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CHAPTER IV. 



CELTIC PROVINCE. 



The Celtic province is our home-circuit. Above 

 all other maritime regions it has been chosen by 

 naturalists for their minutest observations. If their 

 science, so far as it concerns the sea, was born, as 

 some have said, in the Mediterranean, it was brought 

 up in the British Channel, and on the mid-western 

 coasts of the Continent. From the bay of Biscay 

 to the Baltic sea, there has been and continues a 

 diligent and searching investigation into the nature 

 and species of the animals and vegetables that live 

 beneath the waters. Their abundance, and the fa- 

 cility with which they can be procured, have been 

 main causes of the attention devoted to them. But, 

 however plentiful, or however easily procurable, we 

 should have learned comparatively little about them 

 had the spirit of energetic research and minute 

 enquiry, characteristic of the enlightened portion of 

 the human population of these regions, been absent. 

 In the British Islands, Natural History has long 

 been a favourite pursuit ; one indigenous, in a man- 

 ner, to the people, and attractive to them for its 

 own sake. It leads to no profit, no high places, no 



