Transactions. 45 
kept his spirit hovering about his relatives to their discomfort and 
annoyance. A funeral is still an occasion of some ceremony in 
Scotland, but in the days of our forefathers it possessed all the 
importance of a festival ; “a dry funeral” being considered un- 
lucky. Not only ale and porter, but whisky and rum, port wine 
and sherry were provided in quantity and in quality corresponding 
with the social standing of the deceased. To such an extent 
indeed was drinking sometimes carried that there are instances 
on record of the procession reaching the graveyard without the 
corpse, the coffin having been left by drunken inadvertence at 
some stage in the way. Once the grave has been filled in over 
the dead, it is still customary for the relatives and friends to 
return to the after funeral feast, where intoxicants are rarely 
altogether absent. 
Notes on the Flora of the Moffat District. 
By Mr J. THorsurn JOHNSTONE. 
The Moffat district, from its geographical position and natural 
surroundings, has a flora of an interesting and unique character 
for a lowland district, being unusually rich in Alpine and sub- 
Alpine forms, which find a fitting habitat among the wild, bare, 
rocky crags and bleak ravines of Blackshope, Corrieferron, Loch 
Skene, Midlaw Burn, &c. It also forms the connecting link 
between the floras of the Cumberland and Westmoreland high- 
lands in England on the one hand, and that of Perth and Forfar 
in Scotland on the other, and this even though our hills are not- 
the highest in the South of Scotland, yet an examination of the 
Society’s list of plants shows that the Moffat hills are a safe 
retreat and a sure one for a larger number of the rarer plants 
than these higher hills. Notwithstanding the richness of our 
flora, the literature regarding it is of a very limited and meagre 
description, and with the exception of some isolated references in 
some of the Botanical Societies’ transactions and the “ Statistical 
Account of Scotland for 1843,” it may be said to be the work of 
one individual, a native of the district—viz., the late Mr John 
Sadler, curator of the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens. As far back 
as 1857 and 1858 Mr Sadler gave the result of his botanical 
researches in the district in the columns of the Moffat Register, 
the local newspaper at that time, and he likewise published about 
