560 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
that my inquiries were undertaken quite irrespective of all contro- 
versial proceedings, parliamentary or otherwise, and for a purely 
scientific object — in which point of view alone I shall now proceed 
to state them. In the present place, I shall notice the lead ques- 
tion slightly, reserving that inquiry for another head of my obser- 
vations. At present I have to say a few words of other matters 
which arose incidentally before me in the course of my inquiries. 
St Mary's Loch is a lonely lake, retired among the hills of Sel- 
kirkshire, 37 miles south from Edinburgh. It is three miles long, 
and about half a mile in width at its broadest parts ; but it may be 
said to be prolonged nearly another mile by the Loch of the Lowes 
above it, which is separated only by a space of 150 yards, through 
which the upper loch is joined to St Mary’s Loch by a small stream. 
The lake in most parts shelves rapidly to a depth of 30 or 40 feet ; 
in various parts it is said to deepen to 80, 100, and even 150 feet ; 
and at a place pointed out to me as the deepest, I found 144 feet 
of water. It discharges itself in a goodly body of water, by a broad, 
shallow outlet to constitute the Yarrow Water. This joins the 
Ettrick a mile and a quarter above Selkirk ; and the united waters, 
under the name of Ettrick, are poured, after a course of about four 
miles more, into the river Tweed. The Yarrow runs over 11 miles 
in a right line, but 14 miles by its windings, in a very stony chan- 
nel, obviously of great width in floods. 
The country of the Yarrow and St Mary’s Loch is almost entirely 
pastoral, except where covered at the lower end of the stream by 
the beautiful woods of Bowhill, Philipshaugh, Hangingshaw, and 
other country seats. Around the lake itself the land may be de- 
scribed as consisting purely of pastoral hills, the attempts at arable 
culture being as yet very limited, and wood hitherto a scanty and 
stunted ornament. The level of the lake is almost exactly 800 
feet above the sea. It is bordered everywhere, and abruptly, by 
hills rising from 750 to 1000 feet above it, showing long sky-lines, 
and steep slopes which present no rocks, no woods, nothing but 
smooth grass, unbroken save where scored by a few stream courses, 
mostly waterless in dry weather. But the Meggat Water is a 
considerable permanent stream, seven miles in direct length, which 
falls into St Mary’s Loch about its middle line on the north ; and 
the Little Yarrow, three miles in direct length, feeds the Loch of 
