It's no substitute for roaming the leafy byways, intriguing gardens and spectacular gorges in one of America's most beautiful college campuses. Rather, the new video presentation, A Journey Through Time and Nature: Cornell Plantations Path, adds a fourth dimension as archival film footage summons scholarly ghosts to join the modern-day walker through a living museum of natural history at Cornell University.

A supplement to the book, Cornell Plantations Path Guide, the VHS videotape is sold for $24.95 or, together with the guidebook, for $33.90. The seven-mile Cornell Plantations Path, which opened in 1994, is a series of interconnected, interpreted walking trails that link historic downtown Ithaca with the university's academic campus, gardens and natural areas.

"If you're getting ready to walk Plantations Path, this video gives a great preview," said Plantations Director Donald Rakow. "After your visit, you can take home a souvenir." Production of the video by the university's Media Services Educational Television Center was made possible, Rakow noted, by a gift from two alumni friends of Cornell Plantations, Maralyn Winsor Fleming and D. Wayne Fleming, Class of 1945.

The video begins with the geological ages that carved the walls of Cascadilla Gorge, the first leg of Plantations Path. As it reaches campus, the video journey offers glimpses of student life in the 1800s, when a new university was growing on the glacier-carved terrain. Horse-drawn blades plow snow and skaters skim a frozen Beebe Lake in a time before collegiate hockey moved to indoor ice. At the peak of the flower-blooming season, viewers eavesdrop on al fresco lectures as 1990s professors ply their trade where illustrious predecessors, including famed horticulturist Liberty Hyde Bailey, once expounded on the science behind all the floral beauty.

Viewers may want to trade the VCR for a planting trowel when the video tour passes through Cornell Plantations' specialty gardens, a tribute to the skills of modern horticulturists, open seven days a week to the visiting public.

Just as remarkable is the legendary ingenuity of Cornell students, recalled in 1950s film footage of what could be the first self-service car wash: Bucket-wielding scholars drove their autos into Fall Creek where it passed through Cornell Plantations, opened the doors and splashed away the grime.

A Journey Through Time and Nature is available at Ithaca-area bookstores, including the Cornell Campus Store and the Cornell Plantations Gift Shop or through the mail by calling (607) 255-3020.