All this notwithstanding, the periphery of Perthshire may roughly be said to embrace all the wealth of beauty reflected in the Tay, and all the wealth of memories that mingles with its flowing current. And richly endowed is this prince of highland and lowland streams, both with beauty and associations. The centre of the basin of the Tay is somewhere in Glenalmond, between the sweet woodland shades of the "burn-brae" of Lynedoch, under which "Bessie Bell and Mary Gray" rest, with their lover at their feet, and the bare and stilly place where "sleeps Ossian in the Narrow Glen," and where murmurs along "But one meek streamlet, only one, The Song of Battles, and the breath Of stormy war and violent death;" while above, on the summits of the hills, the grey stones and cairns still keep watch, and, interpreted by tradition, point out to us the place where Fingal once held sway in the very heart of Perthshire and of the Caledonian Forest. [Illustration: _Walker & Boutall sc._ THE TAY.] Of the ancient woods that are supposed once to have clothed the country, remains may yet, perhaps, be seen in those glorious sylvan demesnes that surround Taymouth in Breadalbane and Blair in Athole; Dupplin, and Drummond Castle, in Strathearn, and Rossie Priory in the Carse of Gowrie; Scone Palace and Dunkeld, Moncrieffe and Kinnoull, overlooking the central and lower reaches of the Tay. Traces of them may also be found in the Woods of Methven, that once gave friendly shelter to Wallace, and in those ragged and giant pines that thinly dot the hillsides in Rannoch and Glenlyon, over which Bruce was once chased by the Lord of the Isles and the English invaders. But a new forest has grown up within a century, to shade once more the waters of the Tay. Whatever may have been the case in Macbeth's or Shakespeare's time, "great Birnam Wood" can no longer be seen from "high Dunsinane Hill" for the growth of trees--the "moving grove"--that has risen up between. The Bruar Water and its falls are now shaded from the sun and the northern blasts, as Burns longed to see them, by "lofty firs and fragrant birks," as well as by their craggy cliffs; and not content with thus fulfilling the poet's wish, the Lords of Athole, from the "Planting Duke" downward, have been nobly ambitious of clothing their once bare hills with forest to the summits. Beside the pillars of ruined Dunkeld Cathedral--almost as worthy of reverence as they--stand the two "Parent Larches," the first trees of their kind introduced into Scotland. Planted only a century and a half ago, millions of their seed and kin have now overrun Perthshire and the Highlands, proving themselves thoroughly at home in the soil and air of the Tay. [Illustration: "BIRKS" OF ABERFELDY.] [Illustration: ABERFELDY, FROM THE WEST.]