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



their estates, were adherents of the party in power ; but in the 

 revolution of events, these sapless branches were snapped asunder ; 

 while the main stem retained a vigorous vitality. Meigle Moss 

 was a source of much anxiety to the undertakers of the Peebles 

 and Innerleithen Railway, which traverses it lengthways ; and 

 it even burst with the weight rested upon it, but the gulf was 

 closed by casting in hurdles of tree-branches. Orchis incarnata 

 grows in this bog. Here the great bulk of Meigle hill occupies 

 the eye. On the hill-side are several singular depressions, called 

 the "Meigle Pots ;" which some attribute to geological causes ; 

 but others are inclined to take them for the pit-dwellings of 

 pristine people. Prom the description of them, the former 

 opinion is the more credible. The late Mr William Kemp, 

 adopting a theory of Agassiz in regard to similar openings on 

 the flanks of the Swiss Alps, called " Creux aud Lapiaz," 

 thought they had been worn out by water pouring through 

 fissures in glaciers, while they were slowly pressing onward. Mr 

 Russell of Galashiels, thus describes them : " They are not seen 

 from the road ; but viewed from the railway, or the opposite 

 hill-side, they have the appearance of a series of large, isolated, 

 cup-like depressions in the face of the slope. Upon closer in- 

 spection, however, this cup-like formation to some extent dis- 

 appears, and they are found to be so connected one with the 

 other that a cart' road runs right through the bottom of them. 

 They are more like cups tilted to one side, the rim nearly on a 

 level with the bottom. They seem to be purely natural forma- 

 tions, the result of a peculiarity in the geological structure of the 

 hill at this place. Two or three parallel ridges of rock run 

 horizontally along the hill-side, and as these are much jointed 

 and broken, the water from above percolates freely through 

 them, constantly carrying with it small portions of the soil, which 

 not being replaced from above, leave in the course of centuries a 

 hollow space. The cup-like shape of these depressions may be 

 accounted for under this theory by a reference to the sand-glass, 

 in which the sand as it runs out is seen to leave a similarly 

 shaped funnel above." Tradition says that in these cavities the 

 persecuted people used to hold conventicles ; and one of them 

 sheltered the laird of Torwoodlee for several days, when pursued 

 by the king's troops. Upon the summit of Meigle hill, on the 

 eastern side of a shelf surrounding its rocky crown, lies a huge 



