168 Report of Meetings for 1888. By J. Hardy. 



coloured brackens, and scattered clumps and dots of dark furze ; 

 as well as brown Dunmore ; the grey Cunion Crags, and the 

 lower Ingram bills ; Shilmore capped by a cairn ; great Cushat 

 Law ; Hogden standing apart, with its abrupt front, and its 

 depressed back stretching away to combine with the mossy 

 swamps overtopping lone Milkhope. Cheviot lies a long way off. 



Mentha arvensis was observed in the fields adjacent to Bridge 

 of Aln ; the ditches and swampy ground produce much Juncus 

 glaucus ; the Aln itself is sometimes crowded with the Bur-reed 

 (Sparganium ramosum), or bordered by thickets of Epilobium 

 hir&utum. The willows are the Bay Willow (Salix pentandra) 

 and the Osier, (S. viminalis). 



Across the fields about half a mile from Bridge of Aln stands 

 Thrunton Mill, now fallen into disuse. A portion of an old 

 broken mill-stone of large grit lying about the place has carved 

 on it behind the hollow for the spindle, a cross moline. Moline is 

 the crossed iron that supports the upper mill-stone. It is curious 

 to meet with this heraldic symbol on the stone at a place so 

 seldom visited. Still more to the west in a grass field skirted by 

 a fir planting rises the copious spring of St Ninian's Well, an 

 unfailing contributory to the mill-pond. It has been faced with 

 stones, and boils up with great force, casting up little whirls of 

 sand ; and there is a fine silvery sand at the bottom, and all 

 along its Forget-me-not (Myosotis) margined strand. The 

 western Roman Causeway passed a little way above the well. 

 The bronze weapons, figured in the Club's Proc, xi., Plate vn., 

 were discovered in a field higher up (the Coldwell field) nearer 

 the Wooler road. 



The company took the footpath by the side of the Coe (Cove) 

 or Jackey's Burn, a tributary of the Aln, to Low Learchild, and 

 then obliquely crossed by an ancient track, the grassy and 

 whinny hill side, till it joined the public highway at Edlingham 

 Hut. All the cross-roads of the country meet at Low Learchild, 

 which was once a considerable place, as is plainly evident by the 

 heaps of turf and stone not yet cleared away. A vacant green 

 space surrounds it, in which are remains of old earthen enclosures 

 for sheep or cattle, for it was liable to be swept by Border forays, 

 or thievish inroads even in times of peace. In 1552 there was 

 a nightly watch kept by two men between Newton and Lierchild, 

 while other two perambulated the distance between "Liersheld 

 and Bawton." It was ravaged during a period of truce, in 



