Wild Flowers of Scotland
INTRODUCTIONESS has been said in a pleasant way about L the wild flowers than about the wild animals of Scotland. Yet our four-footed creatures are few, and their tale easily told. Our wild bircls, too, have been sadly thinned out, with the exception of sea forms and fIiese belong to other coasts as well. Birds have wings, ancl 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 colnmon border across which they mingle with kindred 9 10 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND forms. Like ourselves, t, hey 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 rucler eleme
...nts 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 shadecl woodlancl glade, or on sunlly bank, seeing that Scotland is not n acle 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-clie where the peregrine builds, is bad to get at, either from the grassy toy, or froin 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 eagles eggs from the face of a Grampian precipice, it needs a bolder one still to rob that little coloily of alpines, faintly glowing, through - the field - glass, five hundred feet above or below appears that in a land like this the pursuit of the rarer wild flowers need not be lacking in manliness. If they do not run away, it is because they are safe froin all but the boldest, who vill 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 thern rnust be at least as hardy as a ptarmigan shooter. No scene so rude as to cleter them, or so lofty as to keep then1 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 rrlight be awkward. They hide in the shadow of the boulder, or peep from the crevice of the rock to see who rnay be the strange visitor, in solitudes so seldom disturbed by human footstep. And the results at the close of a long day, wheil one has dropped down the mountain-side and perhaps got into his slippers, are certainly not less a 12 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND matter of boast than the bag of game... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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