16 Report of Meetings for 1879, by James Hardy. 



opposite side of the road are several bird-cherry trees ; others 

 grow by the road-side, near Eenton house. 



Passing the Free Church manse, a fine clump of beech trees 

 indicates the site of an old nursery. Old Amperly, now abro- 

 gated, lay on the western side of the Eye, on Horsely farm, 

 opposite the Established Church manse. Amperly, once a pos- 

 session of the Coldingham monks, was granted by them in 1334 

 to one Lewis de Cornoioi. " After that it was long the residence 

 of the hereditary foresters (under-foresters must be meant) of 

 Benton, which office for many generations was held by a family 

 of the name of Craik."* There was a piece of ancient forest 

 in its neighbourhood, called Amperly wood, which is now nearly 

 extirpated. The North-British Railway runs through the site of 

 its cottages. An old man, whose memory must have gone back 

 to eighty years, told me that in his youth the farm-garden at 

 Amperly was notable for producing quantities of "lilies" or 

 daffodils. The offspring of these plants appear to have been 

 discributed among most of the gardens thereabouts. In few 

 places are there more to be seen ; and nowhere more profusely 

 than in the manse garden, where also the Crown Imperial hung 

 out its crop of bells. 



The public road now winds finely among woods and wayside 

 trees, at each turn revealing an agreeable succession of sylvan 

 prospects. After enjoying these for a time, the company turned 

 into the adjacent natural wood, which is mentioned in the 

 Coldingham charters as the " Grenewde," which name it retains. 

 This wood is of considerable, extent, and the trees which are 

 mainly oaks, birches, hazels, mountain ashes, and sallows, with a 

 sprinkling of hollies, have the gnarled appearance common to 

 aU ancient natural forest growths. Vegetation was too back- 

 ward to admit of much botanising. Among a wealth of prim- 

 roses in f uU blossom, a plant of the red variety was noticed by 

 the Eev. WiUiam Stobbs. It is a variety grown in gardens, but 

 was here truly wild. I know not whether it has been by paying 

 more attention than usual to the forms of Primula, that I have 

 this season detected two other varieties wild. In Oldcambus 

 dean I found a stalked form of this very colour ; thus approxi- 

 mating the Polyanthus. Again in the Pease dean, on one of the 

 railway slopes, I came upon a colony of a variety of the primrose 

 * Henderson's Popular Ehymes, &c., of Berwick, p. 44. 



