ng of lichen; and, by the way, if adepts in the cryptogamic
department of botany shall succeed in finding a test of the precise age
of those lichens, which they believe they have proved to be the growth
of centuries, a key of the most valuable kind will be obtained for
discovering the age of stone monuments.[85]

[Footnote 85: Any one who desires to see the extent to which science can
find employment in this arid-looking corner of organic life, may look at
a "Memoir on the Spermogones and Pycnides of Filamentous, Fruticulose,
and Foliaceous Lichens," by Dr William Lauder Lindsay, in the 22d volume
of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.]

Turn now in another direction. At the head of Loch Fyne, near Dunderar,
the grim tower of the Macnaughtons--which, from some decorations on it,
looks hugely like as if it had been built in the seventeenth century
with the stones of an old church--we find a tuft of trees with a dyke
round it, called Kilmorich. It is a graveyard evidently, though it may
not have been recently opened; the surface is uneven, and several rough
stones, which may have been placed there at any time, stick through the
earth. These, after a deliberate inspection, are found to have nothing
of a sculptural character. But a small piece of rounded stone appears
above the grass, and a little grubbing discloses a font, faintly
decorated with some primitive fluting, on which a stone-mason would look
with much scorn, and a scratching of a galley, the symbol of the Argyll
family, or some other of the races descended from ancient sea-kings.
This gives encouragement, and a sharper glance around betrays a
singular-looking rounded headstone, in which are two crescent-shaped
holes. There are corresponding holes on the portion under the sod, which
thus completes the rounded head of an ancient Scoto-Irish cross. The
next point is to find the shaft--it lies not far off, deep in the turf.
And when we take the grass and moss from its face, it discloses some
extremely curious quadrilateral decorations, quite peculiar, and not in
conformity with any type of form which would enable its date to be
guessed at within a century or two of the reality.

Passing through the rich woods of Ardkinglas, in a few miles we reach
the burying-ground, called of old Kilmaglas, but now the well-kept
churchyard, in which stands the modern church of Strachur. There are
many who will remember the white house glimmering through the trees,