A Botanico-Geological Excursion into the Grampians

Abstract

THE Scottish Alpine Botanical Club is wont to hold a spring meeting for mingled plant-hunting and conviviality in some Highland district where the Alpine flora can be reached at not too great a distance from oatcakes and whiskey. The Geological class in the University of Edinburgh is in the practice of terminating its labours for the winter by taking an excursion of a week's duration to some part of the country where professor and students can find interesting rocks, with enough of food (such as it may be) to eat, and of beds, or shake-downs, to sleep on. This year the two bodies, drawn together perhaps as much by animal spirits as by scientific enthusiasm, coalesced and held a conjoint gathering at Clova —a lonely hamlet on the Forfarshire Grampians, well known to botanists for the richness of its Alpine flora, and to geologists for its glacier relics and its ancient metamorphic rocks. The following notes by the respective leaders of the plant-seekers and the rock-hunters were communicated to the Edinburgh Botanical Society on the 14th ult.:—