Country Rambles, and Manchester Walks and Wild Flowers. Leo H. Grindon
century by the mattock of the farm–labourer, which has likewise diminished very considerably the ancient abundance of some of the less common plants, where exposed, such as the goldilocks and the forget–me–not, though higher up the valley, like the primroses, these are still to be found in fair quantity. Never mind: the anemones, the golden celandine, so glossy and so sensitive, the cuckoo–flowers, the marsh–marigold, and a score of others, are untouched, and will remain untouched. There is something a great deal better than simple possession of the rare and strange, and that is the happy faculty of appreciation of the lovely old and common—a faculty that needs only culture to become an inexhaustible mine of enjoyment. Every man finds himself richer than he imagines when he puts the real value upon what Providence has given him.
For the return, we may either mount the hill, and get into the lanes which pass through Hale or Ringway, and so to Altrincham; or we may follow the downward course of the stream, by the path enjoyed in coming, as far as Warburton’s farm, already mentioned. Arrived here, for variety sake, the better course is not by the tempting green lane, but through the fields below and to the left, which are full of every kind of rural beauty, and here and there gemmed with cowslips. Different paths take us either past the river again, and so by way of Ashley to Bowdon, or into the road that leads to the Downs. The latter is the shortest, but the Ashley way is the pleasanter. The distance in the whole is a trifle over that by the road, or, omitting fractions, four miles. All the way along the birds are in full trill; with this great charm in the sound, that independently of the music, the songs of birds are always songs of pleasure. We sing in many moods, and for many purposes, but the birds only when they are happy. No notes of birds have an undertone of sadness in them. Beautiful, too, in the early summer, is it to mark here the glow of the red horizontal sunlight, as it lies softly amid the branches of the golden–budded oak, and the milk–white blossoms of the tall wild cherries. Oh! how thoughtless is it of people to let themselves be scared away from Botany by its evil but undeserved reputation for “hard names,” when, with a tenth of the effort given to the study of chess or whist, they might master everything needful, and enter intelligently into this sweet and sacred Temple of Nature.
The interest of the Bollin valley is quite as great to the entomologist as to the botanist. By the kindness of my friend, Mr. Edleston, I am enabled here to add the following list of the Lepidoptera, which will be read with pleasure by every one acquainted with the exquisite forms and patrician dresses of English butterflies.
“The meadows,” he tells me, “near the river Bollin, from Bank Hall to Castle Mill, produce more diurnal Lepidoptera than any other locality in the Manchester district, as the following select list (1858) will suffice to prove”:—
| Gonepteryx Rhamni | Brimstone |
| Pieris Brassicæ | Large White |
| „ Rapæ | Small White |
| „ Napi | Green–veined White |
| Anthocaris Cardamines | Orange Tip |
| Hipparchia Janira | Meadow Brown |
| „ Jithonus | Large Heath |
| „ Hyperanthus | Wood Ringlet |
| Cœnonympha Pamphilus | Small Heath |
| Cynthia Cardui | Painted Lady |
| Vanessa Atalanta | Red Admiral |
| „ Io | Peacock |
| „ Urticæ | Small Tortoise–shell |
| Melitœa Artemis | Greasy Fritillary |
| Chrysophanus Phlœas | Small Copper |
| Polyommatus Alexis | Common Blue |
| Thanaos Tages | Dingy Skipper |
| Pamphila Sylvanus | Large Skipper |
| Procris Statices | Green Forester |
| Anthrocera Trifolii | Five–spot Burnet |
| „ Filipendulæ | Six–spot Burnet |
| Sesia Bombyliformis | Narrow–bordered Bee Hawk |
| Heliodes Arbuti | Small Yellow Underwing |
| Euclidia Mi | Mother Shipton |
| „ Glyphica | Burnet |
The past twenty–five years, it is to be feared, have told as heavily upon the Lepidoptera as upon the primroses and the cowslips, the latter also now far between. The birds, likewise, have greatly diminished in numbers, partly in consequence of the extreme severity of the trio of hard winters which commenced with that of 1878–9. We have also to lament the death of Mr. Edleston.
CHAPTER III.
ROSTHERNE MERE.
When the month of May
Is come, and I can hear the small birds sing,
And the fresh flourès have begun to spring,
Good bye, my book! devotion, too, good bye!
CHAUCER.
THE path to the Ashley meadows offers the best point of departure also for far–famed Rostherne, for although the distance is somewhat less from the “Ashley” station, the old route past Bowdon vicarage remains the most enjoyable. Going behind it, through a little plantation, we proceed, with many curves, yet without perplexity, into the lane which looks down upon the eastern extremity of the mere; then, crossing the fields, into the immediate presence, as rejoiced in at the margin of the graveyard of the church, which last is without question one of the most charmingly placed in England, and in its site excites no wonder that it was chosen for the ancient Saxon consecration, as declared in the primitive name, Rodestorne, “the lake (or tarn) of the Holy Cross.” The peculiar charm of Rostherne Mere, compared with most other Cheshire waters of similar character, comes of its lying so much in a hollow, after the manner of many of the most delicious lakes of Westmoreland, Cumberland, and the romantic parts of Scotland; the area of the surface being at the same time so considerable that there is no suggestion, as sometimes with smaller meres when lying in hollows, of the gradual gathering there of the produce of rain–torrents, or even of the outcome of natural springs. At Rostherne one learns not only what calmness means, and what a broken fringe of diverse