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SPRING'S PAGEANT 

 IN WESTMORLAND AND LANCASHIRE. 



F. ARNOLD LEES, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.Lond., 



Leeds ; Author of ' The Flora of West Yorkshire.' 



Scar-buttressed Kendal is, veritably, a Nature's lychnoscope, 

 from outside which at various angles may be glimpsed the 

 elevation of the Host (of bloom) resurrected from the earth at 

 Spring's appointed day, the cosmic ' Floralia.' For ten days 

 this year, in late May and early June, I found vegetation holding 

 high revel, advancing with amazing leaps and bounds from leaf- 

 bud to seed-vessel in marvellous variety of form. Mrs. Humphrey 

 Ward, in her 'Robert Elsmere ' and ' Helbeck of Bannisdale,' 

 the latter a ' Catholic ' novel, has finely limned the landscape of 

 the Kent river-basin in its more general features. Here I would 

 offer only a few science data, additional to the facts set down 

 in Baker's 'Flora of the English Lake District' (1885) and 

 Martindale's Summary in the First Part of the ' Westmorland 

 Natural History Record' (1888). The 'Sweet o' the Year' is 

 no;: a favourable time for Mosses or Hepatics, so that I am not 

 able to supplement with aught worthy of definite note the nine 

 papers by George Stabler on those Bryophytes, issued in ' The 

 Naturalist' between October 1888 and November 1898. 



Kendal is a much more convenient centre than Bowness or 

 Appleby for the investigation of the Winster and Gilpin basins, 

 betwixt which Whitbarrow lies crouched like some grey ante- 

 diluvian monster with long sloping back and head on paws, 

 stretched north and south on guard over the hill-gate entrance 

 to Lakeland from Milnthorpe and Foulshaw 'mosses.' The 

 little-visited parallelogram with Knipe and Cunswick Tarns for 

 its northern corners, and Strickland Hill and Beethwaite for its 

 southern, is wondrously diversified for a tract under 25 square 

 miles, the florula changing with sometimes startling suddenness 

 twice or thrice in the course of a walk from Kendal west over 

 Scout Scar to the Crossthwaite 'Colony,' or from Cunswick Tarn 

 diagonally over Whitbarrow to Key Moss. The snuff town, 

 too, is the best starting point for awesome Long-Sleddale (best 

 approach to Hawes Water over Gate Scarth and down Mardale) ; 

 for Whinfell and Hollowgate on the Shap Wells road; for Gray- 

 rigg and Low Gill, or the late Mrs. Cottrell-Dormer's Lily Mere 

 above Bendrigg full east on the Sedbergh road ; in brief the 

 best imaginable nave for spoke-like excursions at every point of 



1900 September i. 



