Boggart-hole Clough. 157 



still and motionless, a silver eye or a glittering rapid is 

 not awanting. Of course we must take with us a dis- 

 position to enjoy. "A song," says some author, "is 

 thrown away that is not in the same key as the listener." 

 The clough is not distinguished by anything special in 

 the way of plants, though we have gathered there fine 

 sprigs of the sweet woodruff. As a retreat, however, 

 from the noise and bustle of the town, and the only place 

 of the kind in that direction, it must always be precious 

 to the lover of nature. Unfortunately, the path has of 

 late years become very much disturbed through the 

 falling away of the bank, the steepness of which, and the 

 weight of the trees, unprovided with sufficient anchorage 

 by reason of the lightness of the soil, causes continual 

 landslips, so that now there are in many places rather 

 dangerous declivities. Many of the trees that once stood 

 erect upon the brows, now lie ingloriously with their 

 heads in the brook beneath, and their roots in the air. 

 The increase of buildings about Newton and Failsworth, 

 and the consequent incessant raids of destroying boys, 

 have also tended of late years to mar the place consider- 

 ably; and now, in 1882, it has to be said with deep 

 regret, that the regular Sunday resort to Boggart-hole of 

 the lowest roughs of the neighbouring villages, leaves it 

 for the week-day visitor tattered and torn and soiled 

 beyond recovery. The signal, with every new season, 

 for renewed mischief, is the opening of the golden 

 sallow-bloom, now not a tenth in quantity of what it was 

 even in 1850. These roughs are the thousand times 



