Page:Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1867).djvu/121

Rh total depth of the actual fall is 100 feet, and nowhere in Britain have we so deep a fall upon so large a stream. The best point of view for it as a whole is the open ground a short distance below on the Westmorland side of the river, from which the wooden bridge which spans the stream about half-way down the rapids (firm enough in reality) looks frail and dangerous. There is probably no piece of ground in Britain that produces so many rare plants within a limited space as Widdy Bank Fell. The distance from the Caldron Snout in a direct line due east to Langdon Bridge is 2 miles. The upper part of the fell is like an ordinary heathery moor, and the summit is only 130 feet above the head of the waterfall, which is 1530 feet above sea-level. Along the face of the hill towards the river sweeps a range of basaltic crags like those that form the waterfall, which are known by the name of Falcon Clints, broken, jagged, and irregular, with a bank of fallen blocks below the precipitous cliff for some 2 miles along the stream-side. Along the back of the hill from half a mile above the Caldron Snout eastward till they are thrown down by a fault into the east end of Falcon Clints, stretch low banks of Tyne-bottom limestone, bleached and rendered coarsely granular in texture by the proximity of the igneous rock, and from this copious streams flow down in three directions, westward towards the Weel, due eastward to Harwood Beck (this stream is called the Whey Sike), and south-east towards Widdy Bank House. Within an area of something like 4 square miles we have, upon the crags and banks of these streams, the following rare plants: