Mr Hardy on Langleyford Vale and the Cheviots. S63 



at length swept off by currents, glaciers, or ice-bergs, to con- 

 tribute to the soils, sands, and gravels that now overspread 

 the lower lands. This is the progress it has made since, 

 under the present sub-aerial influences, to bury itself once 

 more with ruin. In a short time the cliffs themselves will 

 disappear beneath their own debris, and the external waste 

 will terminate ; and the surface may skin over, and the 

 evidence be altogether shut up, that discloses that not only it 

 but all the adjacent hill-sides have once undergone the same 

 gradual disintegration. These remarks are applicable to the 

 whole of the Cheviots, so much encumbered are they with 

 displaced weathered rocks. 



Farther on, the ground is disfigured by heaps and inequali- 

 ties, such as are produced by great slips of soil from hill- 

 sides ; and several long ridges of rolled blocks and gravel 

 cross the valley, similar to those which above Langleyford I 

 have called moraines. These mounds may at a former period 

 have converted this confined valley into a series of temporary 

 lakes, whose ancient bottoms the stream is now disturbing. 



The quantity of thriving Hawthorn here is a special index 

 of the soil's dryness and gravelly texture. They are the 

 charm of this part of the glen. They are not very tall nor so 

 pendant in the branches as in richer ground, but their shapes 

 are wonderfully diversified : bushy and bowery ; upright and 

 tufted ; one-sided, antique, and bent ; dwarf, stunted, and 

 crippled ; now flourishing in the vale and the shelter ; then 

 flung out on the far-off ridge, the forlorn -hope of trees, 

 biding every foul gust of wind ; and so dispersed and 

 scattered about in the hollows and on the low grounds, that 

 they imitate an artificial park in happier situations. We 

 need only to bring back the extirpated red-deer and roe, to 

 make it real. But now, we have the calmer picture of the 

 ewe and lamb reposing under their shadows ; while the ring- 

 ouzel pipes its wild note from their unmolested bowers. 

 There is a period too, when the hawthorns are not only leafy 

 and decorative, but unfold their snowy blossoms, to soften 

 the roughness of the mountain side and introduce a gracious 

 mildness on the waste. The blossoms continue a longer time 

 up here than farther down ; sometimes we have the hawthorn, 

 the wild rose, and the late primrose in flower together — a 

 combination of three floral seasons. The thorns and other 

 trees here are free of lichens, shewing the air itself to be 

 comparatively dry. 



