304 Anniversary Address. 



in order to gather up members lingering in the rear, lest they 

 should become bewildered in the mist. Before reaching the 

 ' glitters ' near the apex, several mountain plants were 

 gathered : the cotton grass, cowberry, crowberry, bilberry (in 

 great tracts), cow-wheat (mountain variety), wood-sorrel, 

 rein-deer and Iceland lichens, ' Tripe de roche ' ( Gyrophora), 

 three species of club-moss (Lycopods), &c. The cairn on 

 the eastern end of Cheviot was reached in an hour and three- 

 quarters from the Hope, all the upper journey being through 

 drifting mist. Owing to the coolness of the day, the fatigue 

 was not great. After a short stay, a certain number volun- 

 teered to search the mist for one of the cairns, where rock is 

 to be obtained in situ. The examination, however, proved 

 futile, various imaginary pinnacles deluding the vision now 

 and then, towards which a push would be made, across 

 treacherous-looking black peat rifts ; but these phantoms 

 proved altogether illusory, and the search terminated in the 

 party drawing up near one of the ' poles,' situated a con- 

 siderable way along the ridge. Here it was resolved to 

 retreat, while it was yet possible to find the way back ; and 

 it was lucky again to discover the cairn whence they had 

 departed on this wild-goose chase. 



" On a subsequent day, the object of search, ' Dunsdale 

 Cairn,' which is not a cairn, but a crag, was visited, and it 

 was found that the rocks of which it consists does not repre- 

 sent the loose blocks piled into a cairn on the eastern end of 

 the hill, or clustered together in the surrounding glitters, 

 which conceal entirely the rock beneath. Immediately above 

 Langleyford cultivated ground, on the sides and in the bed of 

 the burn, the rock is a granitoid porphyry, with a light fleshy 

 felspar basis, enclosing numerous large felspar crystals 

 (whence it takes a rough granular fracture), a greyish white 

 quartz, together with small scales of mica, interspersed with 

 larger blackish grey blotches of the same mineral. Nearly 

 all the bottom boulders, and those half-way up what is called 

 the ' Hill End,' are of this variety. It is a readily decompos- 



