CHANNELS AND GLENS OF AYRSHIRE. 53 



I know of in Ayrshire being the one cut through by the Doon, 

 and forming the long, narrow, deep, picturesque, Ness Glen. 



Old Channels. 



Skelmorlie Glen. — About the middle of the glen on its south- 

 east side, there is a prominence capped by what appears to have 

 been an old fort defended by a ditch, the curious thing about it 

 being a fragment of a stone wall, the lime having been tempered 

 with sea shells. A short way above this, the Skelmorlie Burn 

 runs for some distance through a rocky gorge excavated in calci- 

 ferous sandstone. From this glen being so much wooded it is 

 not easy to make out on which side the old filled-up glen lies, but 

 it is possibly on the north-east. Above the rocky gorge the burn 

 has cut deeply into the drift. 



Garnock Water. — Just above Glengarnock old Castle, the glen 

 of the Garnock shows a considerable quantity of drift, especially 

 on its east side, and the slopes of the glen where cleared of drift 

 are normal, that is they are not perpendicular, like the sides of 

 post-glacial glens cut by streams, but present appearances more or 

 less sloping, any pre-glacial scaurs having been modified by 

 glaciers, striae being seen sometimes on vertical faces of the rock, 

 but these exposures are not high. From the point mentioned, 

 where the drift is thick, downwards, somewhere about the line of 

 Blackburn and Millside Houses, the old drift-filled channel must 

 run. At the old castle the Garnock wheels suddenly to the right, 

 then to the left, and runs through a post-glacial rock-bound gorge 

 of trap for a considerable distance. This gorge being difficult to 

 traverse from its narrowness, and the deep rocky pools it abounds 

 in, is a happy sanctuary for some of our more delicate ferns, 

 mosses, and other plants, the display of garlic flowers in their 

 season being magnificent. 



Opposite Smithstone, Dalgarven and Monkcastle, rock appears 

 in the bed of the Garnock. It forms no cliffs, not even small ones. 

 I used to consider the hollow in the Garnock Valley between 

 Dairy and Kilbimie Loch (and further on by Loch Semple), now 

 filled with lake deposits, as having been scooped out by glacier ice, 

 but it is quite possible that there is an old buried channel partly 

 in line of the present one at Kilcush, and to the east of it at 

 Groatholm, which drained the now filled-up part of the valley. 



