54 REPORTS OF MEETINGS FOR 1909 



for the aged poor or young orphans, for lunatics, and for the 

 segregation of lepers. When Hospitals were erected for the 

 protection of traveller's, they were frequently found on the 

 mai'gin of rivei's near a ferry, and Rutherford was specified 

 as under that class. But whatever was the character of the 

 Hospital it was certain that no remains of either Church or 

 Hospital were now to be found, and as to the churchyard, it had 

 been ploughed up early in the 19th century, when the grave- 

 stones were broken up and cast into drains. Had time permitted 

 it was intended to drive as far as the ford of which mention 

 had been made ; but as the forenoon was far advanced it was 

 deemed expedient to proceed forthwith towards Fairnington, 

 which formed the next point of interest in the day's itinerary. 

 On gaining the high ground above the railway, a fine view of 

 Smailholm Tower was obtained. The drive lay along a road 

 bounded on the North by patches of moor which were ablaze 

 with Rose-Bay Willow Herb ( Ep'dohium angustifolium), and 

 terminated near Fairnington Crags, and on the South by 

 undulating arable land, whose striking feature was the immense 

 number of broad acres enclosed in individual fields. 



On reaching Fairnington the party assembled at the door 

 of the mansion, where its urbane owner, to whom they were 



in large measure indebted for the judiciously 

 Fairnington. arranged programme of the day's proceedings, 



favoured them with a narrative of the history of 

 the family of Rutherfurd, and its connection with the estate. 

 In the course of his remarks, he stated that it would not be 

 necessary to go further back than the 16th century, when the 

 Rutherfurds first obtained possession of parts of it. Generally, 

 however, the estate concentrated about that time into Ruther- 

 furd ownership, and so continued for many years — a learned 

 genealogist and antiquarian alleging that with the exception of 

 a few months Fairnington had not been out of the name of 

 Rutherfurd during the last four centuries. It was not asserted 

 that a continuous holding had been preserved in the same identical 

 family, but a holding by the Rutherfurd family albeit through 

 a different line. Regarding the spelling of the name, while 

 furd prevailed for a century or more, in an old deed of entail 

 it was rendered in no less than three different styles— /ore?, furd, 



