1 1 o Country Rambles. 



The lapse of twenty-four years has not tended to 

 improve the aspect of the Reddish valley. The main 

 features are the same, but the brightness is sadly dimmed. 

 Everything now, in 1882, illustrates the operation of town 

 smoke and hurtful vapours, not to mention the devas- 

 tating influences which come of human travel. The wild- 

 flowers have shared the fate of those in other suburban 

 localities; the old hall has sunk further towards decay; 

 the Inghams, happily, are extant. Mr. Sidebotham, 

 for his own part, practices, amid the refinements of his 

 Bowdon home, all that he cultivated originally upon the 

 banks of the little river, and with the added success that 

 arises upon unbroken assiduity. He tells me now of his 

 researches into the entomology of Dunham Park, where 

 not long ago, for one or two successive seasons, in July, 

 a curious beetle occurred in plenty, a fact immensely 

 remarkable, since only one other of its kind has ever 

 been noticed elsewhere in England, this upon an oak in 

 Windsor Forest as far back as 1829 ! The insect was first 

 detected by Mr. Joseph Chappell, a working mechanic 

 at Sir Joseph Whitworth's, and one of the most careful 

 observers of nature now in our midst. 



The first photographs ever shown in Manchester were laid before 

 a meeting of the Literary and Philosophical Society by the late 

 Mr. J. E. Bowman, in November, 1838. I remember the occasion 

 well, and the interest taken in them by Dr. Dalton. 



