CHAPTER I. 



The Beetles of the Downs 



IF we draw a line across England from Gloucester 

 to Hull south of that line will be found no elevation 

 which in our boldest flight of imagination can be called 

 a mountain. Yet the south-eastern portion of our 

 island is not without its eminences, and I think the 

 most characteristic of these are certainly the Downs 

 North and South where they enclose the Weald, 

 broadening into one great central mass as they 

 unite and sweep westward through Dorset and Wilt- 

 shire till they thin out and disappear against that 

 band of oolite which cuts transversely right through 

 the country. Not that the Downs rise to any great 

 altitudes, but they have a character that is their own 

 in a sense that the Cotswolds and the Chilterns and 

 all the little elevations of the Midlands do not possess. 

 What strikes one most about the Chalk Downs of 

 Southern England is their immense spaciousness, 

 the long, long lines of their horizons, the interminable 

 emptiness of their placid slopes. In Cumberland 

 and Carnarvonshire one is conscious of fierce sub- 

 terranean forces, masses of volcanic rock, abrupt, 

 savage, overwhelming, thrown high up to Heaven, 



i 



IB 



