PKESIDENt's ADDKE8S. Ill 



secured; or the iuvoluntary cry of delight Avhen, the Juniper 

 wood passed, that long line of bushes, half in, half out of the 

 water, proved to be the eagerly soiight Potentilla fruticosa ; or 

 the mad rush after the startled Partridge chicks, checked by the 

 intense concern of their crafty mother ; or the shrinking eager- 

 ness with which the first Lizard was seized ; or the speculative 

 interest with which those two heaps of feathers were examined 

 by one of our worthy Secretaries ? Not I. But this is poetry, 

 perhaps you are saying, and Naturalists want prose. "Well, 

 poetry or prose, it is life ; and such are among the purest plea- 

 sures of life. Even now I look up, as I write, at the whitened 

 skull of a ram, near me, and at once see a heap of bones on an 

 open moor, and near by a black little pool of clear water set in 

 a glorious emerald frame of Sphagnum and other mosses, and 

 starred where the waters bubble as they rise, with dainty white 

 or speckled-white blossoms of Saxifrage. I am in a fairy-land, 

 though truly only recalling one scene midway between the Snout 

 and the Nick. 



How came this Nick? The whole conditions and lie of the 

 land say, not wholly by river action but, perhaps, primarily by 

 marine denudation, subsequently by glacial action, and finally 

 by running water. For, First, from the Snout to the head of the 

 Nick is a rising slope; the Nick's extension has shortened and 

 is shortening the basin of the eastern-flowing streams, so it is 

 impossible for a bigger stream to have formerly flowed throiigh 

 the Nick -valley westwards. Second , the spring and insignificant 

 burn in the valley emphasizes this. Third, the parallelism of 

 the rocks on either side forbids the idea of earthquake action as 

 the cause ; and Fourth, the fiord character of the west coast of 

 Scotland so harmonizes with this Nick and neighbourhood that 

 it seems a natural extension of that coast, when the Cumberland 

 hills were islands, and the Permian and later beds of the Eden 

 valley were being laid down between them and the Pennines. 

 Have raised beaches been sought hereabouts or moraines and 

 other glacial signs found ? 



A very fine rolled Stigmaria was found by us in Maize Beck. 

 Our chief botanical finds were Tofieldia pahistris on Widdy Bank 



