Moffat and Upper Annandai.e. 201 



sawpit, and nailed on the walls and ceiling's with cast-metal 

 nails. These sawn laths were also used on estate work up to 

 forty-six years ago, when they gave place to split laths made 

 from memel from the Baltic ; at the same time the cast-metal 

 lath nails were giving place to cut ones. The first job ever I 

 worked on as an apprentice the ceilings were lathed with cut 

 nails and the walls with the cast ones ; now wire nails are 

 nearly universal. Some of the rooms in Moffat House and 

 the Spur Inn (Proudfoot House now) and Hopetoun House are 

 finished in panelled wainscot, and are still in good preser- 

 vation. Windows which were hung had stone weights in- 

 stead of iron. In the Spur Inn the attic floors are laid with 

 gypsum, which was quarried in the neighbourhood of French- 

 land Burn, the bed of which has long been lost sight of. 



The following extract from a search for minerals here, 

 made in 1800, is interesting. In 1776 a Mr Burrel made a 

 survey of Annandale in search of coal and other minerals, but 

 his results were not published. But in the year 1800, at a 

 meeting of the County (Committee) of Dumfries, held on the 

 30th April, Messrs Busby were appointed to make a mineralo- 

 gical survey of the county, which they did. Their journal of 

 the survey is given as Appendix No. 22 in Dr Singer's View of 

 the Agriculture, State of Property, and Improvements in the 

 County of Du))} fries, published in 181 2. Among the places 

 thev examined here was the Frenchland Burn, which they 

 describe as consisting " of a kind of primiti\e rock, not un- 

 friendly to ore." At a part of the Burn, near an ash tree, are 

 appearances of slate ; and a quarter of a mile below there is a 

 considerable body of gypsum, " as we particularly instructed 

 the farmer how it was to be obtained." They also examined 

 the farm of Selcoth for slate, " where it is promising of advan- 

 tage, if a proper trial was made." Howe\er, it has been long 

 known that there are no minerals of any kind in merchantable 

 quantities in the district. The slates used came principally 

 from the Glenochar quarry in Crawford parish ; but they were 

 not of good quality, the weather sooner or later breaking them 

 up in foliations not much thicker than notepaper. A few 

 slates were also obtained from some of the hardest of the 

 black shale rocks in Correferran and Selcoth, but these slates 



