CLIMATOLOGY. 93 



of the central valley, but these are growing gradually smaller 

 and fewer, and now fully one-third of its area is occupied by 

 arable land. The royal forest of Galtres, which extended from 

 York to the Howardian hills and from the Derwent to the Ouse, 

 was disforested in the reign of Charles the Second, but several 

 what are called 'carrs,' boggy pieces of ground more or less 

 overgrown with trees and brushwood, still remain in the central 

 valley undrained. The main body of the most elevated towns 

 of the three western dales, Middleton, Muker, and Hawes, is 

 in each case at 300 yards or somewhat under. The only village 

 which I remember that attains 350 yards is Keld in Swaledale, 

 In Cleveland I do not know of any house so high as 300 yards. 

 There is an inn upon the Hambleton plateau considerably above 

 350 yards and numerous scattered farm-houses at 400 and up 

 to 450 yards in all the three dales of the west. In Gretadale 

 the ' Spital' at the summit of the Stainmoor Pass is 1,450 feet 

 above the sea-level, in Swaledale Crook Seat and two or three 

 other farmhouses attain or exceed 500 yards, and there is an inn 

 and two other houses near the Tanhill coalpit at 1,600 feet. 

 There is a shooting-box upon Askrigg Moor at 550 yards and 

 another upon the edge of the eastward spur of Lovely Seat not 

 much under 600 yards, but above this I have not noticed any- 

 thing but mere temporary sheltering places for shepherds and 

 miners. 



Though trees are tolerably abundant in most parts of the 

 valleys* both in hedgerows and in woods, yet except in some of 

 the carrs and occasionally by the stream-sides we cannot safely 

 regard them as indigenous in such situations. Woods are much 

 more plentiful in the dales and amongst the lower levels of the 

 slopes than in the low country apart from the hills, and both by 

 the stream-sides and amongst the banks and cliffs of the eastern 

 and western ranges of moorland they are in many cases evi- 



* Here as almost uniformly throughout these notes I use the words valleyx and dales in 

 contra-distinction to one another ; meaning by the former the vale of Pickering and the 

 vale of York ; by the latter the dales of all the hilly tracts. 



June 1888, 



