Page:Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1867).djvu/112

94 undulated sweeps of the ordinary kind of heathery gritstone fell. We have given already a list of the plants noted in the Upper zone on Kilhope Law. As tested either by number of species or individuals the boreal element of the Flora is considerably smaller than in Weardale, and still more so than in Teesdale. The principal interest of the district, from a botanical point of view, arises from the extent and perseverance with which agricultural and horticultural cultivation has been carried on at, for Britain, an unprecedentedly high altitude; but as full details have been given in the chapter on climate, both as to species and the heights to which they are grown, we need not say more about the subject here. At the head of West Allendale there is a village of perhaps thirty houses, called Coal Cleugh, at a height of from 1600 to 1700 feet above sea-level. Above Allenheads the slopes are everywhere clothed with extensive plantations of Scotch fir and other Coniferee, and at the bottom of the hollow stands Mr. Beaumont's hall in the midst of its well-ordered grounds, and in front down the river extends a village half a mile in length, with a church and school-house, and a large number of cottages and gardens, and in the centre the mining office and entrance to the great shaft, a model mining village for order and cleanliness, at a height above sea-level of from 1350 to 1450 feet. The town of Allenton is 9 miles below Allenheads, near the point where the East and West Allen unite. From Whitfield all the way down to the Tyne the banks of the Allen are bordered with woods, and in some places, as for instance about the old castle or Peel of Staward, which stands out towards the river on a rounded rocky promontory, with a steep wooded bank on the opposite side and a high heathery moor in the back ground, they rise for 100 feet above it with much abruptness. At Gatton the watershed between the Allen and the stream on the east has sunk to 1000 feet, but there is still a well-marked ridge in the direction of Hexham with a gradual slope of cultivated country towards