T52 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



The author has herein done good and laborious 

 work in a field of research little known, but which 

 offers much of importance and interest. The student 

 has here collected ready for use the records of 

 varieties hitherto scattered through numberless 

 magazines. Nevertheless, much of the work recorded 

 is new. Mr. Tutt is well known as a diligent 

 lepidopterist, and this handy little manual will be 

 liighly acceptable to all working entomologists. 



The Species of Epilobium ocairring North of 

 Mexico, by W. Trelease. Professor Trelease is in 

 charge of the Missouri Botanic Garden, and this 

 well got-up work forms the Second Annual Report 

 of that Institution. It will be of much service to 

 American botanists. It is illustrated by forty-seven 

 artistically got-up plates of the different species of 

 Epilobium. 



Afonographie du Genre Pleurosigma et des Genres 

 allies, by H. Perogallo (Paris : M. J. Tempere). This 

 handsome monograph of the most important of all the 

 genera of diatoms, owes its publication to the 

 existence of " Le Diatomiste," the French botanical 

 quarterly journal, edited by M. Tempere, devoted to 

 the study of diatoms, to which we have already drawn 

 the attention of our readers. It is illustrated by 

 ten plates, quarto size, crowded with accurately 

 drawn figures. M. Perogallo's work has involved 

 much labour and research. 



TWO VIEWS OF THE WEALD. 



View the First. 



THE long ridge of Kentish rag which bounds the 

 Weald Valley on the north slopes steeply down to 

 the bed of the Beult— a little tributary of the Med way, 

 which meanders slowly through the rich corn-land, 

 scattered copses and marshy meadows, which make 

 the Weald dear to farmers and to sportsmen. The 

 alluvial soil of its banks rests upon a bed of flinty 

 gravel, laid bare in the river-bed and the ditches 

 bordering the fields, and contributing more stones 

 to the surface soil than is usual in a land where 

 "stone-pickers" are unknown. These scattered 

 flints will furnish us with the materials for reconstruct- 

 ing in our imagination the Weald as it once was — 

 the home of beast and wild fowl, of hunters without 

 gun or cartridge, trained setter or beagle, but whose 

 weapons, of their own manufacture, doubtless did 

 good execution in their day. 



Step with me over the plank bridge that spans the 

 Beult. There in the river-bank, not long ago, was 

 found sticking out of the soil, a beautiful polished celt, 

 an axe-head, whose owner little dreamed that the 

 tool he fashioned and polished with such infinite toil 

 and care should now alone represent to us the worker's 

 life and ways. 



When we have crossed the meadows, where the 



overflowing river deepens its 'deposit of silt every 

 winter, we arrive at the edge of some ploughed fields, 

 bare as yet of seedlings ; the soil in this curious 

 "spring" weather is dry and crumbling after the 

 ploughing and harrowing. At every step or so we 

 may pick up a fragment of flint — satiny black, trans- 

 lucent grey or brown, glowing red, almost as jasper, 

 weathered to a blue like that of the Kentish hills in 

 the distance, cracked and calcined like a bit of old 

 pottery — and of real pottery, too, we may pick up 

 specimens, of which more anon. 



The variety of colour in the flints is by no means 

 their sole attraction or interest. Scarcely one of them 

 but has been split or splintered, and that in no 

 accidental manner. A practised eye soon recognises 

 "flakes " and "cores," perhaps a fashioned arrow- 

 head, borer, or other tool. Here was undoubtedly 

 one of the earliest manufactories of which we have 

 record— and these flints are the raw material, the 

 refuse, or the finished articles. 



Long ago the ever-working rain and frost and 

 rivers and sea wore away the escarpment of those 

 chalky downs which bound the Weald to north and 

 south ; long ago the flints were drifted over the land, 

 sole traces of the earlier deposits. The great Weald 

 forest grew up, man appeared on the scene, and here, 

 where fish and bird and beast must have found food in 

 plenty, their newly arrived master found weapons also 

 to his hand. Generations of the old stone-workers 

 must have lived and died — hundreds of flints must have 

 been chipped and shaped, and presently polished, and 

 then " the old order " changed, newer races came on 

 the scene, for as we trudge over the ground we can 

 pick up from time to time pieces of well-burnt clay 

 that are not bits of drain-pipes, nor specimens of 

 modern art, but genuine Roman tiles, and Roman 

 pots. And on the far side of the Beult, along the 

 hill, stretches a long line of Roman earthworks, and in 

 a copse half-way down is a still untouched tumulus, 

 into which as yet only the rabbits have been 

 privileged to burrow. 



And so, as we homeward wend our weary but 

 happy way, we may see in thought the savage 

 hunters stalking their game, setting their snares or 

 their nets, sitting over their fires after nightfall — ashes 

 have been dug up in these very fields — shaping and 

 polishing their tools, scraping their skins, fitting their 

 bows, doubtless enjoying life as much as did those 

 modern sportsmen whose many empty cartridge-cases 

 now betoken a "warm corner." Doubtless the 

 rabbits scurried and burrowed, as now in the soft 

 loam, and the plover screamed over-head, and the 

 larks rose into the cloudy sky wherever the wood was 

 cleared — perhaps also the wolf and the bear and the 

 wild boar ranged over the land. Much is changed, 

 yet enough is the same — enough to make us sure that 

 these our rude forefathers of the stone ages, had in 

 many ways such a view of the Weald, as we may 

 have to-day, if we will but look for it. 



