146 POOLE AS A LOCALITY FOR NATURAL HLSTORY. 



Hampshire. I wish my knowledge of Natural History enabled me to watch 

 with a more practical eye the face of nature in this favoured part of the 

 kingdom. The warmth of the climate in this county is favourable to the 

 production of wild plants in an endless variety; nowhere do I see the Ferns 

 so various or luxuriant, hedges so gay, or woods so carpeted with flowers. In 

 a month's time the Primrose, Anemone, Orchis, Periwinkle, Wild Hyacinth, 

 (a white vax-iety is very common also,) and a thousand others will make every 

 coppice a garden ; the rare Fly Ophrys too I have seen growing in the chalky 

 woods at Ranston, in this county. As a proof of the mildness of our Dorsetshire 

 climate, I may mention that at Lower Lytchett, a few miles from hence, 

 may be seen in the open air a hedge of Cammelias, more than ten feet 

 high and twenty or thirty yards in length, of most luxuriant growth, and 

 which is a perfect blaze of blossom, and far more healthy and vigorous than 

 I have ever seen the plant in any greenhouse; near it also stands an Araucaria 

 nearly thirty feet high. Vast heaths and moors extend over many thousand 

 acres in these counties, continuing in an almost unbroken chain from South- 

 ampton to Dorchester, including the wild tract of the New Forest — a distance 

 of fifty miles. These moors have an unenviable notoriety as a favourite 

 haunt of all the species of reptiles which are found in Britain; botanists also 

 report them as a favourite field of search; in the many clear streams also 

 that intersect the country, almost every fish usual to English waters is to be 

 found, from the lordly Salmon to the humble Minnow. 



The immediate neighbourhood of the sea, the great bays and creeks of 

 Poole harbour, and the vast extent of tidal mud-flat between its mouth and 

 Calshot Castle in the Southampton Water, give us as great a variety of 

 wild fowl in the winter months as could be found perhaps in any other part 

 of the western seaboard. This season, from the mildness of the winter, we 

 have been visited by few of the rarer species, and I have been able to make 

 no additions to my collection, with the exception of a young bird of the 

 Red-necked Grebe, (Podiceps ruhricoUis,) and a solitary Pintail, (Anas acuta.) 

 With regard to the latter bird, I should think it must be more rare than 

 Yarrell leads us to expect, as he describes it as not uncommon on the mud-flats 

 before mentioned, whilst a friend of mine, who annually kills more wild fowl 

 perhaps than any other amateur, tells me that he has never killed but one 

 other on the same water. Since the beginning of February the Teal have 

 been in far greater numbers than ever were previously known; on one occasion, 

 in February, I assisted in bagging one hundred Duck and Teal, and on 

 another occasion the same party bagged one hundred and seventy in one 

 day. On the River Avon, above Christehurch, almost all the rarer species 

 of wild fowl make their haunt, and in cold seasons great numbers of that 

 noble bird, the Hooper, {Cygnus feriis^ are killed there. In the Earl of 

 Malraesbury's collection at Heron Court, are preserved in one case the heads 

 of four Hoopers, which, with a splendid male preserved in another case, make 

 a very good study of the peculiarities of the Wild Swan^ as distinguished from 



