Alder ley Edge. 129 



paths, up and down, and rather intricately, at last 

 reaching a moss alcove, and, by pushing up the ravine, 

 a little waterfall. This is, perhaps, the choicest wood- 

 land scene readily accessible from Manchester. All wood 

 rambling is of necessity fine. The true way, nevertheless, 

 to learn how beautiful a wood can be, and how best to feel 

 its richness, is to track, as we may do here, one of its 

 streamlets to the source. Near the little waterfall grows 

 the beech-fern, and upon the rocky ledges of the cascade 

 itself, the " shining cavern-moss," Sckistoste'ga penna'ta, 

 so called from being luminous, when viewed at a par- 

 ticular angle, with a kind of emerald and golden phos- 

 phorescence.* After visiting this lovely retreat, and re- 

 turning to the higher portion of the bay in the hill, we 

 turn to the left and go past a farmhouse, then through 

 fields and under the trees, and so reach the Macclesfield 

 road at the point spoken of. Near the Holywell Rock 

 occurs one of the rarest of known mosses, the Orthodon'- 

 tium gra'rile, at present known to grow only in Abyssinia 

 and in Great Britain, two out of the three British locali- 

 ties being in Cheshire. 



Between the main ascent to the Edge and the lane 

 that leads from the Congleton road to near the "Wizard," 



* There is no actual evolution of light from this charming little 

 plant. The seeming phosphorescence comes of a peculiar reflection 

 and refraction of the light of the sun from the cellules that form its 

 substance, and which, in the young state of the plant, (when the 

 phosphorescent appearance is alone exhibited,) are swollen or dis- 

 tended, so as to form innumerable minute papilla;. 



I 



