SHROPSHIRE NATURALISTS. 17 



CHAPTER II. 



SHROPSHIRE NATURALISTS. 



ANYONE writing a book on the Natural History of 

 Shropshire must, necessarily, avail himself of the 

 work done by his predecessors in the same field. The 

 County of Salop may well be proud of the noble army of 

 her sons who have distinguished themselves as naturalists. 

 Charles Darwin stands in the forefront as the man who 

 fought for a great principle and infused a new spirit into the 

 " dry bones " of science ; but, it is not with such as he that we 

 are concerned in the present volume ; no the book aims 

 only at giving a complete account of the Vertebrate Animals 

 of the County, and therefore owes much to those patient 

 workers who during the last 80 years have sought after, and 

 recorded, all the interesting occurrences in their own neigh- 

 bourhood, and so preserved to us a heritage of valuable facts 

 that would otherwise have been lost. The first list was 

 published by T. C. EYTON in 1838, in the " Annals and 

 Magazine of Natural History/' It is entitled " An attempt 

 to ascertain the Fauna of Shropshire and North Wales,'' 

 and is the only one that records the Mammals, Reptiles, and 

 Fishes, as well as the Birds. The next list was written by 

 JOHN ROCKE, and published in the Zoologist for 1864-5. This 

 gives an excellent account of the Birds of Shropshire, with 

 ample details up to that date. Mr. Rocke not only wrote 

 about the birds, but made a splendid collection of specimens 

 at his house at Clungunford. A third list of Birds was 

 prepared by W. E. BECKWITH, and published in the 



