1 76 Country Rambles. 



second nearly to Bowdon, over which place it has the 

 advantage of its earliest plants being among the rare 

 ones of the Manchester flora, while its latest are some 

 of the most beautiful and attractive. The name of 

 "clough," though so familiar in Lancashire, is not known 

 in the southern counties. Hence it may be useful to 

 observe that "doughs," beyond the Mersey, are those 

 fissures or "clefts" in the ground which give the first and 

 simplest idea of a valley. Formed by the rise, in opposite 

 directions, of two gentle acclivities, which run for a short 

 distance in a more or less irregular and winding parallel, 

 and at last widely diverge, or else undulate away into the 

 plain, these "doughs" have in every case a little stream 

 along the bottom, while the slopes on either side are 

 clothed with trees and natural shrubbery. Along the 

 borders of the stream there is a slender rustic path, which 

 often quits the water-side to mount high upon the slope, 

 and thus give pretty little peeps of the shining current 

 down below and of the distant leafy intricacies of the 

 wood. Rarely is there so much water as to form a deep 

 and steady brook; in summer time we may be sure it 

 will be shallow enough to "make music to the enamelled 

 stones," and beguile us onward with that beautiful magic 

 which always accompanies the artless voices and tones of 

 nature.* In the neighbourhood of Prestwich there are 



* While such is the original and proper sense of the word, the 

 application, as in the case of Wessenden Clough (p. 150), naturally 

 passed on to similar denies destitute of trees. Not fewer probably 

 than a third of the cloughs mentioned in the present volume are of 

 the latter character. 



