180 
TATE : SOURCE OF RIVER AIRE. 
One resident writes : — " If you let off the water at the 
Tarn, you have flooded water at Airehead. The Cove water, 
doubtless percolating through superior strata, comes from a 
darker coloured water running over ling-covered lands and 
peaty beds up at the west of the Tarn, where are the old 
smelt mills. Any connoisseur in waters could tell the 
difference speedily enough. A peat water is never so hard 
and ' petrifying' in its qualities as Mawme Tarn or Aire- 
head springs." The analyses (Appendix B) do not sustain 
this conclusion, the Cove water being softer (10*8 Clark's 
scale) than that at the smelt mills (13*1 Clark's scale). 
An old inhabitant, speaking at Settle last summer, said : — 
" We in Malham have always been told that when the 
Streets Smelt Mills were in operation, and lead washing 
going on there, the water issuing from the Cove was con- 
stantly discoloured." This tradition has been often reported 
to the writer during the past twenty years. Mr. Morrison, 
however, has always understood that the scene of the pollu- 
tion was not the Streets Smelt Mills, but the lead mines on 
Pike Daw. Mr. Morrison, in answer to our enquiries touch- 
ing another report, writes: — "Tradition, but not a clear 
tradition, says that a Lord Eibblesdale tried the experiment, 
by putting in chaff at the Malham Tarn ' Water sinks/ and 
that it came out at Airehead." Mr. Leather, C.E., writes as 
follows : — "I did some work at Malham Tarn for Mr. Morrison 
some years ago, and I took the opportunity of making some 
experiments — by holding the water back in the Tarn entirely 
for a length of time, and then sending down an increased 
volume for a time — which proved conclusively that the water 
flowing out from the foot of the rock at the Cove, is not the 
water which sinks into the ground and disappears some dis- 
tance above the Cove ; the water which so sinks and disappears 
comes out on the right bank of the stream, some distance 
below the village of Malham, at Airehead." This test Mr. 
