36 Report of Meetings for 1S85. By Jas. Hardy. 



" Me far above the rest Selbomian scenes, 

 The pendent forest, and the mountain gi'eens, 

 Strike with delight ; there spi'eads the distant view, 

 That gradual fades till sunk in misty blue : 

 Here nature hangs her slopy wood to sight, 

 Bills purl between and cast a quivering light." 



From the eastern end we look across on the old forest of Roth- 

 bury with its sprinkling of thorns and furze and birches, and 

 its cultivated margins. Nearer us is a grey farm-steading with 

 its clump of ash-trees, the most naked-looking trees that could 

 be selected for a shelter ; and behind it a bushy ravine in which 

 ash-trees also preponderated. After a vacuous interval the eye 

 catches opposite Pauperhaugh, the native thickets of Brinkburn 

 old woods skirting the banks, the proper ground for the botanist 

 or entomologist had we been able to reach it, but it lies far 

 away across the Coquet. We are told that on the side where we 

 were, on Whitfield Farm, opposite Brinkburn, runs a wild dell 

 or ravine called Wolf's Fauld or Wolf's Holes, where the last 

 wolf of the district was slain. 



On our return we looked down to the water-fall of Debdon- 

 burn with the native growth of Geranium sylvaticum beside the 

 stream, and birch and mountain ashes dependent from the rocks. 

 Polypodium Dryopteris and P. Phegopteris are native here. 



There was sufficient time before dinner to visit the church, and 

 inspect its internal improvements of recent years. The stone 

 near the entrance sculptured with a Maltese cross, and the frag- 

 ment of the shaft of the old Saxon cross supporting the font, 

 were minutely examined . I am inclined to think that the name 

 of the town, whether old or new Eothbury, has nothing to do 

 with the Irish Path ; which would merely reduplicate the word 

 bury ; but that according to the old form of orthography, 

 Eodeberia, it is pure Anglo-Saxon, signifying the fort at the 

 Bood or Cross. Rodbury is still the popular name of the town. 



After dinner the Rev. J. L. Blake, Langton, was proposed as 

 a member. During the conversation that ensued, Corn-crakes 

 were said to be very numerous this year about Duns ; and Pied 

 Fly-catchers at Alnwick ; and it was mentioned that a pair of 

 Woodcocks were nesting in Penmanshiel Wood. A shower of a 

 sulphur-looking substance after a thunderstorm that had fallen 

 in the low parts of the Merse, was spoken of by Mr Muirhead, 

 who exhibited a specimen of it. On being examined microsco- 



