GOODYER'S COUNTRY 3 



The Goodyer country is perhaps better known to, though 

 less visited by the English reader, than any other inland 

 area in England. Its natural features and attractions have 

 been made widely known by the premier work on nature 

 study in our language, the classic Natural History of 

 Selborne, by Gilbert White. 



This country in which John Goodyer lived extends 

 among the chalk hills at the junction of the North and 

 South Downs, on and around one of the principal watersheds 

 of south Britain. Born in the valley of the Wey, whose 

 waters flow into the Thames, he passed his young manhood 

 at Droxford on the Meon, which runs straight down to the 

 Solent six miles west of Portsmouth ; while at Petersfield 

 he lived by the sources of the Rother, whose waters, 

 mingling with those of the Arun, enter the English Channel 

 at Arundel. A cyclist could visit all his homes in an 

 afternoon. 



As Gilbert White said a century and a half later, in this 

 district ' so diversified with such a variety of hill and dale, 

 aspects and soils, it is no wonder that great choice of 

 plants should be found. Chalks, clays, sands, sheep-walks 

 and downs, bogs, heaths, woodlands, and champaign fields 

 cannot but furnish an ample Flora. The deep rocky lanes 

 abound with filices, and the pastures and moist woods with 

 fungi. If in any branch of botany we may seem to be 

 wanting, it must be in the large aquatic plants, which are 

 not to be expected on a spot far removed from rivers, and 

 lying up amidst the hill country at the spring heads'. 

 And yet perhaps it was just this upland character of his 

 native country that caused Goodyer to pay especial attention 

 to water plants whenever he came across them, an atten- 

 tion of which the reward was several most remarkable 

 discoveries. He added at least a dozen aquatics to the 

 British flora. 



Nor are the literary associations of this favoured spot 

 confined to the name of Gilbert White. Droxford is 

 remembered as the village where Izaak Walton passed 



B a 



