Ar??iiit : The Birds of Rydal. 



Hart Crag- (2,598 feet), and still on, after the Barton boundary 

 strikes away to skirt Scandale, along the gradually lessening- 

 heights to High Pike (2,155 feet), to Low Pike (1,656 feet), 

 until, with the shoulder of the fell, it drops abruptly to the main 

 valley of the Rothay. Before reaching the floor of the valley it 

 joins company with Scandale Beck ; with this it crosses the 

 highway at Scandale Bridge, and the flat meadows of the 

 bottom, till it reaches the Rothay itself. The boundary should 

 now keep with the river, but in actual fact does not. A wide 

 deflecting curve is made by it about the meadows towards the 

 new church of Ambleside and Cross Syke. And this curve 

 represents the old course of the river, for which a shorter and 

 artificial channel was cut some time back ; so that it may be 

 said that the river has left the boundary, rather than the 

 boundary the river. It regains the river just past the grounds 

 of Miller Bridge, follows it to the house called Gilbert Scar Foot, 

 and thence strikes straight up Gilbert Scar, to reach the heights 

 of Loughrigg : and so completes its circuit in some fourteen 

 miles. 



The area thus circumscribed falls into three natural divisions : 

 (1) A mountain basin which holds Rydal-water, the smallest 

 mere of the country, scarcely over a mile long and a quarter 

 broad. It was described by Hawthorne as a flood in a field, and 

 yet it possesses in miniature every property of a true glacial 

 lake, in sloping rocky shores, wooded islands, and rocky islets. 

 And small as it is, the mountain basin that holds it is no larger. 

 The water brims to the slopes, and Loughrigg and Nab Scar 

 rise at either hand without a perch of flat meadow between ; 

 while the scant pasture and meadow land of this division has 

 altogether an Alpine character, on steep, thin-soiled inclines. 

 The Rothay, flowing into the lake from Grasmere, rounds the 

 projecting arm of Whitemoss by a rough little pass at full 

 speed ; then, slackening speed as it enters the lake, forms a very 

 small marsh at the head. On leaving the lake it again finds 

 but a narrow passage, and rounds the outstanding spur of 

 . Loughrigg in rapids, leaving the mere shut in completely. 



(2) The second natural division embraces the rise and course 

 of the Rydal Beck up to its union with the Rothay. The stream 

 is enclosed by the amphitheatre of heights enumerated above, 

 and — their wild and desolate slopes rising sheer above it — forms 

 as typical an Alpine valley as Lakeland possesses. Springs 

 supply its source, and intermittent rills that flow down the 

 northern face of Fairfield, often crowned with snow ; it starts 



Naturalist. 



