The Naturalist on the Thames

Having spent the greater part of my outdoor life in the Thames Valley, in the enjoyment of the varied interests of its natural history and sport, I have for many years hoped to...

The minute elegance of many of these shells is very striking. Tiny _physas_ and _succineas_, no larger than shot, live among big _paludinas_ as large as a garden snail, while al...

Drifting against a willow bush one day, the branches of which came right down over the water like a crinoline, I saw inside, and under the branches, a number of fair-sized chub...

It would not be human if some belief had not arisen that the insects that fly by night imitate human thieves and rob those which toil by day. There has always been a tradition t...

By watching the river carefully for many years I have noticed that it is a regular migration route for several species besides swallows. The first to begin the "trek" down the r...

A month later Mr. Harcourt was shooting his woods at Nuneham. There are more than four hundred acres of woods round this most beautiful park, all of them giving ideal English es...

Fish and flour go together as bye-products of nearly all our large rivers. The combination comes about thus: Wherever there is a water-mill, a mill cut is made to take the water...

The return of the birds, and especially of wild fowl, to the London river is the result partly of the same causes which have restored the fish to its waters; partly, also, of me...

Gilbert White, who noticed everything, and lived near a chalk hill, makes some shrewd conjectures, both about the dew ponds and the part which trees play in distilling water fro...

In the Vision of the Lots and Lives, when the souls chose their careers on a fresh register before taking another chance in the world above, Ulysses chose that of a stay-at-home...

To give a rather striking example. Last spring the writer was in the Valley of the Eden, opposite Eden-hall. The vale is a wide one, and on the north-east side are high fells, C...

This is supposed to be a "business" country, but one wonders why new wants which accompany any change of daily habit are so slowly realised. Take, for instance, the annual migra...

On the Kew Gardens border it lies against what was, until a few years ago, the wild and private part of Kew. To this it served as an open park, where all the birds drew out to s...

It was the end of a blazing hot London day when I went down the hard to the water's edge, among the small, pink-legged boys, paddling, and the usual group of contemplative workm...

Crows make one of the best nests constructed by the larger English birds. Usually it is placed, not out on the small branches, where rooks prefer to build them, but on the fork...

It has always been a separate region. Never yet has it entered the heads of its proprietors to join it permanently to the mainland. For three centuries its visitors and people h...

The answer is that, in the first place, this is not the proper business of the Conservancy, but only an incidental duty; and, in the next, that with the best of goodwill, as is...