21Q 



in Cumberland. The first crannoge selected for examination by 

 the Ayrshire and Wigtownshire Archpeological Association was 

 situated in the centre of a peatmoss in Mochram parish, this 

 summer being especially favourable on account of the long drought. 

 In the centre of this moss, which is about sixty acres in 

 extent, there is a circular enclosure fifty-four feet in diameter, 

 surrounded by a low wall, the whole surface of the enclosure being 

 green with grass, while the surrounding moss is covered with 

 heather and bog plants. The moss around this crannoge had 

 grown up to its level since its construction, and it appears that in 

 a laborious and accurate map, pubhshed in the year 1672, the 

 present moss appears as a lake. A crannoge in the bed of Bar- 

 happle lake, in Old Luce parish, which was drained off in 1878, is 

 described by the writer in the " Times " as measuring one hundred 

 and fifty-seven yards in circumference. The country in its neigh- 

 bourhood is said to be now bleak and treeless. " Low drums or 

 sow-backs, so characteristic of a glacier-scraped country, rise out 

 of vast tracts of peatmoss." Barhapple Loch was of small extent, 

 some five hundred yards long by three hundred broad. The piles 

 of the causeway connecting this crannoge with the shore extended 

 for seventy-five yards, there being a space of ten yards without any, 

 either for the passage of canoes or the erection of a defensive 

 movable bridge. At Dowalton we learn that a great part of the 

 bed of the lake (now drained) is soHd rock of the Lower Silurian 

 formation, rising here and there into dome-like roches moutonnees, 

 beautifully striated and scraped by the ancient land ice. Some of 

 the crannoges there are built against these masses of rocks, pro- 

 jecting from them into the muddy alluvium around. When 

 Dowalton Loch was drained in 1S63, the crannoges only became 

 visible as the water receded. The " Times " writer thinks that 

 their submergence was due not merely to the collapse of their 

 material, but to an elevation in the level of the lake-surface. 

 Owing to the invisibility of the crannoges before drainage, nothing 

 of archaeological interest had been expected. It is interesting to 

 note, therefore, that there was a vague local tradition in this case, 

 that a village lay beneath the waters of the loch. T. V. H. 



