4 GEOLOGICAL EXCURSION. 



rock project into the excavation, and giant columns spring from its depths 

 and assume most fantastic shapes. These walls and columns and the sides 

 of the pits are furrowed, and deep round channels are cut in their sides 

 by the gurgling waters which have poured into them, making deep funnels, 

 most probably by means of stones twisted round and round by the boiling 

 waters; this action may be seen anywhere on a rocky shore. 



But perhaps these Buttertubs will be better understood by describing 

 one in another part of the country, where the powerful agencies which 

 created them are still at work. In a hollow on the moors between 

 Inglebro and Meughten Fells, a tiny rivulet has cut a deep channel in 

 the black peat; collecting the waters of the bog, it increases in bulk till 

 it becomes a small stream; as its course is followed, it is found to have 

 worn its bed down to the Limestone, and huge stones encumber its descent. 

 Suddenly the water disappears; following the dry bed it is found again 

 rising from the crevices where it has been sucked in; the bed becomes 

 rougher and more rocky, and twenty feet at least below the level of the 

 moor; in this bed the stream foams and tumbles, till the whole of the water 

 precipitates itself into a deep hole twenty feet in diameter, and from two to 

 three hundred feet in depth. It owes its size entirely to the action of 

 the stream, which must have worn it for ages. The sides are' quite pre- 

 cipitous, rather overhanging at the top, and on looking down, nothing but 

 a pale blue mist can be seen — the spray of the falling water. 



Thouofh larger and consequently grander than the Buttertubs, this deep 

 cavern, (Gaping Gyll, as it is called,) is not so picturesque; the water has 

 been working at it longer, and has worn away those elegant columns, and 

 smoothed the rugged sides which add such a beauty to these romantic 

 caverns; nor is the vegetation so luxuriant as in the Buttertubs, the whole 

 of which support a magnificent crop of Ferns, flourishing luxuriantly in 

 these cool, shady, moist, and sheltered hollows; their edges are fringed 

 by the hardy BlecMum horeale, and numerous Jungermannia tinge the 

 rock with their rich green. The pools swarm with a little fresh-water 

 crustacean. 



From the top of the Pass half-a-mile higher than the Buttertubs, the 

 eye ranges over a wide horizon; to the north as far as Water Crag and 

 the Kene Standards; to the south, the broad top of Inglebro towers high 

 above the surrounding summits, which compose Carn Dod, the fells at the 

 head of Raydale, and a tossed sea of mountains which cluster round the 

 hollows of Dent and Sedbergh, In the descent into VVensleydale we gath- 

 ered Lycopodium selago, and started one or two King Ouzels — not a common 

 bird in this country. 



The road at about a mile from ITawes passes Ilardraw Scar, a beautiful 

 and well-known waterfall; the stream falls over the edge of that band of 



