184 The Church and Churchyard of Chirnside. 



The specific characters of V. arborea, as sent to me by Mr. 

 Smith, are as follows : — 



V. arborea ¥ . Head, the scape of antennse yellow in front ; 

 the clypeus without marks, or with two indistinct ones ; a nar- 

 row yellow line runs up the inner margins of the eyes, not, 

 or seldom, reaching the notch. The scutellum with two lunate 

 spots, but the metathorax below immaculate. Abdomen with a 

 central spot and one on each side, not touching the margin of 

 the base ; the second segment has a narrow black basal band, a 

 centra] spot, and an oblique one on each side, the rest usually 

 immaculate. The posterior tibiae have long black hairs. 



N.B. — I recollect that the year these specimens of V. arborea 

 were taken, wasps were particularly abundant. 



Chirnside — its Church and Churchyard. 

 By George Henderson, Surgeon, Chirnside. 



It has been said that there is a charm about a place having a his- 

 tory : we are afraid, however, that the historical associations con- 

 nected with Chirnside are not of such a nature as to add much to 

 the charms which render it lovely in our eyes. The locality owes 

 more, we presume, to the amenity of its situation — the beautiful 

 landscapes with which it is on every side invested, and the fer- 

 tility and high state of culture which mark its fields and gardens; 

 but what remains of its antiquities, however fragmentary they 

 be, we are "anxious to preserve, and in the following notice this 

 we have attempted to perform. 



The etymology of the name of the village and parish of Chirn- 

 side is involved in impenetrable obscurity. The idea that it is 

 derived from Chairn or Chirn*, (Brit.) a Cairn, and the Saxon 

 affix side, is that which seems to carry the greatest number of 

 votes. This denotes that the site of Chirnside was originally 

 near or by the side of a Cairn, or monumental heap of stones. 

 Now it is well known that there existed, about eighty or a hun- 

 dred years ago, an immense cairn on the highest point of Chirn- 

 side hill — nearly at the distance of half a mile to the north-east 

 of the Church. This cairn lay close to a farm-place called Hare- 

 law — literally the hill of the monument — Haar in the ancient 

 British signifying a stone or stones of remembrance. Those 

 hare-stones were generally monolithic columns of rude stone set 

 up as memorials of some important military action, or a sepul- 



* Cam, or Cham, in the Cambro-British and Gaelic languages, signifies 

 a heap, secondarily a sepulchral tumulus ; and of this Gaelic word the 

 oblique case is Chairn ; and to this form of the word the Saxon settlers 

 applied their affix side, to denote its position. — Chalmers. 



