Natural History. 125 



recorded is wanting. For instance, the young botanist in 

 Lincolnshire, who knows his plants fairly well, is adding hardly 

 anything to our knowledge of nature by bare lists of species 

 which grow in his neighbourhood. But let him take the new 

 drift maps, published by the Geological Survey, in his hand as 

 he walks, and accurately note the changing flora with the 

 varying outcrops and soils he passes over, and he will just give 

 us that connecting link which makes his work live. If the 

 elevation, humidity, porosity, and impenetrability of the surface 

 has nothing to do with the distribution, he has discovered the 

 chemistry of the soil has, and a quantitative and qualitative 

 analysis of the plants will show it. He has pointed out to the 

 chemist where his work has to begin and what the problem is 

 he must settle. Had as much been known as might be 

 discovered with a little trouble on this very question of 

 geological distribution, thousands of acres would not have been 

 sown down to permanent pasture with expensive seeds, which 

 the land could not support till the passage of years had accu- 

 mulated its fertility. When a young lady drew a lovely 

 picture of the heath-covered wolds of Lincolnshire the other 

 day in a magazine article she had just missed the nexus, which 

 was all important to the truth, if not the loveliness, of her 

 description. Our wolds are chalk, but our English heaths 

 cannot stand a particle of lime in their love for silica. Our 

 wind-blown sand-hills and commons are clothed with their fair 

 pink bells, and so to a perfervid but inaccurate mind the chalk 

 hills must be, but nature having ordained it otherwise it is 

 not so. The point to catch and note for ever is the nexus or 

 connecting link between the thing observed or the action seen 

 and its environment. Nothing is there by accident, nothing 

 is done in nature without a motive, an all-sufficient reason. 

 When we observed all the birds flying in one direction on 

 Salisbury plain, as if a bush fire were behind them, we did not 

 doubt there was a very good reason, and found it later in the "dew 

 pond" at the foot of Sidbury Hill. The only open water for 

 miles on that barrow-strown height, was frequented by all the 

 birds and animals round. But the fox and rat, rabbit and hare, 

 did not visit the spot at the same time of day, nor the different 

 species of birds drink together, but we made no notes, and 

 missed the nexus, and are ignorant why to this moment. The 

 water was full of newts and lower life forms, and if we remem- 

 ber accurately a solitary species of P otamogeton^ but that was not 

 surprising, as these ponds are sometimes frequented by wild fowl. 



