CHAPTER II 



The Beetles of the Moorlands 



EXCEPT in the far West, Devonshire and Cornwall, the 

 Moorlands of this country all lie north of that line drawn 

 from the estuary of the Severn to the Humber, south 

 of which we find the whole extension of the country of 

 the chalk Downs. No doubt wide areas exist ki Surrey, 

 in Berkshire and in Hampshire which can grow little 

 beside heather and ling, but these expanses we must call 

 Heaths not Moorlands, for as we miss even in their 

 remotest solitudes the whirr and cackle of the startled 

 grouse, so they lack much of the distinctive insect fauna 

 of the great Moorlands of the North and North- West. 

 Nor by Moorlands are meant such heathery wastes as 

 Cannock Chase or Chat Moss as it was ; although they 

 lie north of the line in question, they are more properly 

 " Mosses/' for the genuine " Moorland " one requires a 

 higher elevation. Go north or west of that vast plain 

 of the Trias which occupies so much of North Western 

 England, and there stretching over the flanks of the 

 great mountain systems of Yorkshire and of Wales lie 

 those lonely expanses rising up from the upper reaches 

 of the river valleys, level stretches or long undulating 

 folds of brown heather above which rises the steep 



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