earth that we can realise in some measure the hardships they endured, and how greatly we should esteem the precious heritage handed down to us by them. Away to the left is the parish of Lochwinnoch, with its ancient castle of Barr, which is said to have been built by men who wrought at a penny a day; and of which it is also said that at one time, when being besieged, and when the garrison was about to surrender from want of provisions, one of them threw over the heel of a skim-milk kebbock, all that remained of their stock, and that the besiegers, taking this as a mark of abundance raised the siege and departed. And not so far away to the left, 2 miles to the north of the village of Kilbirnie, are the ruins of Glengarnock Castle, built some 700 years ago. Tradition tells us that it was once occupied by Hardy Knute, the hero of the fine old ballad of that name. It is now the resort of picnickers for purposes of innocent amusement; but also, sad to tell, of the neighbouring farmers, who make it a kind of quarry for stone dykes and similar purposes. Looking north we have Ben Lomond and the frontier masses of the Perthshire Grampians, and the serrated ridge of Cowal and the Loch Eck district. Due west we have the hills around the Kyles of Bute and the coast of Cantyre, and Goatfell, with Innellan, Toward, Loch Striven, the Kyles, the lovely Bute, with Mount Stuart and Kilchattan Bay, and the two Cumbraes, with the far-extended Millport and its reminiscence of the former parish minister who magnified his bishopric and prayed for “the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland.” The view more immediately below us, including the beautifully-shaped Knock Hill, with the still more beautiful half-moon Bay of Largs and the town in its bosom, and the braes rising in gentle slope all around, and the Roads of Fairlie, which, with the tide so far out, and the wind rippling the surface of the water, seems to us to resemble a curling pond (the ripples having the appearance of little drifts of snow here and there), all go to constitute as lovely a prospect as can be had anywhere on the West Coast. It will be interesting to remember here that if at this place the water is narrow, it is correspondingly deep to make up for it; and that, as Geikie in one of his books shows us, if the land all over Scotland could be raised a few feet, it would add about 150 miles to the size of the country away to the west of Ardnamurchan, and dry up considerably the Firth of Clyde, but that there would still be deep water between Fairlie and the Greater Cumbrae.