392 Annioersary Address. 



coming out to the light. These three divisions are also of as 

 many divers colours. The bank below Gledswood is of a 

 slaty grey, like the channel of the Tweed ; on crossing the 

 Halidean burn it is yellow ; and, nearer to Bemerside, red. 

 The first is owing to fragments of slaty shale ; the second may 

 arise from this shale weathered, for we find a similar ochreous 

 colour elsewhere in such a soil, where rabbits have burrowed 

 in it, as well as when turned up by the plough, (a barren soil 

 it is); and the third of red sandstone origin. The members 

 here turned aside to the house of Old Melrose where refresh- 

 ments were provided for them by the kindness of Mrs. Russell, 

 to whom the thanks of the Club were duly tendered. Here 

 Lord Henry Schomberg Kerr and Admiral Hope Johnstone 

 joined the party. The members had the opportunity of ex- 

 amining two crania that had been recently disinterred in the 

 garden, once a portion of the old churchyard. They were of 

 diiferent types, the one, brachycephalic, (supposed to be con- 

 fined to men of the bronze period), the other dolichocephalic, 

 (like the present race) ; whatever theorists make of it. The 

 same commixture of skulls, Mr. Tate remarked, took place in 

 the old Cemetery at Alnmouth. Old Melrose v^as a Culdee 

 foundation, and hence Melrose bears an Irish-Gaelic name. 

 {Maoli bare, naked, denuded of trees, and B,oss, a projection). 

 St. Cuthbert was the most celebrated alumnus of this house. 

 Brought up a shepherd on the banks of the Leader, he rose to 

 the Priorate, and was afterwards transferred to Lindisfarne. 

 Of the humble structure of the Monks of lona, there is not a 

 vestige left ; the chapel commemorative of St. Cuthbert on 

 the Chapel Know being of later erection. Of this building, 

 a huge ash tree with its magnificent arms overshadows the 

 site. A few sculptured stones were glanced at ; one with 

 dog-tooth ornamentation ; another with the figure of a fish 

 and an angelic head ; and a third, not so old, may have been 

 a door pillar. There is still here the Virgin's Well; the 

 Holy Wheel in the Tweed, where the Monks bathed ; and 

 the Monks' ford. A ditch and wall defended the peninsula 

 from sudden inroads. The coeval monastery of St. Ebba on St. 

 Abb's Head, equally exposed as this to the ruthless ferocity of 

 the Danes, was in like manner protected by a lampart and ditch. 



