Mr. George Tate on the Cheviots. 369 



The modern aspect of this range of hills is, however, very 

 different from that of mediaeval times, when the great Forest 

 of Cheviot was tenanted by herds of red deer and roes, and 

 was the scene of the " Woeful hunting " sung so plaintively 

 in our Border ballads. Ruthless Border warfare destroyed 

 this great forest ; even so early as the middle of the sixteenth 

 century much of it was gone ; there were *'many allers and 

 other ramell wood;" "the grownde was overgrown with 

 linge and some with moss"; but there was still "great 

 plenty of red deer and roes." Though a few stunted oaks, 

 descendants of the denizens of the old forest, still grow 

 on the northern slope of Yevering, and patches of indigenous 

 birch, alder, hazel, the elder, mountain ash, and a few 

 thorns and sloes in the valleys, and one holly still lingers 

 near the top of Brough law, yet the higher grounds are now 

 denuded of ancient trees. Deer and roes are entirely exter- 

 minated ; but their place is now occupied, more profitably, by 

 large flocks of sheep, for the support of which the fine sweet 

 herbage of the minor hills is especially adapted. 



Taking into account the area of the Cheviots, their situa- 

 tion, distant from fourteen to thirty-five miles from the sea, 

 and their altitude, the botany is far from being rich. Perhaps 

 this comparative poverty may be due to the small a-nount of 

 lime distributed through the porphyritic rock ; and it would 

 seem, indeed, that the rare plants, which grow upon them, 

 find a habitat there more from height above the sea level than 

 from the mineral character of the rocks. A more peculiar 

 flora marks the basaltic rocks of the Borders. The flat ex- 

 tended summit of Cheviot itself is very dreary and barren, 

 being chiefly a great moss hag, in some places near to twenty 

 feet deep, with here and there tufts of Carex rigida and 

 Festuca vivipara, and patches of Rubus chamcemorus, Vacci- 

 nmn Vitis-idcea, and Lycopodium alpinum and Selago. At 

 a little lower level the two rarest plants of all flourish, Epilo- 

 hium alpinum and Cornus suiceca, the former at an altitude 

 of about 1900 feet ; at lower levels still, on the minor hills 

 we have Pyrola secunda and Viola lutea. But among the 

 rocky ravines and cliffs in Dunsdale, Goldsclengh, and Hen- 

 hole, at elevations from 1000 to 2000 feet, most of the more 

 interesting plants of the range have their habitats, as Epilo- 

 hium alsinifolium, Saxijraga stellaris and hypnoides, Asple- 

 nium viride, Cystopteris dentata, Allosorus crispus, Poa 

 Balfouri, Sedum Rhodiola, and Salix nigricans ; yet none 

 of these can be considered as peculiar to this rock formation. 



