SS2 Anniversary Address. 



fine sight — thistles though they were. Percy's Leap was cer- 

 tainly a marvellous performance, to a knight on horseback, 

 sheathed in heavy armour. The Roman road hereabouts 

 accompanies and crosses the highway ; the large stones hav- 

 ing been judiciously allowed to remain. Very pleasing, 

 newly washed by the rain, were the garlands of wild blush 

 roses, suspended archwise from the hedges, near Brandon 

 White House. This season, like most flowers, they have been 

 evanescent as poppies. The accumulation of gravel by the 

 water side at the County bridges has long attracted the atten- 

 tion of geologists; and yet this wild stream — this Breamish 

 or mad water — further down, can only shift small particles of 

 silt. At Eslington we crossed the Aln, there contracted and 

 juvenile; a small curved bridge at the end of the park wall is 

 the subject of one of Bewick's tail pieces. Here the Dog-roses 

 again enlivened us, but the land had grown poor and clayey, 

 and other thistles than the nutans spoke of neglect. The 

 farm-houses also were become small and mean looking ; some 

 of them are roofed with ponderous slabs of sandstone slate, 

 which are said to be porous and to admit moisture. "Baxton 

 hughe," in 1553, watched by the *'inhabiters of Over- 

 trewycke," must have lain somewhere near our route, further 

 on. Bakestones were girdles fashioned out of this fissile 

 variety of rock. Eslington was formerly the property of the 

 "courteous" Collingwoods, once a powerful race in this part 

 of Northumberland, whose other seat of Little Ryle has now 

 been allowed to go to decay. Darkly, in the fair morning 

 light, the gloomy pines throw their shadows over the terraced 

 sandstone heights of Thrunton crags and Callaly. How 

 funereal they must look during a thunder-storm ! Opposite 

 to us, on the other side, were the Ryle and Prendwick hills. 

 1 had visited these during last summer, but they are dry and 

 grassy, and the only unrecorded plant I met with was Carex 

 muricata, at Haselton Rigg wood, above Alnham. On Casely 

 moor the crops get still barer ; the curlew and lapwing haunt 

 the road ; the hawthorn ceases to thrive ; and the tree tops 

 on the south-western side bear witness to the frequent onsets 

 of cutting winds. Netherton is a curious old village of one 

 story houses and thatched cottages ; the inn signs have never 



