105 NATURAL HISTORY OF SUNNINGHILL. 



which, like those of animals, are all different, and the substance of each 

 earlier one is transferred to the succeeding one. 



{To be continued.) 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SUNNINGHILL. 



BY O. S. ROUND, ESQ. 



CHAPTER I.— Introductory. 



An historical notice, a learned dissertation upon antiquities, or a drier 

 topography, is not that which will be found in the following pages; no, 

 I enter upon an easier and more pleasing task, to myself at least, and trust 

 that it may prove equally so to my readers. The district I am about 

 to describe is not the place of my birth, but of my adoption, for it was 

 to this spot that I was brought when labouring under the sickening in- 

 fluence of the unwholesome vapours of the metropolis; here it was that I 

 drew first an unpolluted breath of the free air of Heaven, to which salubrious 

 change I probably owe my present being: it cannot, therefore, be surpris- 

 ing that I should undertake the task of celebrating its beauties, or that 

 such task should contain for me a certain degree of pleasure. I have 

 entered upon it with the more confidence since I am but an atom of 

 the mass of its admirers, for it may be safely affirmed that no one once 

 visited it for a summer without (if in their power) doing so again. 



Having resided on the confines of the parish for upwards of twenty-five 

 years, my knowledge of its general features is consequently considerable; 

 these I shall endeavour to set forth in the clearest light, and as I am 

 neither a scientific naturalist or geologist, I must be understood to speak 

 in popular phraseology, and to state things exactly as they are, without 

 ornament or addition. It is impossible but that in the course of so many 

 seasons, a cloud should have occasionally passed over the prospect, but 

 then, although they must cause particular localities, as we gaze upon them, 

 to revive, melancholy recollections lend a superior interest to the scene, 

 as lively and far deeper than the brightest reminiscences of days gone by, 

 for here gloom is present, there departed and softened, and mellowed by 

 the hand of time. 



The admiration of a rural landscape must be the natural bent of the 

 mind, for although the conveniencies of a town life in some measure 

 supplant it, with what double gratification do we return to it and inhale 

 its sweet breath; and whilst we revel in the pleasures of artificial life, 

 as a relaxation from daily toil, pursue that toil merely for the pleasure 

 of retiring into the country in our latter days. Horace has this idea in 

 his first satire, where he says — 



"Ut in otia tuta recedant." 



