78 Report of Meetings for 1885. By Jas. Hardy. 



These are the results of the winter snows which they embosom 

 and protect. When these become melted, they gradually ex- 

 cavate and carry away the substance of the main hill, which runs 

 more or less at right angles to the ravines. The ravines are 

 mostly rugged open fissures in the Old Red Sandstone Con- 

 glomerate, or in the overlying boulder clay and re-assorted waste 

 of the Conglomerate ; where, displaying a broader area assuming 

 strange fantastic forms like the wasted battlements of a mighty 

 citadel upreared by elfin might ; but mostly narrow, with only 

 room for the streamlet that intersects them to struggle through 

 between their steep rocky walls. Sometimes there are lengthened 

 barren spaces of conglomerate with only here and there a starving 

 shrub, 



" Sown by winds, by vapours nurs'd," 



dependent from their crevices by cable-like roots out of all pro- 

 portion in length to the miniature bush they anchor ; and where 

 in the horizontal bands of the strata, the rock bramble (Rubus 

 saxatilis) has fixed itself, and pushes out its waving tendrils over 

 the perpendicular faces, and but rarely perfecting its harsh and 

 acid but pretty scarlet fruit. The wild strawberry (Fragaria 

 vesca) in pretty small forms with dwarf fruit in like manner ex- 

 hibits a preference for the crannies of such precipices, or plants 

 itself within some sheltering angle wherever a scant covering of 

 soil has mouldered from their sides to overlap their bases. Next 

 we will meet with small groves of native trees, birch and hazel 

 and sallow, some of them of elegant form and well feathered with 

 foliage, with an undergrowth of woodland flowers and grasses 

 underneath. The mountain- ash asserts itself as a predominant 

 ornament here, especially above the fern-clad hollows, or situated 

 on the brinks of craggy banks, which if moisture trickles down 

 are verdant with sheets of mosses of various hues and varieties. 

 The number of dripping mossy banks is excessive ; the drops of 

 water gleam among the Mniums and Hypnums and Jungermannia 

 epiphjlla all the day, as if they had been 



"By mists and silent rain-drops silver' d o'er." 



These moss-cover'd rocks and banks are often fringed on their 

 brows with strong edgings of bilberry, or the purple bell-heather, 

 or Calluna ; and occasionally sheets of white Sphagnum (invari- 

 ably S. acutifolium) ; and their faces are sprinkled if not over- 

 moist with the foliage or flowers of Crepis paludosa, Hieracium 

 sylcaticui/i, Golden-rod (Solidago virgaurea), whose luxuriant leaves 



