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WATERFALL ON KINDERSCOUT, DERBYSHIRE. 



H. FRANKLIN PARSONS, M.D., F.G.S. 



Kinderscout, the highest hill in the Peak of Derbyshire, has a broad 

 flat table-top, formed of a thick bed of coarse gritstone (Kinderscout 

 grit), the lowest bed of the millstone grit series. This plateau ends 

 on the western side in a long, nearly straight, rocky edge. The 

 surface of the plateau is covered with a bed of peat many feet in 

 thickness, through which the watercourses have cut deep winding 

 channels, frequently down to the rock. The drainage of a large 

 part of the plateau converges to a notch in the centre of the western 

 edge. Here there is a shelving rock, ending below in a free edge ; 

 down this rock the water slides and falls in a cascade about 50 feet 

 in height. Approached from below the waterfall is found to be at 

 the point of a funnel-shaped rocky gorge. When the wind is in the 

 west it blows up the gorge, and, intensified by convergence, meets the 

 falling water and blows it back in the form of spray. On June 23rd 

 there being heavy showers, with a stiff westerly breeze, the cloud of 

 spray as seen from Disley, six miles distant as the crow flies, was 

 conspicuously visible, rising like a high column of steam above the 

 hill. The next day, when I visited the waterfall, the weather being 

 fine, the stream had shrunk to smaller dimensions, and there was 

 less wind, but the water going over the fall was all blown back as 

 spray, none reaching the bottom except such as was splashed upon 

 the rocks and trickled down them. The rocks around the top of 

 the fall were washed bare by the spray, and I was told by an in- 

 habitant that in cold weather he had observed the spray to freeze in 

 the air and fall as hail. It rarely happens that a waterfall is so 

 situated as to form a conspicuous object in the landscape at a 

 distance ; it is usually in a rocky glen (excavated by itself), or at the 

 head of a mountain valley shut in by hills. The prominent position 

 of the one on Kinderscout is due to the configuration of the hill ; 

 the broad plateau affording the gathering ground for a stream of 

 some size, while the high rocky escarpment forms the hard edge over 

 which the water falls. It is obvious also that, under the conditions 

 above described, the volume of the water passing down the fall is 

 augmented by that which has been blown back, and has found its way 

 again into the stream above the fall ; in fact, some of the water has 

 to tumble down the fall twice or more before it reaches the bottom. 



I may mention that the Cloudberry (Rubus chamamorus) is 

 abundant on Kinderscout, and that the flowers (of rare occurrence 

 on the Yorkshire moors) were found in some plenty at one somewhat 



Sheltered Spot. Naturalist, 



