152 
NOTES ON THE REA VALLEY. 
the Pebble Mill, Persliore Road, the tributary stream of 
Bournbrook, and passing there out of the county of Worcester 
into Warwickshire. From thence it flows by Cannon Hill 
and Calthorpe Park, where it enters on its town conditions, 
unfavourable to the botanist, and passes through the older 
part of Birmingham across Deritend, to join the Tame in the 
neighbourhood of Aston. The Tame, thus augmented, flows 
into the Trent beyond Tam worth, near to Croxall, and this 
finds its way into the estuary of the Humber, and so into the 
North Sea. In tracing the course of the Rea from the Lickey 
Hills to the German Ocean, the thought was suggested to me 
whether it would not be well, in addition to the county floras 
which we have, but the limits of which are artificial, to work 
out the flora of large natural geographical areas. The orni¬ 
thologists of Scotland are working on this plan, as I saw by 
the maps of Mr. Harvey-Brown, during a recent visit. The 
great natural divisions of that country are more distinctly 
marked by its mountain systems than our own; but our larger 
rivers, with their affluents, would form, I think, botanical 
areas of an instructive character. Thus the Trent Valley 
might be taken as a large district, and, in connection with it, 
the sub-districts of the Tame and Anker, which have been so 
exhaustively worked out by Mr. Bagnall, and the Rea, which 
I am attempting. 
I said that the Rea enters on its town conditions where it 
leaves Calthorpe Park, and this reminds me of the rapid 
growth of the town in this direction ; for I can remember 
when the river was crossed by stepping stones where the 
Gooch Street Bridge now stands ; when Barford Street was 
barred by gates, beyond which were Destsr’s fields, where I 
gathered my first wild-flowers, now the populous parish under 
my ministerial charge ; when snipe were shot in the marshy 
places that became Bishop Street; and when the Rea ran 
betwixt smiling meadows till it reached the old Apollo Gardens 
of Moseley Street. But if we consult maps dated 1731, copies 
of which we can see in Dr. Langford’s “ Century of Bir¬ 
mingham Life,” we shall find that the Rea was a country 
river through nearlv the whole of its course, the main street 
of Deritend being the only strip of town that intervened ; 
we shall see meadows by Deritend Chapel, divided by hedge¬ 
rows, diversified by trees, rendered picturesque by an occa¬ 
sional homestead and a windmill, and personally interesting 
by the couples who stroll on the banks of the Rea in the 
summer gloaming. 
Having traced the course of the river, I will add a few 
words oil the geology of the valley through which it flows. 
