Part 2

“The temple-loving martlet, does approve By his lov’d mansioning that the heavens breath Smells wooingly here. * * * where they Most breed, and haunt, I have observed the air Is delicate;”

nor the nightingale who

“Sings darkling, and in the shadiest covert hid, Tunes her nocturnal notes;”

nor the lark

“The herald of the morn,”

flies within three thousand miles of our own haunts. Thus it is that knowing so little of the creatures in whose midst we live, and mentally familiar by our daily reading with the tribes of another hemisphere, the forms of one continent and the names and characters of another, are strangely blended in most American minds. And in this dream-like phantasmagoria, where fancy and reality are often so widely at variance, in which the objects we see, and those we read of are wholly different, and where bird and beast undergo metamorphoses so strange, most of us are content to pass through life.

But there is a pleasant task awaiting us. We may all, if we choose, open our eyes to the beautiful and wonderful realities of the world we live in. Why should we any longer walk blindfold through the fields? Americans, we repeat, are peculiarly placed in this respect; the nature of both hemispheres lies open before them, that of the old world having all the charm of traditional association to attract their attention, that of their native soil being endued with the still deeper interest of home affections. The very comparison between the two is a subject full of the highest interest, a subject more than sufficing in itself to provide instruction and entertainment for a lifetime. And yet, how many of us are ignorant of the very striking, leading fact that the indigenous races of both hemispheres, whether vegetable or animal, while they are generally more or less nearly related to each other, are rarely indeed identical. The number of individual plants, or birds, or insects, which are precisely similar in both hemispheres, is surprisingly small.

It will probably be unnecessary to observe that the writer of these remarks must be understood as laying no claim to the honorable position of a teacher, on either of the many branches connected with Natural History; a mere learner herself, she can offer the reader no other guidance than that of companionship, in looking after the birds, or plants, or insects, mentioned by Mr. Knapp. It has indeed been a subject of regret with her, that the task of editing the “Journal of a Naturalist” should not have fallen into hands better able to render the author full justice in this respect. But it is the object of the present edition to prepare this English volume for the American public generally, and for that purpose simple explanations were alone necessary. Anxious, at least, to do all in her power, the editor has consulted the best printed authorities within her reach, and she has also availed herself of the valuable and most obliging assistance of Professor S. F. Baird, Major Le Conte, and Mr. M. A. Curtis, while preparing several of the notes, which will be found in the appendix.

S. F. C.

AUGUST, 1852.

JOURNAL OF A NATURALIST.

The village in which I reside is situated upon a very ancient road, connecting the city of Bristol with that of Gloucester, and thus with all the great towns in the North of England. This road runs for the chief part upon a high limestone ridge, from which we obtain a very beautiful and extensive prospect: the broad estuary of the river Severn, the mountains of Glamorgan, Monmouth, and Brecon, with their peaceful vales, and cheerful-looking white cottages, form the distant view: beneath it lies a vast extent of arable and pasture land, gained originally by the power of man from this great river, and preserved now from her incursions by a considerable annual expenditure, testifying his industry and perseverance, and exhibiting his reward. The Aust ferry, supposed to be the “trajectus,” or place where the Romans were accustomed to pass the Severn, is visible, with several stations of that people and the ancient British, being a part of that great chain of forts originally maintained to restrain the plundering inroads of the restless inhabitants of the other bank of the river: Thornbury, with its fine cathedral-like church and castle, the opposite red cliffs of the Severn, and the stream itself, are fine and interesting features.

An encampment of some people, probably Romans, occupies a rather elevated part of the parish, consisting of perhaps three acres of ground, surrounded by a high agger, with no ditch, or a very imperfect one, and probably was never designed for protracted resistance: it appears to form one of the above-mentioned series of forts erected by Ostorius, commencing at Weston, in Somersetshire, and terminating at Bredon in the county of Worcester—ours was probably a specula, or watchhill, of the larger kind. We can yet trace, though at places but obscurely, the roads that connected this encampment with other posts in adjoining villages. A few years sweep away commonly all traces of roads of later periods, and the testimony of some old man is often required to substantiate that one had ever been in existence within the memory of a life; yet these uniting roads, which, as works, must have been originally insignificant, little more than by-ways, after disuse for above fourteen hundred years, and encountering all the erasements of time, inclosures, and the plow, are yet manifest, and an evidence of that wonderful people, thieves and ruffians though they were, who constructed them. There is probably no region on the face of the globe ever colonized, or long possessed, by this nation, which does not yet afford some testimony of their having had a footing on it; this people, who, so long before their power existed, it was predicted, should be of “a fierce countenance, dreadful, terrible, strong exceedingly, with great iron teeth that devoured and broke in pieces,”

——where’er thy legions camp’d, Stern sons of conquest, still is known, By many a grassy mound, by many a sculptured stone.

Almost every Roman road that I have observed appears to have been considerably elevated above the surrounding soil, and hence more likely to remain apparent for a length of time than any of those of modern construction, which are flat, or with a slight central convexity; the turf, that in time by disuse would be formed over them, would in one case present a grassy ridge, in the other be confounded with the adjoining land.

Coins of an ancient date, I think, have not been found here;[1] nor do we possess any remains of warlike edifices, or religious endowments. Our laborers have at various times dug up by the road-sides several skeletons of human beings, and of horses; they were in general but slightly covered with earth; and though the bones were much decayed, yet the teeth were sound, and appeared most commonly to have belonged to young persons, and probably had been deposited in their present situations at no very distant period of time. With the bones of a horse so found there remained the iron head of a lance, about a foot long, corroded, but not greatly decayed. Unable better to account for these skeletons, we suppose that they constituted, when alive, part of the forces of General Fairfax, and that they fell in some partial encounters with the peasantry when defending their property about to be plundered by the foragers of his army in 1645, at the time he was besieging the castle of Bristol. The siege lasted sixteen or seventeen days; many parties during that time must have been sent out by him to plunder us cavaliers, and contention would take place.

It is foreign to my plan to enumerate, and it might be difficult to discover, all the changes and revolutions which have taken place here; and I shall merely mention, that this district formerly constituted a regal forest, and we find Robert Fitzharding holding it by grant in the time of King John. We have a “lodge farm,” it is true, and the adjoining grange, the “conygar,” _i. e._ coneygard, the rabbit-keeper’s dwelling, may, perhaps, have been the situation of the sylvan warren; but there are no remains, or any other indications, of a forest ever having been in existence. Names and traditional tales are all that remain in most places now to remind us of the ancient state of England, or to make credible the narratives of our old historians, who lived when Britain was a forest. Where shall we look for the remnants of that mighty wood, filled with boars, bulls, and savage beasts, that surrounded London? Even in our own days, heaths, moors, and wilds, have disappeared, so as to leave no indications of their former state but the name. Woods and forests seem to be the original productions of most soils and countries favorable for the abode of mankind, as if inviting a settlement, and offering materials for its use. As colonies increase, wants are augmented; the woods are consumed; the plow is introduced, division of property follows; a total change and obliteration ensues, though the ancient appellation by which the district was known yet continues.

The parish consists in parts of a poor, shattery gray clay, beneath which we find, in some places, a coarse lias; in others a spongy, rough, impure limestone; in other parts a thin stratum of soil is spread over an immense and irregular rock of carbonate of lime, running to an unknown depth: this in many cases protrudes in great blocks through the thin skin of earth. The rock, though usually stratified, has no uniform dip, but trends to different directions; in some places it appears as if immense sheets of semifluid matter had been pushed out of the station it had settled in, by some other or later-formed heavy-moving mass, or met with an impediment, and so rolled up: that these sheets had not fully hardened at the time of being moved is yet made probable by the whole crystallization of the mass being interrupted; so that no part adheres firmly, but separates into small shattery fragments when struck. This substance we burn in very large quantities for building purposes, and for manure, which, by the facility which we have of obtaining small coal, is rendered at the low rate of three-pence a bushel at the kiln. Our farmers, availing themselves of this cheap article, use considerable quantities, composted with earth, for their different crops, at the rate of not less than a hundred bushels to the acre. This is a favorite substance for their potato land. The return in general is not so large as when grown in manure from the yard; but the root is said to be more mealy, and better flavored.

The utility of lime as manure consists in loosening the tenacious nature of some soils; rendering them more friable and receptive of vegetable fibres: it especially facilitates the dissolution and putrefaction of animal and vegetable substances, which are thus more readily received and circulated in the growing plant; and it has the power of acquiring and long retaining moisture; thus rendering a soil cool and nutritive to the plants that vegetate in it. The power that lime has of absorbing moisture will be better understood, when we say, that one hundred weight will, in five or six days, when fresh, absorb five pounds of water, and that it will retain in the shape of powder, when slackened, or loosened, as is commonly said, nearly one-fourth of its weight.[2]

That lime rehardens after being made soft, as in mortar, is owing to the power which it has of acquiring carbonic acid—the fixed air of Dr. Black—from the atmosphere; when the stone is burned, it loses this principle, but re-absorbs it, though slowly, yet in time, and it thus becomes as hard as stone again: we unite it with sand to promote the crystallization and hardening. The utility of lime in various arts, agriculture, manufactories, and medicine, is very extensive, and in many cases indispensable; and the abundance of it spread through the world seems designed as a particular provision of Providence for the various ends of creation. Lime, and siliceous substances, compose a very large portion of the dense matter of our earth; the shells of marine animals contain it abundantly; our bones have eighty parts in one hundred of it; the egg-shells of birds above nine parts in ten—during incubation, it is received by the embryo of the bird, indurating the cartilages, and forming the bones. But the existence and origin of limestone are pre- eminent amongst the wonders of creation; nor should we have been able, rationally, to account for the great diffusion of this substance throughout the globe, however we might have conjectured the formation, without the Mosaical revelation. It may startle, perhaps, the belief of some, who have never considered the subject, to assert what is apparently a fact, that a considerable portion of those prodigious cliffs of chalk and calcareous stone, that in many places control the advance of the ocean, protrude in rocks through its waters, or incrust such large portions of the globe, are of animal origin—the exuviæ of marine substances, or the labors of minute insects, which once inhabited the deep. In this conclusion now chemists and philosophers seem in great measure to coincide. Fourcroy observed, forty years ago, that “it could not be denied, that the strata of calcareous matter, which constitute, as it were, the bark or external covering of our globe, in a great part of its extent, are owing to the remains of the skeletons of sea animals, more or less broken down by the waters; that these beds have been deposited at the bottom of the sea, immense masses of chalk, deposited on its bottom, absorb or fix the waters, or convert into a solid substance part of the liquid which fills its vast basins.”—_Supplement to Chemistry_, p. 263. Such are the conclusions of philosophical investigation; and the discoveries of all our circumnavigators fully corroborate these decisions as to formation. Revelation in part accounts for the removal of these stupendous masses; though, probably, unrecorded concussions since the great subversion of our planet have, in remote periods, effected many of the removals of these deposits. We find the basement of many of the South Sea Islands, some of which are twenty miles long, formed of this matter. Captain Flinders, in the gulf of Carpentaria, held his course by the sides of limestone reefs, five hundred miles in extent, with a depth irregular and uncertain; and still more recently Captain King, seven hundred miles, almost a continent, of rock, increasing, and visibly forming:—all drawn from the waters of the ocean by a minute creature, that wonderful agent in the hands of Providence, the coral insect. This brief account of the origin of calcareous rocks was, perhaps, necessary before mentioning an extraordinary fact, that, after the lapse of so vast a portion of time since the basement of the mighty deep was heaved on high, existing proofs of this event should remain in our obscure village.

The limestone rocks here are differently composed but are principally of four kinds—a pale gray, hard and compact; a pale cream-colored, fine- grained and sonorous: these form the upper stratum of stone on our down, a recent deposit, or more probably a mass heaved up from its original station. The whole of this mass, running nearly half a mile long, is obviously of animal formation, a coral rock; a compounded body of minute cylindrical columns, the cells of the animals which constructed the material, the mouths of which are all manifest by a magnifier. The stop in the progress of the work is even visible; soft, stony matter having arisen from some of the tubes, and become indurated there in a convex form; in others the creatures have perished, but their forms or moulds remain, though obscure, yet sufficiently perfect to manifest the fact: these tubes, by exposure to the air for any length of time, have the internal or softer parts decomposed, and the stone becomes cellular. This stone burns to a fine white lime, and is very free from impurities, containing in a hundred parts—

Carbonate of lime 88 Magnesia 8 Silex 1 Alumine,[3] colored with iron 3 ——— 100

Another quarry presents, likewise, unquestionable evidence of an animal origin, veins of it being composed of shattered parts of shells, and marine substances, greatly consumed and imperfect, embedded in a coarse, gray, sparry compound; an ocean deposit, not a fabrication, and consequently has more impurities in its substance than that of insect formation: it contains about

Carbonate of lime 73 Magnesia 11 Clay 14 Silex 2 ——— 100

These two specimens so clearly prove that the original materials of their substance were derived from the deep, that no further arguments need be advanced to support this fact as to our limestone. The former is, perhaps, the mountain limestone of Werner; the latter a variety of dolomite. Our other quarries, as well as the lower strata of the above, present no such indications of animal formation, and they are probably sediment arising from a minute division of shelly bodies now indurated by time and superincumbent pressure and become a coarse-grained marble. Our limestone thus appearing not to be contaminated with any great portion of magnesian earth, it may be used for all agricultural purposes with advantage. Many detached blocks of limestone are found about us, having broken shelly remains; and the joints of the encrinite, greatly mutilated, embedded in them. Irregularly wandering near the lime-ridge is a vein of impure sandy soil, covering a coarse-grained siliceous stone; sand agglutinated, and colored by oxide of iron, resisting heat, and used in the construction of our lime-kilns: the laborers call it “fire-stone.”

We occasionally, though sparingly, find, in a few places on our downs, nodules of lead ore, which induced persons in years past to seek for mineral riches; but the trial being soon abandoned, the result, I suppose, afforded no reasonable ground for success. We likewise find thin veins of carbonate of strontian, but make no use of it; nor is it noted by us different from common rubbish; nor do I know any purpose to which it is peculiarly applicable, but in pyrotechnics. Spirit of wine, in which nitrate of strontian has been mixed, will burn with a beautiful bright red flame; barytes, which approaches near to strontia, affords a fine green; nitrates of both, compounded with other matters, are used in theatrical representations. Strontian exists in many places, and plentifully; some future wants or experiments will probably bring it into notice, and indicate the latent virtues of this mineral.

Perhaps I may here mention an incident, that occurred a few years past at one of our lime-kilns, because it manifests how perfectly insensible the human frame may be to pains and afflictions in peculiar circumstances; and that which would be torture if endured in general, may be experienced at other times without any sense of suffering. A travelling man one winter’s evening laid himself down upon the platform of a lime-kiln, placing his feet, probably numbed with cold, upon the heap of stones, newly put on to burn through the night. Sleep overcame him in this situation; the fire gradually rising and increasing until it ignited the stones upon which his feet were placed. Lulled by the warmth, the man slept on; the fire increased until it burned one foot (which probably was extended over a vent-hole) and part of the leg above the ankle entirely off; consuming that part so effectually, that a cinder-like fragment was alone remaining; and still the wretch slept on! and in this state was found by the kiln-man in the morning. Insensible to any pain, and ignorant of his misfortune, he attempted to rise and pursue his journey, but missing his shoe, requested to have it found; and when he was raised, putting his burnt limb to the ground to support his body, the extremity of his legbone, the tibia, crumbled into fragments, having been calcined into lime. Still he expressed no sense of pain, and probably experienced none, from the gradual operation of the fire, and his own torpidity, during the hours his foot was consuming. This poor drover survived his misfortunes in the hospital about a fortnight; but the fire having extended to other parts of his body, recovery was hopeless.

Residences upon limestone soils have generally been considered as less liable than other situations to infectious and epidemic disorders; and such places being usually more elevated, they become better ventilated, and freed from stagnated and unwholesome airs, and by the absorbing principle of the soil are kept constantly dry. All this seems to favor the supposition that they are healthy; but if exempted from ailments arising from mal-aria, inflammatory complaints do not seem excluded from such situations. When the typhus fever prevailed in the country, we were by no means exempted from its effects; the severe coughs attending the spring of 1826 afflicted grievously most individuals in every house; and the measles, which prevailed so greatly at the same season, visited every cottage, though built upon the very limestone rock.