563 THiRSK NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, [September, 



eocanulatum ; the damp places on the hillside, Mnium subglobosum 

 and Hypmim stramineum ; and the walls, Weissia cirrhata and 

 Ptychomitrivm polyphyllum. In a limestone hill of equal eleva- 

 tion, the top would have been more of a table-land, the streamlet 

 fed from springs at the hillside instead of these trickling water- 

 courses, the edge of the bank a precipitous scar, the slope much 

 drier and more abrupt ; and I need scarcely say the Flora changed 

 in character in a degree proportionate to the difference in phy- 

 sical conformation. 



" Next day my brother and our valued muscological curator 

 joined me at Ilkley for an excursion to Bolton Woods, and Dr. 

 Carrington kindly came over from Yeadon to point out to us the 

 stations of the rarities. We took a gig as far as Bolton Bridge, 

 five miles up the river from Ilkley. Near Addingham is another 

 station for the three little Orthotrichea. About this point, as 

 before explained, we leave the millstone grit and enter upon the 

 Yoredale series of strata ; but in this part the lithological transi- 

 tion is barely appreciable. Upon a wall near Fairfield Hall is 

 one of the few stations in Britain where Encalpyta streptocarpa 

 has been seen in fruit, but we could meet with only some half-a- 

 dozen capsules. About Bolton the valley is quite as broad and 

 as fully cultivated, the fells scarcely higher or steeper, and the 

 aspect of the country not more mountainous than at Ilkley.* 

 Upon the trees that margin the Wharfe is plenty of Leskea poly- 

 carpa, and here again, on the rocks in the bed of the river, abun- 

 dance of Hypnum fiuviatile, and Cinclidotus. The priory, theme 

 alike of poet and painter, celebrated by Wordsworth, by Rogers, 



* " Except in the stony bed of the stream, the scene possesses little more aspect 

 of mountaiuoiis character than belongs to some of the park and meadow land 

 under the chalk hills near Henley and Maidenhead ; and if it were faithfully drawn 

 in all its parts, and on its true scale, would hardly more affect the imagination of 

 the spectator, unless he traced with such care as is never from any spectator to be 

 hoped, the evidence of nobler character on the pebbled shore or inconspicuous rock. 

 But the scene in reahty does affect the imagination strongly, and in a way whoUy 

 different from lowland hill scenery. A httle further up the valley the limestone 

 summits I'ise, and that steeply, to a height of 1200 feet above the river which foams 

 between them in the naiTow and dangerous channel of the Strid. Noble moor- 

 lands extend above, purple with heath, and broken into scars and glens, and around 

 every soft tuft of wood and gentle extent of meadow tkroughout the dale, there 

 floats a feeling of the mountain power, and an instinctive appreciation of the 

 strength and greatness of the wild northern land." — SusMn, 'Modern Painters,'' 

 Tol. iv. p. 256. 



