This may be partly accounted for by its
woodland haunts, where the struggle for existence
is not so keen as in the meadow; or, when

52 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

growing in the open, may point to a more sus-
picious origin.

It might be too much to say that the cowslip is
not native to Scotland. But, wherever it grows in
such abundance, in company with a profusion of
common flowers of the sweeter kinds, the hand of
man has probably had something to do with it.
And the only hands, vanished all of them, that could
have so enriched these Balmerino banks, and so
added to the charm of the scene and the happiness
of the lives to corne after, belonged to the monks
of the adjacent monastery.

Where primroses and cowslips have grown so
long together in sweet fellowship, one may pretty
confidently start on the pleasant hunt for oxlips.
If Oberon knows a bank whereon the oxlip grows,
depend upon it, the cowslip is in the meadow, and
the primrose in the wood hard by. This form is
easily picked out, even at a distance, by the larger
flower of the primrose on the common stalk of
the cowslip.

Hybrids between closely-related species, in plants
as well as animals, are doubtless commoner than
we are aware of. All that is needful, in many
cases, is that the parent forms mingle freely on the
same scene. But this is not always so easy to

THE GARDEN AND THE WILDS 53

detect, nor does it occur in the same marked
degree. Violets, albeit approaching as closely as
primrose and cowslip do, on the common margin
of wood and meadow, modestly veil their attach-
ment. If oxlips are not more frequently observed
in Scotland, it is simply for the lack of cowslips.

A rarer and more undoubted legacy of these
Balmerino monks is " the lily of the valley."
Unhappily, it is an example also of the tendency
of attractive plants, when they are sweet-scented
as well, to disappear behind the garden wall.
There is reason to believe that its tenure of Bal-
merino is already a thing of the past. The same fate
must have attended it elsewhere. Like " none-so-
pretty," it remains and thrives when the last stone
of the cottage has fallen, and, by the aid of its
underground stolons, spreads marvellously amid
the rubbish.

It is so rare in Scotland, that many lovers of
wild flowers who have searched the country well-
nigh all over, never saw it growing wild. Here
its presence suggests the vanished hand.

Guide-books tell us that, common in England,
it thins out toward these boreal regions. As if it
were the most natural thing in the world for a
wild flower, at once so lovely and shelter-loving,

54 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

to select the shade and rich depths of southern
woodlands.

A closer acquaintance with its true nature shows
the preference to be rather strange than otherwise.
So far from being delicate, it is one of the hardiest
of wild flowers ; so far from being a shy woodland
plant, it has no objection to stare the sun in the
face.

The lily of the valley can, on occasion, become
the lily of the mountain. Travellers to Norway
find it growing in great abundance on bare rocks,
near the perpetual snow-line.

Like many another, it may have come too late
to the edge of the channel, and been debarred
from crossing by the inflowing of the water.
Afterward, it may have been introduced into
English woods, mainly through the gardens ; and
much about the same time to the banks of the
Tay. Nor are these the only gifts we owe to
the monks; nor the rarest flowers that grow, or
grew but yesterday, around the old monastery of
Balmerino.

IV.
WHIN AND BROOM

IN the later spring the country-side is touched
all over with colour — in lines, and patches, and
masses.

The lines mark out the rough margins of the
ploughed fields, just under the dividing fences,
or light up the edges of woods, or follow the
course of the burns. The patches crown the
knobs of hard rock rising above the general
level. The masses spread out over areas of
waste land, or along the lower slopes of the
hills.

Yellow, as yet, is the only wear ; yellow in its
utmost glory and spread, showing that spring is at
the height. Ere long, the white, breaking out over
the hawthorn, will mark the transition to summer.
In the days, or weeks, during which the two
seasons kiss without parting, the beauty is exceed-

56 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

ing. At no other time is the earth so delightful a
place to live on.

As the yellow came, so it dies, first. Then the
white passes into the prevailing green of summer ;
after which there are no more colour masses or
patches that can be seen at a distance, till the fields
fade into straw or golden shades, and the woods
take on the tints of autumn.

In this the showering season of the year, the
hues are kept incessantly pure. These cloud
masses, with their lit summits and dark defiles,
resting on an ocean of vapoury haze, have retired
to the horizon to give the midday hours over to
the sun. In the afternoon they will come up
again to wash the faces of the flowers afresh ;
again to roll away from the west, that their edge
may be touched by the sunset.

After her morning, and again after her evening
bath, at this maidenly time of the year, nature
looks very fresh and charming. It is then that
one falls in love with her, and never tires of look-
ing on her face. I can imagine no greater delight
— it is one I have often known, and would not
willingly miss — than to turn towards the largest
mass of yellow within reach, in the interval
between the ceasing of the afternoon shower and

WHIN AND BROOM 57

the setting of the sun. The blossoms are still
trembling with the drops, and the linnets have
come out of their hiding from the rain for an even-
song.

The yellow belongs to the whin and to the
broom — not nearly so much to the whin as to the
broom. The fainter glow on these knobs of hard
rock is of the whin ; the brighter hue, around the
edges of the field, and where the sloping bank
retreats from the stream, is of the broom.

The whins may burn with an intenser if lower
flame to one who is near, but theirs is not a
travelling shade. Besides, there are not so many
flowers, and some are half-hidden away amid the
dark green of the shrub. It does not scatter its
energies in colour, but conserves them for other
uses.

The seedling begins life by putting forth very
soft three-leaved foliage. But in successive leaves
the mid-lobe extends and sharpens, until it becomes
a very formidable spike. Thus this innocent
child of nature very early in life develops into a
veritable Becky Sharp, who, " because of the spite
of fortune, whose beginnings she couldn't remember,
never had been a girl — she had been a woman
since she was eight years old."

58 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

There must be some reason for this : there is for
everything. Becky Sharp was once an ingenuous
child. There may have been a time, also, when
whins only put forth soft leaves. Wherefore,
then, the change in the plant and the girl ? " Many
a dun had Becky talked to, and turned away from
her father's door; many a tradesman had she
coaxed and wheedled into good-humour, and the
granting of one meal more." That seems sufficient
to account for the departure of the green leaves
and the substitution of the bristles ; together with
the disposition not to mind whom she pricked —
indeed, rather to enjoy it, so long as she kept
herself right.

Let us suppose that the whin was driven
out into waste places, and that there it was ex-
posed to duns in the shape of grazing cattle, and
troublesome tradesmen in the shape of nibbling
rodents. In this hard school it would naturally
acquire a certain precocity, quite shocking in
its way, to the sheltered growths of the
inlands.

Even in its present condition, it is still nibbled
by the rabbits into compact masses of all manner
of fantastic shapes. But as often as the persecu-
tion, which first taught it to look after itself, is

WHIN AND BROOM

59

repeated, it concentrates its forces, and redoubles
its means of defence.

The tender foliage of its days of innocence would
prove the most acceptable of bites. Unless some
device were hit upon to stay the spoiler, speedy
extinction was inevitable. Suppose some of the
plants, by reason of the hardness of the leaf, to
become less agreeable ; suppose the hardness to
increase until it pricked the creature's mouth.
Here we have some sort of explanation of a soft-
leaved plant becoming so formidable.

It may be asked why the broom did not change
in the same way. Several answers may be sug-
gested. I imagine that there is a bitterness about
the broom, which makes it less sought after by
animals than the sweeter-juiced whin.

I have seen cows pulling at every shrub round
about, except the broom, even when the branches
were so intermingled that it was a matter of some
difficulty to disentangle them — -just as I have seen
them, with a delicacy one could scarcely have
looked for in such large-mouthed creatures, picking
the surrounding grass without disturbing the tall,
upright meadow buttercup. Do not these same
buttercups owe their name to the supposed
partiality of the cow, which never tastes them if

60 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

it can help it, and the butter-producing qualities
in the milk they never enter ? Or was it the cool,
moist, fresh look in the cup that suggested this
cool, fresh name ?

One may test this element in the shrub by
putting a bit of the bark in his mouth, just as he
may discover why a cow avoids the buttercup by
chewing a bit of the stem.

Again, I imagine that the broom has not been so
long here ; nor has it passed through anything like
the hard discipline to sour its temper, raise its
bristles, and put it on the defensive. And, lastly,
the broom is not nearly so much a child of the
wastes, where the chief danger lies.

The simple distinction between the areas of
broom and whin is, that the whin frequents bare,
arid, and sandy stretches; while the broom finds
out unoccupied places, with a certain depth and
richness of soil, such as the margin left where the
plough could reach no nearer to the hedge.

Of course they cross into each other's domain.
Especially is this the case with the whin. The
poor, though quite able to exist on what they have,
never object to a better home. Often they are
seen to mingle their dark and light green foliage ;
their dusky, and bright yellow blossoms. But

WHIN AND BROOM 61

there are limits in the direction of bareness which
the broom positively refuses to cross.

The whin covers the knobs of hard rock, and
pays for its lodging by helping to keep the thin
sprinkling of soil, gathered from the waste of the
stone, from being blown off by the wind or washed
down by the rain. Because of its tenant, the rock
gets the common name of whinstone.

Long straggling roots give the whin a lot of
purchase, thus making it independent of depth.
So much one will learn who tries to grub it up.
This habit of root-growth it may have acquired
along with the prickles. In the way, where there
was enough of earth to strike straight down into,
it became a simple necessity of existence, as soon as
the shrub was driven beyond the limits of cultiva-
tion. It takes advantage of every crack to tighten
its grasp.

It is a veritable fir tree among shrubs, and has
much the same place and function in nature. In
passing through fir forest or whin scrub, one has
to watch his feet very carefully lest he trip over
the exposed roots. The fall is to be avoided as
either very rough or very thorny. Should the
hard rock form a ridge, the fir tree and whin share
it between them. Nothing is commoner than the

62 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

dull glow of whin under the deep shadow of the
fir needles. In such a situation, with its downward
tending roots, the broom would starve or be stunted
and easily torn up.

The sandy stretch of links around our coasts is
the domain of the whin, occasionally shared by a
clump of fir trees. Seldom or never is this area
invaded by the broom. Round St. Andrews we
have abundance of whin, with some fir trees, but
not a single broom bush. And this is fairly repre-
sentative of similar scenes elsewhere. The glow at
the seaside, so pleasant in the cool sunshine, so
suggestive of a day among the bents with club and
ball, is still a comparatively dull glow. It is the
glow of whin. Anyone who has seen whin and
broom growing together will never mistake the
one for the other.

The inland yellow is the yellow of broom. It is
that which touches spring with masses and patches
of colour. It is that which lights up our sweet,
fresh country-sides. It is that which marks out
the curved line of beauty of the burns, with their
suggestions of rising trout. It is that which
washes itself twice a day in the April showers, and
then shines out in the April sunshine.

No wildling blossoms so freely as the broom,

WHIN AND BROOM 63

This generous habit alone, but for its abundance,
would make it a favourite in the garden. As lief
imprison a little of the sunlight, or the blue of the
sea, when all that is needed is a window, or an eye
to let it in.

Sometimes the hawthorn strives to cover itself
with white, but it seldom or never altogether
succeeds — there is generally some bare spot left ;
whereas the broom will not rest from flowering
till every leaf is hidden away. This may well
have been the bush that burned " nee tamen con-
sumebatur." No wonder that it makes the scene
so bright, and gives a character to spring.

Blossom, blossom, everywhere, until the very
bees thernselves are puzzled with the embarras
de richesse. The special mechanism for dusting
the insects back with pollen seems thrown away,
when the very weight, as it lights, seems sufficient
to bring down a yellow shower. The very atmo-
sphere surrounding the plant, even when undis-
turbed, is filled with pollen rain.

The dark birds are dusted yellow as they pass out
from their nests. One requires no dusting. It is
probable that the head of the yellow-hammer has no
other meaning than the blue cap of the chaffinch, or
the light spot of the white-throat, and that the bird

64 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

made no conscious selection of the spring brake for
nesting. But it is no fancy that the yellow head
affords it some concealment, as it sings its simple
lay from the broom bush, or even amid the scantier
blossoms of the whin.

One would naturally expect to find such seem-
ing-hardy, free-spreading plants among the hills.
And, even should the broom fail, after a certain
altitude, because there was no depth of soil there,
the whin — so habituated to bad treatment, able,
through much practice, to cling on to any rock,
and, through much privation, to subsist on any
diet — should climb as high as other plants.

And yet both reach but a comparatively low
altitude, beyond which no spring yellow is visible.
Both are found sparingly at the Castleton of Brae-
mar, some twelve hundred feet above sea-level, but
do not manage to struggle beyond.

The whin is an interesting instance of a com-
paratively hardy shrub, that can face anything but
a mountain. Its lowland companion, the fir tree,
climbs away beyond, and leaves it lagging behind.
In these windy regions one would imagine the
advantage to lie with the lowlier shrub,

V.

.THE FLOWERS OF SUMMER

FROM spring to summer lies be-
tween the fading broom and
the blossoming hawthorn — through
a gateway overhung by lilac and
laburnum.

Neither lilac nor laburnum is native,
by right of long hold of the soil, although both
are so closely woven in with our earliest recollections
of the season, that it is hard — to me impossible — to
picture it without them. If not found in our lists
of wild flowers, it only shows how very fine are
the lines that are drawn, and how strangely they
are made to curve in and out. Both grow so
freely beyond the garden walls, and wander so far
into the depths of the surrounding country, that
5

66 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

they seem to have as good a claim as many another
form of no older date, and which most of us
never saw.

The fenceless path through the field, by which
the children, now in their sunny- weather pinnies,
go to the farm for milk, is overhung all the way.
Never was there a brighter arch. Each alternate
tree is a laburnum, some' of whose drooping
racemes come just far enough down for little hands
to reach. What a handful of flowers to get all
at once ! Broom stretches from trunk to trunk,
forming a second lower yellow line.

No pathway in the country is pleasaiiter to me
than that. I have gone up a thousand times,
morning and evening, just at this season. - And
yet the farmer, who shares the charm in larger
measure than others as he drives up and down in
his gig, has of late been shaking his head.

" Unwelcome intruders into his domain," he
calls what was there while he was yet in his
cradle ; and, shutting his eyes to escape the glow,
lest it might touch him, he breathes out threaten-
ings and slaughter.

" They keep the sun from his grain."

He always looks in the morning or afternoon,
when the shadow is half across to the next hedge.

THE FLOWERS OF SUMMER 67

" They rob the land along the edge of the
field"

As if everyone did not know that he manures
largely with old boots. Plainly, he has no belief
in such close proximity between utility and
beauty.

One day, when the blossom is off and there is
nothing left to weaken his purpose, he will carry
out his threat. Some are fearfully looking
forward, while others say that his bark is worse
than his bite. After that, he will have many
a year to drive up a bare road. Serves him right !
Possibly, he will not care, but that is all the more
his loss.

The gateway to the farm has its summer arch.
The cream of the bourtree meets the white of the
rowan. Blossoms and scents mingle overhead.

The hawthorn ought to flower on the first of
May, for which reason it has got the name of the
month. But that is in England, where everything
is earlier.

" Oh, that was past before we came away."

Such is the tantalising comment of our visitors
from the south ; while all is yet fresh to us, and,
in the innocence of our hearts, we are pointing
to the opening buds.

68 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

Our village maidens are yet simple in their
ways and thoughts, with just a lingering touch of
rustic superstition. They rise before dawn on that
magic morning, the same to-day as it was six
centuries ago.

The busy lark, messager of day,
Salueth in hire song the morwe gray ;
And fyry Phoebus ryseth up so bright,
That all the orient laugheth of the light.

In quest of dew they go forth, between hedge-
rows which are green as yet, to shady nooks if
they be wise. And should they gather but as
much as will wet their cheeks, the freshness of
May will be there every morning of the year.
Surely the purity of some of these complexions is
worth preserving.

With us there is no maypole or queen, or
pageant of any kind, although the children have
a game in which they dance round in a ring, to
some refrain, which sounds like a corruption of
" Merry May Day." Since dew for the cheek can
lie on the green blade, there is not the same need
of blossom for the pole. Mayhap we have no pole
because we have no blossom, and turn to the dew
as all we can get.

Be that as it may, our hedges delay breaking

THE FLOWERS OF SUMMER 69

into white till about the twentieth of the fresh
month; after which, for many weeks, especially
when rain-washed, they are delightfully pure and
fragrant, all over our country-sides. So that we
would willingly part with many a flower before
" The May."

The glory of summer is the hedge. The glory
of the hedge is the wild plants, which straggle,
at their own sweet will, and know not when to stay.
In such wanderers, especially of the flowering
kinds, Scotland is not very rich. Many of these
are lovers of chalk, of which we have none ; and
the rest seem to prefer milder quarters.

No "traveller's joy," fitly so called, such as
lends a wealth of beauty to the waysides of the
southern counties of England, is ours. One bush
grows against a gable hard by, covering it in the
summer - time from side to side, and sending
straggling twigs away above the chimneys. And
it is hard to convince those who see it for the first
time, that such things are really wild.

No bryony breaks out of all bounds, running on
either side away from its roots, and over the tops of
the hedges. Nor does the convolvulus hang its
great white bells over the green.

And yet our hedges are not without their

70 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

charm, part of which may lie in their very
reserve. They seem to make up in their sweet-
ness for want of luxuriance. At least we don't

seem to want them to be
other than they are. We
have got to like them.
Perhaps the only hard-
wooded climber we have
is the woodbine ; and this
is a host in itself.

The interval between
the fading of the white —
here we call it simply
" blossom," as if there were
none other to compare

with it — and the reddening of the fruit is all filled
up. The pretty dog-roses, tinted pink and white,

THE FLOWERS OF SUMMER 71

like a country cheek returning from its May morn-
ing dew bath, never lose their charm, however
many seasons old we are. Clumps of sweet briar
are seldom so far apart as to leave any portion of
the lane unscented.

And there are vetches — yellow, blue, and pink —
which come along with the roses ; and, last after
them, on to the season of the haws. These can
climb as high as ever did " traveller's joy " ; and
wander as far as bryony ; and moreover have a
lightness, denied to the wooded stems of either,
and a grace beyond the great convolvulus bells.
I have seen them, clear of everything, poised
as if on their own wings, hovering over the hedges
like so many strange butterflies.

Nor can we forget such living flowers of country
lanes as the linnets, who are as inseparable from
the thought of dog-roses as the yellow-hammer
from that of broom. I have seen the yellow-
hammer with the broom shade slightly faded, and
the linnet with the rose slightly paled, the one among
the yellow, the other among the crimson vetches.

Just as the spring shade is yellow, so the charac-
teristic summer hues are white and blue — white
like the sunlight or the lit edges of the cumulus
cloud ; blue, like the patches of the sky. Not that

72 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

there are no other shades. Have I not been writing
of pink dog-roses ? Only, when one thinks of sum-
mer after it is past, these two separate themselves
out from the rest.

Two summer blues come running ahead of the
rest. The speedwell may, or may not, be a pledge
of good fortune. That other name of veronica is
at once prettier, and more significant. It means
the true image. And all who look down upon
them must feel that they reflect the sky with
wondrous trueness. Among them there are differ-
ing shades of purity, and in some the heaven must
see itself as in a fairy glass.

There is a pretty story attached to the name,
which gives to the reflection another reference.
But in this case I shall overlook the legendary,
and abide by what is obvious and natural.

The veronicas are among the most widely spread
of our summer flowers. They grow everywhere,
can adapt themselves to any environment, accept
light and shadow with equal thanks. They are
weeds of the field and garden, root themselves
between the joints of our doorstep or the thatch
of our roof.

The common species is by the hot and dusty
roadside. The blue rock speedwell grows far above

THE FLOWERS OF SUMMER 73

all lower defilements, and nearer to the sky it
reflects. There it is fanned by the breezes eternally
playing round the mountain -tops.

Another just lifts its head above the hedge-
shaded ditches and slower streams, where it is
distinguishable from the white-flowered watercress
only by the blue. A professional cress-gatherer —
whose well-nigh soleless boots are always wet —
tells me that when in leaf alone, they are gathered
together by the unskilled and sold for salad.

Most deserving of the name of veronica is the
germander speedwell. There the blue is delight-
fully sky-like in its purity. Happily, it is not
rare. By roadsides with a little bank sloping up
to the hedge, it grows among the springing grasses.
There it gladdens the wayfarer through the fresh
months of May and June, and even into hot July.
I do not envy one who passes by without
looking.

It refuses to be touched. When pulled, it rains
down its blue flower — where all the petals are in
one — to hide away among the grass. Therein it
shows its good taste. It will not be taken where
it cannot reflect the sky.

Forgetting the traditions of the race, one creeps
in among the shades. It gets the name of mountain

74 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

speedwell, though mainly found in moist woods.
The whole plant is bigger. The leaf, which in the
open grew close against the stem, now takes on a
little stalk. Since it cannot see through the close
leafage, the flower forgets the colour of the sky.
The hue is pale.

The other blue is the " forget-me-not," It, too,
is one of the most widely spread of our wild
flowers. It, too, is everywhere, — in the gardens
and fields as a weed ; by the roadsides and in the
woods as a wild flower ; on the mountain-tops as
one of our very rarest alpines. It is the very
chameleon of flowers, passing through many shades
in the process of unfolding. In the open flower
the blue is darker than that of the veronica — more
like the sky as reflected in the pool, or the blue of
the wind-chased sea.

There are varieties in shade here also. The
deepest and purest is that of the water forget-me-
not. It grows in all sorts of moist places, nowhere
more perfectly than by the grassy margin of the
stream. There it can see its likeness in the pool-
can dip under the flowing current for its morning
bath.

Round this plant a legend has grown, with much
of human pathos in it. As a play of the imagina-

THE FLOWERS OF SUMMER 75

tion on the natural surroundings, it is worth
repeating.

A minstrel of Mayeiice lost his heart, and, since
the poor may not marry, would go forth in search
of fortune. His courage was high, if his spirit was
sad ; and as he bade farewell to his lady-love, he
whispered her to hope for the best. Successful
beyond his hopes, see him once more amid the
familiar scenes to claim her for his own.

The eve before the wedding was spent in gentle
dalliance by the lake-side. On an islet bank,
sweet blue flowers looked coyly out from among
the fresh grass. The lady sighed. In such an
hour the faintest wish is law. And straightway
he struck out from the shore. Strength failed him.
The parting was like to come hard upon the meet-
ing. He struggled near enough to cast the flowers
at her feet. " Vergiss mein nicht," he cried, and
sank.

These flowers of the air, the summer butterflies,
like flowers of the land, are white and blue : white
in the sunlit open country, blue near the blue sea.

Since last I wratched the children on the way to
the farm for milk, time has moved on a few weeks
with the consequent changes. The pinnies have
been through several washings, and the sprig upon

76' WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

them, so fresh looking on that early summer day, is
faded. Hands, face, and in some cases feet also,
show signs of exposure. The fair are fern-tickled,
as they call it, from the likeness of the blotches to
the spore-cases on the back of the fern ; the dark
are brown as mulattos.

The lane, too, has changed, and at first sight does
not seem quite so attractive ; at least not nearly so
gay. The brambles are flowering instead of the
broom, and the alternate lime trees instead of the
laburnum. The white-throats are busy and silent
behind the big white flowers, and the greenfinch
is trilling in the cool shade of the soft leaves.
And what a delightful scent of lime blossom and
hum of bees ! How still and warm the air ; how
almost noiseless the woods, and shadowless the
fields ! Is not this the very height of summer ?

Mountain ash and elder-flowers have passed into
berries. An arch of honeysuckle rises over the
latticing at the farm doorway. Endless roses are
growing at their own sweet will, and fast lapsing
back into wildness. One among the rest is yellow,
the like of which I have seen with single rows of
petals, by Scots lane-sides, in the quiet country.
But whether only " escapes " which had run wild,
I have been unable to determine.

THE FLOWERS OF SUMMER 77

Then there is the lowing of kine, and the cool
sound of churning butter. The dame returns with
an apron full of eggs, gathered from no stale hen-
houses, with their wire-netting runs ; but from
barn, and stable, and byre, wherever erratic hens
which spend the day in the stackyard and roost
on the stalls, chose to sit. The Scots grey, missing
for three weeks or more, pushes her way through
the hedge with a brood of thirteen chickens.

VI

MARGUERITES AND POPPIES

IN May the daisies troop on to the links, so
that golfers have often to use a red ball, as
after a fall of snow in December. In such a dainty

favourite, however, as in the case of forward but

78

MARGUERITES AND POPPIES 79

bright children, much is tolerated that would be
inexcusable in almost any other wild flower; so
that I cannot recall a single instance of a golfer
being out of temper, even after the loss of a second
ball.

Enlarge a daisy many-fold ; broaden its yellow
disc to an inch in diameter, surrounding it with
correspondingly great rays, and you get, at all
events in appearance, a marguerite. The common
idea of the relation between the two is that of big
and little sister.

Happily, the marguerites do not invade the
links. Instead of a carpet, we should then have
a forest of white, scarce less lovely perhaps, but
more troublesome. And the same toleration might
not be extended to troops of the bigger sisters.

The marguerite is not without a history — has
found its way into ecclesiastical legend, is even
sacred to an apostle, all of which go to show
that its attractions were recognised very long
ago.

We learn that in the Church of Remi, at Rheims,
there exists a coloured window of twelfth-century
date. St. John and the Virgin appear at different
sides of the cross. The outer edges of the aureoles
encircling their heads are touched or rayed with

8o WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

marguerites. Each open flower turns to the
central figure as to a sun.

That it was simply naturalised here, seems
probable. In a sense, this is true of very many
of our wild flowers ; only some date further back
than others. When the marguerite crossed the
Channel, it were hard to fix. It has the colonist's
liking for the nearness of houses; and, taking
into account the unlimited powers of scattering in
the order to which it belongs, is seldom found far
astray. It is not a woodland plant; it seldom
climbs very high ; it abandons the wastes to the
shabbier-looking scentless mayweed.

We ask- of a true native, that it belong to
mountain, forest, swamp, sea-coast, or some modi-
fication of the four ; for of these, ancient Scotland,
in the main, was made up. Now, the marguerite
likes dry and sunny places, of which in rude
times there were few. Since the soil is drier where
the ground inclines, it seeks out sloping banks.

The slopes it mainly haunts are those of very
recent formation. Nothing it likes better than a
railway embankment, probably because of the
greater dryness caused by the looseness of the
soil, and the very sharpness of the double incline.

Scarcely are the navvies out of sight, than it

MARGUERITES AND POPPIES 81

arrives, along with or close on the trail of the
earliest grasses. Once rooted, it loses no time in
spreading. It careers on its unimpeded way,
through cornfield, meadow, and marsh. Mile on
mile of flat country, with few signs of man's abode,
save the solitary farm, or clump of cotter houses,
it crosses.

With a break, where the train descends to the
level of the surrounding country, it reappears
beyond. Thus, during the bright months of the
year, it transforms what would otherwise be an
eyesore into an elevated garden — a scene of great
natural beauty. We forgive the railway embank-
ment, when it is there, for the sake of the
marguerite. No other device, especially on flat
scenes, would serve as well.

It is not a daisy — not a thing of the sun.
Scarce would it be too much to say that it is
rather a thing of the twilight. It looks, with its
great open eye — large enough to catch every ray
— out on the luminous dark of the summer night.
Those who go forth to see find it loveliest on the
softly shaded atmosphere. One who has not
looked then, does not know the marguerite.

Often in my summer wanderings have I ap-
proached the banks, long after sunset, near enough

82 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

to catch the dimly veiled glory ; nearer still, till I
could make out the separate faces of the flowers,
and find that not one was asleep. One night, in
particular, comes back to my memory.

I had been far afield, fishing, where the stream
ran between high banks of broom and whin,
slackening towards the mill dam. The biggest
fish lay just where the current broke in upon the
still waters of the dam. The best time was just as
the light became magic. For company I had
white-throats and sedge warblers, marsh buntings
and meadow pipits, agreeable, if only as a change
from human chatter. The charm, rather than the
fish, held me.

It was late when I tore myself away and
started back over a rough country. I took as near
a crow -line as the ripening grain fields would
allow. Distant objects had drawn over them a
tender veil of summer dark, too transparent for
concealment.

The railway embankment was whiter than I
remembered to have seen it. There, all seemed to
be just awakening from the drowse of day. I
approached till I could see the faint yellow discs
with the great expanded petals. Had I been
more tired than I was, I could not have passed by,

MARGUERITES AND POPPIES 83

The bank wooed me. I lay down on the slope.
The fair heads bent over to whisper to me. The
light was magic. It was like spending an hour
among the fairies. It has seemed so ever since —
a dream of love, purer and rarer than human !

This fair flower passed through a season of
neglect. It is not so very long, not much more
than a decade, since the marguerite was taken
notice of in Scotland. Years had it grown on the
same banks, and in equal abundance ; but gatherers
passed by on the other side. Nor would the plea
for a place beside the others in their basket have
been listened to.

It was known as the horse-gowan. " Horse " is
used for all coarse overgrown things, where there
is another and daintier of the same kind. The
go wan was the daisy; and the horse-gowan was
fit only to be cut down with the scythe, and,
together with the national emblem — the thistle —
presented to the jackass. It may be that some
Maud Muller picked it out from amid the con-
fusion of green stems at the haying-time ; but that
was only her rustic taste. It may be that some
strangers passing on horseback paused to look ;
but that was only at the pretty face.

It is quite wonderful how rapidly the aesthetic

84 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

element progresses when once it gets a start, or is
affected when once it becomes fashionable. One
is sometimes not unreasonably disposed to doubt
the genuineness of the admiration, even when the
thing admired deserves it all. The banks where
it grew are invaded ; and even its great abundance,
so seldom the case, is not sufficient to make it
vulgar.

Rich and poor meet when there is no need for
search and no excuse for competition. Coarse
hands pluck it and put it into the broken jug in
the kitchen. Dainty hands pluck it and put it in
the shapely vase in the drawing-room, with a few
grasses to give lightness. What could be more
exquisite ? Where else could it be matched, were
one to wander over all the summer fields ? Per-
haps an edging of dog-roses ! No ! they are better
by themselves. " What a pretty name too !'"'

As if that had not been given by people with
better eyes in their heads, when it was only the
horse-gowan here. One wonders how the mar-
guerite likes it.

" And what a perfect massing and combination
of two simple colours !"

As if this, too, had not been found out ages ago,

There is a disposition to laugh at the long classic

MARGUERITES AND POPPIES 85

names given to flowers. This one is even excep-
tionally long. But it happens to have a meaning,
which more than redeems its length — Chrysanthe-
mum leucanthemum.

The former word simply means golden-flowered,
the latter white-flowered. The two together say
" the white and golden flowered." What could be
simpler and more expressive than this ? It is no
more than a description of what one sees, such as a
child might give — the white rays, the golden disc.

More refined than horse - gowans, more poetic
than ox-eye daisy, it only yields in sweetness,
though not in expressiveness, to marguerite.

The rage is, perhaps, not so great as it was ; that
is only what one expects of all such sudden fancies.
The love of change is universal, and prevents one
favourite reigning for many seasons with those
who, without inherent tastes, affect what others
admire. But nothing can ever again wholly close
the senses against the unadorned loveliness of this
flower. Many will continue to visit its haunts,
and bring it back with them to purify and beautify
their rooms.

The main association in my mind, between the
poppy and the marguerite, is their common pre-
ference for a railway embankment. Sometimes

86 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

they grow together. . The red mingles with the
white in nature's own unstudied way, which
never errs on the side of bad taste. Sometimes
poppy and marguerite divide the space between
them, and even choose different embankments, as if
each wished its own share of admiration ; so that
one train may speed through poppy- land and
another through marguerite-land. Not only does
the poppy appear before the marguerite, but it
lingers after ; and then we get a reign of pure
white, and another of pure red.

Poppies do not mass like marguerites. However
many — and often they may be gathered in dozens
without moving from the spot — they are scattered
among, and separated by the grasses.

The wanderer in the summer twilight they do
not lure from the same distance. They cannot
send a signal so far. One must cross the paling
before he knows that they are there, and then the
charm begins to work. One must kneel among
them to catch the dusky glow, and the shadows
lurking within the crimson lids. They are no
longer pale but dark - eyed beauties, with a
witchery more subtle and all their own. They are
said to lull mortals to sleep. Many at least have
been known to go to sleep while they watched — I

MARGUERITES AND POPPIES 87

among the rest — and have suffered no evil fate,
such as they would not be willing to dare again.

Unlike the marguerite, they rebel against being
taken from their haunts. They will not be
abducted and carried over field, fence, and burn,
whether they will or no, and petted and enslaved
in a vase. They break away at the crossing of the
dyke, shake their petals free during the leap over
the ditch, or the stumble on the boulder ; and all
that appears at the end is that which raised them
from the ground. Of gipsy birth, and bred in the
open, they pine within the walls.

There is no pleasanter feature in modern railway
management than the encouragement given to
good taste. This goes a little way to redeem the
frequent vandalism which offended the aesthetic
sense of Ruskin, and to soothe the irritation of
those who would have the rarer haunts of nature,
with their wild creatures and wild flowers, left
undisturbed.

Stations, which were wont to be such ugly
breaks, are now more or less bright with gardens.
Nature has done the rest — has taken charge of the
track, and changed raw piles of soil into flowery
ways.

But there are limits in this direction. Nor, for

88 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

the benefit of lazy tourists, should fresh scenes be
needlessly invaded, in the hope that the eye will
get accustomed to the outrage ; and, in time, the
unsightliness will be hidden away under the white
and crimson robe of marguerite and poppy.

When the chrysanthemum leaves the railway
embankment, it follows the dry compact turf in
search of some natural slope to scatter down. It
pauses on the edge of the fields to hail its golden-
haired sister over the heads of ripening grain.

The poppy parts with its fair companion at the
fence and takes another way. Turning aside from
the turf, it crosses the dyke, or passes through the
hedge among the corn. There, in the later weeks,
we shall find the crimson glowing against the
straw colour, and gaily floating on the shadow
billows, along with the golden-haired sister of the
chrysanthemum.

VII.
THISTLES.

THE thistle belongs to the later summer, when
the whites and blues are already beginning
to pass into the reds and purples. It is well on
for the end of June before I notice the children — a
little browner, a little more freckled, with evident
signs of mending on their pinnies — under the lime
tree getting at the cheeses. Tearing off the outer
wrapping, they expose the white cushion, on which
the purple-robed flowers sit in such dainty state >
and this they consume, with the relish of epicures
of nature.

What skilled botanists of a practical sort these
children are ! It is wonderful how they know
what to eat, when it should be sought for, and
where to find it — lessons which, as we grow up and
lose our freshness, we forget more and more. On the

early morning of another day, they start the hare

89

90 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

from her form, and the lark from her nest, in their
search for the earth nuts. They know under
what plant to find them, and how far they are
down in the ground. See them cross to the burn-
side, where they can make a salad out of the
sorrel growing on the bank.

Nor is their skill by any means confined to the
plant kingdom. On one of the thistle heads a
" foggie " — distinguished among the bees by his
browner shades and the suppression of the black
and yellow bands — is hanging. It is plain that he
is in the helpless plight of one who has partaken
too freely of the heady juices. No haste is made.
No precautions are taken for the capture. He is
not likely to fly away.

With pinnie-protected fingers the thistle head is
severed from the stem. One takes off the purple
from the cheese, while another, in a rude and blam-
able but effective way (which will occur to those
whose blessed privilege it has been to spend their
childhood in the country), extracts the honey.

Thus they, whose mothers can afford little more
than bare necessities at home, find a table of
dainties, inexhaustible in its variety, spread for
them in the wilderness.

All the way cheeses grow under their purple

THISTLES 91

flowers, with foggies here and there in addition.
And the gourmands sit down to feast under each
second lime tree. Not every thistle they come to
suits their purpose. That prickly small-headed
specimen in the ditch is of no use ; that pale-
flowered fellow among the oats still less so. In
that strip of wood to the right grows the melan-
choly thistle, tall, unbranched, prickless. But these
youngsters are not melancholy — at least not to-day,
— and do not turn aside to see.

They pause before the great cotton thistle,
growing in front of the farm window, with much
the aspect of a small company of Liliputians
staring at Gulliver. But it is not to admire,
only to wonder what edible use it could be
turned to.

Was it John Leech who once depicted some
London street boys, small by reason of age and
hard living, contemplating a six-foot sentinel in his
box ? And when the object of so much attention
was flattering himself that he had made an impres-
sion on their youthful minds, one said to the other,
" What a jolly jack-in-the-green he'd make ! " Had
these children given audible expression to their
thoughts, they would have said, " What jolly cheeses
it would make ! "

92 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

The thistle, which is thus only a cheese-bearer
to the undeveloped patriotism of these children, is
the symbol of Scotland par excellence. It is
supposed to bristle all over with the national
spirit. The prickles, which the little fingers
crush with their pinnies, illustrate, if they did
not suggest, the proud motto, " Nemo me impune
Idcessit"

Altogether, there is a softness about it which
belies its warlike aspect, and convicts it as a bit of
a braggart. Its pulpy stem, albeit four or five
inches in diameter, barely succeeds in holding it
upright. A cut with a thin walking stick
would double it up, and level its pride with
the ground.

Nevertheless, he is a buirdly chiel, and there
is much in his look to warn the timid — who do not
know him so well as these children do — from
trifling. No would-be Scotsman of foreign ex-
traction, north for a fortnight's holiday, is satisfied
till he has a tin effigy pinned to his newly-acquired
Glengarry bonnet. Possibly, he owes part of his
respect for the reality to the fact that he has made
its acquaintance while masquerading in his bran-
new kilt.

All this presupposes that the thistle is so pecu-

THISTLES

93

liarly Scots as to lend a certain appropriateness to
its adoption ; and, moreover, that there is only one
thistle, or at least one with some unquestionable
predominance over the rest. Neither of these pro-
positions is wholly true.

Scotland is a hilly country, and the thistle does
not take so kindly to climbing as it ought to do, if
it were to the manner born. It is when he has
donned the kilt, as I have already noticed, that
the foreigner affects the thistle ; which is a mistake,
either in costume, or natural history, or both. If
he were better acquainted with the modern High-
lands than he seems to be, he would probably
know that the two things he is least likely to
see there are thistles and kilts. Indeed there
are very few prickly plants among the hills,
which may be one reason why kilts used to be
worn.

In describing a Scot of the proper sort, Sir
Walter says —

Right up Ben Ledi could he pass,
And not a sob his toil confess.

So far from being able to climb Ben Ledi, I
question if the thistle reaches much above a thou-
sand feet ; that is scarcely the height of the whin

94 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

or the broom. It has certainly no representative
among Scots alpines, which are the true highlanders
among plants. The nearest mountain relations are
the blue sow-thistle and the saussurea : neither
of which, despite the name of the former, is a
thistle. It belongs to the plain, to the water-
course, and — -be it whispered in the ear — to the
rubbish heap. Even there it is very much of a
weed.

Moreover, there are many kinds in Scotland, all
possible or actual rivals. There is the pale-
flowered field thistle, which indicates poor land or
bad farming, or both, and usurps the ground rightly
belonging to oats. Indeed it impoverishes much
more space than it seems to cover, since it creeps
in all directions under the ground with those
insidious stolons. I always suspect creeping
plants. They come from hungry places, and
have immense appetites. We shall meet them
again, and generally with the same sinister
meaning. Some of them have their place in
nature, covering places where nothing else
would grow, and doing work they alone are
fitted for. Least of all countries could Scotland
do without them. But this is not one of the
useful kind.

THISTLES 95

Then there is that other, lighting up the ditch
with the brilliant crimson of its flowers, whose
haunts, as in this case, are in watery places, where,
as a rule, it can do little harm. It is at once the
fiercest-looking and the softest of the whole — a not
uncommon combination.

The lance-leaved thistle of waste places — that
cellar of the foggie, and larder of the children,
giving meat to the one, and drink to the other —
follows. And a round dozen more, not so generally
known.

Three at least are claimants, each with its
greater or less number of clansmen. One of them
is the cotton thistle, before whose eight or
ten feet, as it towers above the farm window,
the dwarfed children stand. To the wanderer
in out-of-the-way places it must be familiar
as growing, during the late summer and into
the autumn, in front of many of the cottages,
• far beyond the eaves of the thatch. I brought
a seedling from such a place, which the first
year grew to a sturdy plant. The second season
it threw out great arms with many flowers,
and shed seedlings enough to fill all the gar-
dens in the neighbourhood. A stalwart Scot, it
has much to say for itself in the matter

96 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

of height. One looks curiously around for
the thistle which would presume to dispute
with it.

As if for contrast's sake, the second claimant is
a dwarf. With no stem at all, it simply spreads
a bristly rosette over the surface of the ground.
This may be only a stunted form of one of the
rest. If it be not, then I have not come across it
in Scotland, although I often see a thistle — chiefly
of the marsh sort — when half starved, very dwarf
indeed.

Common sense entered the judgment-seat in the
person of the late Professor Balfour. It stands to
reason, that a thistle, chosen from the others as the
national emblem, must be that which is known to
the greatest number. The question thus reduces
itself into which is the commonest ; and there can
be no doubt that to the lance-leaved thistle belongs
the honour.

That depends on the position of the observer.
To the crofter it might be the cotton thistle ; to a
son of the marshes, a marsh thistle ; and to a
farmer who was still more a patriot, if such there
be, a field thistle.

There are suspicious indications, moreover, that
this thistle has spread out from the neighbourhood

THISTLES 97

of houses. It has no special habitat, no division of
the land which owns it and gives it a name. It
belongs not to the hills, nor to the woods, nor to
the marshes, nor to the coast. It has possession of
all sorts of recent heaps, and may at no distant
date have been introduced. Very probably it is
not our native thistle, in the ordinary sense
of having been longest in possession. The
marsh thistle leads a wilder and more inde-
pendent life.

But common sense has something more to say
than that. The man who first gave the plant
its national significance may not have made
such fine distinctions ; probably he did not. Each
prickly thing may have been to him a thistle,
and all thistles alike. Botanists, besides being
scarce, are not disposed to symbol-making, but
rather to species-making. With all their virtues
they lack imagination ; and who knows how many
species have been made since Scotland first uttered
her prickly motto ?

The inventor may even have called this a
land of thistles, in tones of contempt. To
whom some perfervid patriot, in a moment
of forgetfulness, may have sharply rejoined,
" Hands off, then ! " Some probability is lent
7

98 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

to this supposition by the undoubted fact
that the first thing even a Scotsman does
is to cut down everyone he meets, which
is rather scurvy treatment of anything so
sacred. Certainly, I never met anyone who
would not be extremely glad
of every thistle in

Ninety-nine
dred in the
not botan-
deny to so
jority the
use the patri-
until they
classes
mined to
they refer ?
point is in
Imagine
an Irishman
the question, Can you point out the special clover
known as the shamrock ? Or an Englishman,
Which rose do you swear by ?

Plainly, all this pother has been raised by species-
mongers. In the absence of any other, the genuine
Scots thistle is the first one comes to. Its claim

to see the back
the land,
out of every hun-
present day are
ists. Must \ve
large a ma-
right to
otic symbol
have attended
and deter-
which species
Fiddlesticks ! The
the prickle,
posing
with

THISTLES 99

rests on the more or less emphatic enunciation of
the motto, "Nemo me impune lacessit" If we
have any preference, it is for the most bristly-
looking.

VIII.
IN THE WOODLAND

I IMAGINE that the woods round about are old.
They show every sign of being mere patches
of a woodland of much greater size, — covering the
whole space they mark out, — and were probably
left on the less promising spots, mainly bare and
exposed ridges, when the rest was broken up into
farms. Many of these patches are still joined at
the corners, and zigzag about in a manner which
will admit of no other explanation.

Very curiously shaped some of these farms are,
as they run in and out among the trees in a game
of hide-and-seek. One part is cut off from another
by an intervening strip, which the ploughman or
the reaper must skirt or cross. So closely are
some of the fields invested, that in broken seasons
the farmer finds it hard to get the grain to ripen,
until it is so late in the year that the sun only

IN THE WOODLAND 101

shows his face above the ridge for two hours at
midday. Sometimes he is fain to cut it down for
green food.

The age of the wood is shown in several ways,
chiefly by the trees. The backbone, so to speak, is
Scots fir. One half -expects this from the ridgy
nature of the ground, and the bareness of the
soil, which help to account for any trees being
left at all.

The rest is mainly oak. Let no one suppose
these to be of the brawny or spreading kind, out of
whose giant trunks battleships were wont to be
made. Such are not Scots oaks; at least, not
those that share old woods with the fir trees.
Straggling growths are these, suffering from
poverty beneath, and shooting up their starved and
lanky length in search of the upper light and air.

A few beech trees touch the sombreness with
their fresh spring green. Though not perhaps to
the manner born, or so ancient in their date, the
beeches of our Scots woods more than hold their
own. They grow to even greater size than the
oaks, or carry more width along with their height.
Than their shining trunks nothing statelier is
there. Scots rooks select the branches for their
nests.

102 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

Ash and poplar are more in the open, and run
along the lanes which join the wood patches.

Under the fir trees, the under-growth is whin.
Where the beech tells of deeper soil, the broom
flowers, though less freely, and with more appear-
ance of leaf, than out in the sun.

The floor, too, is tell-tale : it is rude and un-
kempt. No one ever planted a forest there. The
site is elevated, reached by a sudden rise of
several feet from the river. It is really a moor-
land stretch, in a shallow depression of a chain of
hills, whose summits are about three miles away.

No soft wood-meadow grasses grow here; the
hard yet graceful waved-heath grasses are a little
more silvery of hue than those of the open ; that
is, in so far as there is room for grasses of any
kind, amid the blaeberries and other moorland and
mountain shrubs.

These woods of fir, with their mingling of oak
and sprinkling of beech, and their rude under-
growth and carpet, are typical of Scotland.

The patch I most care for is two miles away,
and involves a climb of another two hundred feet.
It has a further mark of antiquity in its name. It
is called "The Emmocks," probably the wood of
the ants. A cart-road, marked by two running

IN THE WOODLAND 103

streams down the wheel tracks in winter, and
scarred by two dry stony channels in summer,
leads up the face of the ridge.

Why the farm at the top was called Balmy-
down, no casual visitor could ever find out. But
those who knew the scene best, and loved it most,
guessed that it must have been christened on one
of these summer days when it plainly suggested its
name ; that is, if the word means what it seems to
do, which I by no means vouch for.

Looking down over the grass park, or the
whispering heads of the wheat to the stream
below, and beyond to the picturesque patches,
whose wounds time had healed, cool in their firry
darkness, and relieved by touches of soft green,
the natural eye, aided by some association, could
scarcely seek for anything more fair.

The cart-road passes behind the farmyard, and
leads along the crest of the ridge to the wood, some
half a mile beyond. At one time, no doubt, all
this was shadowed by trees. The path-side vegeta-
tion still bears traces of the ancient state of things ;
for it is a long time before the natural growths
can be entirely rooted out, and the rudeness
refined away.

A dry-stone dyke separates the wood from a

104 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

road which has been cut through its midst. Long
enough time had passed for nature to soften and
level the top, under a layer of turf, woven of
rare moorland grasses, over which dainty panicles
danced. The curious among the woodland plants
leapt up where they could see both ways, and so
an ungainly fence was made into a linear garden
of wild flowers. To step across is to be with
nature. One finds himself under tall, graceful,
silver-barked birches. The birch is accommodat-
ing. In exposed situations it can shorten itself,
and yet remain the chief ornament of its rude,
rocky, and elevated sites. The fir hard by is
gnarled and twisted by the storms which sweep
the mountain - side, though often intensely
picturesque and characteristic in its way. The
willow becomes stunted, and takes refuge in lowli-
ness; the birch clings and cowers with feminine
grace — or when a woodland tree, as here, it can
lengthen itself in competition with the tallest,
Until its topmost branches emerge into the upper
air and light, even beyond those of the statelier
beech, and all without losing aught of its pro-
portion. The oak has struggled up, too ; but what
an overgrown, long-drawn-out gawk it looks in
comparison !

IN THE WOODLAND 105

The wood floor is distinctly moorland — more so
even than that of the patches farther down. To
the waved hair grass has been added the ruder,
stiffer — altogether less graceful — mat grass. The
moorland shrubs, too, have been considerably in-
creased. In addition to the blaeberry, common
to all the woods, I can gather the rose and white
flower of the cowberry, and, here and there, the
purple vase of the crowberry.

Quite a jubilant shout summons me to the back
of the wood, whither my companion has gone
foraging on his own account. I find him lying
all his length on the ground, gazing intently at
something. It is quite an unconscious tribute, and
all the more eloquent on that account, since he did
not know what he was looking at, only that it
was beautiful.

Twining in and out among the shrubs are certain
pink branches, at first sight scarcely distinguish-
able from the blaeberry twigs, except from their
habit of running long distances along the ground,
instead of standing more or less erect in compact
bushes. Every here and there, from these re-
cumbent stems, rises a flower-stalk, suspending,
some half a foot in the air, and clear above
the blossoms of surrounding shrubs, two of the

io6 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

most delightfully shaded and shaped bells im-
aginable.

There is no mistaking this flower for a moment.
No other approaches it in exquisiteness, except,
perhaps, that second moorland plant, the bog
pimpernel, and that only from a great distance.
It is that which awakened the enthusiasm of the
great botanist, and after him was called Linncea
borealis. Its presence is another sign of age. It
is not uncommon in Scots woods that have been
undisturbed. If only occasionally noticed, that is
because it is so easily overlooked, even when in
flower, by the unobservant. We swear a vow of
secrecy over that Linncea, because we know that
many would be glad to take it away.

The trailing willow is all over the floor of the
wood, lighting it up with its long yellow male
catkins. A great space is beautified by the
mountain globe flower, found in these patches, and
not again till the mountains are reached. It is the
largest, and certainly the most graceful, of our
yellow wild flowers, with great soft balls of loosely
incurved petals, as big as the closed hand of a
lady.

At least four orchids grow in this wood — among
them the rose-coloured, sweet-scented orchid, and

IN THE WOODLAND 107

that other with the black spots on the green
leaves.

Moreover, the floor is inlaid all over with patines
of bright silver, relieving the shades by countless
stars. No flower, wild or cultivated, has the simple
purity of the wood winter green.

Many of these, and more I could mention, are
found all over the sub-alpine region of the hills,
which extends upward for the first fifteen hundred
feet.

The wood is a delightfully cool wood ; that is the
charm of it. It is worth climbing the ridge and
getting heated in the July sun, just to plunge into
it. It is like a water bath on a hot day, only
infinitely more delicately tempered. It is not the
shadow alone. Every wood has a shadow, and yet
there are days when they are not cool. It is the
moisture that is never absent from the air. Part
of the floor is mossy and spongy. In winter one
goes over the ankles there, and even in the height
of a warm summer one always wets the sole of his
boots.

These grey marshy stretches are relieved by the
bright crimson and rose of the two louseworts,
and diversified by the flat wan leaves of the butter-
wort. There, too, rise the wax-like spikes of the

io8 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

round-leaved pyrola. Thus, these fir, beech, and
oak trees cover over what, if exposed, would appear
as moor and marsh, and be found to contain a
fairly exhaustive representation of the characteris-
tic flowers of both. The sundew is the only notable
absentee.

The creepies of the gipsies, or, rather, tinkers,
are visible on a bare place among the under-growth.
These not altogether uninteresting survivors of a
previous condition of existence, seem to have a
partiality for the old woods. Their knowledge of
the country is enviable, having been handed down
from generation to generation. Many a hint have
I got from seeing them turning up a pathway
which seemed to lead to nowhere. I marked that
way out for future investigation.

The donkey is luxuriating on the richest grass
he can find, with an asinine contempt for absent
thistles and present whins. Your donkey is an
epicure, whatever people may say ; and if he some-
times eats coarse food, it is because he is a
philosopher as well, and takes what he can get
without grumbling. By what sweet stream-sides
and in what cool glades have I seen the gipsy's
donkey grazing, while ordinary donkeys had to
content themselves with the sparse dust-covered

IN THE WOODLAND

109

grass by the roadside. What an innocent face he
has, almost touching in its rude gentleness !

" Poor Neddy ! Poor Ned ! " Open-mouthed, the
gentle animal rushes at the well-meaning intruder,
who is extremely relieved when he gets beyond

the reach of his tether. Moral : Never trifle with
gipsies' donkeys.

Just beyond the creepie the floor descends into
a little cup, completely isolating one, even from the
life of the surrounding wood. No fellow-loiterer
can see down until he comes to the edge, and even

no WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

then, he finds it hard to peer through the screen of
branches. Unless he hears the voices, he may
pass on, unaware that anyone is there.

In the centre of the cup, the autumn and winter
rains form a pool, which persists through all but
the driest summers. An accommodating willow
has stretched a gnarled branch over the pool,
whence, in comfort and safety, one can watch the
water-beetles coming to the surface and bearing
clown with them their silver globule of air. From
just beyond the wood comes the low of kine, and
in the most out-of-the-way corner of the world
nestles a farm, where lives a farmer's wife, who is
seldom without, and never refuses, fresh milk and
floury scones.

A month later, when all these waxen flowers
have given place to berries, black and red, which
happily occurs at school-holiday time, children's
voices are heard in every part of the wood. Tired
at length the young berry-hunters, with blackened
faces, gather on the willow, and chatter among
the branches like so many starlings or monkeys.

And when the sun begins to dip they fill their
baskets, and leave only the lessening echoes of
their retreating voices to die into the silence of
the wood.

IX.
ON THE LINKS

TO those who sail, or walk along, our coast
presents three phases : the cliff, the seaside
moor, and the links.

The moor differs from the links, in that it
usually has a considerable proportion of some
darker deposit among the blown sand. Those
with which I am best acquainted are near the
mouths of rivers, and may have been formed of

ii2 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

the mud brought down by the current, when the
volume was much larger.

The three bear quite distinct wild flowers.
Though directly facing the rude sea, the cliffs have
still many ledges ; and niches so cunningly placed
as to be shut in from almost every wind. There
they gather a comparatively rich soil out of their
own decay, on to which seeds fall. In this way
are formed little gardens, often of rare forms,
worth risking one's neck to see.

The moor is open from end to end to every
wind that blows. There are no corners formed by
jutting points, where delicate wild flowers can hide.
So much is included in the very conception of a
moor — not in the sportsman sense of a shooting
ground, but in that of a flat expanse, laid down
under such conditions as to make it interesting
to the artist, the naturalist, and the wild bird.

Still, by reason of the darker deposit among the
sand, it not only affords richer food, but also
retains more moisture. And there are generally
marshy spots to add to the interest, and still
further to vary its plant as well as its animal life.

Examples occur, all in a row, — a somewhat
unusual sequence, — on the East Coast, south of
Lunan Bay. Cliffs run along almost to Arbroath,

ON THE LINKS 113

and the mouth of the Tay. And such cliffs!
Sheer down to the water below, or ploughed into
gorges by some stream ; or picturesque by reason of
the outliers, cut off by the water in their retreat.
Cliffs — not stupendous, but breezy and exhilarat-
ing, and with every element of natural interest.

From the Tay to the Eden, filling up the whole
space between the estuaries, and possibly partly
formed by the silting process referred to, lies
Tents Muir. Beyond the Eden run the two miles
of golf links, the length of St. Andrews.

Anyone who wishes to see what the three phases
of our coast have to show — where each is of con-
siderably more than local interest — could not do
better than spend three summer days between Red
Head and St. Andrews. I have spent, in each of
the three, many days I am not likely to forget,
and feel in a position to advise.

Unlike the cliffs, the links have no sheltered
niches. Unlike the moor, they have no dark
deposit. They are made up of pure blown sand.
Therein consists their excellence for golfing uses ;
seeing that the rain so rapidly runs away ; those
who play on inland courses will understand what
I mean. But as life-supporting areas or wild
gardens, they demand, on the part of the plants,

1 14 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

that they be easily satisfied, and able to make the
most of what there is.

On the sea side of the links, shutting out a view
of the water from the players, is a row of the most
picturesque sand-dunes imaginable. Beginning as
round mounds, these have been worn into various
shapes; and, in certain conditions of the atmo-
sphere, present very weird effects.

A breezy day must be chosen for watching the
growth of the young sand-dunes ; and a very
curious study it is. Seated on the leeside of some
maturer pile, exposed to the attentions of late-build-
ing coast-birds, the situation has a certain rude
charm. Borne on the wind, the blown sand eddies
or swirls round the infant mounds, before it comes
to rest on their flanks or summits. With every
gale, the process is renewed, swelling the bulk
and height of the mound. After a while, when the
pile is about on a level with the rest, and may be
said to be finished, the busy winds begin else-
where.

Then the great lime-grass and rushy wheat-
grass take possession, and net-work it with their
hidden stems, until the surface of light blown sand
becomes almost as hard as inland turf. This is the
beginning — the babyhood, if we may apply the

ON THE LINKS 115

term to anything so rude — of the life of the
links.

Thus, these compact dunes, besides presenting a
miniature mountain chain to that exceptional
golfer who has an eye for anything but his ball,
serve the more practical purposes of preventing
drifting over the links, and farther inland, to the
detriment alike of golf and agriculture ; they also
prepare the way for the richer turf behind.

It is interesting to notice how many flowers can
grow on pure sand. No doubt, after a while, the
roots of the grasses form a certain superficial soil,
varying in depth as one proceeds from the sea
margin to the fence which marks off the links
from the fields.

Imperceptible in the dunes, where the lime-grass
seems to find sufficient in the sand for its broad
brittle leaves and long stout stems, it appears just
beyond as a thin streak, and deepens, it may be, to
an inch in the older parts of the links. In replacing
turf, the course-keepers sprinkle soil underneath ;
thus artificially increasing the depth.

But the layer is never very deep, and nowhere
gets beyond the tawny hue, mingled of yellow
and brown. The main condition of these links
wild flowers growing, is that the sands cease the

u6 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

restless motions of the open sea-coast, and be
brought to anchor by the stolons of the lime.

I have already spoken of the whins, which burn
with their yellow flames, through so many of the
earlier months. Some of them rise into bushes,
branching out above several feet of bare stem ;
while, on the ruder parts of the links, others are
contented to lie along the ground. Ought I to
speak of two species ?

No whin growrs on the coast-side of the dunes ;
nor on the dunes themselves, so long as they are
bare and exposed ; nor anywhere, on unanchored
sand. But just within the shelter they thrive
marvellously. So far from being starved and
dwarfish, they are beyond the ordinary height
and robustness. As in the case of the almost bare
rock, they feel along the surface for any soil there
may be.

The unbroken sheet of daisies which puzzles the
golfer, does not spread so near the sea. It belongs
to the older part of the links, where the turf has
been changed more than once, The wild flowers
proper of this scene must be sought for on
the rougher belt between the daisies and the
sand-dunes, where there is less suspicion of
tampering.

ON THE LINKS 117

The links can be very attractive on a July day.
They are warm, but not so hot as the sand ; their
green covering keeps them pleasantly cool. No
glare rests upon them. Mark oat a little patch,
and you will see the reason why. Look at the
countless lights and shadows, due to the grass
blades, — to every lit blade a shadow : the intenser
the light, so much sharper the contrast and darker
the shadow.

With this miniature as guide, glance over the
whole, and see how mystic lovely it is. You
hardly know whether to describe the effect
as shaded light or lit shadow. Under the
mounds the shadows gather ; toward their tops the
light increases. From the woods to the links,
the change seems greater than it is. In the one
the shadows are massed, well marked, sometimes
almost unbroken ; here they are in fairy lines and
panicles.

Not only is there light, but colour as well. Now
we have mass, more than in the woods. The colour
is inlaid on the green. From a little distance it
seems a glow rather than a growth, born of the
air and not of the earth — a reflection from above
rather than a flower bank. This is due to the
shortness of the stem, scarcely sufficient to raise

u8 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

the flower above the sand. Everything goes to
colour.

It were hard to tell which flower forms the
largest patches. The light purple or pink of the
thyme seems to be everywhere. Not a bank on
which it does not grow. What a wild natural
smell it has ! Not a namby-pamby garden smell-
not a sweet sentimental odour.

There are none such, if we except the faint
cocoa-nut of the whin by the seaside — no perfume
proper. Such would be out of place ; the scene is
too rude. It would be like scent on a ship captain's
handkerchief. It smells of the breeze. Imagine
the salt breeze scented — of the open — of the bank.
Wilder still, only slightly harsher, is the scent of
the pink restharrow.

The lotus — children call it crowfoot, or craw's
taes — comes next. Not tall as under the hedge, or
medium - sized as by the roadside, but with its
crimson buds and yellow flowers hugging the
ground.

Near the lotus, and almost as common, is its
purple cousin, with the same butterfly - shaped
flowers, the milk vetch. Whereas the lotus is
found everywhere, this is one of the forms which,
after leaving the coast, we shall not meet again

ON THE LINKS 119

all over the plain, and until we have climbed
a little way up the mountain slopes. Under the
most favourable conditions for growth, the flower
is large in proportion to the stem and leaf. Here
it seems all flower together, quite top-heavy with
blossom. One must look carefully before he dis-
covers the delicate leafage.

The common bedstraw forms other large patches
of yellow. I have noticed that, when growing in-
land, and there is no commoner roadside form, the
flower has an extremely pleasant, if somewhat
wild, odour. There it shares with the white clover
the function of scenting the summer day. Here
the sweetness has departed, while the wildness
remains, and is intensified.

It is not easy to explain this deficiency in sea-
side plants. Where sight fails, scent is supposed to
act as a second guide to the insect in search of the
plant. It may be more needful, where the luxuriant
leafage of inland scenes hides away the colours, or
where the plant is playing bo-peep behind the
hawthorn hedge, or has retired several yards
within the shadow of the wood, or is nestling
under the steep bank, than on a flat scene
of bare vegetation and profuse blossoming.
No insect with half an eye could miss the

120 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

glow on the links, especially flying over it as
they do.

There is also abundance of the delicate little
white bedstraw, not quite so self-assertive, but
even pleasanter to look upon.

Harebells are, of course, abroad in their favourite
haunt — short-stemmed like the rest. Perhaps also
a little paler in shade. At the seaside there is a
tendency to part with colour as well as scent, partly
from the bleaching influence of the air, and partly
because less will serve to attain the end in
view.

Many other plants are there whose names it
would be tedious to mention. All that seems
necessary is to point out the general conditions of
that scene, midway between the seaside moor and
the open coast, and to indicate those forms which,
while they refuse to grow among the restless sand,
ask no more than that the sand shall be moored by
the grass roots, and so brought to rest.

Not the harebells themselves, not the scent of
wild thyme, not the many-shadowed links, not the
salt breeze, nor the sea, nor the whispering gush
of water, is so delightful in these July days as the
blue seaside butterflies. They are the veritable
Ariels of the scene, appearing for a moment, then

ON THE LINKS 121

mingling with the blue of the sea or vanishing
into the blue of the sky — returning to light on
the grass blade, and straightway, by the simple
closing of their wings, becoming once more
invisible.

X.

THE PATH THROUGH THE
CORNFIELDS

r I ^HE children are sitting under a lime tree,
spelling out the time of day on a dandelion.

By the way, they call it dentelion — dent-de-lion
—a relic, it is said, of the old friendship between
the French and the Scots, just as the sorrel at
Craigmillar left by Mary's vanished hand recalls
a still closer tie.

Concerning that, of course, they know nothing,
and care less.

" One, two, three, four."

The puffs are very gentle, because they have to
get a good deal out of it.

"Five, six, seven, eight."

After this they scarcely breathe lest they scatter
too many at once.

" Nine, ten, eleven."

PATH THROUGH THE CORNFIELDS 123

Quite a circle clings round the edge, needing a
good strong blow from a little distance to clear the
disc. The ruddiest and likeliest of the band is
chosen for the final effort, and succeeds in clearing
away all but two.

" Ten minutes past twelve," they reckon.

It is really a quarter past, which is wonderfully
near for such a primitive timekeeper, quite as near
as most modern watches come.

Thus warned of the flight of the slower winged
hours, and the quicker beat of the flock of smaller
minutes, the children jump to their feet, and with
a rattle of cans make off for the farm.

The purple thistle is fading. To the few perfect
heads the foggies cling with a helpless indecision
which fears to trust itself away, lest they take
other than a bee-line home. It is with thistles as
with school games ; they have their season. That
for cheeses and foggies has gone by.

The marsh thistle still raises itself out of the
ditch, until its crimson heads, brighter than ever,
are quite on a level with those of the children.

These prickless cousins of the thistles, the purple
roadside centaureas — ironweeds as they are called,
from the hard packing of their heads — are in flower.
Of little use, and less ornament, they have no

124 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

interest for the needle-eyed but eminently prac-
tical naturalists. No one who has put a centaurea
in his mouth will try it again. In the main, the
glory has departed. The blues and whites of
summer have given place to the darker hues — reel
and purple — not many reds, only purples.

Harebells — a relic of the blues — tremble on
autumn airs, so light as scarce to fan the children's
hot cheeks. Some ring their chimes down the
ditch side to the dark meadow butterflies.

One tall tuft is chiming its graceful bells to a
great painted lady on the path. The children
approach the bells and catch sight of the butterfly.
Flowers are cast away. Cans, whose descent is
made noisier by rattling coppers, roll into the
ditch, and the chase begins. Most of the fun is
with the butterfly, which enters on the game with
the utmost zest.

With arm in readiness for action, the children
pull one foot after the other. Suddenly they drop
the ribbonless hat. Bit by bit they lift the broken
brim to peep under. Slowly they realise that the
covered spot is deserted.

" There it is ! "

And they are off in pursuit.

After a merry curve over the field, the butterfly

PATH THROUGH THE CORNFIELDS 125

comes into view, and lights on the selfsame spot.
The tactics are repeated a little more wildly this
time. The painted lady embarks on a second
frolicsome course, to return in the same tantalising
way as before. And so on, until the children are
fain to gather up flowers and cans and pursue their
way.

The rowans are reddening, and the elderberries
blackening. The woodbine is still shedding fra-
grance from an arch of fantastic flowers. The
haws, with which the hedge abounds, are just
showing a touch of colour on one side. Hips
have taken the place of the dog-roses.

The big thistle is at its tallest, and sends out on
all sides giant arms, bearing great pink heads. A
crowd of thrushes are busy on the beam tree. A
smaller band of children are equally busy on £he
unripe haws.

This is all they see until they are coming back.
And then they catch sight of their elder sisters
sauntering up the way as if to meet them, but
really on an errand of their own. At great risk of
falling, and to the sound of jolting milk, they strive
who will touch first.

Tall in comparison with the little ones these
sisters are. Some fair, some dark ; neither more

126 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

nor less fresh and pleasant-looking than country
maidens usually are.

" See ! see ! " say the breathless runners, holding
out what they have gathered.

There are nodding harebells, and a sprig of
crimson herb robert, and a little scarlet poor man's
weather-glass, got on the field side, and a whole
shower of star-like stitchworts, and a bit of sweet
briar for scent ; and just a little morsel of wood-
bine which grew outside the gate, " and didn't
belong to the farmer, you know : did it ? "

The children have only half satisfied their ele-
mentary consciences about the woodbine, and coax-
ingly appeal for the approval of their elders.

"Is that all?" say the sisters discouragingly.
" Look what we have come for."

They lift the little ones above the level of the
tall corn, and there over the forest of yellowing
grain is paradise ; at sight of which the withered
and despised collections of the morning are dropped
to the ground.

" You see what it is to be big," say the maidens.

And then the whole band begin to walk along
the edge of the corn, the children waiting in faith
below, the maidens watching above for some of
those glorious things to come within reach.

PATH THROUGH THE CORNFIELDS 127

A long stretch of the tallest, whose unbound
hair, as it drops from her shoulders, is of the same
hue as the yellow grain with which it mingles,
secures the first prize. This turns out to be a large
flower of a pink hue, a member of the graceful
group of the campions. The familiar name is corn-
cockle ; but whether these girls have one of their
own for it, as they have for most things, I could
not catch. But, name or no name, they all agree
that it is fair as any flower of the garden ; and
there is some competition among the younger
members to carry it.

A rush, and a ripple of maiden voices, tell of
another flower in sight. It is a little farther afield.
What with the competition and the impetus of the
race, the winner steps or is pushed just a foot or so
among the grain, leaving a little gap of bent stalks
and drooping heads. Silence falls on the group,
and a timid glance is cast up and down the road to
see if any of the farm people have been looking.
Then the grain is straightened once more, so that
no one could have told that anything had happened.

This is a still lovelier prize than the other.
What blue in nature can compare with the
circle of florets round the pink disc of the field
cyanea ?

128 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

Concerning the proper name of the plant, or
rather the sole right to the name it sometimes
gets, there is a considerable difference of opinion.
One day the farmer, a shrewd man, whose keen
eyes look out from beneath shaggy brows, stopped
me by this very field and pointed it out as the
" blawort." I was struck at the time, less with his
knowledge than the evident enthusiasm of one who
had a sworn feud with the laburnums and lime
trees. Did not these field flowers equally bloom at
the expense of the grain !

And now the verdict of these maidens, better
than much discussion, is on the same side ; all of
which goes to show that from our blues, our
borages, our bells, our forget-me-nots, this has been
chosen out as pre-eminently the bluewort. Per-
haps it is better known to country people than
the others, or was in olden shearing days, when all
were abroad during the bright autumn months.

The field is an exception to every rule, and the
hues of all the seasons at their best mingle with
the corn.

No excitement is manifested as the somewhat
washed-out lilac of the blue-cap is added to the
increasing collection. Not until a richer yellow
flushes the straw-coloured grain is there another

PATH THROUGH THE CORNFIELDS 129

merry stampede, moderated by the remembrance
of their recent transgression.

" Gowans ! Go wans ! " is the cry. True, they call
other flowers gowans as well ; in the country they
have general names for similar things ; but this is
the true one.

Golden they are ! Golden they look in the
autumn sunshine and amid the paler shades !
Chrysanthemums ! Flowers of gold ! Golden rays !
Golden disc, nearly two inches across of rarest,
richest gold ! No need to hurry ; there are plenty
for all. " Far too many," says the farmer, relapsing
into bad humour. But what care these heedless
minds, these children of the senses, for questions of
profit and loss !

Weeds are flowers in their wrong place. Pity,
then, that such glorious flowers should be in their
wrong place, and that war to the death should be
waged against them in the interests of modern
cultivation. The fields of Germany are brighter
than those of Scotland. Those of the islands and
other outlying parts of the land are gardens in
comparison with the unbroken yellow of many of
our fields.

They are not in the wrong place, as far as the
fitness of their surroundings goes. Nowhere could
9

130 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

they look so well as among the grain. It would
almost seem as if they were aware of this. For
most of them refuse to wander, seem nervous to
approach even the margin of the field, and are
seldom surprised far away. If odd ones appear
here and there, it is only for a season ; and, being
annuals all of them, no progeny seems to be left.
Cornflowers appear in the wilds seldomer even than
cultivated plants, and are much more reluctant to
settle there.

In the gardens to which, because of their
brightness, they are often transported against their
will by the injudicious, they have already lost
half of their charm for lack of environment. The
gaiety with which they laughed among the corn,
or peeped through between the heads, or re-
joiced as they rose and fell on the billows of light
and shadow, and hailed one another over the field,
is all gone. As well take one of the village
maidens and place her in a drawing-room.

Golden handfuls are passed down to the children.

But the best is yet to come — the cornflower par
excellence, which makes the autumn fields a joy
and a memory.

Poppies ! Poppies !

Not wayside poppies, not shabby poppies, not

PATH THROUGH THE CORNFIELDS 131

washed - out poppies, but they of the short-fruited
kind — poppies with ample petals of intensest scarlet
dye ; not nearly so common as many seem to
think — absent from large districts of the country
where poppies abound — oftenest found, perhaps,
near the seaside, probably because of the poverty
of the soil.

These, wherever found, are the true corn poppies.
See them against the yellow, see them in the
sunshine, see them in the shadow, see them in the
ripples of light and shade, see them anyway, and
say if ever you saw anything so fair.

Poppies are distant in their mood ; it may be
because their beauty is so evanescent that a touch
will dissipate it, their petals so fragile that a move-
ment will shed them. Hand grasps hand to prevent
the yellow-haired maiden falling forward among
the yellow grain.

Satisfied at length, they turn away and pass
the clump of harebells chiming to the selfsame
painted lady. The butterfly rises to tempt another
scamper ; but the young have grown wise by ex-
perience, and the maidens have other thoughts,
innocently vain, in their heads.

They sit down, big and little, under the self-
same lime tree to portion out the spoil, and to

132 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

deck themselves with colours suited to each com-
plexion.

" A p°ppy for y°u> and a g°wan for

And

little cloud comes
across the sun,
and a shadow
falls through
the air, and
a gentle
breeze
chases
over the
field, and
the heads
of corn
bend down
as if to listen
o the converse .of
the maidens.

" And a blawort for
you."

Attracted, it may be, by the
murmur, some outsiders of the
great flocks of linnets and greenfinches feeding on
the grain come to the edge of the field, and bend
the stalks still further that they too may hear.

PATH THROUGH THE CORNFIELDS 133

Meantime the children have secured another
dandelion.

One, two, three.

Without any act or wish of theirs, the third
blow clears the disc. So quick is the passage of
time in these early years ! The long shadows cast
over the straw colour by the lime trees might have
told them that, had they cared to look.

" It's three o'clock ; what will mother say ? "

Not that they fear; for they know that the
blame will fall on the elders.

Bright are the hats, careless the minds, and
innocent the spirits of these country maidens as
they pass homeward along the path between the
cornfields.

XI
FLOWERS OF THE FAR NORTH

THE wild flowers of one corner of Scotland are
so exceptional in their interest, so character-
istic of their haunts, that they ask to be treated
apart; especially as they are so shy at crossing
their very narrow boundaries, and are so seldom
visited in districts which offer less attraction to the
many.

The north-east dip of sandstone which forms the
county of Caithness is mainly of rough moorland,
rising very little above sea-level. It passes under
the shallow Pentland Firth, to be continued, in a
certain broken way, in the sandstones of Orkney.

This whole district, though northern, is not
highland ; the climate, though on the Polar side of
us, is rather milder than our own ; the wild flowers,
though boreal, are neither alpine nor arctic.

A few of the hill plants come down the slopes,

134

FLOWERS OF THE FAR NORTH 135

and make themselves at home near sea-level. This
is by no means strange. Hardy mountain forms
are known to grow on coast moors, chiefly such as
are so rude and exposed as this. Among others
the eight -rayed mountain avens — Dryas octo-
petala — appears on the flats of Caithness, and
crosses to the low heights of Hoy.

Some few years ago I spent part of the summer
in Orkney, under the soothing ripple of canvas.
Within half a stone's-throw was a lake, constricted
in the middle, and swelling out at each end, some-
what after the shape of an ancient hour-glass.

Down the slope we ran with a towel for a morn-
ing bath, and again with our rods for a forenoon's
cast. As fishing sheets, the weakness of this and
other Orkney lakes is the abundance of pond- weed,
rising to the surface as the season advances, and
covering large areas when the sport is at its height.
In July and August much of the water is unfish-
able, and a rise too near the forest, leads to the
twisting of the line round the stems by the running
trout. This nuisance is on the increase from year
to year, and will soon have to be dealt with.

Round the lake margin was a circlet, broken here
and there, of the pink bells of the bog pimpernel.
This is to the wastes what Linncea is to the woods,

136 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

and is well-nigh as graceful and delicately-tinted
as the wild flower which seemed so charming to
Linnaeus. The difference in appearance may be
because the one grows under shelter, and the
other in such places as stunt the growth.

The colour was pale — the result, no doubt, of
exposure to the sea breeze, whichever way the
wind blows. Some of the bells were white. The
same bleaching process appeared in the purple
scabious, the crimson ragged robin, and the violet
self-heal. All showed many white flowers.

The scene was unrelieved. No trees were
visible. The crofters' houses, dotted down here
and there, only increased the impression of bare-
ness— they were so rude themselves.

" I very much long for trees," said one who had
never left the island. " If I were not so old " — he
was beyond the four score — " I should go south yet."

It seems strange how one gets accustomed to
anything. After the first few days I was not
conscious of the want.

Immediately round the crofts, were patches
reclaimed from the universal moor. The cereals
were oats, and bere — a six-rowed form of barley.
These strips, sparsely covered as they were,
frequently came out in vivid contrast to their

FLOWERS OF THE FAR NORTH 137

duller surroundings ; while, in that moist air of
diffused rainbows, the dull shades themselves
became marvellously bright. The changes to
beauty were sudden as surprising. On the rude
background of untamed Orkney, beyond the crofts,
I have seen atmospheric effects like the flush of
distant flowers, only lovelier and brighter.

If the crops were thus thin, the space between
the stalks was fully occupied — for better or worse,
according to the point of view. What was lacking
in use had been given over to beauty. I never
saw so many cornflowers.

The fields were simply inlaid with heartsease
— not the ordinary long -stalked, small-flowered
field variety of the south, scarce deserving to rank
above a weed. Round as a sixpence, with space
for each of the shades to come distinctly out, they
were such flowers as we find on the dry short turf
here, and even larger than our best.

All this would seem to show that our field violet
is simply the miserable outcome of competition
with the taller and stronger grain. If the hearts-
ease first came here as a wild flower of cultivation,
it must have been as it appears in the meadows or
on these Orkney crofts, and it has slowly de-
generated with improved methods.

138 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

These rude fields, thus carpeted out of all com-
parison, more delightfully than our own, were
o'ertopped and almost o'er-canopied with gowans.
Though this was doubtless owing to the bad soil
and worse tillage, still it made them gardens of
quite exceptional beauty. Within the dry-stone
dykes, in many instances, grew elder bushes
(bourtree). It seems almost unaccountable at first
that such a soft-wooded bush should nourish in
places so exposed and windy that not even the
hardiest of shrubs has a chance. But so it is !
And but for this fact the outlook from the
windows of Orkney crofts would be still drearier.

It chanced one day that a gentleman farmer — or
as near an approach to one as the different con-
ditions of Orkney agricultural life permitted —
passed our way. Struck with the strange
phenomenon of a tent where no tent should be,
and which, like Jonah's gourd, seemed to have
sprung in the night, he called to see what it might
mean ; and before leaving he courteously invited
us to return the visit at his house, some few miles
away.

Two days later found us out on the search in
the direction indicated ; for, after three or four
weeks gipsying, a little social life of the un-

FLOWERS OF THE FAR NORTH 139

expected sort comes as a relief. Hidden by a
plastered wall of considerable height from the
passing gaze, the cottage had undoubted claims
to picturesqueness.

The inmates seemed to counterbalance the
desolate surroundings by a cheerful inner life.

There may have been a little philosophy in it,
such as common - sense people cultivate where
matters cannot be mended ; but there seemed to be
a good deal of nature as well.

Certainly, I never witnessed such bubbling over
of animal spirit even in the brightest scenes,
especially on the part of those who were no longer
children. The example was contagious, which

140 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

would not have been the case had the gaiety been
forced. One could not help laughing along with
them, and he would have been very dull and ill-
iiatured who tried. There was wit, too. There
generally is with persons wTho still see both sides
of life, even when one of them is not so obvious as
it might be.

In bad weather, when the brown shades looked
black, and there was no relief anywhere, they
didn't require to look beyond the garden wall ; and
like wise folk, who refuse to meet depression
half-way, probably they did not try. All of the
soaked and blackened earth they could command
from the windows, were the tops of the hills.

Within the enclosure, the scene was as if I had
been suddenly transported south again. It must
have been only so much the brighter on the
duller day, and thus helped to preserve the
balance. Garden vegetables grew to the usual
height, and were bordered by bright annuals.

In a snug corner, shut in between the gable
and the wall, where the blast would pass over
without sending down so much air as would
disturb the dust on its glass roof, nestled a little
conservatory. It was just such a spot as one
would choose out for telling a world-forgetting

FLOWERS OF THE FAR NORTH 141

story in. And, I daresay, those northern imagina-
tions sometimes used it for the purpose in the
dull winter-time.

That autumn day it was suggestive of something
milder. The retreating shelves were hidden away
amid the colours of geranium, pelargonium, and
fuchsia. All this brightness was backed by the
green of native ferns. For the presiding spirits
were lovers of nature, even more than florists.
There many a summer afternoon was dreamt
away, in sweet forgetfulness of monotony and
dulness.

The ladies were enthusiastic gardeners — indeed
must have been, to have achieved such results as
these under prevailing conditions. They trembled
between the humorous and the pathetic in their
description of the difficulties and disappointments
of horticulture in Orkney.

" It's all very well for you to admire now," said
one, half poutingly ; " but if you only knew what
trouble they have been, and how much anxiety
they represent. When we have just coaxed them
above ground, and are saying to ourselves, ' Soul,
take thine ease, sleep in peace,' a south-wester
will rise through the night, and in the morning
great foam flakes are flying over the island,

142 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

crusting the garden with salt, and destroying the
promise for the year."

" You have great storms, then ? " I inquired.

" Storms ! I should think we have," and the
fun came dancing back to her face. " There are
days when, if you open your mouth to the wind-
ward, you must turn round before you can get it
shut again."

The idea of the wind keeping the mouth open,
as it might do an umbrella, was certainly original.
The only improvement were to carry the parallel
further, and suggest the blowing inside out.

" But I love Orkney," she went on, with the
northern light in her eye. " You are too late for
the finest and rarest of our wild flowers. You say
that you have never been here in the spring ?
Then you must come."

And she spoke with much enthusiasm of the
beauty of the vernal squill ; and of the delightful
surprise, at the close of winter, of going out some
morning when the sun was shining through and
glorifying a veil of moist air, to find it already
scattered far and wide over the landscape.

" You, who are so rich in wild flowers, will laugh
at my innocence," she said, with an assumption of
humility.

FLOWERS OF THE FAR NORTH 143

I assured her that we had nothing in the south
more beautiful than the few-flowered blue lily,
except perhaps its sister, the bluebell of the woods.

" And sisters don't quarrel," I added.

" No," she said doubtfully ; " at least not in
Orkney — there are too few of us. And we have
the scilla all to ourselves ? "

" Not quite, but almost. It crosses to Caithness.
Caithness, you know, is only a part of Orkney."

I put it the wrong way about, to smooth her
ruffled susceptibilities.

" Well ! " she said, in a hard, questioning voice.

"It crawls down the east coast — very reluc-
tantly, perhaps — as far as Banff."

I have since discovered it on St. Andrews links,
and have little doubt that it grows on similar
exposed situations elsewhere. My experience
teaches me to be exceedingly suspicious of any
hard-and-fast limits assigned to species. But of
all this she is happily ignorant, and so was I at
the time.

" Is that all ? "

" And as for the west. Why, of course it crosses
into Sutherland. You couldn't help it doing that,
seeing that county lies next to Caithness, without
any brick wall between."

144 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

" Sutherland, does it ? Any more ? "
" It appears just here and there down the coast,
always near the water. It never forgets that it
was born of the Orkney sea breezes, and scattered
over your island by the first spring west wind. It
nowhere seems to meet its woodland sister, the
bluebell ; at least I never heard of the meeting.
Your scilla is not bright blue like the other ? "
" No, it is pale."

" That is because it is a child of the sea. Now,
the bluebell creeps up the centre of the country,
disappears into dens and other snug places by the
way; shivers back from the coast unless there is
abundant shelter ; and positively refuses to venture
into Sutherland or Caithness. Your pale seaside
bell forms a sort of ring, very thin and interrupted,
round the inland and woodland bluebell."

" I wonder if they really do meet anywhere ? "
The idea of two sisters held apart affected her
imagination, and sentiment for the moment pre-
vailed over her common sense.

" If I hear of it, I shall let you know."
In St. Andrews they are divided only by the
breadth of the town — the scilla growing on the
links to the north, and the harebell in sheltered
places of the cliffs to the south.

FLOWERS OF THE FAR NORTH 145

" You have missed another Orkney flower,
which, but for the dryness of the season, would
have been here yet. It is not so easily seen, but
worth searching for, and when found worth look-
ing at. You have no lilac primroses where you
are ? "

" No. There is said to be one somewhere ; but I
never saw it, or met a person who had done. At
most, there can only be a few plants."

" Not our primrose ? "

"No, it is taller. Yours positively refuses to
grow on our hills, although we can't tell why ; has
not been found on our sheltered lowlands, and
probably would be choked if it tried. It seems to
belong to such exposed sea-breezy places as this.
It strikes me as the Shetland pony among plants
— so minute is it, so much at home in its own
domain, so sensitive to change, and so perversely
determined not to oblige those who would grow it
elsewhere, however kind they may be."

" Long may it keep in that mind."

" I am of opinion that it owes its minuteness to
the hard living; and, even if it could be coaxed
into settling farther south, it would after a while
begin to grow bigger. But the chances are that it

would die before that came about."
10

146 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

" What a spirited little plant ! I shall think
twice as much of it in future. You can't rob us
of that."

" Of course it crosses into Caithness, which, you
know, is so very like Orkney."

" Well, I suppose I must give in about Caith-
ness," she said, with a pout. " But why wasn't the
Pentland Firth on the other side ? "

XII
UP THE GLEN

ON an August day, allied to the summer gone
by in its cloudless sky and breathless
warmth, rather than to the coming autumn with
its crisper air and shaded sunlight, I found myself
in Kirriemuir. J. M. Barrie was still unhatched —
I mean in a literary sense — and Thrums had not
yet wakened from its long sleep to find itself
famous.

This was by no means the only visit. The place
has a power to draw me for a distance of ten miles
on all sides. Besides, it lies directly in the way of
some of my favourite haunts; and I must needs
pass through in order to reach them.

Kirriemuir is on the northern margin of Strath-
more — the greatest, as its very name implies, and
also the quietest of Scots valleys. It is a quaint

other-worldly town — as becomes the site — of un-

147

148 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

spoiled folk with no more than their share of con-
ceit in themselves. Not very long ago, outsiders
of simple tastes sought it instead of some more
stirring holiday resort, alike for its moorland air
and soothing naturalness.

Sometimes I feel glad that I knew it in those
days. The place must ever be most to those
who loved it before others so much as heard of
it. Whatever Kirrie may mean, muir or moor
aptly enough describes the surroundings, and
indeed the condition of that portion of the
strath.

A short way to the north the Lowlands pass
quite suddenly into the Highlands of Scotland —
so suddenly indeed, that in some places it is easy
to step from one to the other.

Once upon a time the strath was a glacier track,
and frozen side-streams flowed out from among the
hills, to join and swell the great river of ice. The
path or channel of these tributaries is now marked
out by just so many glens ; while all that remains
to represent a volume once reaching to the
mountain-tops is a streak of water running down
the centre.

It was yet early morning. The cool shadows
cast by the irregular buildings lay across the street,

UP THE GLEN 149

some of the taller climbing far up on the opposite
side. I must have passed the little house upon the
hill, then, as at other times, quite unconscious of
the immortality in reserve for that unpretentious
structure, and the thriving trade it was destined
to do in refreshments, with those indefatigable
pilgrims and hero worshippers who are determined
to be disillusionised.

Which of these side glens, leading a varying
number of miles into the very heart of the
Highlands, was I to take ? Three complete and
several broken ones were available ; to all of which
Kirriemuir — with a possible rival in Alyth — was,
so to speak, the lodge. This special morning I
chose that of Clova.

The only way of getting there was on foot. On
certain days a coach ran, but this did not happen
to be one of them. Even had it been, it is
questionable if I would have taken a seat. It was
no privation. And I strongly advise those who
love the Highlands, and wish their love to con-
tinue, never to get on a coach where the distance
is walkable. One who has not a pair of legs, or
the will to use them, should stay at home. The
plague of cycles had not then broken out.

The delight of the start comes freshly up as I

150 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

write — so vividly indeed, that I shall abandon my-
self to the thought that it is happening over again,
and write in the present.

The hills at this point stand three miles back.
As I pass over the open country the sun continues
to climb higher, and the shadows shorten. At
length I cross a considerable stream, issuing from
Glen Prosen, and then I know that the very next
valley I come to is Clova.

As one steps from the Lowland sandstones to
the Highland schists, a change, like that of the
strata, passes over the wild flowers. Familiar
forms are missed, while others take their place
and do their work. For each plant has its place
to fill, and work to do; except perhaps a few
gipsies, which settle on any waste piece of ground,
where they are left in peace. For obvious reasons,
such vagrants are not nearly so common in the
Highlands.

It were long to tell everything which adds its
little to the general change. Details are alike
wearisome and uninstructive. Enough that I men-
tion one of the larger, perhaps the very largest,
contributors, leaving such of the rest as may strike
me to be picked up as I go along.

The commonest flower of the plain is the daisy.

UP THE GLEN 151

It is the white garment or tippet the earth puts
on to show that spring has come. No meadow or
pasture or green roadside, if the grass grow not
too rank, is without it — except it may be some
seaside moor — it loves not wild places. Nor can it
be said to care for shadow. It haunts the margins,
but barely enters the woods. And the daisy is one
of the missing flowers.

Yet one scarcely misses it. There is the same
sheen ahead ; and, as all is rude grassland together
here, the effect is so much the more widely spread.
The unobservant are not even aware that another
agent is at work ; but so it is.

That other is the eyebright, not altogether pure,
touched with purple. But is not the daisy also —
" the wee, modest, crimson - tipped flower " ? At
a distance both seem white.

The names of the two (that do the same office in
different scenes — reigning, the one over Highland,
the other over Lowland turf) are strangely alike —
days-eye and eyebright. One lifts the crimson
lids, which have been dropped during the dark, to
greet the morning, and exposes the golden ball
without blinking throughout the hot and bright
hours ; the other, from its specific name, officinalis,
seems to have been credited with some medicinal

152 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

virtue — probably that of adding lustre to the eye
of beauty.

The eyebright is not unfrequent on the plain,
but is generally found in such rude places as the
daisy does not care to invade; so that their
domains, though they often touch, sometimes even
intersect, remain essentially distinct. Both appear
on the links; but the one haunts the older and
maturer, the other the younger and rougher
portions. The eyebright has not the same ob-
jection to shade, and is common in the older
Lowland woods.

Steady walking, without a break, is not for such
a forenoon as this. It is quite a delusion to sup-
pose that there is freshness in a Highland glen
when the day is warm, or shelter when the sun is
high. The rays beat down with pitiless severity ;
the heat gathers into ovenlike intensity ; there is
no gully anywhere on the investing heights deep
enough to create a breath. One often sighs or
gasps for the open plain, where he is at least sure
of what wind there is, just as a dweller on the
plain sighs for the seaside. Happily, there is
always the escape to the mountain-tops.

Everywhere one is within hearing of the water,
with its suggestion of coolness. But there are

UP THE GLEN 153

days when the very ripple speaks of motion ; and
the sense of motion begets heat.

I seldom go abroad without my rod. It serves
as walking - stick or alpenstock, is convenient
for pushing aside the thorns, and is ever ready
to be turned to its legitimate use. I sit down
by the aider, and lazily fit in the pieces and
string through the line. The shadow is oppressive ;
the very heat seems to be taking refuge from
itself under the same bush. It rests upon one
with the weight of another garment. I wonder if
there is more air in the open.

The bed is rocky ; the stones stand out like the
ribs of a lean man. The stream is broken into
many separate currents, which flow in attenuated
channels, and only gather here and there behind
the larger boulders into triangular mid - stream
pools.

One such still place, more promising than the
rest, is well over to the other side. A cast may
bring something.

Phew ! how hot it is ! And only a two-inch
trout, after all the trouble ! How he disappears
beneath the nearest stone on being returned to the
water, after his first visit to the upper air ! A
trout in a much-fished stream must have a lively

154 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

time of it ! Ten miles at this rate means ten
hours ; it will be cool enough then !

A few such diversions to the water-side, with the
needful slipping down and climbing up steep
banks, and leaping from boulder to boulder to get
at some likely pool, or climbing such awkward
fences as only crofters know how to put up and
black-faced sheep to get over, especially when the
encouragement is of the slightest, prove enough.
And the face is turned a little more steadily
toward the goal.

c5

Next to the daisy, the dandelion is the most
familiar of plants. The one is gathered by the
Lowland girls for stringing into bracelets, the other
by the boys for feeding their rabbits.

And the dandelion is being replaced by the
hawkweeds. Nine out of ten of our hawkweeds —
many of which have a beauty of their own — are
mountain forms, the majority belonging to the
Scottish mountains. A few outliers come down to
the glen, and a few intermediate species connect
these with the flowers of the plain.

Crossing freely from the glen to the lowlands
is the pale yellow mouse-eared hawkweed. It
just enters within the domain of the dandelion,
and in certain neutral places the two grow side

UP THE GLEN 155

by side. But the lemon hawk weed is found
where the orange dandelion is not, and vice
versa.

On the links are a few dandelions and many
mouse-eared hawkweeds ; but there they observe
much the same limits as the daisy and the eye-
bright. Dandelion and daisy are found consorting
on the newer, eyebright and hawkweed on the
older, portions. One reason may be found in the
long milky taproot of the dandelion and the
creeping stolons of the hawkweed. Such pro-
visions seem to mark each off for its mode of life.
While the dandelion, like the daisy, keeps very
much to sunny places, the lemon hawkweed, like
the eyebright, creeps under the shadow of the
older woods.

The common ragworts, with the unequal lobing
which gives them their torn look, are left behind.
On moist ground, the marsh species, less deserving
the ugly name because of the greater regularity of
the leaves, appears. As a rule, marsh species are
extremely accommodating.

Here and there, mainly in shady places, grows
the somewhat similar, but much more graceful,
golden-rod, with its long lance-shaped leaves and
pretty spikes of yellow flowers. This is a charac-

156 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

teristic sub-alpine form, and strikes one who
approaches the hills as something new.

The buttercups, with their much-cut foliage, are
down on the plain. And only the marsh species,
with their usual indifference to the presence of
anything but w^ater, care to climb. Such are
found in moist places so far away as the arctic
lowlands, water seeming to remain the same
wherever it is found.

The distinctive cups of the glen are mainly
white ; and among them is the most attractive of
white cups, alike in its perfect shape and in its
proud and graceful pose. The grass of Parnassus
— for so runs its stately and fitting name — comes
as a revelation of unexpected beauty to those who
see it for the first time, where it grows side by
side with the bright yellow of the bog asphodel.

In Scotland I find that the foxglove, though not
unknown on the plains, affects the glens and hill
slopes up to a certain low altitude, marked per-
haps by the upper limit of the bracken region. A
favourite site is the heap of stones, representing
some ancient moraine, or piled up by the simple
disintegration of rocks. There it pushes its way
through, together with the oak fern and the
colourless spike of the wood germander. Or it

UP THE GLEN 157

forms the somewhat lurid undergrowth of the
thin strips of dark fir, above where the whin
ventures. It seems to have much the same claim
as the golden-rod to be treated as a sub-alpine.

Seaside wild flowers reappear. The mosses
change ; the grasses change. The stone dykes,
where such there be, show a transformation of
roadside forms. Among ferns, for instance, there
is a lessening proportion of the common polypody,
so familiar on similar old Lowland fences.

"Phew! How hot!"

The sun has passed the meridian, but the warmth
has not, and I am afraid never will. A shadow
rests on the sloping bank ahead — not a very long
one; for at this hour of the day, at this time of
the year, shadows are at the shortest.

I shall sit down for a minute or two — not more
than five ! Why keep bolt upright, when one can
lie ! As well be comfortable for the short time !
This slope just fits into the back ! My head is
out of the glare, and I can gather my hands
under it thus ! What matter that my boots roast !
One o'clock ! Eight miles yet ! Two miles an
hour ! Five ! Just nice time ! Heat and cold
make one slee — !

And the shadow of that tree must have stolen,

158 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

unwatched, over my boots, and crept stealthily
across the road, while I lay in deeper shadow still.
Ere I see it again, it is already beyond the dyke
on the opposite side; there is no more time for
trifling. The pace is now persistently forward,
though still extremely moderate, for the margin
of a summer day is large.

The common lady's-mantle grows by every dusty
roadside down below, washes its flower racemes
of dull yellow in every burn that waters the plain.-
If it is sometimes hard to see how some plants
ever got their popular names, there is no difficulty
in this case. When held downwards by its stalk,
the leaf is a miniature of a green mantle just taken
out of its folds.

Not less familiar, by Highland pathways and
stream-sides, is the alpine lady's-mantle. It is
often one of the first of the flowers to tell that
the dividing line between lowland and mountain
has been crossed. In many places it carpets the
glen. The name would seem to have been given
to the plain form first, and afterwards applied
to that of the hills. The creases or folds have
been divided into five little leaflets, which quite
take away the appearance of a mantle. The flowers
remain the same. In gardens or rockeries it has

UP THE GLEN 159

a tendency to increase the number of leaflets
indefinitely.

There are ragged glens, which shoot up a
majestic peak here, and are comparatively tame
there. The strength of this one lies in its cumu-
lative impressiveness. Nowhere sensational, it is
everywhere calmly majestic. It gains upon the
spirit by degrees, until it takes full possession. On
entering, one feels that he is constantly passing on
to something greater. On returning, one feels that
he is being let down, so to speak, to the plain.

A few scattered houses appear, in a magnificent
amphitheatre. One must concentrate his atten-
tion before he can see them, so little are they
in comparison with their surrounding. There I
must stay; if anywhere, under a roof. The first
cottage is not promising. The door is shut, the
chimney smokeless ; a black-and-white pig is gar-
dening in the front plot; the knock yields only
the echo of an empty house. Never mind ! the
ground is dry, the heather springy, and I can sleep
a mile or two farther on, in the solitude of hills.

A second application is somewhat more success-
ful. There is a room, not in this cottage, but in
some older structure behind, of whose accommo-
dation the woman speaks with perfect plainness

160 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

and a becoming modesty. I follow her to the back
premises and up a narrow wooden stair.

The bed is a procrustean concern, in a very tight
corner of the wall. The atmosphere is provided
by six drying cheeses. On the other hand, the
skylight is innocent of glass — a very distinct
advantage on such a night. Possibly, much to her
surprise, I say it will do. I refrain from telling
her that I have put up with worse.

Half an hour afterwards I am climbing the
slope. Two tarns overhead are steaming like
volcanoes, with craters formed by the surrounding
mountains. The day exhalations are being con-
densed by the nightly fall of temperature. About
five hundred feet above my lodging for the night,
I lie down to watch the sun dipping behind an
elevated horizon, picturesquely broken by the
mountain-tops; and the mystic light coming out
below.

XIII

THE HEATHER

THE freshness, for which I have panted all the
day, dwells up here. The tail stream from the
tarn, coining out of the mist, passes about fifty yards
to the right. Though its motion, as it rushes down
the slope and falls headlong into the frequent
pools, is so boisterous, it awakens no longer the
sensation of heat, but of coolness. The glare has
gone out of the light. Mountain shadows fall
across the glen, as the house shadows fell across
Thrum's streets in the morning.

The contrast of this evening lounge on the hill-
side, compared with the involuntary siesta on the
way up the glen, is great. How pleasant is the
South Esk as it runs down the valley, with a margin

1 1

162 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

of cool black shadow under its banks ! How
tempting the distant ripple of currents that scarce
cooled the feet at midday !

Not far off is a moist patch. Round cushions of
pale sphagnum are touched here and there with
red by our native insect-eater. I find that the
sundew . almost always chooses cushions of sphag-
num, where they are to be found. It may be
because these retain sufficient moisture in all states
of the air ; and also, that they offer a background
against which it more easily catches the eye of its
insect prey. There is scarcely any other white
background over all its hillside or moorland
haunts.

On the same marshy spot grows the cross-leaved
heather, easily known by its pale downy look.
From the shape of its very large flowers, it gets
its familiar name of bell heather, though the so-
called bells are almost closed at the mouth into
little balloons.

This is-the earliest of the year's heather. Pale
at first, the blossoms blush on the exposed side,
where they are kissed by the sun into rose ; after
which they swiftly fade into an unsightly brown
mass. As these three stages are very often
present in the same cluster, one has sometimes

THE HEATHER 163

to search a long time for a perfect sprig of rose-
and-white.

Of sprawling and somewhat slovenly habit, it
presents a frequent dishevelled washed-out ap-
pearance. Under the most favourable circum-
stances, like many another rose-and-white beauty,
it looks better at a distance.

The hue of the opposite hill-slope, extending far
and wide on either side, is not rose, but purple.
This purple form is the next to flower, and seems
to be the only one some people know. The sole
talk we hear is of purple heather, as if all heather
must be the same. Now, purple is not very
common, and this is the only native species of that
colour.

The association of purple with heather is a very
natural one, and doubtless owes its origin to the
fact that this species lends the delightful autumn
glow to the hill-slopes, just at the very time when
the tourist is on the alert and all the world is
in the Highlands. Whereas the delicate rose of
the bell heather appeals only to those who are as
near as I am now, the mass and glow of the
purple is caught from the glen, even by those who
are many miles away,

He has enjoyed a rare privilege who has seen

164 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

this heather darken under the passing cloud, and
blush vividly out again when the shadow has
passed over; or the richer, deeper effects as the
crimson light of evening comes slant- wise across
the purple, as it is doing now. The hue will rest
upon the spirit, to fall on the page of the ledger
or manuscript, months after, amid the dulness of
short winter days and the fog of cities. Little
wonder that the dream is of purple heather.

Why it should be called Erica cinerea, or grey
heath, is not very obvious. In ordinary circum-
stances its appearance is not grey, but vivid green,
supporting one tier or dividing several tiers of
bright purple. It retains its glory through many
summer and early autumn weeks, and then fades,
without, like the rose, becoming ugly.

Widely spread as it is, this is not the commonest
heather. A third species is within reach of my
hand. Indeed I am reclining on some, half raised
above the ground by its wiry springiness. The
last to bloom, it is now fully out. The flowers
are numerous — small, pink, and pretty. Though
there is plenty of it on the far side, I cannot make
out the colour at this distance.

It is very vigorous in its growth, and more of a
shrub than any of the others ; only, it is a lazy

THE HEATHER

'65

shrub. It trails. Were the stems stiff enough
to stand upright, it would present the appear-
ance of a dense thicket, through which path-
ways up the mountain-side wrould have to be
cut. I disentangle one, and pull it out to its full

Its stature is three feet.

height.

common name — Ling,

Ling is the Highland

Perhaps it is most
popularly known
cies amid which
wade knee-deep, -
unconscious of
for many
their
for

Hence its
or Long,
heather,
widely and
as the spe-
visitors
and totally
fatigue,
hours, in
eager search
white heather,
tented, if, in
evening, they
back ever so
It appears as the

con-

the

bring

little.

breezy title to one of William Black's freshest

novels. In this way it may be distinguished

from the purple in the heatherology of those

who before were ignorant of its existence.

Pinks and kindred colours growing at any
considerable height have a tendency to bleach into

166 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

white. Looking over the face of the hill from
where I lie, I can see several distinct shades, some
much lighter than the rest. Near the sea the
bleaching is still more pronounced. On coast
moors I have gathered the fine-leaved heather,
with its larger flowers and more decided colour,
from purple, through crimson and pink, to purest
white. The reasons why ling yields a greater and
more certain harvest are probably that it is nearer
white, to begin with ; and also that, so far as the
hills are concerned, it grows, as we shall see
directly, in more exposed situations.

It seems a somewhat strange whim that wishes
pink heather to be white when there are so many
white flowers about. It is the taste, less of a
naturalist than a gardener. I understand that a
prize has been offered for a blue rose. Were the
ling white, there would be the same rush after
pink or any other curiosity.

I know several lethargic folk who would not
climb a dozen yards for all that nature has to
offer, and yet think no labour thrown away
in the search for something abnormal. I have
seen the precious sprig carefully unwrapped, and
displayed as the chief outcome of a month in
the Highlands.

THE HEATHER 167

The only thing that can be said for the
craze is, that it does not hurt anyone else, and
probably results in certain indirect benefits.
The flush removed from the heather may be
confidently looked for in the cheek of the
searcher.

These are the only heathers within reach or
sight, or for miles around. Indeed there are only
three heathers in Scotland ; unless I include the
trailing azalea on the ridge overhead, and the yew-
leaved menziesia confined to the Sow of Atholl.
But these, though belonging to the same family,
and somewhat resembling them in outside appear-
ance, are not heaths in any strict sense, but moun-
tain plants.

The whole three have been adopted, once and for
all, by different Highland clans; from which it
appears that these interesting Celts believe them
to be distinctive of their elevated regions. I
remember an Edinburgh student who wore an
eagle's feather in his cap ; and it was said that he
alone had a right to it, because he was the son of
a chief. Since eagles have been bartered by High-
land chiefs for grouse, the prejudice ought not to
be quite so strong. In some such hostile spirit the
favoured tribes may regard any unauthorised

1 68 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

Lowlander or foreigner who affects the rose, the
purple, or the pink.

Towards their summits the highest hills have a
barer look. The heather seems to be thinning out,
as if it were approaching its limit in that direction.
Into this seeming bare region I shall ascend to-
morrow.

From my feet, and also down the opposite slope,
the heather runs away to meet below, or only to
be divided by the breadth of the stream. There
is no appearance of exhaustion, no sign of reaching
any limit that way.

On seaside moor, protected only by the sand-
dunes from the invasion of the waves, I have
found all three round about me, as I do
here. Moorland stretches on the sheltered
inlands, very little above sea-level, yield heather
which seems very vigorous and very much at
home.

However low down I am, there I find myself
with the heather ; whereas, if I ascend, I increas-
ingly leave the heather behind. Not all three at
once, but one after the other.

The purple flush does not reach to the top of the
heather region. It ranges only to some fifteen
hundred feet high. By looking keenly, I can just

V*

v

THE HEATHER -j69

make out the irregular line where it ceases, or
fades into the duller shade above.

The rose heather grows in patches, and no-
where covers a great area. It must be sought
after by those who desire it, and may be found in
almost any moist place up to about two thousand
feet.

That into which the purple fades away is the
pink. Hardiest of the three, the ling continues to
climb. It alone forms the broad belt of dark
shrub, scarcely lit by its blossoms up to the higher
alpines. Through it, mainly, one wades for the
third thousand feet of the ascent. It is in these
higher reaches that the white sprays should be
sought for.

This is the Highland heather, in so far as there
is such a thing. The crofter puts it to endless
uses, and finds it invaluable. To its services as a
broom it is said to owe its name, Calluna, to cleanse.
The more poetic rendering, to adorn, refers to the
charm it lends to the surroundings.

The common view, therefore, that Scotland is
the natural home of the heaths, because it is so
mountainous, is only very partially true. It would
be much nearer the truth to say that Scotland
marks well-nigh the northernmost limit of the

i7o WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

heath zone, and only three of the hardiest of an
immense family have been able to penetrate so far.

If hills and hardship had anything to do with it,
then the east side of the North Sea is still more
favourable. The scene is more broken, the climate
severer, and more arctic than our own. If this
were a northern type, we should expect to find it
flourishing there ; whereas the first thing that
strikes a visitor to Norway, next to the abundance
of alpines, is the scarcity of heaths. This came
as a surprise to the experienced members of the
Scottish Alpine Club.

" I climbed," says Archibald Geikie, " a slope,
clothed with luxuriant masses of ferns, bilberries,
and cloudberries ; " but no mention of heaths.

We are accustomed to associate grouse and
heather. Yet the Norwegian willow grouse, in
the absence of that shrub, thrives on something
else. Our own grouse are heather birds indeed,
alike in tint and diet; but not hill birds, seeing
that heather is not a hill shrub. Some were
doubtless driven to the slopes, whose sole advantage
is their dryness, as a last refuge from the plough.
As many still live on the plain as the scanty
patches of lowland moor left will support.

The ling alone seems able to bear the severity

THE HEATHER 171

of an extreme climate. It penetrates within the
polar circle, and appears on the arctic lowlands.

If this is the case toward the north, what about
the other direction ?

Scarce in Norway, and poorly represented here,
the heaths increase in the number of species as
they tend farther south. Passing down, in a not
very broad belt, they culminate in the south of
Africa, where they are known to grow in endless
variety and loveliness. Thence all the delightful
species which glorify our greenhouses, and may
sometimes be coaxed to grow outside, come. The
heathers of the Cape, and the primulas of Europe,
are the just boast of all who possess them.

Thus, if anyone is justified in using the shrubs
as badges, it is not the Highlander, but the South
African. I can imagine a Scottish emigrant open-
ing his eyes at the unexpected revelation, and a
visitor from the Cape saying, " Do you call that a
heath ? "

Of the non-Scottish, though British, heathers,
there are other three — the spring flowering Irish
heath, with racemes of pink flowers, made more
attractive by the dark exserted anthers ; the large-
belled, fringe-leaved heath of Dorset ; and the dull,
heavy Cornish heath.

172 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

These, with their varieties, prefer the milder
conditions of the west of Ireland and the south
of England ; and their affinities are with southern
rather than with northern species. Thus the ling
of the arctic lowlands, and the vast profusion of the
Cape of Good Hope, represent the two extremes.

All this has been said in the interests of exact-
ness, and with no intention of destroying illusions
which I most fervently share. There is still
enough heather in the Highlands, both for man
and grouse.

Long may it be before the search for the white
sprig ceases to put the pink of the blossom into
the pale cheeks of maidens, and the vision of the
purple, even though it actually reveal itself nearer
home, lure men " north again."

Long may the holiday seeker — already half
recuperated by the prospect — from his corner in
" The Flying Scotsman," cry gaily to envious friends
on the platform, " For the heather ! "

Even if there is not much that is new in her
rose or purple or pink, Scotland has still an un-
approachable background against which to present
them. Never heather on the plain looked like
this.

The sun has long dropped out of sight, and the

THE HEATHER 173

summits are fast losing their distinctness of outline.
The hill-burn is beginning its twilight song, so
different, if only in imagination, from that of broad
daylight. Shadows are deepening under the woods.
The stream runs like a thread of silver down the
dimming glen.

Tidy housewives come out to the cottage doors.
Their voices reach me here. The saunter down is
worse than the climb. I feel wondrous stiff; and
tired enough to sleep soundly, even on my pro-
crustean couch.

XIV
ON THE MOUNTAINS

way to Braemar."

And a finger on the post points away to the
right.

" This way to Braemar."

And a second finger, on another post, points to
the left.

There is nothing strange in two ways leading to
the same place ; indeed it is one of the commonest
of experiences, the main problem being to find out
the shorter one.

One of these ways, so kindly indicated in the
freshest of paint and the clearest of letters, has a
decided hint of a curve in it.

More suspicious even than that is the quite
paternal interest taken in the well-being of
pedestrians. There is a difference of opinion here,
and two unknown benefactors vie with each other

ON THE MOUNTAINS • 175

in their zeal to prevent needless wandering. This
is unusual in the Highlands, where one is left to
grope along as best he can, and is taken roughly to
task if, in his ignorance, and to his own great loss
of time and strength, he chance to wander.

Now the spirit of these finger-posts is far other
than friendly. As soon as one learns why they
were put there, the very aspect alters, and they are
seen to glare and storm at each other. They
represent the very old dispute between private
rights and public wrongs. The property has
passed out of the hands of one of the old families,
and it is the purchaser who kindly recommends
the circular route. His finger-post really means,
" I wish to shut up the other way."

And the jealous guardians of the sacredness of
paths which human feet have trod, time out of
mind, without so much as saying, " By your leave,"
put up their finger-post, which flatly contradicts
the other, and says, " You shall not do anything of
the kind, if we can help it."

In my experience, the practical victory in all
such breezy disputes lies with the proprietor, pro-
vided he makes the friction as severe and constant
as possible. The timid fear to venture ; and even
the bold, when they have gone once or twice slowly

176 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

over the ground, just to show their independence,
turn aside from the annoyances, and take the other
way.

In this case, the old path happened to be of quite
exceptional interest to a small but mildly stubborn
order of visitors. Their grievance was not in the
closing of the nearest way to Braemar — many of
them would have trudged the extra mile or two
without a word. The attraction lay along the
route, and not in the goal. Lost through all the
long hours of a summer day in Glen Doile, they
never so much as emerged from the other end.
Stained and footsore, but not weary, and with a
light shining in their faces, they might have been
seen towards night coming out just about where
they had gone in. To them the finger-post meant
the shutting up of their hilly paradise.

I have no intention of going to Braemar to-day.
My further route is in a pleasing state of un-
certainty, as it always is when I am abroad. The
forbidden ground is just what I have come to see.

There, the gathering majesty of the way passes
into still loftier reaches of grandeur and sublimity.
Though it gets the name of Doile, it is only the
fitting climax where Clova abuts, and abruptly
closes, on the tremendous cross - ridge of the

ON THE MOUNTAINS 177

Grampians, forming the backbone of the
Highlands.

Nor is it mainly for the scene I have come, —
though never for so much as a moment is it
possible to lose consciousness of it, — but because
these torrent-ploughed slopes form one of the few
wild-gardens — certainly one of the first three — of
our rarest Scottish alpines.

Like Nelson, I am blind to the signal I do not
wish to see, and obey the finger-post which points
the nearest way to Braemar as up the glen.

The road passes near the dwelling — I believe
it now makes a detour. As I thread nay way
among the outhouses, I am aware of being the
object of a little hostile attention. Loiterers cast
a side glance, and disappear into some doorway as
if to make my unwelcome presence known. A
few moments bring me beyond the shot of eyes
into a scene of picturesque wildness — that is, wild-
ness which is not at the same time desolation.

One autumn day — it may be such another as
this — a sportsman was shooting over the sur-
rounding heights. His title came from a barren
spot in one of the shorter glens opening on
Strathmore, watered by the Quharity, dear to

all readers of Barrie. His income he owed to a
12

178 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

richer property on the banks of the Tay, and a
spirit, which was singularly childlike, to nature
alone. He paused as his eye fell upon a patch of
rose colour.

It is an excellent thing, when one is alone shoot-
ing in these out-of-
yV the-way places, to

have a pair of eyes
in one's head, and
< a soul of some
kind behind
them. The blue
, sky, and the
cloud shadows,
and the life and

colour of the
hills, weave tender
threads into the
coarser texture of
a day's sport,
carried about, and a benefit to
the possessor, these simple gifts, as in the case
of this blushing alpine, sometimes notice what
others would like to see and are glad to hear
about.

Few have better opportunities than sportsmen,

Easily

ON THE MOUNTAINS 179

if they cared to use them. Compared with their
systematic work, the zig-zagging of an occasional
naturalist is trilling and ineffective, leaving vast
tracks on either hand unexplored. They quarter
every interesting hill in Scotland, cross every yard
of every slope and summit, and that at the bright
season of the year, when all the later and rarer
alpines are in flower. Granting a little natural
curiosity, they might have many a pleasant
revelation to make. Others must have passed
that patch, but no one had thought it worth
his while to pause, or tell over again that such
a thing was there.

But this was a sportsman of the proper sort,
to whom the birds wrould have been nothing
without the background and the thousand little
touches that made their upland home charming.
In after years he did not think it worth his
while to rehearse howr many brace had fallen
to his gun. True, it was before the days of
sensational bags, when, as yet, grouse-shooting
was a gentlemanly sport.

But I have heard him tell, with great anima-
tion, of the delight with which he looked on
that vision of beauty. And I know that it
remained a lovely spot on his memory to the

i8o WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

latest years of his life. The flower had been
lost sight of, and the privilege of having found
it again made him glad.

With the economy of a lover of nature, who
never wastes, however great the wealth may seem
to be, he gathered, in remembrance of that Clova
idyl. The late Professor Balfour on one of his
excursions came that way, and the finder sent a
little to where the botanist was staying. It is
said that certain playful youngsters of the student
band caused the treasure to be placed under cover,
and served up for dinner : and we can well believe
that the old enthusiast forgot his hunger in his
delight.

This wild flower is only reported from the one
site, but may have been overlooked on two or three
of the heights of the same north-west corner of
Forfar. Beyond this restricted area it has only
as yet been found in the north of England, where
it grows, at a much lower elevation, to a greater
height.

This would seem to show it is no denizen of the
hills by birth and long tradition, but only one of
the Shetland pony order of fairy plants, which,
under more favourable conditions, would probably
lose its alpine characteristics. I have seen it

ON THE MOUNTAINS 181

flowering freely enough in the gardens of High-
land gamekeepers, who had brought a bit away as
they were passing its haunts.

The alpine catchfly, as it is named, presents
a very miniature or fairy semblance of the
extremely pretty crimson day-catchfly, abounding
in most of our moist woods, and brightening so
many of our stream banks ; as if the larger flower
had climbed up the hillside, and dwarfed as it
rose higher.

This crimson patch is the goal which, after
visiting the rare corners of the glen, and seeing all
that grows there, I intend reaching.

The day is young, and, for so young a day, is
used up. It has already parted with its morning
freshness — if, in the early hours before I was
abroad, it ever had any. There is sultriness in
the breathless air, and a pitiless glare in the light.
A lit haze fills the glen. Even Clova was open
and breezy in comparison. If it is thus at eleven,
what will it be at two ? is a question I am in a
position to answer from my recent experience.
And there is less promise of shelter on these bare
heights. Already it matters not on which side of
a boulder one sits down.

Moreover, the ascent has become sharper, and

182 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

the road rougher. There is more of the climb in
one's walk. The rush and noise and broken water
of the stream alongside is a sufficient measure of
the incline.

Eleven is a good time for a rest. It is the hour
chosen by outdoor workers, in the sunny months,
for placing their backs against the shady side of
the stocks. " Eleven hours " they call their fore-
noon break. The water is inviting, and here
is a bank which will afford the skirt of a
shadow.

How brown my hands are ! I must be like a
mulatto ! My last night's lodging had nothing so
refined as a mirror, and the water is too broken to
see ! Stay, there is a quiet place behind the
boulder ! How still the glen is ! The " baa " of
the black-faced sheep seems to emphasise the
solitude ! What is all the fuss about ? No one is
here to disturb — !

A faint sound, resembling a footstep, reaches me,
and, a few minutes afterwards, a man, accompanied
by two dogs, appears on the bank overhead. The
turn down to the water-side, though not a ruse,
has served the same purpose. To all appearance,
the man intended following, keeping, as far as
possible, out of sight ; but, missing me, he had

ON THE MOUNTAINS

•83

ventured forward to reconnoitre : there he stands,
revealed in all his brief authority.

Now the positions are reversed. He has to go
on, and I can watch him. It is rather an un-

comfortable
position for a

feet in the sun —
no very long process — why, they have a tint of
brown on them already ; leisurely put on my
boots, and climb up the bank.

My friend is equal to the occasion. In calculat-
ing on any advantage, I have reckoned without
my host. Though he can scarce have got above

184 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

two or three hundred yards away, and the glen is
shelterless, save for some tumbled fragments of
rock, he is nowhere in view. Instead of the sullen
up-and-down movements of two tails, and the
flash from a gun barrel, the sun

All unreflected shone
On bracken green, and cold grey stone.

He has vanished into thin air, or dropped behind
a boulder, or lain down all his length under some
imperceptible rising of the ground — protectively
coloured in his pepper-and-salt suit. And his
dogs play up to him. Not a hair of them is
to be seen. Once again he regains the advantage ;
and so this mountain comedy passes through its
several acts.

An hour afterwards he suddenly reappears — from
nowhere in particular. I look, and he is not ; I
look again, and, behold, he is within a few feet.
I seize the chance of asking the nearest way to
the hill on which the catchfly grows. This is
adding insult to injury. He regards me more in
sorrow than in anger, and solemnly warns me
that, so far from helping, he will stand across my
path.

When he sees that the threat has not the desired

ON THE MOUNTAINS 185

effect, he melts into the Highland air, fades into
the grass ; and, though I never lose the uneasy
sense that he is fixing me from behind every stone
or tuft of mountain meadow grass, he returns no
more.

It is characteristic of these glens in the north-
west corner of Forfar, that their wild flowers, with
very few exceptions, are much alike. What you
find in one, you may look for in the other. And
as I shall visit a second, it is the less needful to
tell all that grows here.

Indeed, the similarity, if not so close, holds of
that concentration of the Highlands, that eternal
gathering of the clans, where the three counties
of Forfar, Perth, and Aberdeen meet. It may be
worth noticing, in the passing, that Perth and
Forfar have an equal number of alpines, but not
quite the same. Seven are absent from each
county, which are present in the other.

The purple mountain milk vetch, so common on
seaside links, and again on the lower slopes of hills,
passes, at a certain height on Craigmad, into the
alpine form, which is mainly white, only tipped
with purple. Elsewhere this alpine is found on
Craigandree, at Braemar. A similar form, the
yellow mountain oxytropis, grows among these

186 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

hills, and not anywhere else, so far as I know, in
Britain.

The sun climbs slowly down as I climb slowly
up. On the top I look round for that particular
summit, whose shape I partly know. And then I
go off in search of the patch of rose, whose charm
is certainly not any greater than that of the spirit
which once reflected it; which had brought to a
halt and gladdened one who was at once a sports-
man and a naturalist.

Already are the shadows creeping up the eastern
slopes. It will be as easy to reach the next glen
as to trudge back to Clova. And the air of my
lodging for the night is likely to be fresher.

XV
ON THE MOUNTAINS

IN passing from glen to glen, a break helps one
to assimilate experiences which follow so hard
upon. A pause between each spell of climbing
gives impressions time to print, as well as sort
themselves out. Like the scene it represents, a
mental picture needs space. If blurred and
crowded, it is rather worse than none. Objects
must stand a certain distance apart. Haste, so far
from being any real gain, finds one at the end of
his rambles as well informed as if he had been on
a conventional tour over the Continent.

A day or two spent in training the eye to read
the mountain-sides from a distance, to tell what
wild plant yields that particular hue, to pick out
the clump of sphagnum touched with the sundew,
to trace the long-leaved cranberry amid the oval-
leaved cowberry and blaeberry, is time-saving in

187

i88 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

the long-run. It absolves one ever afterward from
the need of zig-zagging over many a mile in search
of what he wants. One does not know birds who
can repeat their names when they light on the
fence ; but only he who can tell them at half a
mile away, by their flight and a thousand name-
less traits, marking them off from the rest.

A little pure loitering even, such as a full-length
stretch at midday under the black shadow of the
pine wood, with a run of water and an ample
supply of berries within reach ; or a change of
occupation, such as a twilight cast in the stream,
has its uses in freshening both body and mind.
Jaded energies do not profit much.

Fishing a pool lying in an elbow of the channel,
where the largest trout are known to be, I find
myself breast-high amid the tall purple heads of
the melancholy thistle. This is perhaps about the
highest reach of the most nearly sub-alpine of the
thistles.

The side-burns I cross at intervals, in passing
down the banks, have their edges touched with the
showy purple of the livelong. This sedum is
common enough all the way downward to the
plain. Immediately overhead, it gives place to the
yellow-flowered rose-root, which in its turn reaches

ON THE MOUNTAINS 189

nearly to the summit of the surrounding moun-
tains.

My lodging, so much pleasanter than that of last
night, is in itself a temptation to prolong my stay.
It consists of a room in a cottage overhanging the
stream, where the ripple sings me into dreamland,
and then pleasantly fills up the intervals of sleep.
If the odour of cheese is not altogether absent,
it is not oppressive, and has to be tolerated
in districts so apt to be cut off from supplies,
that the people lay up stores against a long
winter.

The haze of yesterday thickens into vapour,
which passes away in rain. I make the experi-
ment of ascending a mist-covered hill. All know-
ledge of direction is at once lost. Even the sense
of going up and coming down can no longer be
trusted. But, with a compass, perfect self-
possession, and a close acquaintance with the
sounds and aspects of the scene, one may find his
way. Shepherds and gamekeepers are not
puzzled.

On a delightfully fresh morning, in a rain-
cooled and purified atmosphere, I face toward the
ridge where the glen comes to a dead pause. Isla
is not so mature in its majesty as Clova. It is even

IQO WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

raw and ragged, as if the ploughing glacier had
passed over so recently that the lapse of time was
too short for mellowing away the effects.

The close, however, is dramatic enough. From
the signs of fierce conflict scattered about, there
might have been a tussle to force a way through to
Aberdeenshire. Wildness has broken loose, and
yet the scene is not savage. Picturesqueness
is scarcely the word ; it is too awe-inspiring for
that. One scarce likes to be left alone in its midst,
and is all the better of a companion.

The walk is not tiring. No need is there to
squeeze into the narrow margin of midday shadow,
nor to cool the feet in the somewhat swollen
stream.

Wild flowers are even more distinctly sub-alpine
than those of Clova. The turf is lit with eye-
bright, as gaily as ever Lowland meadow with
daisies; while alpine lady's - mantle carpets long
stretches of the road.

Through a peat bog I approach the tremendous
gateway of the glen, or caen, whose left pillar
stands nearly four thousand feet high. I do not
enter by the gate, but essay to scale the mighty
wall. Turning up the hillside, I ascend into the
alpine country. Trailing azalea and other early

ON THE MOUNTAINS 191

plants, which make the June hills bright, are past
the flowering stage, and, in their sober dress, easily
overlooked from a distance.

That pleasant scent is not of whin, but of the
bog myrtle on the moister portions of the lower
slopes. The shrub of the mountains is not broom,
but juniper. As it struggles upward, it dwindles
into a bush, which is quite needlessly spoken of as
if it were not the same.

In ascending, it is interesting to watch the trees.
There are only three to attract attention — the Scots
fir, the birch, and the willow. The Scots fir has
no alpine representative. It lessens, but is allowed
to remain the same species throughout. When it
has reached the minimum of size, it is still only a
little fir.

The birch cowers closer and closer to the
mountain-side or to the rock, until it becomes
less a tree than a bush; and each step in the
intervening process is represented, so that the eye
can follow the passage from one extreme to the
other. But the wise conservatism in the case of
the Scots fir is departed from ; and, as with the
jumper, the stunted birch is spoken of as if it were
another. The probability is that bush birches are
alpines of the Shetland .pony kind, which could be

i92 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

passed, in the reverse order, on to the full stature
again.

The willow seems to be the only one of the three
with truly alpine forms which would probably
defy the utmost ingenuity to reconvert into any-
thing else. I see them in increasing numbers as I
ascend higher, lying against the face of the slope —
little fairy shrubs about the length of a quill-pen,
or even less. As one expresses it, root and all might
be hidden between the leaves of a lady's pocket-
book. Most of them have circular leaves, dis-
tinctly and prettily veined and netted. These are
not the dwindled forms of the trees at the foot, or
the bushes I passed by the way, but differ from
both in very many ways.

I begin to notice certain marks, placed evi-
dently by human agency, at stated intervals, and
leading in one direction. There are too many of
them to be meant for shepherds, who presumably
are very much at home on the hills ; and they are
evidently guides to a more general public.

Glen Isla is a cul-de-sac, much more complete
than Clova. The only way out at the top end is to
climb. And this route, rising steeply to upwards
of three thousand feet, to drop as far on the other
side, must be the way to Braemar. The thought

ON THE MOUNTAINS 193

calls up the finger-posts of yesterday, with the
amusing sequel. Happily, there are not two ways.
Nor does there seem scope for any choice up here.

A gamekeeper is on the outlook for me, but this
time with no hostile intent. These hills are free to
the curious, under the not unreasonable conditions
that visitors shall be as careful as possible not to
disturb the deer when it is getting near the shoot-
ing season. It is a big playground for two to
have hide-and-seek in, especially when one is not
sufficiently acquainted with the local names to
profit by minute directions. With the best inten-
tions in the world, we fail to meet until I call at
his cottage in the evening on my way back.

I daresay I missed a little in consequence, for he
seemed to be an intelligent man, who had made
himself acquainted with all that was interesting in
the district. From his knowledge of the hills, he
might have guided me more directly to where I
wished to go. But there is a good deal in search-
ing out for one's self ; for, even if one does not find
out so much, he keeps a better grip of what he has.
On this and other visits, I managed to stumble
across what was best worth seeing ; and I do not
think I have forgotten anything.

I had looked on all the forms many times
T3

i94 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

before; and I seek to keep myself as free as
possible from that form of curiosity which dearly
loves to snare a secret, and would fain worm out
of every pawky gamekeeper what he has to tell or
to sell.

The chief treasure of the place — whose where-
abouts, in the opinion of some, all the mountains
were placed there to hide — is the snowy gentian.
The man who is able to say " I know " is an object
of envy. It is a pale blue annual of some three
inches high, which peeps over the ledges over-
looking the caen in July and August, and rains
down its seed alongside and on the ledges beneath,
for next year's bloom.

It seems to grow only here and on Ben Lawers.
One can account for widely-spread alpines that
are found in every likely situation, more easily
than for those isolated forms, such as this snowy
gentian, or the yellow oxytropis, whose whole area
may only extend over a few ledges of rock or a few
square yards of turf. How was the seed or pea
from which they sprang dropped down ? If their
tenure is as ancient as it seems to be, then how, in
the many ages before botanists existed, did they
not manage to spread farther ?

In contrast with this minute snowy gentian is

ON THE MOUNTAINS 195

the blue sow-thistle. It is a case of the giant and
the dwarf. This sow-thistle — not a thistle — is a
curiosity in its way. The typical alpine is a fairy.
Such is a necessity of its existence. The scanty
food, the exposure, the frequent need to pass
rapidly through the flowering and seeding stages,
all forbid strong or leisurely growth. Minuteness
is the broad distinction between a hill plant and
that of the plain.

The sow-thistle is the only, or at least the chief,
exception. It is an alpine, and yet has the robust
growth of a Lowland form. It grows up the
wildest branch of the gorge. I wish to visit it,
and struggle up under increasing difficulties by
the side of a torrent which rushes ever more rudely
down its boulder-strewn bed. Exhausted, I sit on
a loose rock, upon whose surface, in course of time,
a soil has gathered and shrubs rooted themselves.
Never were such blaeberries, for number and size,
as grow on that rock.

When one turns his face backward after a day's
ups and downs, he begins to feel his sores. There
is now nothing ahead to make him forgetful. His
pace settles down into a certain dogged, uninter-
ested, out-kneed paddling along, which has been
likened to that of the German band,

196 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

On looking in upon the gamekeeper, I find him
wonderfully good - tempered after his fruitless
errand. He shakes his head over the idea of
climbing in the mist as foolhardy, and relates
some harrowing incidents which had recently
occurred on these same hills.

And then he proceeds to describe, in a certain
dramatic fashion of his own, the different characters
that come there in search of flowers, and the need
there is to discriminate. Some of these sketches
were worth reproducing, but that there are those
who might persist in finding in these pages a
looking-glass. From similar reports, and from my
own observations, I feel that too much caution can
scarcely be exercised if we are to retain the proud
distinction of being the land of flowers of a certain
very rare and excellent sort.

The risks to our wild plants are not exactly
the same, or likely to be so speedily destructive,
as those which threaten our wild animals. Any
losses up to the present time must be sought for
among Lowland forms, through cultivation, drainage,
easy access, and other obvious causes.

Probably no upland species has been reduced to
the dire straits of some of the birds of prey which
dare to find a meal on the moor or in the covert.

ON THE MOUNTAINS 197

They lead a passive and innocent existence, and are
in no one's way. Dwelling in a zone of their own,
which nothing cares to dispute, they flush the bare
slopes with colour, gladden the desolate heights
with the signs of life, and furnish a welcome bite
to the ptarmigan.

The danger lies rather in the indifference than
the hostility of the proprietors, who are careless
as to their fate — in many cases ignorant of their
very existence. If they keep back the wrould-be
spoiler, it is lest he disturb the game, and not lest
he root out the wild flower.

The gamekeeper is more aggressive. His High-
land fastness is invaded every summer by eager
spirits from the south, such as my friend so graph-
ically described, and he is besieged by questions as
to the whereabouts of the alpines. He has taken
the hint to look round about him when he is out,
and mark the places where anything unfamiliar
grows. He uses his advantage skilfully.

He is now ready to supply whatever is wanted
for a consideration, and even to guide the more
liberal to the spot. Such perquisites make a
sensible addition to his wages. Once informed,
each newcomer is master of the situation, and may
become a guide in turn.

198 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

The footsteps of greed desecrate the stillnesses,
and the hand of greed lays more waste even than
curiosity or false enthusiasm. Where so many
are anxious to possess and willing to pay, there are
sure to arise sellers ; and so quite a trade goes on
in alpines. In addition to the amateur who
forages for himself and his friends, the professional
plant collector is abroad, whose business in life is
to hawk on his own account from door to door, or
to act on behalf of some man who keeps a nursery.

Two forces are thus at work — the man who
lives by it ; and a certain uninteresting type of
tourists and lodgers, who have not yet learned the
first lesson taught to all well-bred children — to
look at everything and touch nothing.

It is not so easy to draw the line between a wise
conservatism and an unwise interference as many
seem to think. There is another side to the access
to mountains agitation not visible to those who
simply theorise from the plain. Sometimes when
abroad on the wilds, with blue cloud-flaked sky
overhead, and many-shaded plain three thousand
feet beneath, I have been annoyed at the restriction
placed on my freedom of movement by some offi-
cious gamekeeper.

And before the day was out I have been equally

ON THE MOUNTAINS 199

annoyed at the liberty allowed to another, who
was digging and tearing at his own sweet will,
and generally doing as much as he could to make
the hills not worth climbing.

Something might be accomplished if proprietors
once more rose above the commercial spirit, which
was wont to be no part of the furnishing of a
gentleman, and, setting themselves to find out
what was best worth preserving on their respective
properties, watched over these with the utmost
jealousy — if, among other things, they took as
much trouble to make themselves acquainted with
their wealth of alpines as some of their servants
find it profitable to do.

It might seem Quixotic to suggest a close-time
for rare and beautiful plants, to be fixed, as in the
case of animals at the breeding-season, when they
are flowering and seeding for another generation.
But surely the same restrictions which guard our
game should be placed around those relics of a
glacial age, — which belong to Scotland because she
is what she is, which were there before the Celt, or
even the earlier race he dispossessed, and are still
more a part of the scene than the grouse or the
ptarmigan.

XVI.
THE SAXIFRAGES

IT is interesting to ask the Lowland wild flowers :
" Have you any kinsfolk among the moun-
tains?" They will be eager enough to confess,
however roundabout the relationship may be, since
it is esteemed rather an honour, as was his kinship
with the Macgregors in the secret heart of Bailie
Nicol Jarvie.

" My mother, Elspeth MacFarlane, was the wife
of my father, Deacon Nicol Jarvie — peace be wi'
them baith — and Elspeth was the daughter of
Parlane MacFarlane, at the Sheeling o' Loch Sloy.
Now, this Parlane MacFarlane, as his surviving
daughter, Maggie MacFarlane, alias MacNab, wha
married Duncan MacNab o' Stuckavrallachan,
can testify, stood as near to your gudeman,
Robert MacGregor, as in the fourth degree o'
kindred."

THE SAXIFRAGES 201

Marguerite, Dandelion, and Daisy shake their
heads and say they are afraid not.

" Though I am so small and as dainty as they,"
says the Daisy sadly, " yet I am not an alpine, nor
the sister of one."

Perhaps the Marguerite is least concerned, as
being a soft eyed and rather stately Lowland
maiden, who has no wish to be stunted.

The Primrose answers, rather vaguely, that she
has heard of a relative, not in the hills indeed, but
beyond them, who dresses ever so prettily in lilac,
not in common yellow. Her cousin, the cowslip,
once met her in Caithness.

" Lots," says the Lady's-mantle. " Next time you
go to the Highlands, just mention my name, and
they will come trooping down to the glen-mouth to
meet you."

" Not so common as that," says that blushing
coquette, the Day-catchfly. "There is just one
little clan of my family that lives apart and quite
select on their native hill. Some have been here
on a visit, and seemed to like the place very well,
although they kept to the grand garden, and never
came out to see me here by the water-side."

" We believe we have," says the blue-eyed
Forget-me-not — who could forget her ? — and

202 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

Veronica, " but they are far too high for such
as we."

One would like a word with the gentians, if one
only knew where to find them. They are absent
from the hedgerow. They do not enter the woods,
or lodge by the burn-side. There is not one, so far
as I know, within miles of where I am at the
present moment. So that most people have never
seen any of them, and only a few know them, even
by name.

The most accommodating of all still likes a
matured piece of turf, or a firm springy river-bank,
such as is not to be found everywhere. One
appears here and there among the bents along the
coast.

The handsomest of a charming family is one of
the few British alpines absent from Scotland —
alpine only as the crimson catchfly is — since it
courts the soft Atlantic winds on the mild west
coast of Ireland, and sets up its blue tent for a few
spring weeks on the lower heights of Teesdale.
The snow form holds the ledges of one of our four
mountain gardens.

I have met these gentians in many situations,
and never a tame one — in Shetland, in Orkney,
amid unbented sand-dunes and bare precipices.

THE SAXIFRAGES 203

And to me they partake of the wildness, oft weird-
ness, of their haunts.

Say to the Saxifrage, " Have you any Highland
kin ? "

" It would be more to the purpose to ask if we
have any Lowland ones," will be the stiff reply.
" Or, should we be so unfortunate, will a stream
of rushing water acknowledge any relation
with the portion withdrawn from it for the
mean domestic uses of those who dwell on the
banks ? "

So like their Highland pride ! And yet the boast
would be true. They are our hill plants par
excellence. Nor is it enough to call them the
alpine of our alpines. They are that, and some-
thing more. They overflow the hills into more
distant and drearier regions.

Just about the time when the blue violets are
at their best, there appears among them a showy-
white flower, not recumbent as they are, but up-
right, and twice as tall. It does not cover all the
area of the violets — never, so far as I know, stray-
ing into the woods. It selects where the turf is
fairly firm and old, with a marked preference for a
slope. Such is the only Lowland relation of the
saxifrages ; but for which they could claim, as far

204 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

at least as Scotland is concerned, to be a purely
Highland clan.

This meadow haunter never ventures north so
as to enter the home of the Macgregors, the strong-
hold of the saxifrages. Did it seek to scale the
"promontory by one or two rapid zigzags along
the precipitous face of a slaty-grey rock, which
would otherwise have been inaccessible," it would
only be to find these rude places held by relatives
indeed, but such as might give it scant welcome.
The feud between Celt and Saxon has been healed,
but not that between Highland and Lowland
plants.

Much about the same time that the white is
adding to the brightness of the plain, the opposite
leaved saxifrage is lending an early flush of purple
to the hills. This is the form so very popular in
our gardens as a rockery plant. It grows wild in
these early months, when few are there to see.

One must wait a month or two after the spring
meadow form has faded, and the autumn holiday
enables him to leave the plains for the hills, before
he will see any more saxifrages.

The first to greet him as he breasts the slopes,
just after the earliest flush of heather has crept
over them, is the yellow mountain saxifrage — not

THE SAXIFRAGES 205

a form requiring to be searched for ; it runs along
the fenceless paths which wind round the moun-
tains, between the bracken and the heather, with
all the freedom and at-horneness of one of our
commonest plants. A hillman would no more
think of turning to look at it, than we at so many
daisies and buttercups.

And yet, if it be the first time in those parts,
one needs to waken up, so strangely unlike are
they to anything he is accustomed to. Even now,
often as I have been with them, I find myself
pausing in wonder. There is that about alpines
which makes them wild flowers indeed, and not
simply by courtesy. They are rare, in the most
delicate sense of that word.

Such experiences as these bring out the differences
between mountain and lowland. The Highlands are
a new world of fresh forms, and owe their attrac-
tive as well as recuperating influence to the fact.
On the Glen Isla hills this yellow may be gathered
by the cart load.

The range of the white starry saxifrage comes
not quite so far down, though it is found on the
lower slopes of the hills. In many places it seems
to be the more abundant of the two. * One who
has not seen it growing — say, in some rift of the

206 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

rock exposed by the wearing of the mountain
torrent — cannot even imagine how lovely it is, or
how fitly it is named. White, and starry, and
saxifrage — how charming must that, which has
three such names, be !

Indeed, both these forms are lovely — at once the
fairest and the commonest of the tribe. If it were
not for fear of consequences, I should say to all
Lowlanders, " See them this very autumn, and
learn what natural loveliness, when in its proper
environment, is." Learn, too, how altogether the
saxifrage is a child of the mist and of the rocks —
not a stone breaker, but a stone adorner, in which
the spirit of the scene looks out.

From these, which thus cluster round the divid-
ing line between hill and plain, I pass at a stride
over many interesting forms to the rarest of all —
those that are in the act of disappearing from the
mountain-top into space.

If one climbs Lochnagar and searches diligently
enough, he may find the snowy and the brook
saxifrages. And if one knows where to look on
Ben Lawers, he will see the one site in Scotland
where grows the drooping saxifrage.

These two, Ben Lawers and Lochnagar, are the
Aberdeen and Perthshire wild -gardens respect-

THE SAXIFRAGES 207

ively, just as Caenlochan and Glen Doile are
those of Forfar. The four form the alpine haunts
of Scotland. Other mountains and gorges have
forms, it may be, even peculiar to themselves, but
in none are so many gathered into one place.

All who have seen the cotyledon growing in
gardens must have rejoiced in it, wondered if
anything so perfect could be wild, and, if so, what
land was favoured with its presence. Yet it
grows in Norway, amid other saxifrages — not
sparingly, but so freely as to form a marked
feature of many scenes. Those who have seen it
in the open, with its great top-heavy trusses,
speak of it with the utmost enthusiasm.

From Norway the saxifrages tend farther north-
ward till they enter within the arctic circle.

There are really three divisions among our
alpines, with no very distinct lines between, but
still rudely separable. Some are simply stunted
Lowland plants, whose tendency is distinctly
southward. These I have spoken of as Shetland
pony alpines.

Others are in their proper places on the hills,
where they lead the little intense life peculiar to
the fairy kind, in pure enjoyment. They exult in
their lofty dwelling-place ; their favourite food is

208 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

the schist, their breath the hill breezes. They
tend neither northward nor southward. These
are the true alpines.

There are those which are at once alpines and
arctics. They appear at a certain high altitude,
from which they climb up to the loftiest summits ;
and beyond that, they are found at sea-level in
the polar regions, where they grow with the
freedom of natives. To this division belong the
saxifrages.

Several of our hill, and even of our heath plants,
chiefly among the shrubs, go north. Even a few
denizens of the plain are given to eccentric move-
ments. The poppy — that vagrant of our waste
places and cornfields — passes over our hills without
stopping (possibly because they are too windy to
light on), and beautifies the arctic lowlands. The
summer there, if short, is thus made gay while it
lasts.

To those who associate only desolation with the
far north, the following picture from the dreary
east coast of Greenland, by the hand of Nansen,
may come as a surprise.

" A little past noon we reached a small island,
which seemed to us the loveliest spot we had ever
seen on the face of the earth/' And we must

THE SAXIFRAGES 209

remember that Nansen was familiar with the rich
alpine flora of Norway. " There was grass,
heather " (which must have been the ling), " sorrel,
and numbers of bright flowers. It was a simple
paradise, and wonderfully delightful we found it,
to be stretched on the green sward, in the full
blaze of the sun. There we gathered a few flowers,
in memory of the little Greenland idyl."

The bright flowers would doubtless include
many poppies — it may be, in marshy places, a few
buttercups ; but by far the greater number would
be the various saxifrages.

The saxifrage is the arctic flower. As soon as
the snows rise, it appears. Wherever black earth
or black rock is exposed, it takes possession. It is
the first and most daring of explorers. No place
so northernly that it may not visit. It seems to
be able to cross barriers of white that never melt.
In one of the recent Arctic Expeditions the saxi-
frage was seen to cling to a piece of rock protrud-
ing from the snow —

It comes before the snowbird dares, and takes
The northern wind with beauty.

Everyone knows that once upon a time the ice-
field lay very much farther down over the
Continent, banishing every living thing to the
14

210 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

South of Europe. Our own land was practically
wiped out, buried fathoms deep. As the sheet
slowly shrank and retreated northwards, life
followed and took possession.

Among plants, the hardier and smaller were in
advance ; the larger and more succulent waited
till the chilled and sodden earth was warmed
and dried, and the danger of devastating floods
was past. The English Channel was then a
land valley, so that no obstacle checked the
onward march.

For a while the first comers had all this land
to themselves. They were satisfied with little,
could endure much, and were able to cling to
any support, above the reach of the tumbling
waters, caused by the melting of the ice. They
held possession of the lowlands, the hills being
capped with white, and the glens blocked with
glaciers.

As the climate became still milder, and the
ice-field shrank farther back, the main body of
big strong plants ventured forward. Unable to
contend with those luxuriant growers on their
own ground, the snow flowers took to the hill-
slopes. Closely followed, they clambered yet
higher up, seizing on every nook and coign of

THE SAXIFRAGES 211

vantage, rooting themselves wherever they could
find a sprinkling of soil or a crack in the rock.
Thus snow plants were changed into alpines.

At length they reached an altitude where
they could defy competition. There they have
remained from that distant time till now, and
there they will remain so long as they are
fairly dealt by. Districts where the land was
mainly flat, or the heights were only moderate,
— less, say, than two thousand feet, — gave no
refuge to the first comers against their pursuers.
Those that ventured to climb were caught as in
a trap, and killed out. Such places number no
alpines in their flora.

But Forfar, Aberdeen, and Perth, chiefly near
where the three counties meet, offered the heights
of Monega, Mad Crag, Lochnagar, and, a little
farther off, Ben Lawers, together with such stern
defiles as Caenlochan, Caenness, and Glen Doile.
Therefore it comes to pass that we are so rich
in hill plants.

Certain of the fugitives planted garrisons or
contingents on the hills by the way, while the
main body followed on the track of the ice,
after it had left our land bare from Tweed to
Shetland. Chief among such were the saxifrages,

212 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

which thus became at once hill plants and snow
plants, alpines and arctics.

And so the division arose between our arctic
alpines, which followed on — our alpines, which
made themselves at home on the hills, and sent
no representatives north, and our plain plants,
which were not robust enough either to climb
or to follow.

XVII
AMONG THE SOUTHERN UPLANDS

pass from the Highlands to the Borders
is of the nature of an anti-climax. Nothing
here was lofty enough to give shelter to such
snow plants as may have retreated up their sides.
The southern uplands are moorland and sub-
alpine.

What rare wild flowers there are, may best be
shaded off by what are missing. No rare
saxifrages, no snowy gentian, no rock speedwell,
no mountain forget-me-not, of the northern alpine

213

2i4 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

area, grows on those more moderate heights with
their shallower glens.

I am settled by the Border stream, and looking
forward to a long walk over the hills. This is
in the yearly round. It has been my delight
to make myself as much at home on the heights
above the Tweed as on those of the Perthshire
Tay and the Forfar Isla and Esks.

Several days are spent in getting myself into
condition. In my day and night fishing I have
done a good deal of tumbling up and down the
banks; but climbing is a thing apart, and needs
a training by itself.

I start up one of the wild side-glens of this
portion of the valley. The burn, innocent-looking
as it is to-day, responds like an untamed colt to
the lightest lash of a cloud, by breaking into a
gallop, or clean taking the bit between its teeth
and careering headlong down.

Oppressively desolate and lonely at first, these
glens take possession of one after a while, and
become wonderfully attractive. A day with the
rod is pleasant, if only as a strong contrast to
casting along the milder course of the Tweed.
One gets used to the crossing and recrossing of
the sheep over the stony channel. So, too, do the

AMONG THE SOUTHERN UPLANDS 215

trout. The paddling of the "trotters" does not
seem to scare or keep them from taking the hook.

Countless little springs, without the strength
to form a channel or a current to lend them
character, sipe through the grass on to the road,
to find some hidden way into the stream. Their
moist track down the slope is marked by the
purple of hairy sedum, by the pink of alpine
willow herb, and the yellow of the marsh
buttercup.

The goal is Windlestrae Law — the highest
hill in the neighbourhood. The peak — more
than two thousand feet above — is, as yet, hidden
from sight by intervening ridges. A slope, not
very steep in itself, is so beset with shrubs as
to put one's endurance to the test. There is
no escaping a wide belt of heather. Ling, in
this case, certainly deserves its name, being
longer than usual.

Heather, when knee-deep, so that one cannot
very conveniently lift each step clear over the
top, is very troublesome to walk among. From
its recumbent habit, it has a nasty tendency to
catch one just above the boot.

Three feet of ling, two of which are trailing, is
not only a drag, but very much of a trap as well.

216 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

In case of undue haste, one is apt to be tripped up
and rolled over and over among the pink blossom.
The latter experience mainly overtakes one in
running down - hill. Climbing is too serious a
business in itself for any such frivolity.

The moist places are thickly dotted with sphag-
num, both stout and fragile ; and of all pleasant
shades, from very pale to ruby-tipped. The fleecy
water variety floats out on the little dark pools
of thfe peat. Much of it — more, I think, than ever I
saw before — is in fruit. In my mental register,
that experience is noted down as " A day among
the sphagnums." In my little map, which no one
ever sees, Windlestrae is named Sphagnum Hill.

A day among the cloudberries, too. These
smallest of our native brambles seem well-nigh to
cover the summit. Many bear fruit. Some are
in flower — a very pretty white blossom, like the rest
of the brambles. One entire cloudberry, root and
all, I put into my buttonhole, and wear for the rest
of the day.

The boggy ground — rather too bogg}% in some
places, for comfort — seems to suit the plant. It is
pretty widely distributed under similar conditions,
and is perhaps more characteristic of these uplands
than any other form. It is as near an approach to

AMONG THE SOUTHERN UPLANDS 217

an alpine as we are likely to find. Since there can
be no rivalry between a moss and a wild flower,
Wiridlestrae also appears on my map as " Cloud-
berry Hill."

A very early hour of the second morning after
finds me dropping behind a curtaining ridge, out
of sight of the placid Tweed. Before me, a
pastoral region slopes down to form the banks of
the stream, and melts away over the gently
rounded hilltops.

The vale is suggestive of undefined emotions
and pensive thoughts. Appealing to the imagin-
ative and impressionable of bygone days, it has
found utterance in sad and tragic ballads. Who
says that a scene may not have a character ? Is
it fancy that there are lines of ineffaceable sorrow ?
I sit down by Yarrow-side to rest. The way left
behind, though not long, — only ten miles, — needed
a good deal of stiff climbing.

The whole morning had been delightful. As yet
there is no hint of change to quicken the pace
— only a little mist on the distant hills ahead,
whence the gentle airs come. A leisurely saunter
along the even ground will be a pleasant contrast
to the ups and downs.

The lake is a part, the eye of the scene. As in the

218 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

case of other eyes, much of the expression is there
— reflection among the rest. Its shadows are reflec-
tions, in the deeper sense. Sad St. Mary's ! A good
deal is in that " sad." In its silent depths, memories
lie. When I come in sight, it is in one of its
quieter moods, not cheerful ; it never is — only still.

Even as I look, the aspect changes : the trouble
comes to the surface, the face darkens, the spirit
of gloom sweeps over it with a moan. Out of the
dark cloud comes the rain. Storm on St. Mary's
has something of a human outburst in it. Rain
falls with the bitter significance of tears.

Five minutes are long enough to wet one
through. The seven miles to " Tibbie's " become a
dogged walk with water — water everywhere, from
cap and finger-tips to boots. The Selkirk coach
has just come in, full of passengers. There is no
getting near the fire, and the floor looks miserable
with the drippings.

A lull tempts me out again. Along the shores
of "the Lake of Lowes" the mist- winged storm
comes along worse than ever. Now all is natural.
The sadness has dropped behind — only, the wild-
ness is in the mountain fastness, from which the
wind and the mist come forth, to play roughly on
the plain.

AMONG THE SOUTHERN UPLANDS 219

The ascending road leads into the midst of the
fray — into the very presence of the raider. The
storm takes visible form in the mist which sweeps
past — swirls, lifts for a moment to reveal a few
yards of the hillside, and then, for a like brief
interval, settles round, wrapping me to my very
clothes.

Two hours later, when I am beginning to think
that I have been the plaything of the elements
about long enough, I come suddenly on shelter. I do
not see the cottage until I can almost touch it. In
some of the stiller moments of the storm I must have
passed unawares ; but the veil lifts, and there it is.

The thought of lodging had not troubled me
when I started, nor in the earlier hours of the day.
If it came, good and well ; if not, then the earth
was big enough. But I had not reckoned on this.
Certain who preceded me, tell of their experience in
the same neighbourhood : —

" As there were large quantities of the common
bracken, we unanimously resolved to bivouac there
for the night ; and having partaken of our evening
meal, and drunk from the clear gushing stream, we
laid ourselves down to sleep, with the sky above as
our curtain, and the majestic hill at our backs
and on either side as our bed-posts. Our love for

220 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

the romantic seemed now to be indulged to the
full; and what strange thoughts came into our
heads as we peeped out through the ferns which
grew so thickly around us !

" One by one we dropped to sleep ; but scarce had
we shut our eyes, when our hands, which we had
left outside the covering as barometers, told us of
a change of weather. We should soon have been
drenched had we not taken up our beds and
adjourned to a hut, which, to all appearance, served
as a maternity hospital for all the sheep in the
neighbourhood.

" It was now twelve o'clock, with the rain pour-
ing in torrents, and the wind whistling in fitful
gusts through our fragile domicile, and one of
our sorrowing friends was heard to whisper —

Sic a night
As ne'er puir sinner was abroad in."

Sic another night was this, and such mayhap
would have been my fate had the storm delayed
its coming. In my weakness, the prospect of a
tighter roof brings a sense of relief. I had been
here before.

A shepherd's cottage has been converted into a
sort of hostelry, for the behoof of passers through
the defile. In old days it might have been called

AMONG THE SOUTHERN UPLANDS 221

a " Spital." The bouse is full ; there is not much
to fill. I might not have been lodged at all, but
that it was a night

Wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,
The lion and the belly-pinched wolf
Keep their fur dry.

Even the four dogs are inside.

The shepherd's wife not only takes me in, but
clothes me. The suit is her husband's. I never
saw the wearer, who was away at Peebles Fair
with the season's lambs ; but I have good reason to
suppose that he is twice my weight.

For two whole days I live and move and have
my being in these clothes. I revel in them, tent
in them, roll about in them, insist that my own are
not dry, until the kindly lender laughingly asks if
I would like to take them away with me.

Anglers gather in from the streams, or are blown
in by the gusts which set every door a-rattling and
every inmate a-shivering. No one has been success-
ful. Rising water seldom yields a basket. Trout
are too much concerned in looking after themselves,
and in seeking the eddies which are last to be
blotted out.

These men have been tempted up from Moffat by
the rain-bearing clouds, which blew from that direc*

222 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

tion, and had got more than they wanted. The
coach rattles up and takes them off'. The house is
left to those who are to stay there.

" I would just hae to be doin' wi' a seat at the
kitchen fire, as the room was let to a lady and
gentleman frae Liverpool."

That is how my hostess puts it. Worse fate by
far might have befallen me.

Happily, the gentleman overhears, and cour-
teously invites me to join them. The blind is
drawn, the lamp lit, and chairs placed round the
table. In a rubber of whist we forget the storm,
or only hear it at intervals, to the increase of our
sense of comfort by contrast. The louder it raves,
the more we hug ourselves. Had you ever a
rubber of whist under similar conditions ? If so,
you will know all it means.

I am abroad, bright and early. Never fresher
morning broke over these or any other hills. The
son, a shepherd like his father, is called in, and
gives minute directions how to go so as to avoid
the peat-hags. I am sure I understand him, and
so take my way up the slope. The sundew grows
in moist places ; so does the water forget-me-not,
the rarest of its kind to be found on these hills.

Of course I do not avoid the peat-hags. Indeed

AMONG THE SOUTHERN UPLANDS 223

I get into the very midst of them ; and having
once lost a track, at best so faintly indicated that
only a shepherd could follow, I never recover it.
More than once I have to descend my own height
on to a treacherous-looking black bottom, rendered
none the firmer by yesterday's rain. By sheer
persistence I somehow bore my way to Loch
Skene.

The mountain sorrel is everywhere. The small
crowded flowers, rising above the kidney-shaped
leaves, are effective, from the reddish tint they
share with the rest of the family. Natural beauty
owes much to lowly agents. The wilds could better
spare many a brighter flower. This is a sub-alpine
that passes into the lower alpine regions, and after
that reappears, to give a welcome touch of colour
to the arctic lowlands. It is thus interesting,
as being one of the northernly tending arctic
alpines.

The mossy saxifrage, so familiar in our gardens
for its cushions of much-cut leaves, is the com-
monest of the few — three, I think — sub-alpine
species growing on these hills. The other two are
the starry and opposite-leaved saxifrages.

Still another plant — the alpine enchanter's
nightshade — is characteristic. The ordinary species

224 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

covers the floor of some of the woods lower
down. Neither is to be regarded as strictly low-
land ; and the alpine form may only be the other,
modified by changed conditions. Both have in
their fantastic flowers a certain weird suggestive-
ness of their name, especially when growing in the
shade.

Somewhere around, a friend, who had his home
by the Tweed-side, once made an experiment. He
was a rare man, such as one meets among the
common herd only twice or thrice in a lifetime.
Dearly he loved these alpine fairy plants ; and
he had a strong wish to get others to care for them
as well, and to take a pleasure in climbing the hills
to look at them.

Out of very unpromising elements he formed an
Alpine Club, which exists to this day, although its
pure and noble guide is gone. There are those
who reserve such words as unpractical for such
schemes as these ; but this one, happily, for those
who became a part of it, took shape. Some who
ran the ordinary risks of becoming sordid, feel all
the better for a day on the hills which overlook
their homes and dwarf their everyday lives.

My friend) naturally, wished to see his favourites
as often as possible, But it was a long way to

AMONG THE SOUTHERN UPLANDS 225

come ; and, living so far apart as they did, he could
visit only two or three at a time. He was, for all
the world, like a man whose children are scattered,
and who grieves that he can no longer have them
all together as he used to do. So he fixed upon a
common home, and spent a few summer days in
tenderly gathering two or three of each, and
placing them as near together as their differing
habits would allow.

One can picture the scene. I think, by patient
search, could pick it out. And it would be
worth finding ; for if ever spot on earth was
hallowed by the purity and simplicity of man, that
spot was.

It would be bordered by a channel, whose rocky
shelving, laid bare by the rude torrent, gave root-
hold to the starry saxifrage. It would include a
marshy area, tender with the blue of forget-me-not,
white with mountain avens, and touched with the
red of sundew. It would possess a shadow,
quaintly pretty with the spikes of enchanter's
nightshade ; and a rough track lit with the scarlet
fruit of the stone bramble, and overrun with the
white purple - tipped blossoms of the wood vetch.
These at least.

Alas ! for the best laid schemes. His face wore

226 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

a half-vexed, half-amused look as he told me the
sequel. One day he reached his paradise, to find it
despoiled ; and, some time afterward, he learned the
cause. Certain botanists from Edinburgh, with
vascula of greedy dimensions, came by chance that
way, and doubtless reported the spot as an ex-
tremely rich floral area.

Loch Skene is flanked on one side by Whitcoom,
which shows its summit just over the sub-alpine
region — some two thousand six hundred feet
above sea-level. This mountain is interesting as
forming the culminating height in these parts ;
moreover, it stands at the touching point of Selkirk,
Peebles, and Dumfries.

In these uplands, Whitcoom holds a position
similar to that of those other culminating heights
which at once attach and separate Aberdeen, Perth,
and Forfar. It is the hilly centre and stronghold
in the south, as they are in the north.

What is not found here need scarcely be looked
for elsewhere. And yet the chief rarities its
slopes have to offer are the alpine meadow rue, the
cranberry, and the veined willow.

If they fell within the popular notion of wild
flowers, it would delight me to talk about the ferns ;
the rather as I regard these hills as the fern

AMONG THE SOUTHERN UPLANDS 227

garden of Scotland, just as I regard the northern
hills as the alpine garden. If some of the
rarer forms are absent, those which are there,
abound.

The brittle fern, the most graceful of all the
forms — and what is rarity, compared with grace,
except to the dry - as - dust naturalist — is, in
many places, as common as the bracken or the
grass.

The male parsley fern waves above the wastes of
stones, and hides away the rudeness under its
feathery fronds; the oblong Woodsia is common
here — a corrie or linn, in the flank of this same
Whitcoom, is a favourite haunt ; while the filmy
fern, in countless numbers, seems to filter every
drip of water.

Before leaving the hostelry, I open the visitors'
book and run down row upon row of uninteresting
names. On turning over a page, my eye is
arrested by the sketch of a tourist's back,
with fishing - basket and other belongings of
sport and travel strapped thereon as if for final
departure. The man who did this knew the use
of his pencil.

The lines beneath, which I quote, less because of
their literary merit — the author was not so much

228 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND

at home with the pen — than for the pathos and
human interest behind a rude form, ran thus —

Scottish lakes are bonnie,
Scottish hills are high,

So are Scots hotel bills-
Scotland, good-bye !

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