PROFESSOR EDWARD FORBES. 69 



other means perched on the hill sides ; and such as are of white quartz 

 have been used to mark boundary lines, or are often placed round ancient 

 interments as already instanced. On Maughold Head, at about 300 feet 

 of elevation, lies a large " en-atic block" of greenstone, strongly marked 

 with grooved and crossed lines. Above, and filling up the ploughed 

 surface of the earlier accumulations, are horizontal deposits of sand, 

 peat, and marine shells, the latter such as now Hve in the sea close at 

 hand, but deposited higher than its waves can now reach. On this north- 

 western part of the island, the coast is of a nature to disintegrate, the 

 wind redistributing the sand into " broughs" or hills, imperfectly kept 

 together by the growth of lyme-grass and mat-weed; at the extreme 

 north — the Point of Ayre — the sands, probably thrown on shore by 

 cun'ents, are drifted by the sarae agency into parallel undulations or 

 ridges, much like the waves of the sea — a tiTdy ban-en waste, adorned 

 with little but gorse, a plant, however, here not wholly despised, but 

 chopped in windmills for fodder. North of Peel there is a naiTow tract of 

 old red sandstone forming the sea-cliffs, and of it the venerable cathedi-al 

 of St. Germain is in part built ; it is there strangely pitted and honey- 

 combed, apparently by the action of the winds. The fi-agments of shells 

 seen in the hardened sands in this part of the island are perhaps due to 

 wind-drifts. It is in what we may term "Forbes's Parish" that the 

 remains of the great deer or elk (Megaceros) principally occur, entombed 

 below the peat of the curragh, and reposing on a bed of shell-marl of 

 fresh-water formation, not much more than twenty feet above the sea 

 level. These curraghs must be partly of recent and partly of pleistocene 

 formation — to use Forbes's term ; the latter, because when the elk lived 

 here, its range could not have been so limited as it must have been if the 

 isle were as we see it now.* 



The curraghs are of interest in other respects, especiallj^ to the 

 botanist. The Osmunda is the common fern. Willows, such as Salix 

 pentandra, &c., S.fusca, and its many varieties, the sweetgale, the bog-bean, 

 the naarsh cinquefoil, milfoil, and several other rarer plants, also occur 

 in them. Pulegium vidgare is common in wet clay, and on the dry, 

 sandy road I found Silene Anglica, Papaver Argemone, several species 

 of rose and sweetbriar, with, however, but one Buhus (fruticosus.) On a 

 di-y bank, near Jurby, was a remarkable potentilla, (P. hirta,) scarcely 

 indigenous, though found also neax Perth. How the plant got here it is 

 difficult to conceive. 



The landscape is somewhat drear, the church towers the most 

 conspicuous objects. Little streams, originating in the marshes, with 

 difficulty find their way to the sea, and enter it, like the Callane, 

 between the sand hills, foi-miug little coves, interesting from the 

 numerous marine plants growing about. t It was in these sti'eams and 

 in the curragh that Forbes fished for Limnsei and Planorbes. 



* In a specimen obtained by the writer, but broken below the snags, the 

 measurement from the centre of the forehead to the extreme end of the right 

 horn would be, in a direct line, 4ft. 6in. 



t Arenaria peploides, Pyrethruni maritimuin, Cerastium tetravdrum, Eryn- 

 gium, Glaucium, Beta niaritima, Atriplex laciniata, Triticum loHaeeum. No 

 plants or shells are recorded, except such as the writer noticed, unless otherwise 

 notified. 



