Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

Nat. Hist.

-

58 Gr. Brit.

THE NATURALIST IN SUSSEX AND ON

THE SPEY.*
April

(September, 19, and 1873.)

THE pursuits of natural history possess a various and multiform interest. When followed out in their strictly scientific character by such men as Cuvier, or our own Professor Owen, they present us with remarkable generalizations, which not only exhibit the clearest marks of design and plan upon which the whole world of animated being has been constructed, but throw ever and anon remarkable light upon some of the greatest intricacies of our own organic construction. The discovery that the lower manifestations of animal life are forms through which the higher animals pass, throws a new light upon the conditions under which those higher animals exist in those preparatory stages in which it is often singularly difficult to explore the secrets of their being. But there are many other advantages which wait upon the study of natural history for those who cannot follow it to these scientific heights. No innocent pursuit which possesses sufficient interest to engage the attention, and so to sharpen the faculties and enlarge the mind, will ever be contemned by the true philosopher. And this pursuit, specially exercises some, and those very important faculties. A good practical naturalist must be a good observer; and how many qualities are required

* ‘Ornithological Rambles in Sussex, with a Systematic Catalogue of the Birds of that County, and Remarks on their local Distribution.' By A. E. Knox, M.A., F.L.S., F.Z.S. London. 1849.

to make up a good observer! Attention, patience, quickness to seize separate facts, discrimination to keep them unconfused, readiness to combine them, and rapidity and yet slowness of induction; above all, perfect fidelity, which can be seduced neither by the enticements of a favourite theory nor by the temptation to see a little more than actually happens in some passing drama. But besides these advantages, which it shares with many other pursuits, natural history has some which are peculiarly its own. Whatever tends to attach man to the works and manifestations of God in the natural world around us, addresses itself to higher faculties than those which reside merely in the understanding.

We are not indeed of those who have any very strong faith in mere rustic innocence-men's passions are just as strong, and are often even coarser in their manifestation amongst an ignorant rustic population than they are amongst those inhabitants of our towns whom mere sentiment would condemn to an almost hopeless degradation. But then these rustics are exactly those whose eyes are most sealed to the beauties and the marvels amidst which they daily walk. Amongst the Spitalfields weavers, many of whom are great bird-fanciers, and many more amongst our best practical entomologists, there is probably far more appreciation of the beauties of the country, which they rarely visit, and of the wonders of animal life, with which they can only now and then come into actual contact in the ramble of a summer holiday, than is to be found amidst the rustic population of our ten thousand parishes. It is amongst these then, and not amongst those who neglect the riches in the midst of which they live, that the real effects of these pursuits are to be traced; and no one we think can entertain a doubt as to what are their effects who has seen amongst these very weavers the softening, harmonizing, and elevating tendencies of such tastes amidst the many depressing accidents of their life of toil. And there

are very many amongst ourselves for whom we should specially prescribe the cultivation of such pursuits as these. There are not a few causes in operation in the present day which tend to wean our gentry from a country life. The personal importance which the possession of land formerly conferred is already much impaired, and probably will be still more lessened as estates are divided and wealth diffused. Our modern improvements in agriculture, reducing as they must the business of cultivating the soil more and more to the ordinary laws which govern manufactures, tend to diminish the natural beauty of the country, and to break in upon some or other of the pleasures of its possessors. It is not merely that some of these are attacked directly, but even more, that many of them are rendered accidentally impossible. It is not only that at the prayer of tenant-farmers Acts of Parliament are framed which inexorably decree the extermination of four-footed game, but that the march of improvement incidentally destroys or banishes other and harmless tribes of animal life, which have formed heretofore the instruments of country amusement. How imperceptibly and unintentionally this may be brought about, may be illustrated by the fact of the annual diminution-now stated without doubt by some of our most accurate ornithological observers in the numbers of our swallows (Hirundo rustica) and martins (Hirundo urbica), and which seems to be caused by the great diminution already created in their favourite food of the Tipulida and ephemeral flies by the draining of our wet and marshy lands. For it is evident that the same causes must be producing the same effects upon our snipes and all our tribes of wading and swimming birds; whilst other causes of a like kind must be reducing the number of our really wild Tetraonida-causes which have already once exterminated (what the spirited efforts of Lord Breadalbane promise to restore) our indigenous Capercailzie

(Tetrao uro-gallus), and our great bustard (Otis tarda). Such,

we say, must be more or less the progress of events; for by all, or almost all our leading men in the science of agriculture, the hedge timber of England is doomed :-very many of its woods are to be grubbed, its downs broken up, its marshes drained, and with some of these changes, however on the whole beneficial, must disappear much sylvan beauty and many sylvan sports. And all this must have an immediate effect upon the attractiveness of country life. There can scarcely be a wider difference than that which exists between the feelings towards his estate of the lord of the soil, whose pleasures, occupations and pursuits are all, in some way or other, connected with its possession, and his who sees in his highly cultivated acres nothing more than a productive investment of a certain amount of capital. We are ourselves great admirers of the sweet simplicity of the Three per Cents; but it is impossible to feel any special affection to the Scrip which conveys or attests their ownership-and very little more can be felt towards landed property which has no other quality than that (first and greatest, as we freely admit it to be) of paying with a sweet simplicity its annual rent. Such an owner may well say when he visits his estates, 'Went to-day upon my own land—very much like everybody else's land.'

Now as we hold it to be a matter of great national concern to keep alive as far as possible that warm affection for a country life which has from time immemorial distinguished our nobility and gentry, we should rejoice in the prevalence of any tastes or pursuits which tended in any way to add to and prolong its attractions. And amongst these we should give a high place to natural history. Nor is there any other branch of natural history for the study of which we in England have such facilities as for the peculiar branch of ornithology. With the exception of the insect tribes, which, from their diminutive size and from many associations con

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »