THE ASHLEY MEADOWS, AND THE LOWER BOLLIN VALLEY.
SPRING VISIT.
O Proserpina,
For the flowers now that, frighted, thou let'st fall
From Dis's wagon!
Pale primroses
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength.
SHAKSPEARE.
The part of the country round Manchester which supplies the greatest
number of different wild-flowers, and of rare kinds in particular, is
unquestionably the neighbourhood of Bowdon. Next in botanical interest
come the Reddish valley, extending from Stockport to near Hyde,
the Disley hills, and the delightful woods in the neighbourhood of
Marple; and next to these again, and perhaps equalling them, Worsley,
Tyldesley, the northern side of Prestwich, and the vicinity of Clifton.
Bowdon, however, with the adjacent districts of Lymm and Cotterill,
stands ahead of all. It holds precedence, too, in respect of its early
seasons. While other portions of our district are scarcely giving
signs of vernal life, at Bowdon the spring flowers are often open and
abundant, and this quite as markedly in the fields as in the gardens.
The former is the more valuable and interesting part of the testimony
thus borne to the mildness of Bowdon, since the life of cultivated
plants is always in some measure artificial, or under the influence
of human direction, whereas the occupants of the hedgerows are pure
children of nature. In the pleasant little nook called Ashley meadows,
lingering with its very latest campanula and crimsoned bramble-leaf,
Autumn seems hardly gone before Spring prepares to change all again and
once more to green. Dunham Park offers nothing important for several
weeks after the Ashley meadows have flowers to show. The total, indeed,
of the botanical productions of the former place is not a fifth of what
may be found within a mile of Ashley Mill. It is well to note this,
because many people suppose that a scene delightful in its picturesque
is correspondingly rich in wild-flowers. Generally, no doubt, it is
so, since the picturesque in scenery is almost always connected with
great unevenness of surface, precipitous descents, rocks, and tumbling
waters, these usually coming in turn, of geological conditions,
such as are highly conducive to variety in the Flora. But when the
charm of a scene depends, not on cliffs and cataracts, but simply
on the agreeable intermixture of differently-tinted trees, a gently
undulating surface, sweet vistas and arcades of meeting branches, and
the allurements held out to the imagination by green forbidden paths
and tangled thickets;--then, as in Dunham Park, the primitive causes of
floral variety being absent, the flowers themselves, though they may be
plentiful in their respective kinds, are necessarily few as to distinct
species. It does not follow that where the variety is considerable we
are to look below the turf for the explanation. Meadows and pastures
are always more prolific than ground covered with forest-trees (except,
perhaps, in the tropics), the reason being partly that such trees offer
too much obstruction to the rays of the sun, and partly that their
immense and spreading roots block up the soil and hinder the growth of
smaller plants. The Ashley meadows, after all, like all other places
abounding in wild-flowers, are the _miniature_ of a romantic scene.
For in landscape, as in history, wherever we go, we have only the same
ideas on a larger or smaller scale, the great repeated in the little,
the little repeated in the great. Here is the mighty forest, clinging
to the mountain-side; here the extended plain, watered by its winding
river; here the terrible chasm and deep ravine,--all, however, in that
delicate and reduced measure which, while it gives us the type of
nature universally, enables us to see the whole at one view.
To get to the Ashley meadows, go by the railway to Bowdon, then along
the "Ashley Road" for about a mile, and then down the lane on the left
hand, which leads to Mr. Nield's model farm. After passing through the
field by the farm, there is seen a small wood upon the right, in which
are many beautiful treasures, and descending a little, we are in the
meadows, the Bollin flowing at the farther edge, and the mill, with
its weir and water-wheel, at the extremity. The very earliest spring
flowers to be gathered here are those of the hazel-nut, the willow, the
alder, and the poplar. People unacquainted with botany often suppose
that the latter and other timber-trees belong to the flowerless class
of plants. They fancy that flowers occur only upon fruit-trees, and
upon ornamental shrubs, such as the lilac and laburnum. The mistake
is a perfectly natural and excusable one, seeing that the established
idea of a flower is of something brilliant and highly coloured. A visit
to the Ashley meadows in the month of April soon shows that there are
other flowers than these. The hazel is by that time overblown, being
in perfection about February; but the other trees mentioned above are
covered with their curious blossoms, which in every case come out
before the leaves. Those of the alder and poplar resemble pendent
caterpillars, of a fine brownish red; the willow-blooms are in dense
clusters, green or lively yellow, according to their sex. For plants,
like animals, have sex, and though in most cases male and female
co-exist in the same flower, it happens with some, especially with the
timber-trees of northern latitudes, that the flowers are of only one
sex, some of them being male and others female. Occasionally the entire
tree is male only or female only--the condition of the willow and the
poplar, the yellow flowers of the former of which are the male, and the
greenish ones the female. On the hedge-banks below these trees may
be gathered the dogs' mercury, an herbaceous plant of distinct sexes,
readily recognised by its dark green, oval, pointed leaves. Soon after
the appearance of these, the banks and open sunny spots become decked
with the glossy yellow blossoms of the celandine, a flower resembling a
butter-cup, but with eight or nine long and narrow petals, instead of
five rounded ones. Mingled with it here and there is the musk-root, a
singular but unpretending little plant, green in every part, and with
its blossoms collected into a cube-shaped cluster, a flower turned to
each of the four points of the compass, and one looking right up to the
zenith. The roots, as implied in the name, have the odour of musk. On
the moister banks, such as those at the lower edge of the wood, grows
also the golden saxifrage, a pretty little plant, with flat tufts of
minute yellowish bloom. Yellow, in different shades, prevails to a
remarkable extent among English wild-flowers, and especially those
of spring. The rich living yellow of the coltsfoot is a conspicuous
example. The coltsfoot flowers, like those of the poplar tree, open
before the leaves, enlivening the bare waysides in the most beautiful
manner, or at least when the sun shines; for so dependent are they
upon the light, that it is only when the sun falls warm and animating
that they expand their delicate rays, slender as the finest needle,
and reminding us, in their elegant circle and luminous colour, of the
aureola round the head of a saint in Catholic pictures. At first sight,
the coltsfoot might be mistaken for a small dandelion. It is easily
distinguishable from that despised, but useful plant, by the scales
upon its stem, the stalk of the dandelion being perfectly smooth. The
leaves and flowers of the dandelion open, moreover, simultaneously. The
coltsfoot, like the flower it imitates, holds high repute among the
"yarb-doctors," who know more of the genuine properties of our native
plants than it is common to give them credit for.
On the banks of the Bollin and its little tributaries grows also
that curious plant, the butter-bur. Appearing first as an egg-shaped
purple bud, by degrees a beautiful cone or pyramid of lilac blossoms
is opened out, bearing no slight resemblance to a hyacinth. Here,
again, as happens with many spring flowers, and, strange to say,
with two or three autumnal ones, the blossoms are ready before the
leaves, which do not attain their full size till after midsummer.
Then they hide the river-banks everywhere about Manchester with a
thick and deceitful jungle, often lifted on stalks a yard high, and
in their vast circumference reminding one of rhubarb leaves. After
these earlier visitants come the furze, the purple dead-nettle, and
the primrose; and in the hedges, again without leaves, the sloe or
black-thorn, its milk-white bloom conspicuous from a long distance.
The name _black_-thorn, so oddly at variance with the pure white of
the flowers, refers to the leaflessness of the plant when in bloom,
the _white_-thorn, or "May," being at the corresponding period covered
with verdure. But it must not be imagined that these plants follow just
in the order we have named them. To a certain extent, no doubt there
is a sequence. Every one of the four seasons, whether spring, summer,
autumn, or winter, resembles the total of the year as to the regularity
in the order of its events. The glowing apple and the juicy pear follow
the lily and the rose, and are followed in their turn, by the aster
and the ivy-bloom. Similarly, in smaller compass, the crocus retires
before the daffodil, and the daffodil before the auricula; to expect,
however, that every particular kind of flower should open at some
precise and undeviating point of time, even relative, would be to look
for the very opposite of the delightful sportiveness so characteristic
of the ever-youthful life of nature, which is as charming,--not to say
as great and glorious, in its play and freedom, as in its laws and
inviolable order. The spring flowers arrive, not in single file, but in
troops and companies, so that of these latter only can succession be
rightly predicated, and even here it is greatly affected by differences
of shelter, soil, and aspect. Nor are those we have enumerated the
whole of what may be found. At least a dozen other species arrive with
the earliest breath of spring, and with every week afterwards, up
to midsummer, the beautiful stream quickens unabatingly. Thoroughly
to master the botany even of so limited an area as that of Ashley,
requires that it be made our almost daily haunt. It is proper to add,
that none of the flowers named are rare about Manchester, or anywhere
in England. Almost all our first comers are universally diffused.
The phenomena of spring, as regards the vegetable world, must not
be viewed as _beginning_ with the season in question. Spring, while
the harbinger and preparation of the ensuing seasons, is itself the
consummation of a long series of wonderful processes, wrought in the
silence and darkness of winter, and largely beneath the surface of
the earth. We never see the actual beginning of anything. Covered up
though they be, by the cold snow, the artizans of leaf and flower are
diligently at work even from the close of the preceding summer, and
only wait the vernal sunbeam to unfold the delicate product of their
labours. This is strikingly exemplified in "bulbous roots," such as
those of the tulip and crocus, in which the future flower may easily be
made out by careful dissection with a penknife. The hazel puts forth
its infant catkins as early as September, while the rich brown clusters
of the same season are but ripening, and the autumn yellow of the
leaves is in the distance. Soon after this it is quite easy to find the
incipient female alder-bloom of the season to come, and the rudimentary
golden catkins of the next year's sallow. Thus is the history of the
flower beautifully in keeping with that of its winged image--the
butterfly, which, like the flower in the bud, has been forming all
along, in the grub and chrysalis, the bud-state of the perfect insect.
The river approaches the Ashley meadows by an exceedingly pleasant
route, generally known as the lower Bollin valley. The whole course of
the stream, from beyond Macclesfield downwards, is interesting, and at
Norcliffe it begins to meander through the prettiest rural scenery near
Manchester. The gentle rise and fall of the ground on either side, the
plentiful and comely trees, the innumerable windings and turnings that
bring with every successive field a new and pretty prospect, the sound
of the rushing water, the birds saturating every grove and little wood
with their cheerful poor man's music, the flowers no longer ambitious,
for every bank and meadow is brimful and overflowing,--really it almost
makes one fancy, when down in this beautiful valley, that we have
got into those happy regions old Homer tells of, where the nepenthe
grows, and the lotus,--that wonderful fruit which, when people had once
tasted, they forgot their cares and troubles, and desired to remain
there always, and ceased to remember even home. The difference is here,
that after going thither, we love home all the better for our visit,
since the heart, though it may be unconsciously, always grows into a
resemblance of what it contemplates with interest and affection. No
senseless fiction is it after all, about the lotus-fruit. Every man has
his lotus-country somewhere; the poet has only turned into ingenious
fable the experience of universal human nature.
The middle portion of the valley, or that which, ascending it,
lies about half-way between Ashley and Wilmslow, is occupied by
Cotterill Clough, a place of the highest celebrity with the old
Lancashire botanists, being not only picturesque in every portion,
but containing a great variety of curious and unusual wild-flowers.
Many are found here that grow nowhere else in the neighbourhood, and
the very commonest attain the highest state of perfection. Hobson,
Crozier, Horsefield, and their companions above-named, used to come to
Cotterill regularly, both in summer and winter, gathering flowers in
the former season, mosses in the latter, and not more for the riches
of the vegetation, than, as Crozier once told me, for the singing of
the innumerable birds. The journey, both to and fro, was entirely
upon foot, and the men were often here by breakfast time. Being a
game preserve, there has always been some difficulty of access to the
clough, and of late years this has been considerably increased. But
gamekeepers, after all, are only men, and "a soft answer turneth away
wrath," so that none need despair if they will but act the part of
wisdom.
The approach to this pretty valley is made in the first instance
from Peel Causeway station, pursuing the lane for a little while,
then electing whether to continue, past Bank Hall and its seventeen
yew trees, or to strike through a field-path upon the left, thence
along the crest of a gentle acclivity, from which is obtained the
best view we are acquainted with, of Bowdon. Although requiring some
watchfulness, so as not to go astray, the upper path is decidedly the
best to take. One point alone needs specially careful observation,
that is, after crossing the little ravine, and emerging into another
lane, to turn down it to the right, and upon arriving at a cottage
upon the left, to take the path immediately _behind_. This leads
over the fields, Alderley Edge a few miles in front, and Cloud-end
rising grandly upon the horizon, then down a steep rough lane into
a dingle called Butts Clough, beyond which there is a green-floored
lane, leading to Warburton's farm, which being passed, we bear to the
right, and in ten minutes more dip into the valley, and very soon
tread the margin of the stream. About a mile and a half further up, we
come to Castle Mill, an old-established and celebrated corn-grinding
concern--and immediately opposite, the wooded slopes of Cotterill,
entered by crossing a single field. The time to select for a first
botanical visit to this charming spot should, if possible, be the end
of April, or at least before the expiration of May. The chief rarities
of the place belong to a somewhat later period, but there are several
that grow here abundantly, and are in perfection at the time named,
which, although less uncommon, it were a pity not to secure. Such
are the goldilocks and the arum. The former, a very graceful kind
of butter-cup, its name translated from the Latin one, _auricomus_,
fringes the bank at the foot of the wood for a long distance with its
light feathery herbage and shining yellow flowers; the other grows
under the trees, and among the brushwood, and in the part of the
clough through which the path leading to Ringway from Castle Mill
makes its way, thus being reachable without more trespass than of
twenty forgiven yards. Few persons fond of cultivating plants in their
parlours are unacquainted with that truly splendid flower, the African
lily, or _Richardia Ethiopica_, which, opening a great white vase on
the summit of its stem, resembles an alabaster lamp with a pillar of
flame burning in the centre; the leaves lifted on long stalks, and
shaped like the head of an arrow. Keeping the figure of this noble
plant before the mind's eye, as the type for comparison, there is no
difficulty in identifying the arum of Cotterill Wood. The latter is
essentially the same in structure, but rises to the height of only some
six or eight inches instead of thirty, with leaves proportionately
smaller, and the flower, instead of white and vase-like, of a pale
transparent green (though often mottled, like the leaves, with purple
stains), and curving over the pillar in the centre like the cowl of a
monk. The pillar is of a rich puce or claret colour, and occasionally
of a delicate light amber. In the south of England, where the plant
abounds, the dark ones are called "lords," and the amber-coloured,
"ladies." Newbridge Hollow, the Ashley Woods, and several other places
about Bowdon, share the possession of this remarkable plant, which is,
without question, the most eccentrically formed of any that grow wild
in the British Islands. It is found also near Pendlebury, at Barton,
Reddish, and several other places, but very scantily, a circumstance
worth notice, because illustrating so well what the learned call
botanical topography. The floras of entire countries are often not more
strongly marked by the presence or absence of certain species than the
portions even of so limited an area as that of Manchester half-holiday
excursions. Here, too, grows in profusion the sylvan forget-me-not,
the flowers of an azure that seems sucked from heaven itself. People
confound it sometimes with the germander-speedwell, another lovely
flower of May and June. But the leaves of the speedwell are oval
instead of long and narrow, like those of the forget-me-not; and the
flowers are not only of quite a different shade of blue, but composed
of four distinct pieces, the forget-me-not being five-lobed, and
yellow in the centre. The consummate distinction of the forget-me-not
is the mode in which the flowers expand, and which, along with its
unique and celestial tint, is the true reason of its being used as
the emblem of constancy. Possibly enough, the pathetic legend of the
knight and the lady by the water-side may have had a fact for its
basis, but the flower was representative of constancy long before the
unlucky lover met his death. The world, truly seen and understood, is
but another showing forth of human nature, an echo of its lord and
master, reiterating in its various and beautiful structures, colours,
and configurations, what in him are thoughts and passions, and in the
forget-me-not we have one of the foremost witnesses. This is no loose
and misty speculation; but to the earnest student of nature who looks
below the surface of things, a determinate and palpable fact, the
source of the most fascinating pleasures that connect themselves with
the genuine knowledge of plants and flowers, and of the objects of
nature universally. The peculiarity referred to consists principally in
the curious spiral stalk, and the store of secret buds, a new flower
opening fresh and fresh every day as the stalk uncoils. It may be
added, as furnishing another example of the variety in the distribution
of plants, that the forget-me-not, like the arum, is wanting on the
Prestwich side of the town, while the sylvan horsetail, so abundant in
Mere Clough, is comparatively a stranger to the valley of the Bollin.
To young people who have the opportunity of exploring the respective
places, independently of the large local knowledge they acquire, it is
a most instructive employment to note these phenomena, for they are all
more or less intimately connected with the grandest and widest laws of
physical geography--the great, as we have shown before, represented in
the little--and no science will be found in after life more thoroughly
entertaining or more practically useful. Besides these more choice
and remarkable flowers, there are in Cotterill Wood at this period
anemones and bluebells without end; while in the upper part, accessible
by the path before-mentioned, and which should on no account be left
unvisited, the firs and larches are at the acme of their floral pride.
The flowers of these trees, like those of the hazel and alder, are
some of them only male, others only female. The female flowers in
due time become the seed-cones, announcing them from afar; the male
flowers likewise assume the cone form, but as soon as the purpose of
their being is accomplished, they wither and drop off. In the larch,
the females are of a delicate pink, contrasting exquisitely with the
tender green of the young tufted leaves, and conspicuous from their
large size, the males being comparatively small, though noticeable
from their immense abundance. In the firs, on the other hand, we are
attracted rather by the male flowers, which are of a beautiful reddish
buff, and on the slightest blow being given to the branch, shed clouds
of their fertilising dust.
The Cotterill portion of the Bollin valley, while the primroses are
in bloom, has no parallel in our district. Certain distant places,
no doubt, are equally rich in this general favourite--the Isle of
Wight, for instance, and the same is said of the Isle of Man, but for
Manchester lovers of primroses, Cotterill is a very paradise. All the
woods and lanes are full, every bank and sheltered slope is yellow with
them, everywhere primroses, primroses, primroses, great handfuls, and
bunches, a score every time we pluck, till wonder is exhausted and out
of breath, and primroses and nature seem to mean the same thing. Such
was the spectacle on the 8th of May--when this was written--the glow
of bloom, which lasts in the whole perhaps for a month, being then at
its height. On one occasion it was as early as April 27th. We now come
to 1882. So great has been the havoc made by collectors of roots for
gardens, and for sale in the market-place, that except in forbidden
parts, and somewhat higher up the valley, the primrose is now almost
as scarce as at the time referred to it was plentiful. Great havoc has
also been wrought during the last quarter of a 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
_Coenonympha Pamphilus_ Small Heath
_Cynthia Cardui_ Painted Lady
_Vanessa Atalanta_ Red Admiral
_ " Io_ Peacock
_ " Urticæ_ Small Tortoise-shell
_Melitoea Artemis_ Greasy Fritillary
_Chrysophanus Phloeas_ 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.
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