354 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
supports upon its sandstones and shales that remarkable extent 
of heather-covered moor and peat which occupies a belt of 
country, broken only by valleys, for a length of 200 miles, being 
in places thirty miles wide. The line of demarcation between the 
vivid green grass of the limestone and the black heather-covered 
peat of the millstone-grit is generally as well defined as that of 
the formations themselves. 
The basin of the Nidd above Hampsthwaite includes an area 
of eighty square miles; and though some allusions will be made 
to the more southerly part of this area, it is the more northerly 
and more elevated parts that will be particularly described. For 
sixteen miles from Great Whernside the valley proper is nowhere 
more than one mile wide from ridge to ridge, and is from 500 to 
800 feet deep, forming, as it were, a deep groove in the vast 
easterly-sloping heather-covered moorland. South of that the 
valley becomes more open, the height of the surrounding hills 
falls, and the moors, which retreat to the west, disappear 
altogether on the east side. Save for the magnificent Brimham 
Rocks, the valley below this is tame and uninteresting. . 
Between the Wharfe near Otley and the Nidd below Pateley 
Bridge, there is a great extent of wild half-cultivated land, almost 
all of which has formerly been under the plough. Some of this 
tract is yet wild moorland, in which les the ancient enclosure 
of Haverah Park, but the rest has long since been turned into 
grazing land. Over this and surrounding districts, farms fitted 
up for agriculture are now standing half ruinous, and it is no 
uncommon thing to see a little shed of logs thatched with hay for 
the shelter of a few calves put up in one corner of a large roofless 
barn built for the reception of hay and grain. Fences have been 
allowed to go to ruin, or gaps have been intentionally formed in 
them to give the herds of cattle now grazing there a larger run. 
Till about fifty years ago long-horned cattle were kept in the 
dale. ‘They were black-and-white, and blue. These were replaced 
by shorthorns, whose chief merit lies in the fact that in a year and 
a half they will put on as much flesh as an ordinary beast will in 
three. In addition to this they “feed” better, and grow fat on 
pastures where an ordinary cow would remain poor. For these 
reasons they are well adapted for keeping for a year and a half or 
two years on these moorside farms. Since the decline of agriculture 
in the dale their numbers have very much increased all along this 
