No. 2. A beautiful most luxuriant growing oak, in one of the sweetest sunny spots of the sweetest valley of our Highlands. This tree, of nearly two hundred solid feet of timber, and 80 years of age, was growing upon the bare shelf of a sound mica-schist rock. From underneath this shelf, several feet down in front, a most exuberant spring welled out, and the roots spread down over {201} the rock to the mouth of the crystal spring, no doubt tracing inward the course of the limpid waters into the rocky chambers of the Naiad. We had much conjecture how this tree came to be growing on the bare shelf, and finally concluded, that the nymph of the spring, while she sat there gazing on her beauties, under the varying dimpling reflection of the living waters, her rosy feet bathed by the glassy flood, had been surprised by some rude Celt, and to effect escape from his rough embrace, had been transformed by Diana into a tree. Yet whether of natural or supernatural origin, it was by the people of the glen held of miraculous virtue, and the sickly children were brought to be dipped in the spring after being borne several times round the charm-tree. When torn from its seat, the tree, though sound, and having a level fall (we saw it fall), broke across about twenty feet up, where the stem was about eight feet in circuit; _this was owing to the very soft tender nature of the wood, which, although consisting of very large annual growths, was, when sawn out, the most porous insufficient Scots oak we have ever seen_. As this fact may be ascribed to the supernatural,—the heart of the nymph beginning to soften towards the Celt at the time Diana interfered, accounting well for {202} the soft texture of the heart-wood of the tree, we shall not press it as a proof on either side of the controversy. Perhaps sober reasoners may think this all phantasy, and conclude, that the tree, from deficiency of substantial earthy food, and subsisting principally on _slops_ (being mainly nourished by drinking of the delicious well), would, like an animal under similar circumstances, be of soft flabby consistency. The above fact is opposed to common opinion—a Highlander always choosing his oaken staff from off a rock, as being most to depend upon; yet perhaps this preference is owing to some association with the hardness of the rock itself.