Anniversary Address. 21 



Jerningham, with a laudable anxiety to arrest the progress 

 of decay, without impairing the venerable appearance of the 

 fabric. Round the base of the ruin were growing the gay 

 Viper's Bugloss, the Plantago media, and the Scots Thistle. 

 At the door of the keeper's house were several balls both of 

 iron and stone, said to have been fired from cannon in the 

 days of old. One of the stone bails, measuring about 18 

 inches in diameter, and asserted to have been discharged 

 from the celebrated Mons Meg, was conjectured by a. 

 sceptical member of the party, to have formed, at no dis- 

 tant date, the topstone of a gate pillar. The " Monk's Well," 

 at the foot of the rock on which the castle stands, afforded a 

 refreshing drink of water. Further down the river, on the 

 Scotch side, is another sacred spring called Holywell, which 

 gives its name to an adjacent fishing shield. The walk 

 along the banks of the stream was most enjoyable. The 

 rocks are of Tuedian sandstone, of which there is an exten- 

 sive quarry a little below the castle. Fine examples of false 

 bedding occur among the seams occasioned during deposition 

 by cross currents. These were, by not a few of the party, 

 mistaken for real strata. Great profusion of the Common 

 Tansy grows on the river banks, and in the river itself were 

 many water plants, amongst which were several forms of 

 Ranunculus fluitans ; Potamogetons, nitens, lucens, pecti- 

 natus, and others ; Anacharis Alsinastrum, &c. Skimming 1 

 the surface of the water were two black-headed gulls. 



Horncliffe Dean, the woodcut representation of which, in 

 Johnston's " Botany of the Eastern Borders," is well known 

 to botanists, was explored by some of the more active of the 

 party. One of them thus describes it : — " The Dean is truly 

 a delightful retreat. A deep and romantic dell is fringed on 

 one side with grass and brakens (Pteris Aquilina), and on 

 the steep bank to the right is covered with woody copses 

 and many fine trees. A brook, which reminds one of 

 Tennyson's poem, winds at the bottom of the hollow, laving 

 the fronds of the ferns and the leaves of the luxuriant Ewpa- 

 torium canndbinum, or hemp agrimony, with its pellucid 



