ock sides; while the flatter ledges, that form the uneven
floor upon which we tread, bristle thick with the stiff, cartilaginous,
many-cleft fronds of at least two species of chondrus,--the common
carrageen, and the smaller species, _C. Norvegicus_. Now, in
the thickly-spread fucoids of this Highland shore we have not a
_very_ inadequate representation of the first, or thallogenic
vegetation,--that of the great Silurian period, as exhibited in the
rocks, from the base to nearly the top of the system. And should we add
to the rocky tract, rich in fucoids, a submarine meadow of pale shell
sand, covered by a deep green swathe of zostera, with its jointed
saccharine roots and slim flowers, unfurnished with petals, we would
render it perhaps more adequately representative still.

[Illustration: Fig. 9.

OSMUNDA REGALIS. (Royal Fern.)]

We cross the beach, and enter on a bare brown moor, comparatively
fertile, however, in the club mosses. One of the largest and finest of
the species, _Lycopodium clavatum_, with its long scaly stems and
upright spikes of lighter green,--altogether a graceful though
flowerless plant, which the herd-boy learns to select from among its
fellows, and to bind round his cap,--goes trailing on the drier spots
for many feet over the soil; while at the edge of trickling runnel or
marshy hollow, a smaller and less hardy species, _Lycopodium inundatum_,
takes its place. The marshes themselves bristle thick with the deep
green horse tail, _Equisetum fluviatile_, with its fluted stem and
verticillate series of linear brandies. Two other species of the same
genus, _Equisetum sylvaticum_ and _Equisetum arvense_, flourish on the
drier parts of the moor, blent with two species of minute ferns, the
moonwort and the adder's tongue,--ferns that, like the magnificent royal
fern (_Osmunda regalis_), though on a much humbler scale, bear their
seed cases on independent stems, and were much sought after of old for
imaginary virtues, which the modern schools of medicine refuse to
recognize. Higher up the moor, ferns of ampler size occur, and what
seems to be rushes, which bear atop conglobate panicles on their smooth
leafless stems; but at its lower edge little else appears than the
higher Acrogens,--ferns and their allies. There occurs, however, just
beyond the first group of club mosses,--a remarkable exception in a
solitary pine,--the advance guard of one of the ancient forests of the
country, which may be seen fa