224 Field Meetings. 



diameter " — but the party contented themselves with the view 

 from the road, and the descriptive notes by Mr James Afifleck, 

 Castle-Douglas, \vho was the conductor for the day. They had 

 also the advantage of the special local knowledge of Mr Cannan, 

 Castle-Douglas. Parton village, which has been re-built by Mr 

 Rigby Murray, excited admiration as a model of neatness and 

 comfort which ought to characterise village cottages ; and the hall 

 which he has provided affords room for social life. Near Airds 

 " the Black Water o' Dee " comes tumbling in from the west, and 

 in masterful fashion gives its own name to the accumulated waters 

 of the Ken and the Deuch. We have been following from Cross- 

 michael lacustrine expansions known as the Dee. Now, turning 

 a little more decidedly northwards, we traverse the shore of Loch 

 Ken, which is really a continuation of the same sheet of water. 

 A noble lake it is, extending under its new designation to over 

 four miles in length and at its broadest to nearlv half-a-mile in 

 width. On both sides it is closely bordered on the highway; on 

 one side the Parton road, fringed with umbrageous woods; on the 

 other, the New-Galloway road, dominated by Bennan and Lowran 

 hills, their rough granitic masses ablaze with heather bloom. 

 Persistent rains had raised the level of the loch by some six feet, 

 and a brisk wind agitated its surface into a constant play of foam- 

 tipped wavelets. Perched on a rocky platform at the north end 

 of the loch, Kenmure Castle and the noble woodland which 

 environs it picturesquely close a vista at once beautiful and grand. 

 The immediate objective was Dairy; so, passing on between Ken 

 Bridge and Dalarran I,odge, the party skirted the lands of Holm, 

 which figure in the setting of some of William Le Queux's novels, 

 crossed "the haunted Carpel," and noted by the wa\ the pillar 

 on Dalarran Holm, by the side of the river, which tradition dimly 

 associates with a sanguinary conflict in the misty past. At Dairy 

 a halt of a couple of hours was made, during which the company 

 had lunch at the Lochinvar Hotel and made a tour of the village, 

 in which they had the guidance of Mr Hyslop, solicitor, who had 

 been making it his holiday resort. From the Tower hill, at the 

 top of the steep village street, they enjoyed a prospect which 

 includes the three Cairnsmores, the Millfire, the Millyea, and 

 other hills of the Kells range. At the churchyard they saw the 

 Kenmure Aisle, a remnant of the ancient church of St. John ; the 

 Martvrs' gravestone ; the grave of Professor Sellar ; and in the 



