66 Foop PLANTs. 
English county, but a phonetic corruption of some Gaelic 
word. 
Terregles, small district and possessing few names, gives us 
two extremely interesting hill epithets—Beacon Hill and Belton 
Mill. The latter, very probably, dates back to the days when 
May-day festivals and sun-worship were solemn rites and part and 
parcel of the religion of our forefathers to an extent hardly 
credible to us nowadays; and, on the broad summit of the height 
which forms so conspicuous a feature in the landscape of the 
extreme Hast Stewartry, no doubt, in “the good old days,” when 
English raids and Highland ravages were frequent, a far-reaching 
blaze of red flame flashed the signal down the Nith and up into 
the lonely glens of Cairn from the Beacon Hill. 
Il.— Food Plants, Flowerless Plants. By Mr PETER GRay. 
As everyone knows, the bulk of our vegetable food is derived 
from the higher or cotyledonous plants; but the more lowly or 
acotyledonous genera also furnish more or less nutritive substances, 
which in some countries are in constant use, and in others utilized 
in times of dearth as substitutes for the more valuable products of 
the dicotyledonous and monocotyledonous tribes. 
To begin with the highest grade of flowerless plants, ferns 
are used by several races, either commonly or in times of scarcity, 
as food. In several species ferns have farinaceous rhizomes, or 
underground stems, which are roasted or boiled, being usually first 
steeped to get rid of the bitter and astringent principle they con- 
tain. Of these the chief are species of pteris, diplazium, nephro- 
dium, and marrattia. When Cook visited New Zealand, the root 
of a species of fern was in common use, and that and fish and 
human flesh constituted the main articles of diet in the islands ; 
for the moa and other large ostrich-like birds had been long exter- 
minated, and there were no quadrupeds in the country save a 
small species of dog kept as a pet, and another about the size of, 
and allied to, the rat. 
Neither the fern allies—mosses, hepaticze, nor characeze—are 
utilised as food ; but many of the lichens supply wholesome nutri- 
ment both to man and beast. The genus gyrophora saved the life 
of our townsman, Sir John Richardson, when engaged in Arctic 
exploration, at a time when the travellers were reduced to feed 
