A SKETCH OF THE NATURAL HISTORY 

 OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



IT was a fancy of Richard Jefferies, 1 and one which, with- 

 out being pushed beyond certain limits, had in it many ele- 

 ments of truth, that the British Islands afforded the student 

 of animal distribution an epitome of the greater world with- 

 out. Quite apart from the poverty of our fauna in the 

 mere number of species, it is significant that of the eleven 

 recognised orders of quadrupeds, five only are wanting ; of 

 the twenty-three living orders of birds, our list includes, 

 if we count the stragglers, examples of no fewer than 

 seventeen; of the fishes, of which science recognises five 

 existing orders, our seas, streams, and lakes provide in 

 greater or less abundance typical representatives of three. 

 There is. however, with the exception of the restricted 

 distribution of one bird (the red grouse) and about half- 

 a-dozen non-migratory varieties of the trout and char, 

 nothing actually peculiar about the vertebrate fauna of 

 this archipelago anchored off the north-west coast of the 

 European continent, a group consisting of two principal 

 islands and several thousand islets, some of them mere 

 rocks. Thus, in the Scilly Islands alone there must be 



i Life of the Fields. 

 A 



