Note. This list has been prepared by Mr Douglas partly from Dr Collie's Heights (Vol. II., p. 168), partly from the Ordnance Maps, and partly from information supplied by Club members. An asterisk after a height denotes that it is taken from the O.S. maps. The other heights are from aneroid measurements by members of the Club. Inaccuracies will no doubt be found to exist in it, and the Editor will be glad to receive any information which may lead to their correction.

IN PTARMIGAN LAND.

BY LIONEL W. HINXMAN.

HIGH up in the heart of the Aberdeenshire grouse-moors, where the upper waters of the Gairn have cut a deep valley through the rolling heather-covered moorlands, lies the lodge, nestling under the steep hillside, and sheltered from the north and east by a small plantation of stunted firs and larches, whose twisted stems and broken tops speak eloquently of many a hard struggle for existence with winter gales and drifted snow.

This plantation is for the birds a very oasis in a treeless wilderness. The grass and wood sedges grow rank and long among the stems, and hide the domed nests of the willow-wrens. Wood pigeons come to the spruce firs, and the hawks would fain build but for the ever-watchful eye of the keeper down below, anxious for the safety of the two or three broods of blackgame that shelter here in the long heather. A little burn comes down through the heart of the wood from the moorland above, falling in miniature cascades and tinkling rapids among the great stones brought down by the winter floods that fill its bed. Here all day long the delicate grey wagtails run restlessly to and fro on the rocks, or hover in the air like great yellow butterflies, their long slender tails drooping and quivering at every moment. The sweet sudden song of the redstart comes from the larches, and his nest is close by amongst the loose stones of the dyke. Higher up, near the edge of the moor, a pair or two of ring ousels build in the rocky banks, and somewhere along the burn the dipper is sure to be seen, curtseying energetically from a flat stone or walking unconcernedly at the bottom of a clear pool.

The lodge is a long, low, comfortable-looking building, with rough-harled granite walls, flagged roof, and rustic porch of untrimmed fir stems. From the front of the house, the road and a sloping grass field measure the breadth of the glen to the river, which now runs clear and placid enough over its shallow stony bed. But the stems of the

dwarf willows that grow along the margin, barked on the up-stream side by the ice floes, and the deep scores cut in the turf along the bank, tell of the wild times when the ice breaks up in spring, and the stream, swollen by the melting snows of Ben Avon, drives the great masses hurtling and grinding over each other along the banks.

Let us follow the road that leads up the valley to Ptarmigan-land. The river swings pendulum-wise from side to side of the narrow glen, cutting deeply into the peaty banks, from which the bleached and wasted pine roots protrude with a grim suggestion of skeleton forms. Bones they indeed are, the buried remains of the great Caledonian Forest that once stretched far and wide over these barren moorlands. At the convex side of every bend there is a deep pool, on the other a wide shingle beach where the red-billed oyster-catchers pipe shrilly, and the little sandpipers run and flit with crescent wings and quavering whistle.

Close to the road is a green "wallee" (Anglicè, welleye), a spring, where the water oozes up through a yielding carpet of green and red mosses and water-plants. No less than six foxes were taken at this place one winter by the keeper. The bait, the carcass of a sheep a good deal more than "high," and therefore irresistible to Reynard, was thrown on the moss and surrounded by traps placed just beneath the water. The mountain foxes of Ben Avon are splendid fellows. Grey rather than red is the predominating colour in their thick furry coats; they stand higher on the legs, and are altogether larger and more wolf-like than their red cousins of the Lowlands.

The path now leaves the glen, and winds up among a network of steep heather-covered moraines, and hollows filled with dark peaty lochans. Herein are goodly trout, not the starved fingerlings of the mountain torrent below, but plump pounders and two-pounders, wise too, and not easily to be beguiled, save in the late gloaming of a summer evening. A pair of redshanks is sure to be nesting hereabouts. See, here they come, wheeling round and round with wings curiously drooped, and quick, impatient, double whistle, as if frantic at our intrusion on their domain. A

little blue hawk flies out of the heather on the steep side of the moraine, and a few steps farther on the hen bird rises at our feet, and there, in a hollow on the bare ground, are the four beautiful eggs of the merlin, very like those of the kestrel, but more uniform in colour, and of a richer reddish brown.

Two thousand feet of steady climb up the convenient shooting path that winds over the shoulder of the Big Brae, and here is the first snow, filling up and bridging over a deep gully that runs far into the mountain-side. The surface is fast dissolving under the warm May sun, but a very little way down it is still hard nêvé-almost glacier ice-showing blue in the walls of the miniature crevasses. A few hundred feet more and we are on the great tableland that stretches with an average height of 3,500 feet above the sea for twelve miles westwards, and forms the summit of the Cairngorm range, or, as they were formerly and more fittingly called, the Monadhruadh-the Red Mountains.

All around is a scene of sterile desolation. The mountain top is covered with coarse sand and weathered slabs of granite, varied with patches of blackened moss and withered Alpine sedge, or half-melted snow. Every hollow in the gently undulating surface holds a spring, and from every spring, swollen with the melting drifts, bubbles up a rill of the clearest water that runs here and there over the yellow sand until it plunges under the dark arch of a snowdrift and is lost to sight. There was a cool breeze down in the glen, but here it is hot and breathless, the sun beats fiercely on the barren ground, and we are glad to creep under the shade of the nearest granite block-" the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."

Listen! a harsh grating croak comes from the scattered rocks close at hand. Scanning the ground inch by inch, a slight motion catches the eye, and there, only a few yards from our feet, a pair of ptarmigan are crouching among the stones. Look how closely the delicately pencilled grey plumage accords with the weathered surface of the granite; mark the contrast of the brilliant red round the eye of the cock bird, and the feet, thickly feathered to the toes.

Throw a pebble towards them. They rise, and with them half a dozen more till now unseen, while another, which the eye had passed over a minute before as a mere rounded projection from the rock, joins them as they dip over the shoulder of the hill, the broad bands of white across the wings showing conspicuously as they fly.

A dark thundery haze hangs over Glen Quoich and the hills to the west, but to the north the sky is clearer, and beyond the level grey line of the Moray Firth rises the dim outline of Morven in Caithness, and the blue peaks of Sutherland and Ross. Nearer at hand, wave after wave of dark heather-covered moorland stretches away to the horizon. Looking down from such a height the lower hill-tops seem flattened, and the bottoms of the valleys are concealed, giving the effect of a billowy waste almost monotonous in its uniformity, save where an opening to the south affords a glimpse of the meadows on Deeside-an oasis of brilliant green among the surrounding wilderness of brown and grey. Right in front of us rises the beautiful outline of Lochnagar, graceful yet strong, a true granite mountain form.

The spiry peaks and fantastic pinnacles of the west coast, the dents and aiguilles of the Alps, may seem at first sight more impressive. But these appeal rather to the craving for the bizarre and sensational in Nature. Sooner or later they create a feeling of unrest, and the eye returns with a sense of relief to the quiet massive forms, the firm rounded outlines, the "strength in repose" of the great Cairngorms.