Anniversary Address. 393 



Mr. Curie, to whom the Club was so much indebted for 

 the arrangements that conducted the proceedings of the day 

 to a happy issue, had a couple of ferrymen awaiting to waft 

 us over the Tweed. On the gravel of the Tweed Mr. Jerdon 

 found Medicago maculata ; the Viper's Bugloss was also 

 picked up. In ascending the wood on the further bank Melica 

 unijlora was observed, and a quantity of Doronicum Parda- 

 lianches, which is better adapted to ornament a wood, than, 

 from its spreading habit, a garden border. Gaining the high 

 ground above the trees, we obtained through an opening a 

 triangular glimpse of Roxburghshire, almost unrivalled for 

 rich cultured beauty. The foreground is rather crowded with 

 trees however, and I prefer the view from the summit of the 

 Eildons from its greater distinctness, and the wide range com- 

 manded all round. Here we beheld dark Ruberslaw, rivalling 

 the Eildons in height ; the lighter green hills of Minto ; the 

 round-topped Dunion also ; the Cheviots with their furrowed 

 sides, curtaining the east and west ; and far remote, the blue 

 Carter Fell, and the weird-like hills of Liddlesdale ; and all 

 the interval between divided and sub-divided with hedges and 

 hedge-row trees, and woods in all their leafiness, with crops 

 of diiferent shades in each compartment ; the whole resembling 

 a vast coverlet of fantastic net-work. We did not expect to 

 find a new mansion house at Bemersyde, the ancient seat of 

 the family of Haig, but so it is, — an old border keep of three 

 hundred years or more, is now flanked by extensive modern 

 wings ; like a veteran placed in the midst of a youthful 

 posterity, and compelled to don their gayer weeds. A gruff 

 old statue with a cross on his bosom, who once stood sentinel 

 on the old tower, is now rather out of place where he now 

 guards the parterre. On the lawn an old chestnut, " with seats 

 beneath the shade," was reckoned to be at least twenty feet 

 in circumference in the bole. In the garden were two vast 

 holly bushes, clipped into cones, having at least a circuit of 

 thirty yards. These are right pleasant to see, and do not be- 

 long to that class of Dutch follies ridiculed by Pope in the 

 " Guardian." " Adam and Eve in Yew," &c. " Noah's 

 Ark in Holly standing on the mount; the ribs a little damaged 

 for want of water." The garden fence consisted of high 



