lOO A RAMBLE UP BURNHOPE. 



be quite waterproof. With a little patience one or two were 

 secured and transferred to the pocket . bottle, and home 

 examination showed them to be Hercostomus nigripen7iis, 

 Fin., new to me, though said to be common. 



A little higher up, where the rocky banks cease for a space, 

 the stream forms a pretty little fall over the ledges of the 

 upper layers of the Six-fathom Hazle, just below which a tiny 

 rivulet comes in from the north-west. A little way up it is 

 crossed by the footpath to Burnhope, and there, its long 

 straggling stems waving in the water, I was delighted to find 

 for the first time a water-moss, Fontinalis antipiretica, L. It 

 was too wet even for butter-paper, so squeezing it as dry as 

 possible, I carried it in my hand, until it was sufficiently dry 

 for transference to the pocket. 



The stream now ran between grassy banks. The mosses 

 and ferns had disappeared, and there were few flies about. 

 But the rocks came in to fill up the gap, for at the next little 

 fall limestone put in its appearance, which I knew must be 

 the Three-yard Limestone immediately overlying the Brig- 

 end Hazle. 



Above this the dip of the strata and the fall of the stream 

 just about correspond for some distance, and the water has 

 worn numerous narrow channels in the cracks of the lime- 

 stone, to which, when the stream is low, the water is confined, 

 leaving a fine dry pavement up which I bent my way. Things 

 began to look lively again in the fly line. A number of 

 wiUows fringed either bank, and soon a bag or two of buzzing 

 flies, with, doubtless, a few bees and Ichneumons, were trans- 

 ferred to the case for home examination. 



A bank now rose steeply on the left, thickly covered with 

 bushy hazles and alders, with little open bits, in which tall 

 rank grasses and Umbelliferse were growing. Very prominent 

 were the solitary heads of the Melancholy Thistle ( Cai'duus 

 heterophyllus, L.), which here was common. Flies were 

 abundant, and near the water an old friend, or rather an old 

 pest, the common Horse-fly Haematopota pluvialh, L,), put 

 in her appearance. It is strange that the bloodsucking females 



