THE HERON. 
109 
roused up two or three of these birds from the island known 
as Broad Meadow, and watched them wend their flight some¬ 
times towards Middleton but often in a contrary direction. 
This is the last species that is anything like common in 
Britain of a noble order of birds. Let not this handsome 
bird be banished from the country in which it has struggled 
for existence so long. As soon as a bird becomes rare, the 
few individuals that are seen are instantly shot to adorn 
some museum, and the note of their occurrence is also the 
note of their death. A large proportion of our British birds 
are in this plight, and I am afraid the number is increasing. 
Many naturalists complain, but hitherto little or nothing has 
been done to stop it. 
THE BASALT OF ROWLEY REGIS. 
I.—THE OCCURRENCE OF GROOVED AND STRIATED 
STONES ON THE ROWLEY HILLS. 
BY C. BEALE, C.E. 
A stranger passing along the many pleasant roads and 
footpaths of this elevated district could not fail to notice on 
every hand the long lines of fence walls built of dry stones, 
loosely, but securely, placed without mortar. Some of these 
walls are of considerable magnitude, being from eight to ten 
feet in height, five or six feet in thickness at bottom, and a 
couple of feet thick at top ; but the ordinary size of the walls 
is about five feet high, three feet thick at base, and eighteen 
inches at top. The stones comprising these walls vary 
in size from huge blocks of, perhaps, a ton weight, or even 
more, to the ordinary size of twenty-eight or thirty pounds in 
weight. 
Generally speaking, these walls show signs of age. Some¬ 
times the roots of growing trees firmly clasp a number 
of the stones in an everlasting embrace. Sometimes the 
ferns of many generations have quite filled the interstices 
between the stones, and again, in favourable aspects, whole 
ranges of fences will charm the eye by their covering of 
many-tinted lichens and mosses. In cases like these we 
might be justified in assuming that such walls had been in 
existence for one or even two centuries, and we have walls of 
all ages down to those built within the last few years. 
The whole of the stones composing these walls—both the 
old and the new—have one common origin. They are all 
basalt. They are all natives of these Rowley hills, and, as a 
