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



So far Mr Bowie; T shall now bring up my own observations. 

 By the road side, before reaching the bridge, there is much wild- 

 strawberry. The descent to the river is by a footpath through 

 a wood. Cow- wheat, Bilberry, Sanicle, Herb Mercury. 

 Clinopodium vulgare, Teucrium scorodonia, Uieracium boreale, H. 

 vulgatum, Melica uniflora, Luzala sylcatica, Bromus giganteus and 

 B. asper, and Brachypodium sylvaticum, mixed with Hazels, 

 Mountain Ashes, Oaks, Bird Cherries, Honeysuckles, and Guelder 

 Poses — the remaining representatives of the ancient woodland. 

 The ferns were Lastrea dilatata, and Blechnum Spicant. By the 

 river grew a large Carex, perhaps riparia, but the preserved 

 specimens are in poor condition. Among the mosses, although 

 Mr Archibald Jerdon had here gathered Distichium capillaceum a 

 rarish hill-moss, there was not any rarity observed. Fontinalis 

 antipyretica grew in the pools ; Dicranum pellucid urn among the 

 rocks, and covering the moistened boulders ; Funaria hygrometrica, 

 in yellow sand, in the fissures of the wasting sandstones. In the 

 gravel, Cardamine sylvatica became manifest ; and a patch of 

 Miniulu-s lutaus. Scrophularia nodosa was also seen, but observa- 

 tions were necessarily cursory. 



The Linns are a wild scene, the mossy-coloured water after the 

 recent rains boiling among the rounded headed mass of rocks', 

 with which the channel is strewed a far way down below the 

 bridge ; but the most wonderful sight here is the Mountain 

 Limestone Strata with their accompanying shales and sandstones, 

 bent round saddle-back wise, and the rocks in the cliffs par- 

 ticipating in the mighty flexure. The limestone rocks and 

 accompanying bituminous shale show embedded the Encrinites, 

 St. Cuthbert's beads, Producti, Spirifiers, and other characteristic 

 corals and shells of the Mountain Limestone ; and the Sandstones 

 are pitted with the remains of casts of fossil wood, possibly 

 Lepidodendrons. The uplifted strata gradually become more 

 horizontal on the banks at the foot of the Linns, when they are 

 suddenly interrupted by a gap, and then a series of red sand- 

 stones follow and slope away, unconformably at a different angle. 

 These form the commencement of the New Red Sandstone 

 quarried at the Mote Quarry. Nearly midway down the gorge 

 a very high water-mark cut on an oak showed the height the 

 river rose to in July 1849, during a thunderstorm on the 

 Langholm Common Riding day. The Water Crow and the Grey 

 Wagtail were the only birds visible at the Linns. Above Penton 



