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



after Mr William B. Boyd and two other members gathered 

 Epipnctis lat (folia, and Paris qiiadrifolia in profusion here. The 

 Herb Paris is recorded for Rugley Wood, and extends across the 

 borders to near Jedburgh. It is more plentiful on the Coquet 

 and in the south of the county. Eoughley Wood used to be 

 famous for hazel-nuts, and was well known to the Whittingham 

 children, who came in the "nutting'' season provided with 

 " pillow-slips " to carry home the spoil. 



The view of the well cultivated and ornamentally tree-clad 

 vale of Whittingham, and the encircling hills, backed by the 

 Cheviots, is one of the most enchanting prospects in North 

 Northumberland. The Hut (422.7 feet of elevation) belongs to 

 the vicar; passing by it, the road skirted the top of Birsley 

 Wood ; which is partly of planted trees amidst native scrub. 

 Oaks and ashes may represent the introduced trees ; hazel and 

 much bird-cherry or heckberry the latter class. The trees were 

 much thinned by the great October gale of 1881. Inside the 

 wood is full of Herb Mercury, and when the Club visited it, the 

 Wild Hyacinth or Harebell was in one brilliant sheet of blue, 

 calling forth general admiration. The soil is cold and clayey, 

 and being undramed affords little reward to the cultivator. The 

 grass is thin and wiry, mostly Fiorin (Agrostis stolonifera). From 

 this elevation, the once fine mansion of Lemmington Hall is seen 

 to great advantage, and occupies a finer position than any of its 

 surrounding and newer built rivals^ Opposite is the great ridge 

 of brown moor, speckled with stones and crags, and beds of 

 foxy-tinted ferns, and little bowers and lines of native trees — 

 birches, mountain-ashes and whitethorns — in sheltered corners, 

 or in the gullies whence the mountain streams break forth, when 

 the snow thaws or during sudden rain-falls, in torrents — but at 

 present only as trickling " letches." Sheep wandering over the 

 heath, or resting in its concavities and dimples, impart a sense 

 of animation to the scene, but are so" thinly distributed as almost 

 to be swallowed up in its amplitude. Very dreary in winter it 

 must be to live here. 



Edlingham was once a village of greater dimensions, and is 

 said to have reached to Newton, when it bore the epithet of 

 " Long," like numerous other assemblages of rural dwellings in 

 Northumberland situated alongside public ways. The vicarage 

 — in a position to which one has to look up — has the front muffled 

 in ivy, through which the windows like so many blinking eyes, 



