312 Anniversary Address. 



small kind ; and others similar have been picked up there at 

 sundry times. It is supposed that in returning home from 

 some raid, the shoes had got loosened and had stuck in the 

 tenacious clay of the ' sluther,' or slough ; but they might 

 have got lost also, if the horses when grazing resorted here to 

 drink. Somewhat further down stood the ' Little Mill of 

 Hume,' which, from working by fits and starts, became a 

 proverb : ' It's coming and going like the Little Mill of 

 Hume.' There was a ' Meikle Mill ' considerably above it, 

 which intercepted the waters, and only allowed driblets to 

 escape, insufficient for a constant supply to its minor rival. 

 More than half-way down the fields, between the castle and 

 the churchyard, is the junction between the old red sand- 

 stone and the trap, very distinctly marked by the dwarf or 

 burnt up grass on the igneous rock, which almost comes to 

 the surface where they meet. The hollow and low ground 

 is red sandstone ; and there is a detached fragment of it, 

 caught up by the trap, adjacent to the castle. It used to be 

 visited by Professor Jameson, when in the neighbourhood 

 with any of his pupils, as being supposed to favour the ex- 

 ploded Wernerian theory. There is a quarry in the sand- 

 stone, on the lands, but the stone obtained in modern times 

 is rotten and worthless. On the return to Greenlaw, by 

 Todrig, a puzzling variety of rock crosses the public road. 

 It has a reddish brown basis, and encloses red crystals of 

 felspar, and traces of chlorite. It is probably a volcanic ash 

 converted into porphyry, and connected with the outburst of 

 trap near Hume. In a field nearer Greenlaw, and in the 

 enclosure walls, are numerous blocks of trap, with a lesser 

 number of greywacke. The trap includes large crystals of 

 olivine, thus differing from that at Hume crags, although 

 popularly supposed to have been drifted thence. I should be 

 disposed to look for some other focus of dispersion more to 

 the north-west. Between this and Greenlaw is a sandy 

 moor, blooming with blue-bells and shepherd's pansies 

 {Viola luted). The ragwort has been more than usual 



