386 Report of Meetings for ] 886. By J. Havdy. 



Mr D. N. Strangeways, 59 Westmoreland Road, Newcastle 

 Mr D. Frazer, Selkirk ; Mr W. Ivison Macadam, Edinburgh 

 and Mr Richard H. Dunn, Earlston. 



Thirty-two members and their friends assembled at the Tower 

 Hotel, Hawick — which was found to be an admirable centre for 

 holding meetings — on Wednesday, September 1 5th, to pay a visit 

 to Branxholme and Harden, and the adjoining hill districts; and 

 thereafter to make acquaintance with the town of Hawick itself, 

 as a seat of varied industry and as an encourager of the sciences 

 and inquiries which the Club was instituted to prosecute. It was 

 beautiful weather, with a tendency to frost. Passing up the 

 valley of the Teviot, where the road runs along the riverside, the 

 sloping high banks are grassy, till a bank is reached partly cut 

 through to accommodate the road, which is margined with a 

 hanging plantation, the pasture grounds and cultivated fields 

 occupying the irregular summits, which are also sprinkled with 

 clumps of old ash trees. Large flocks of lapwings were hover- 

 ing about with uncertain movements, or alighting on the pastures, 

 attended by small groups of starlings ; while here and there a 

 wood-pigeon rose from a turnip field. The pied and grey wag- 

 tails were the only birds seen on the banks of the river. The 

 cottage gardens displayed masses of blooming pink phloxes; in 

 very few of them was Tropceolnm spociosura chosen as a wall orna- 

 ment. 



The Verter well by the roadside is a chalybeate well of some 

 local repute. There only remains the -site of Crumhaugh Peel, 

 once the residence of a cadet of the Buccleuch family. In the 

 river here is a bathing pool called the Chief's Pool, which lay 

 quite convenient for the inmates of the adjoining tower. Some- 

 where above, as marked in Dr. Murray's Archaeological map of 

 Teviotdale, between Longbank and Martin's, British Cists con- 

 taining thirteen Urns were found. Borthaugh,on the opposite side 

 of the Teviot, is a very conspicuous farm place, with white walled 

 cottages and offices, having slated roofs. There is a British fort 

 on Borthaugh hill, where a stone celt preserved in Hawick 

 Museum was picked up. Groldielands Peel, that we had passed 

 on our left, shewed a massive square grey wall ; which afterwards 

 was visible from a great variety of positions, as we got above it. 

 It could signal to Branxholme; and there is a tradition that a 



