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Pie Dp  NVLEE PINGS. 
18th May, 1907. 
(From the Dumfries and Galloway Standard.) 
AMISFIELD TOWER AND TORTHORWALD. 
The first of the season’s field meetings of the Dumfriesshire 
and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society took place 
on Saturday afternoon, when a party numbering twenty-eight 
paid a visit to Amisfield Tower and Torthorwald Castle. The 
day was pleasant for driving, and the wayside trees, with their 
various stages of leafage, afforded material for interesting ob- 
servation. At Amisfield Tower a hospitable reception awaited 
the visitors at the hands of Mr and Mrs Farish. The many 
handsome trees in the policies were greatly admired. In the 
extensive and trimly kept walled garden are two apple trees on 
which mistletoe is growing—on one of them a many-branched 
plant. Several cherry trees, covered with a close mass of 
blossom, presented a particularly beautiful sight. 
Attention was chiefly directed to the old tower, which adjoins 
the mansion-house to the north. It is externally in perfect 
preservation, and in the interior the winding stone stair is intact 
from the basement right up to the little watch-box, or “cape 
tower,’’ perched high on the top of the south-east angle tower, 
from which a magnificent prospect can be obtained. It com- 
mands a long stretch of the Solway shore, which would be the 
quarter from which danger was chiefly to be apprehended in the 
days when the owner of the tower and his retainers had figura~ 
tively at least to sleep with spur and spear. A good many of the 
original wooden beams survive, but in a decayed state; and the 
inaccessible corners were on Saturday vocal with the chirp of 
adolescent jackdaws. There has been a castle of Amisfield, or 
