230 DENTDALE AND RIBBLESDALE. [AugUSt, 



worn hollow by the action of the water, for which his Satanic 

 Majesty was supposed to have a partiality. The plants that I saw 

 in our short walk by the Dee were sufficiently numerous to con- 

 vince me that a longer search could be amply rewarded. The 

 most conspicuous and plentiful of these plants perhaps was Ge- 

 ranium sylvaticum, and almost equally abundant were Myrrhis 

 odorata and Allium ursinum. Gymnadenia conopsea was not un- 

 common in meadows by the river, and in the same meadows I saw 

 several specimens of a Mentha, but they were not forward enough 

 to decide the species, and several Hieracia upon and about the 

 rocks were in a similar state. I have no doubt many of the Fern 

 tribe might be found in this neiglibourhood rather later in the 

 season. The Hawthorns throughout Dentdale were most beau- 

 tiful : they had gone out of blossom near Preston, so we did not 

 expect to see them in such perfection ; and indeed we had the 

 pleasure of meeting with two other vernal favourites to which we 

 thought we had bidden farewell until next spring, Pj'imula veris 

 and Hyacinthus non-scriptus. After a walk of rather less than a 

 mile we regained our conveyance and drove two or three miles fur- 

 ther, when we finally dismissed it, and walked the remainder of the 

 way, about four miles, to Newby Head. Here we stopped for the 

 night; and on the following morning, after visiting a copious spring 

 arising on the side of a hill near the inn, which we consider to be 

 the real source of the Ribble, we took our course down the 

 stream, which for the first three miles is called Gale Beck. We 

 met with nothing remarkable in the floral way until we came to 

 a romantic part of the stream called Thornsgill, and in the mea- 

 dows here we found many interesting plants. Trollius europceus, 

 Primula farinosa, and Geu7n rivale were abundant ; Habenaria 

 viridis and Listera ovata were frequent, and Habenaria albida 

 almost equally so. In one meadow there was a great quantity of 

 Cardans heterophyllus (not yet quite in blossom), which plant we 

 also found near Horton, in Kibblesdale, from whence it was sent at 

 the end of the last century to Sowerby, by a Mr. Bingley. Ge- 

 ranium sylvaticum was also abundant hereabouts. Polygonum 

 Bistorta we saw in many places, as well as Campanula latifoUa, 

 the last of course not yet in blossom. We passed Lynn Gill, a 

 mountain ravine, on our way to Horton, but made no further 

 botanical discoveries worth recording previously to reaching the 

 latter place. At Horton my companions left me, but I remained 



