134 A NATURALIST'S CALENDAR FOR DORSETSHIRE. 



thus furnished should be tabulated, and the results eventually 

 published in our " Proceedings." This would, of course, entail a 

 large quantity of labour and correspondence on the secretary or 

 other functionary whose office it was to collect and digest the mass 

 of facts submitted to him, and whose residence might become a 

 central bureau of information for the county. This, however, is 

 all rather visionary. The interest which would arise from the 

 calendar would be very general. As soon as a mean could be 

 struck for the county each locality by comparison of its own dates 

 with that of the county would arrive at some definite conclusions 

 as to the fact of its early or late seasons, and the causes which to 

 some extent worked to produce that result. 



Finally, to make our calendar complete we require an accurate 

 series of returns of annual rainfall to be made at six or eight 

 localities well distributed over the surface of the county, by which 

 the effects of the varied physical features of the district, and 

 relative position of sea and land may be noticed in the increase or 

 diminution in the amount of rain. 



Dorsetshire is essentially a naturalist's county. It possesses an 

 exceptionally rich flora and avifauna, for the published description 

 of which we are indebted to the labours of our President. 

 Geologically its sedimentary deposits form a multum in parvo of 

 the English secondary and tertiary beds. Its physical features are 

 no less varied and suggestive. The broad back bone of the white 

 chalk runs through the county from west to east, forming a ridge 

 of high open downs rising to the height of 800 feet above the 

 sea, and standing like a wall in the steep escarpment which looks 

 northwards over the low ground of the Vale of Blackmoor and 

 Wardour. On either side of this cretaceous backbone we have, 

 roughly speaking, two belts of low ground one the heavy clay 

 districts of the Vale above mentioned, the other the sandy and 

 gravelly country around Poole, Bournemouth, and Wareham. 

 Finally, the Island of Purbeck, itself cut off by a high chalk ridge 

 from the rest of the world, forms a separate area of its own. The 

 influence of this peculiar configuration of the land surface, and the 



