Report of Meetings for 1880, by James Hardy. 231 



that William Brockie makes the remark, that *' a dreadful 

 creature of this species, whose haunt was on the west side of 

 Mellerstain Hill, near a place called the Yallow Door, was long 

 known, and perhaps is still, by the name of Roarie.'" The com- 

 mon viper {Felices Berus) is very numerous in the southern or 

 Fans part of the moss. On the day of the Club's meeting, 

 Sheriff Eussell captured Argijnnis Selene, one of the small fritil- 

 lary butterflies, for which this is a new locality. The pretty 

 orange-tip butterfly [Anthocaris Cardamines) is also found here. 



On the geological features and present condition of Gordon 

 Moss, Mr Stobbs supplies the following remarks : — " The moss 

 is one by nature, but belongs to four proprietors. It is divided 

 by a stank, which helps to drain it. The moss has been a lake 

 unable to drain itself, by its outlet deepening its bed in the 

 course of ages. A dyke of basalt that crosses the country at its 

 eastern extremity proved too tough to be so easily worn down as 

 the rest of the land. This dyke had to be blasted with gun- 

 powder when the stank was made, and the moss drained about 

 60 years ago. There is a succession of very fine spi-ings down 

 the course of the trap or basalt dyke that breaks through the red 

 sandstone, from the railway station to the moss. In the moss 

 there is a well-known * verter,' i.e. virtue well, which has a strong 

 tincture of iron." Hazel and birch are the chief ligneous con- 

 stituents dug up in the moss. The monks of Kelso Abbey had 

 two petaries here ; and six cottages of which each of the tenants 

 was bound to deliver annually thirty wain-loads of dry peats at 

 the cloister.* Each husbandman of the 28 husbandlands of 

 Bolden or Bowden, Eoxburghshire, was also obliged to furnish 

 a wain to carry peats from the moss at Gordon to the Abbey.f 

 These amounted to 208 wain-loads per annum. 



There was only conveyance for a limited number, and these 

 were associated with the second walking party, part of the way. 

 Leaving by west end of the village, the " Hanging Stone" was 

 pointed out — a mass of rock dependent from the bank above the 

 railway. The story is, and it is a myth attached to other '' Hang- 

 ing Stones," that a pedlar who had been resting there got his 

 head into the aperture between two of the blocks, and was 



* Morton's Domestic Annals of Teviotdale, p. 134. 

 t Ibid, p. 121. They first carried them to a place of storage at "The 

 Pools " (le pullis), and thence to the Abbey in the summer (p. 165). 



