MAP OF BANFFSHIRE
THE COUNTY OF BANFF.
The county generally is under cultivation of the highest order. The valleys are intersected with rich meadows and pasture-lands, which are stocked with cattle of the choicest breeds. There are numerous woods and plantations, both luxuriant and verdant, though there is a great want of hedges. Agriculture is gradually extending upwards towards the mountains. Moors and morasses are fast disappearing. In places where the wail of the Plover, the birr of the Moorcock, and the scream of the Merlin, were the only sounds,—the mellow voice of the Lark, the Mavis, and the Blackbird, are now to be heard in the fields and the woods throughout the country.
AND NORTH ABERDEENSHIRE.
BEN MACDHUI.
In the extreme south-western district lies the great mountain knot to which we have already referred. The scenery of this neighbourhood can scarcely be equalled, even in Switzerland, though it is at present almost entirely unknown. Cairngorm, Benbuinach, Benaven, and Ben Macdhui, surround Loch Avon and the forest of Glen Avon. The Banffshire side of Ben Macdhui forms a magnificent precipice of 1500 feet, which descends sheer down into the loch. This lonely and solemn lake is fed by the streams flowing from the snows that lie all the year round in the corries of the mountains above. These streams leap down from the bare and jagged cliffs in the form of broken cataracts. One of these falls has a descent of 900 feet. The parish of Kirkmichael, in which this scenery occurs, is almost unpeopled. It has only one village—Tomintoul—the highest in Scotland. The people who inhabit it and the other hamlets of the parish, are of a different race and religion, and speak a different language, from those who inhabit the middle and lower parts of the county.[31]
EDWARD’S ROUNDS.
To return to the labours of our Naturalist. For about fifteen years Edward made the greater part of his researches at night. He made them in the late evening and in the early morning, snatching his sleep at intervals between the departing night and the returning day.