iSgi.] 



THE BRITISH NATURALIST. 



239 



who were before us in this place, we wake up to the fact that our 

 present nineteenth century object is to make ourselves acquainted 

 with the Coleopterous denizens of these glades, to feel the pleasure of 

 the pathless woods, and to enjoy a summer holiday. 



Delamere has not always been a forest as we find it now, three 

 centuries ago it formed part of the great woodlands that occupied all 

 west Cheshire, and owed to the Abbot of St. Werburg, in Chester a 

 stag and six bucks yearly, but by the beginning of this century it had 

 been disforested and was a boggy waste of heather something similar 

 to the present Chat Moss. More recently still, fifty or sixty years ago, 

 the greater part was planted with oaks and the swampy bottoms were 

 drained, and there the survivors of the original firs and birches 

 managed to struggle again into life and renew the semblance of 

 the Delamere of Plantagenet times. But long ago, before the dawn 

 of history, this whole tract must have formed some kind of tidal 

 estuary, some great river must have washed the flanks of Eddisbury, 

 for all the forest is grown on beds of ancient river gravel or sea shingle, 

 and deposits of sand. What was the exact configuration of the land 

 at that" time is difficult now to make out, nor is it our immediate 

 province to discover, but the bare sides of the surrounding hills afford 

 those unmistakeable sign of terraces of banked up sand and water- 

 worn gravel. This poor sandy soil renders the land very unsuitable 

 for cultivation, and has perhaps saved our forest from the fate of 

 many a woodland grown on more remunerative land. A splendid 

 piece of wild rough country it is, however, wherein we can range at 

 will, it being nearly all Crown property and innocent of game or game- 

 keepers. Here the ornithologist, the botanist, and the entomologist 

 find a happy hunting ground. In the tops of these oaks the 

 persecuted magpie builds her thorny dome, and in the remoter glades 

 the jay and the sparrow-hawk have found a refuge. If you are a 

 lepidopterist, not to speak of nocturnal sugarings and abundant spoil, 

 you may net the Fritillary Euphrosyne in the clearings near the meres, 

 and in the rough bramble hedges Thecla nibi is often abundant. 



But the coleopterous fauna of the forest is all unknown, let it, 

 therefore, on this occasion, be our care. Yonder sinuous sheet of 

 water flashing in the morning sun is Oakmere, and we cannot do 

 better than make our way straight towards it. Between it and us lies 

 a low wet part of the forest, and deep ditches drain what would 



