Reports and Proceedings. 89 
the year 1864 of this the oldest Naturalists’ Club in the kingdom 
was held, on the 26th of May, at Greenlaw, in the central part of 
Berwickshire. The field-explorations of the day were chiefly di- 
rected to the geology of the district. Greenlaw stands on the upper 
beds of the Old Red Sandstone, which are well seen in great cliffs, 
150 feet in height, on the banks of the Blackadder, in Greenlaw Dene. 
About a mile eastward of Greenlaw a railway-cutting has exposed a 
broad trap-dyke, composed of amygdaloids, basalt, and trap-tufa, and 
having a direction of NE—SW. ; abutting against this dike on the 
east side, are impure limestones and calciferous sandstones and 
shales, belonging to the Tuedian or lowermost group of the Car- 
boniferous formation, lying between the Mountain-limestone and 
Old Red Sandstone. Hume Castle, three miles southward of Green- 
law, was visited, and a long range of columnar basalt, with an 
E.—W. direction was examined, These columnar rocks are not less 
than 50 feet in height; in mineral character and external form 
they resemble the basalt of the great Whin-sill, ranging through 
Northumberland ; but whether, like that sill, it has been intruded 
as a lateral dike among stratified rocks, or was a vertical dike, 
could not, during the limited time of the survey, be determined. It 
is 20 miles westward of the northern termination of the basaltic 
whin-sill at Kyloe ; and, whether or not connected, very probably 
both have been erupted at the same period. 
But the most interesting objects examined were the Kaims— 
peculiar elongated ridges of sand and gravel, standing up like huge 
defensive earthworks above the general surface of the country. 
Bedshiel Kaim, the most important of them, is three miles northward 
of Greenlaw ; it stands on elevated moorland, between six and seven 
hundred feet above the sea-level. The Kaim is from 80 to 60 feet 
above the level of this moor; and, when viewed from its highest 
point, it seems a wonderful object, winding its way, like a serpent, 
a distance of three miles across this elevated moorland. The top is 
about 10 feet wide; and the inclination, which is nearly the same 
on both sides, varies from 15° to 33°; where steepest, the sides are 
covered with heather; but where the inclination is less, they are 
clothed with grass. There is a gap in one part of the ridge, where 
it is cut through by the Fangrist Water. From diggings made into 
the Kaim in different parts, so as to expose sections, it was found to 
be composed of gravel and sand, distinctly but irregularly stratified. 
Three-fourths of the gravel consisted of greywacke, from the Cam- 
bro-silurian formation of the Lammermuir Hills; mingled with these 
were rocks of Old Red Sandstone, of porphyry-amygdaloid, and a 
very few of basalt; all were rounded and smooth, so that they must 
either have come from a distance, or more probably been repeatedly 
rolled over each other. Most of them must have come from the 
N. and the W., where, at no great distance, those rocks occur in situ. 
On the moors on both sides of the Kaim, in certain parts, are 
deep deposits of peat, which was formerly dug, dried, and conveyed 
by asses to Greenlaw, and there sold. The introduction of coal put 
an end to this traffic, and from the subsequent growth of peat in the 
