b THE CAUSES WHICH PROPAGATE 



whispered audibly legends of spirit land — mainly to discover 

 why such dependent things are so proverbially transient. 

 Wending- once move over the hummocky heather laud stretching 

 out along the sail-studded Southampton Water, here and there 

 traversed by a tinkling brooklet, incessantly eating deep and 

 deeper through an irony stratum of angular chalk, flint, and 

 water-rounded pebble into a thick layer of yellow and green sand 

 beneath. A silent turn in the road brought again to my view 

 the winding creek, bordered with its well-known white mansions 

 mirrored glassy and grey. Over the cockly mud flats and fucus 

 wash, made in hurriedly the clear spriug flood with a silver 

 ripple until it kissed the shingles at my feet ; and then there 

 arose a voice of the tutelary river nymph, " Behold your fluvio- 

 marine limestones of the future ! " The graceful yachts lay 

 sleeping mid-stream, moored on a magic shadow; and nought 

 was stirring save the drowsy village echoes and cry of the 

 gliding seamew from the shadowy banks. Away and beyond the 

 silvery gauze of fresh bromine and iodine undulated the upheaved 

 cloud-cliffs of A^ectis, " The deep sea formation continued the 

 wavelets of the secondary." The salt plant clung to the dripping 

 river dyke, where the Dragon-fly was mating, the red with the 

 olive. And now as the morning fled its prime, a fleeting eats- 

 paw escaping the russet tangle hung with coral red, sat momen- 

 tarily in the bulging jib of the creeping smack, and caused its 

 keel to career sleepily along the waving water-grass; or now, 

 the indolent ducklings again and again put forth from the red 

 brick angle, to undulate on the cool reflections. Chi'onologically 

 it was autumn, a definable period in unlimited time. 



Yet maybe we naturalists and insectmongers are too prone 

 to thus philosophise over our delectable spots and localities; 

 though it is never well to ignore wholly the written transactions 

 plainly inscribed around us. A great forest will, if ransacked, 

 prove to contain more compressed information than our trim 

 shrubberies and hanging rosaries ; a neighbouring heath or marsh 

 land tells more tales than rich Levantine orchards and cattle- 

 cropped parks. And therefore, not improbably, the young en- 

 tomologist expending his time and means in storing boxes and 

 cabinets with local specimens, and his shelves with technical 

 pamphlets, on account of the comparative exhaustion of our 



