In a hedge near the cross road, which leads back from Liberton House to the village, grows the wormwood (_Artemisia vulgaris_), with its deeply-cut, silver-lined leaves, and curious, aromatic smell. It is the only place in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh where I have noticed it growing. When we reach the main road again, we turn to the right, and, passing the large reservoir that the Edinburgh Water Company have lately built, we soon reach the east lodge of Morton Hall. On the opposite side of the road is a small place, St. Catherine's, in the garden of which still stands the famous Balm Well, to which in former days so many pilgrimages were made. The water of the spring is covered with a film of petroleum; and however frequently the film is removed, it always returns. In old days the well was much resorted to for the curing of cutaneous distempers. It owes its origin to the following miracle. St. Catherine had a commission from St. Margaret, the queen of Malcolm Canmore, to bring her some holy oil from Mount Sinai. At this very place she happened by accident to lose a few drops, and on her earnest supplication the well appeared. When James VI. was in Scotland in 1617, he went to visit it, and ordered that it should be fenced in with stones from bottom to top, and that a door and staircase should be made for it, so that it might be more easy of access. The royal commands being immediately obeyed, the well was greatly adorned, and remained so till 1650, when Cromwell's soldiers almost totally destroyed it. It was repaired again after the Restoration. St. Catherine was buried in a chapel adjoining the well, which was pulled down in the last century. It was observed that the man who pulled it down never prospered again. There are still remains of the old stonework to be seen; and now, as then, a black, oily substance floats on the top of the water, but the well is only visited in these days as a curiosity, and not with the trusting faith that its miracle-working powers excited of old. When we reach the blacksmith's shop at the corner, our way turns to the left, and we leave the road we have hitherto followed, to pursue its course to the shale-works and coal-pits of Straiton and Loanhead. The thick white smoke drifting along the rising ground to the south of us comes from the limekilns of Burdiehouse, which are surrounded by a labyrinth of caves, out of which the limestone has been quarried. Fossils of curious plants and fishes are found there in great quantities. It is said that the name Burdiehouse is a corruption of "Bordeaux," and that the place was so called by some of Queen Mary's French attendants who settled there.