33 



ON THE BOTANY OF THE CUMBERLAND 

 PART OF THE PENNINE RANGE. 



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



Royal Herhariiitn, Kew; Vice-President of the Yorkshire Naturalists Union. 



I HAVE long felt curious to know what the botany of the Cumberland 

 part of the Pennine range was like. On the west side of it, the Lake 

 district is well known, and on the east and south, Tynedale, Wear- 

 dale, Teesdale, Wensleydale, and the country round Settle, have been 

 well searched ; but for the hundred square miles of Cumberland that 

 drain into the Tyne, and form part of the great Pennine range, 

 there are scarcely any botanical records. So this year, after attending 

 the meeting of the British Association at Manchester, I took lodgings 

 for a fortnight at Alston, and the present paper contains a summary 

 of what I saw during this visit. 



Physical Geography and Geology.— The district dealt with 

 belongs entirely to Cumberland, but immediately adjoins portions of 

 Northumberland, Durham, Westmorland, and the north-west corner 

 of Yorkshire. Throughout the lower levels the mountain limestone 

 is universal; it reaches a height of 1,950 feet above sea-level on the 

 north side of Crossfell, and above it there is a thick cap of Millstone 

 Grit ; so that, from a geological point of view, it presents a complete 

 contrast to the Lake mountains. The two main streams — the South 

 Tyne and the Nent — unite just below Alston, a short distance south 

 of the Northumbrian border, at an elevation of about 900 feet above 

 sea-level. From Alston it is ten miles to the head of the Tyne, and 

 rather less to the head of the Nent, and each main stream has 

 numerous branches. There are two broad open grassy valleys, with 

 but little crag on the hill-sides, the heather mainly confined to the 

 Jiigh gritstone ridges. All the fields are bounded by stone walls, and 

 the main roads into Teesdale and Weardale are excellent. There 

 are no lakes or tarns, and I did not see a single Potamogeton or 

 Batrachian Raniincidus, much less Isoetes., Littorella, or Lobelia dort- 

 inaiina. It is a country of innumerable waterfalls, where the streams 

 break through the bands of limestone, but none of them are so large 

 as the High Force or Hardraw Force ; the best known are Lower 

 and Upper Nent Force, near Alston, and Ashgill Force, on a side 

 stream six miles above Alston, up the Tyne. Crossfell reaches a height 

 of 2,8oo' feet, so that the district covers the whole sweep of two of 

 Watson's botanical zones, the super-agrarian and infer-arctic. Alston 

 is the only town, and it stands on a steeply-sloping hill-side, at an 



Feb. 1888. 



