BOTANY OF THE CUMBERLAND BORDER MARCHES. 



J. GILBERT BAKER, F.R.S., F.L.S., 



Of the Royal Herbarium, Kew ; ex-President of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union; A?ithor 

 of i North Yorkshire,' etc. 



In the county of Cumberland there are five well-marked physical 

 tracts, as follows : — (i) The Coast Line. (2) The Lake Hills. Of 

 these two alone is the botany tolerably thoroughly recorded. (3) The 

 Plain of Carlisle (Red Sandstone). (4) The Border Marches, a tract 

 consisting of arenaceous and aluminaceous hills that do not reach 

 any considerable elevation, intersected by deep wooded river-beds. 

 (5) The Pennine Hills, further south than the last, which form part 

 of the great back-bone chain of the island, into which limestone rock 

 enters prominently, and which are much more lofty than those of 

 the last group, reaching in Crossfell an altitude of 2,900 feet, which 

 is higher than any mountain in Yorkshire, and only 250 feet lower 

 than the topmost Lake peak. District No. 4 has no doubt the 

 smallest flora of the five. The general elevation is high enough to 

 repel a large number of the common lowland plants of the north of 

 England, and the mountains are not high enough to bring in many 

 of the characteristically boreal plants. As just indicated, it is a 

 strictly arenaceo-argillaceous region, without any intervention of lime- 

 stone or basalt, so that one never sees such plants as Helianthemum 

 vulgare, Arabis hirsuta, Origanum vulgare, or Draba incana. It may 

 be compared to the Whitby district in North Yorkshire (leaving of 

 course the littoral out of account), which has the smallest flora of all 

 the nine North Yorkshire drainage districts, or in the West Riding 

 to the neighbourhoods of Sheffield, Huddersfiejd, Dewsbury, Bradford, 

 or Todmorden, or to the little bit of upland Cheshire about Staley- 

 bridge. As there is hardly anything on record as to the plants it 

 yields, I made, whilst staying there this year in September, and making 

 excursions from Gilsland as a centre, a complete catalogue of all the 

 plants I saw. I doubt whether the total flora of the tract will mount 

 much over 400 species in a broad sense (Flowering Plants and 

 Vascular Cryptogamia). From Gilsland northward to the border 

 (above a dozen miles) stretch low undulating grassy moors, of which 

 the following plants form the predominant phanerogamic vegetation : 

 Potentilla Tormentilla, Vaccinium Myrtillus, 



Galium saxatile, Juricus effusus, 



Calluna vulgaris, Juncus conglomeratus, 



Erica Tetralix, Juncus squarrosus, 



