314 Report of Meetings for 1891. By Dr J. Hardy. 



turnip and potato fields. These crops are less luxuriant and 

 promisint^ on the high unequal hilly grounds of Upper Pinker- 

 ton on the right ; but they altogether Lear witness to the soil's 

 immense fertility. 



Dryburn has remarkably high gravelly banks and bottom, the 

 result of the spoils for successive ages of the Conglomerate that 

 belts the Lammermoors. A small Free Church stands on the 

 flat beyond. Skateraw, a land-mark, is always conspicuous by 

 its elevated clump of trees. " Dumpender (Traprain Law) over 

 Johnnie Bogue's," (the name of a former farmer) was a well- 

 known meath often in the mouths of the old fishermen. Inner- 

 wick, a straggling village, underlies a cultivated rolling height, 

 which terminates on the N.E. with the swelling tops of the 

 venerable trees that begirt Innerwick Castle, and westwards 

 meets the Thurston woods. Passing these, we turn up by 

 Thurston Mains. Here the Great White Oxeye manifests itself 

 on the red soil by the wayside, and the stones and twigs of the 

 hedges are yellowed with Parmelia parietina, a breath of damp 

 wintry air having persistently blown thei-e. The back of Black- 

 castle hill, now fronting us, is mostly either cultivated or patched 

 with furze. The half obliterated old Camps on this aspect are 

 imperceptible at this season. Heavy crops of wheat and barley 

 lie on our right, some of them scourged by recent shaking winds. 

 Thistles and nettles were rather too predominant in some fields. 

 A section of Old Red Sandstone is visible by the roadside at 

 Thurston Mains. In passing tliis place, a glimpse was had 

 down the Braidwood burn, steep and grassy on one side, 

 roughened with entangled thorns and briars, and gashed with 

 red scaurs on the other. Before we had reached the burn, the 

 entrance to the Emmelscleugh hill-road was crossed, while we 

 held to the left. The noisy rush of the waters of the impounded 

 stream over the cauld here, has the effect of a waterfall. There 

 are here fine timber trees by the winding road, and refreshing 

 glimpses of untarnished grass on the steep rising braes, and 

 green hillocks on either hand. The soil is gravelly and dry, but 

 the rains had brought back the hues of spring. 



There is a fine section of Red Sandstone rock by the tree- 

 shaded burn. The burn contains good trout, and I am now told 

 that the pools of Shippath dean burn, which is one of the 

 tributaries, are not destitute of fishes as I once supposed and 

 stated, so that I must not have sounded all its depths, (Club's 



