Tar GLENKENS IN THE OLDEN Trvus. 135 
continue to spend upon it. The thanks of the Society are certainly 
due to these ladies for their careful guardianship of the collec- 
tion. 
10th Apri/, 1896. 
Il].—T%e Glenkens in the Olden Times. By Mr James 
Baresoour, of Dalry. 
The Glenkens, or valley of the river Ken, lies in the north of 
Kirkeudbrightshire, and extends from New-Galloway Railway 
Station on the south to Ayrshire on the north, and from the river 
Dee on the west to Dumfriesshire on the east. It is 28 miles 
from north to south, and 18 miles from east to west. The height 
above sea level is about 120 feet at head of Loch Ken and 2688 
feet on Corserine, the highest hill in the Glenkens. It is one of 
the most beautiful valleys in the south of Scotland. Except a 
fringe of cultivated land on each side of the Ken it is wholly 
pastoral—consequently its primitive condition is the more easily 
ascertained. The parishes of Balmaclellan and Dalry lie on the 
east side of the Ken, and Kells and Carsphairn on the west side. 
When the Romans entered Galloway about A.D. 80 they found 
the country covered with wood except the exposed soilless 
summits of the rocks and low marshy spots where wood would 
not grow. The trees in the Glenkens were principally oak, ash, 
birch, alder, and rowan-tree or mountain ash. There would also 
be an undergrowth of hazel and thorns, both white and black, in 
some places, as may be seen now in patches and clumps of old 
natural wood at Gairloch, Tannoch, Forest, on the banks of 
Garroch and Knocknarline and Garpol Burns, and at several other 
places. There had also been thickets of fir trees, an instance of 
which is seen.at the foot of Loch Dungeon, where the water has 
washed the soil from the roots. Where peats are cut in deep 
moss the spade goes through numerous branches of birch and 
hazel with the nuts still retaining their shape. Trunks of large 
oak trees are found with the wood yet quite hard. Often on the 
highest hills, where no improvements have been attempted, the 
roots of large oak trees are yet to be seen. Inno part of the 
south of Scotland can those old relics of bygone ages be traced 
so well as among the hills of Kells and Minnigaff. Those forests 
were stocked with wild cattle, horses, the wrus—an animal 
