562 
breast-work, would naturally take the direction of least resistance, 
— viz. the course of the stream which drains the moss. 
The area set in motion was estimated at about 300 feet broad at 
its widest part, BB, and 1320 feet long, from A to A d. The slip 
met with slight elevations at CC: the most formidable of which 
lying on the north, gave the flow a southerly direction, and led to the 
deposit of the tongue marked D. Here it spread over portion of a 
corn field, covered part of the highway, Haldane’s Moss Boad, and 
wasted part of a field of turnips lying on the south side of the 
road. 
At the point where the moving material turned to the south, evi- 
dences of great disturbance are to be seen. In some cases, huge 
masses of peat have been turned upside down ; and, as they were 
pushed over sunken portions, their faces now rest on what formerly 
formed the surface of the ground. On the lumps thus inverted, 
many branches and roots of native birch trees ( Betula alba ) were 
to be met with. No birches now grow in the immediate neighbour- 
hood. It was shown that no trees of any sort grew near the moss in 
1809 ; and the birches, it was concluded, had been laid down long 
anterior to that date. A peculiarity of their roots was pointed out. 
Many of the main stems, instead of being rounded, have a central 
depression on both sides, are flat, recurved, and run quickly to a 
point. Fragments of land shells (Zonites) were picked up among 
these roots. 
At I), the floating material turned again to the north, and bending 
N. by E., it came in contact with a plantation of Scotch firs. A 
few of the trees have been carried several yards forward, and now 
stand as if they had not been moved from their place. Several have 
been thrust violently, top downwards, into the underlying clay, and 
others have been placed horizontally on the edges of arrested masses 
of peat. In its course, much damage was done by the slip to other 
two corn-fields. At F, it filled a whinstone quarry about fifteen 
feet deep. At the bend EE, the soil in motion must have been at 
least twelve feet deep. The great body of the peat, which had been 
set in motion on the 12th of August, took six days before it reached 
in bulk the point I, a haugh on each side of Binniehill Burn, 
where it covered a space described as being as wide as the Clyde near 
Glasgow. On the 15th, the movement was at the rate of about a 
yard in two minutes. 
