368 Mr Hardy on Langleyford Vale and the Cheviots. 



trapped in early spring, some time since, in a rock near the 

 top of Cold-law, and the stuffed bird is now in his possession. 

 It was a young bird of about two years old ; after which the 

 longitudinal bars on the breast feathers become transverse. 

 The peregrine falcon preys as far down as Middleton Hall. 

 By an examination of the bones and the remains of wing- 

 feathers, fyc, strewed beneath their eyrie in the Bizzle, it 

 would appear that it is principally wood-pigeons with which 

 they nourish their young. 



Where the very modern cottage of Langlee stands, there 

 terminates a low ridge called the Shank, on the upper side 

 of which is a longitudinal depression parallel to Langleyford 

 vale, named the Letchy syke. Latch is a dub or mire 

 (Sibbald's " Glossary " to " Chron. Scot. Poetry ") ; and in 

 modern German, lache is a pool, puddle, plash, or lake. 

 For more about a Latch or Letch, see " Guy Mannering," 

 chap, xxiii. Passing upwards from the cottage, there is a 

 camp, traversing which is an oval-oblong erection with two 

 compartments, and a hut-circle at the end of it. There are 

 other hut-circles in the corners of the camp. Two large 

 tumuli next occur ; and still farther on, there is in the bank 

 a cluster of cup-shaped cavities, whose purpose is not obvious. 

 I have seen nothing like them, except near some huts and 

 tumuli on the upper Lill burn, near Ilderton Dodd hill. 

 They are too rude for pit-dwellings, and are more like 

 modern concealments belonging to the smuggling period. 

 Passing on, there are strong, numerous, and extensive en- 

 closures and folds, round the old Langlee cottage ; many of 

 them modern, but others, from the employmemt of stones on 

 end, of ancient date. They lie directly opposite the British 

 town on the Langleyford side of the hill, to which they may 

 have originally belonged. This townlet occupies an expan- 

 sion at the foot of the hills, and its lower boundary-wall 

 skirts the present main road. The huts are closely clustered, 

 and in good preservation ; some of them remaining still, as 

 the natives would leave them when umoofed, with their 

 causewayed floors exposed, and they require no excavation to 

 bring their form to light. I thought I could trace in some a 

 raised platform inside round the walls. A British road 

 passes slant through amongst them, and they ascend well up 

 the hill-face. They are copiously supplied with springs. 

 Here, as elsewhere, the inhabitants had taken advantage of 



