INTRODUCTORY, 



A NATURALIST S PAEADISB. 



I DWELL in a district of country remarkable for its riot- 

 ness in plant and animal life ; I mean, of course, the wild 

 and indigenous. So varied and plentiful are the species 

 that in these respects I venture to believe there is no 

 other part of England, or, indeed, the United Kingdom, 

 which can at all compare with it. This profusion is 

 chiefly due to its peculiar geological features. As will be 

 easily understood, the geology of any particular part of 

 the earth's surface aSects the character of its botany so 

 much that the former may appropriately be termed the 

 parent of the latter ; while, in turn, the plant-life may be 

 regarded as the creator and nursing-mother of all that 

 " lives, moves, and hath being." If, for instance, some 

 grand upheaval — volcanic, plutonic, or by whatever name 

 called — have tossed to the surface a varied series of the 

 stratified rocks which form the earth's crust, and left 

 their tilted edges exposed to the atmosphere, there will 

 spring up on them a varied vegetation, with animal life 

 in like manner diversified. And it will also be obvious 

 that the more abrupt the dip of the upheaved strata the 

 greater will be this variety within the limits of a given 

 district ; as, of course, the sharper the angle of elevation 

 the narrower the exposed surface of any particular stratum. 

 Now I am living in the immediate neighbourhood of 



1 B 



