82 Report of Meetings for 1885. By Jas. Hardy. 



on the burn flat outside ; Cardamine hirsuta in the burn channel ; 

 and Lastrea Oreopteris along with Polypodium Bryopteris, Wood 

 Anemone, and Grass of Parnassus on the left bank adjoining 

 the moor. The burn takes a sudden turn, and the elevated and 

 unequal ground above the banks is capped with tufted birches 

 swelling into trees with arching outlines, draped in this October 

 month with yellowish green foliage, intermingled with the fiery 

 scarlet and green of the upright mountain ashes, and the grey 

 green of the great Sallow. A general yellowness was passing 

 over the decaying ferns ; which were principally Lastrea filix- 

 mas, Athyrium filix-foemina ; and Lastrea dilatata, occasionally ; 

 and Blechnum boreale. The hazels yielded some pretty rosy 

 cheeked nuts, not fully ripened. Among hazels almost every 

 bush has its own peculiar quality or shape, or colour of nut. 

 Nuts the produce of bushes standing in boggy soil, or in sunless 

 hollow glens are mostly deaf. There are also a few old haw- 

 thorns, the only examples here. The native flora is concentrated 

 at the entrance. Asperula odorata, Hypericum qicadrangulum and 

 pulchrum, Valeriana officinalis, Honeysuckle, Meadow-sweet, 

 Angelica sylvestris, Geranium sylvaticum, Hieracium sylvaiicum, 

 Solidago virgaurea, Foxglove, Crepis paludosa, Geranium Robertia- 

 num, Pingmcula vulgaris, all grow here. There used to be two 

 patches of Polypodium Phegopleris, but it has been much carried 

 away by local fern cultivators. Cistopteris fragilis which grew 

 in a mossy recess round which the burn wheels is now extirpated 

 here. Polypodium Bryopteris is still plentiful at the top of some 

 of the banks overshadowed by trees. Campanula rotundifolia is 

 not a common plant up here. Euphrasia officinalis is dwarf, with 

 enlarged flowers. Crowberry is common, and Rock Cistus is 

 scattered, but is more plentiful on the elevated b anks on the 

 right hand. As the drier banks open up they are spotted here 

 and there with juniper bushes. 



The first Fairy Castle, a name applicable both to dikes of por- 

 phyritic trap, and the shapes assumed by the weathered con- 

 glomerate, erects itself at the junction of Bladdering Cleugh and 

 what we may now call Burnup ; being a remnant of the con- 

 glomerate that has been indurated and partially strengthened by 

 one of the porphyritic dikes that here obliquely crosses the 

 ravine. The porphyry is of a brown colour, and is sometimes 

 amygdaloidal ; and probably owes some of its qualities as well 

 as colour to the conglomerate which it has partially fused. 



