Report of Medinys for 1881). By br. J. Hardy. 4?0 



Eagles or Earns are frequently seen, but have no place of residence here." 

 lie also supplies information about the quadrupeds, which he says are 

 " Foxes, Hares, Wild Cats, Pole Cats, Weazels, the White Weazel, often 

 seen in winter, Hedgehogs, and Norway Rats. Tradition affirms that the 

 earth of Liddesdale has a peculiar quality of banishing the Common Rat 

 from Teviotdale. It is certain, that only a few years ago, carriers on their 

 return to the country loaded their horses with it, and carried it away for 

 that purpose. But it is affirmed, with more probability, that it is only 

 since the Norway Rat was introduced, that the Common Rat has been 

 extirpated." Old. Stat. Acct., xvi., p. 76. He says nothing of the Badger. 

 Adders, he adds, and as I learned from the shepherds, are not numerous ; 

 the soil is too damp. 



In recent seasons the hill-pastures have escaped the ravages of the Field 

 Mice, and the Caterpillars of the Grass Moth. There have been years 

 when the grasses were cut up with the larva; of a species of Tipula. 



In the forenoon of June 28th, a drive was taken across the dividing hill 

 ridge, between the slopes of the basin of Upper Liddesdale, aud the 

 gathering ground of the tributaries of the Rule and Jed waters. It is of 

 the road across the pass here that Sir Walter Scott speaks in a note to 

 " Guy Mannering." " The roads of Liddesdale, in Dandie Dinmont's days, 



, could not be said to exist, and the district was only accessible through a 

 succession of tremendous morasses. About thirty years ago, the author 

 himself was the first who ever drove a little open carriage into these 

 wilds ; the excellent roads by which they are now traversed, being then 

 in some progress- The people stared with no small wonder at a sight 

 which many of them had never witnessed in their lives before." It is a 

 steep winding way along hill-sides, aud across depressions formed by 

 intersecting cleughs, with a limited view on either hand, till the en- 

 compassing hill ridges are surmounted. Greywacke slate is the predominant 

 variety of rock, and it weathers into a yellow or whitish clay. The hills 

 themselves are capped with peat, and the winter torrents cut black gashes 

 in the soft enveloping mass, till they reach the moistened decaying rock 



.beneath, and break it up into conspicuous deep yellow scaurs. They like- 

 wise deepen and scour out the transverse or slanting foot drains, so that 

 the dark hill-faces are often crossed with numerous lengthened yellow 

 coloured lines of singular aspect, which sometimes terminate in a vast 

 mountain slip. The road is now that to Jedburgh, and passes up the side 

 of Dawston Burn to Abbey, where the Club had been on the previous day. 

 We have therefore now a continuance of that day's journey. At Abbey 

 we look up the Cliff-hope burn which rises in the Mid Hill (1123 feet) and 

 Lamblair Hill, 1635 feet, and lies on our left hand as we ascend. Cooper 

 Cleugh, in which there runs a tributary of the Dawston, is on the same 

 side ; and on the other we look down into Singdean or Caldron Burn. 

 Thereafter Wane Cleugh communicates with Singdean, near which is a 

 thriving plantation, chiefly of fir trees. At Singdean we are shown a 

 rather remarkably home -made -looking spade for cutting foot-drains ; and 

 the shepherd has an old " creeing-trough," for husking bear or barley, 

 lying at the house-end. Singdean Burn rises in Fanna Bog. In the 



