Forest of Rossendale. 3 



of different kinds, is sufficiently attested by names which exist to 

 the present time. 



To the thoughtful mind there is much food for varied reflection, 

 pleasing and profitable, as it endeavours to picture to itself the 

 appearance and characteristics of the dim Forest in its primeval 

 existence, when the streams that tinkled through the valleys, pure 

 as the air of its brown uplands, assuaged the thirst of its meaner 

 inhabitants, and the umbrageous foliage afforded them kindly 

 shelter from the heats of summer, and the cutting blasts of its more 

 inclement seasons ; and long ere yet the busy din of manufactures 

 and trade had invaded its shadowy precincts. 



The wild boar tribe has left behind it tokens of its presence, 

 deeper and more ineffaceable than the marks of its warlike tusks 

 upon the trees of its favourite haunts. There is no mistaking 

 the parentage of such names as Boarsgreave, Sowclough, and 

 Swinshaw. 



The wolf, ferocious and cowardly, has disappeared from its 

 lurking-place in the Forest ; but we still retain amongst us the 

 evidences of its occupation in the names, Wolfenden, Wolfenden 

 Booth, and Wolfstones. 



That a species of wild oxen ranged the hills and hollows where 

 now our domestic animals graze, is proved by remains of horns 

 and bones from time to time disentombed from the debris depo- 

 sited in the valleys by the mountain-streams, whose courses have 

 been diverted, or whose beds have been narrowed and appropriated 

 to other uses. 



The different varieties of the deer tribe, it is well known, were 

 denizens of the Forest, which they wandered at will, and no doubt 

 supplied both food and raiment to the partially-clothed human 

 inhabitants in this and surrounding neighbourhoods. 



At a meetmg of the Manchester Geological Society, the late 

 Captain Aitken e.xhibited a pair of antlered horns, a bone, and a 

 short horn, and stated that the antlers and bone were discovered 

 whilst excavating for a drain in a bed of river gravel, six feet from 

 the surface, in the valley of the River Irwell, near Rawtenstall. 



