392 Meetings of Berwickshire Naturalists' Club, by J. Hardy. 



leaf. The house is well screened, is new, capacious, and well 

 built, and looks handsome, both at a distance, and when 

 closely approached. It has a rocky foundation, and partly 

 occupies the site of the old castle of Blackadder. It looks 

 out upon a winding reach of the Blackadder, with the 

 banks well wooded on both sides of a narrow haugh. The 

 trees, a considerable proportion of them being beeches, from 

 the size of their trunks appear to have been planted in 

 recent times, but they rise with clean stems to a most 

 stately height. There is a venerable ash tree near the house, 

 and a goodly sized white poplar in the grounds. There is a 

 rookery both here and in the contiguous grounds of Allanbank. 

 The company were shewn over the gardens and greenhouses ; 

 but a downpour of rain prevented them being seen to advantage. 

 At the house there is a conservatory in the form of a Gothic 

 chapel, with the frame-work entirely of cast-iron, which 

 was erected by the late proprietor, Thomas Boswall, Esq., and 

 cost several thousand pounds. It encloses a good variety of 

 exotics, in a very thriving condition. Such erections are not un- 

 common now, but when first attached to mansions, they attracted 

 the admiration of the entire country-side. 



Some fine primrose-covered banks enlivened the walk, and an 

 umbellated variety of the Primula, scarcely differing from the 

 Oxlip, ws£s noticed ; and after passing the house, in a nook where 

 once stood a gas-house, Cowslips, both purple and yellow, pro- 

 bably raised from seed, had sprung up promiscuously. Here 

 the purple Orchis grows in the meadows. In crossing to Allan- 

 bank, which stands on a rise at a very short distance from Black- 

 adder House, plots of the wood Forget-me-not again glistened 

 beside the walk. Viola odorata abounds on the banks of the 

 Blackadder down to the junction of the river with the White- 

 adder. Kingfishers are frequently seen in the same locality. 



The policy at Allanbank is well-wooded, and the trees appear 

 to be co-eval with those at Blackadder. The most patriarchal 

 tree is an ash, now reduced to a stump, crowned with ivy. There 

 is also a white poplar, the rival of that at Blackadder, and a tree 

 called the Bell Tree, whereon the bell of the mansion-house used 

 to be suspended. Allanbank is a compact, well-finished house, 

 mostly new ; and is at present unoccupied. The site of the old 

 house is more to the north, adjoining the bowling-green. The 



