INTRODUCTION.

BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR.

It is now nearly five-and-twenty years since the “Journal of a Naturalist” first appeared in England. The author, Mr. Knapp, has told us himself that the book owes its origin to the “Natural History of Selborne,” a work of the last century, which it is quite needless to say has become one of the standards of English literature; and the reader is probably also aware that the honors acceded to the disciple are, in this instance, scarcely less than those of his master—the Journal of a Naturalist, and Selborne, stand side by side, on the same shelf, in the better libraries of England.

Both volumes belong to a choice class; they are to be numbered among the books which have been written neither for fame nor for profit, but which have opened spontaneously, one might almost say unconsciously, from the author’s mind. The subjects on which they touch are such as must always prove interesting in themselves; like the grass of the field, and the trees of the wood, the xiigrowth of both works has been fostered by the showers and the sunshine of the open heavens; and in spite of so much that is artificial in our daily life and habits, there are hours when all our hearts gladly turn to the natural and unperverted gifts of our Maker.

The History of Selborne, and the Journal of a Naturalist, happen to have been both written in the southern counties of England. Selborne, the parish of which the Rev. Gilbert White was Rector, lies on the eastern borders of Hampshire. Mr. Knapp has not given us the name of his own village; but its position in Gloucestershire is minutely described. He tells us that it stands upon a high ridge of land commanding very beautiful views, including the broad estuary of the Severn, and the rich plains on its banks, while the fine mountains of southern Wales fill up the back-ground; a Roman ferry with the sites of ancient stations, and the lines of old roads of the same people, are visible, and the pretty though unimportant town of Thornbury, with its imposing church and castle, occupy the cliffs on the opposite bank of the river.

“The smooth Severn stream,”

with its

“Rush-yfringed bank

Where grows the willow, and the osier dank,”

xiiiis the only river of any size in England, running north and south. It rises in Wales, at the foot of Plinlimnon, and winding through some of the finest plains on the island, waters the town of Shrewsbury, Worcester, Tewksbury, and Gloucester. How familiar are all these names to American ears; how the scroll of history unfolds before the mind’s eye as we read their titles! During the last century the importance of the Severn, in a commercial sense, was very great indeed; the movement on the broad estuary by which it flows into the ocean, being perhaps greater, at that period, than that of any other European river, with the single exception of the Thames. Many have been the naval expeditions of importance which have sailed from the Severn; the Cabots when bound on the daring voyage which first threw the light of civilization upon the coast of North America, embarked from the wharves of Bristol. Perchance the scanty sails, and heavy hull of their craft, as it made its way sea-ward, may have been watched by some wondering peasant, toiling in the same fields to which the Naturalist has introduced us.

The mountains of Wales, filling the back-ground of the picture sketched in the author’s opening pages, are very different from those with which American eyes are familiar. Bare and bleak, they are usually wholly shorn xivof wood, and far bolder in their craggy outline than our own heights. Snowdon, the most important mountain in Wales, rises to a height of 3700 feet. Standing in a northern county of the Principality it is not, however, to be included in a view from the banks of the southern Severn. But the hills of Glamorgan, and Brecon, especially noticed by Mr. Knapp, are upward of 2000 feet in height, and stamped more or less with the same general character. It often happens indeed, from the boldness of position, and the abruptness of outline, which usually mark the mountains of Europe, that heights of no great elevation produce very striking effects in a view.

The fertile alluvial pastures in the immediate foreground of the picture, are those in which Milton’s rivernymph Sabrina, may be supposed to have strayed:

“Still she retains

Her maiden gentleness, and oft at eve

Visits the herds along the twilight meadows,

Helping all urchin blasts, and ill-luck signs

That the shrewd meddling elf delights to make,

Which she with precious vial’d liquors heals;

For which the shepherds at their festivals

Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays,

And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream

Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils.”

The little village, the immediate scene of the Naturalist’s xvobservations, appears to have had an uneventful existence. It lies, we are told, “on a very ancient road,” running between the cities of Gloucester and Bristol; doubtless the tide of war and adventure, must often have swept over the track on many occasions, when the interests of England were battled for in the western counties of the kingdom, but only scanty vestiges of its passage have been found in the little community. A few skeletons, accidentally dug up by the road-side, the bones of horses, the iron head of a single lance, are alone alluded to as memorials of some nameless conflict of the period of Cromwell, and his wars. No stern feudal towers, no ambitious monastic edifices appear to have been raised within the limits of the parish; and, in short, the position of the spot is one associated chiefly with simple rustic labors, and rural quiet, a field especially in harmony with the inquiries and pursuits of the lover of nature.

It is with the vegetation of this unambitious region, and with the living creatures by which it is peopled, that the Naturalist would make us acquainted. He tells us of the trees found in the groves and copses of that open country; of the grasses which grow in the meadows on the banks of the Severn; of the grains and plants cultivated in the hedged fields which line his ancient road. He has a great deal to say about the birds which fly to xviand fro, with the passing seasons; about the butterflies, and moths which come and go with the summer blossoms, and he is familiar with the lowliest of the creeping things found upon his path. Such simple lore is never without interest to those who delight in the face of the earth, to those who love to honor the Creator in the study of his works. It is pleasant to know familiarly the plants which spring up at our feet; we like to establish a sort of intimacy with the birds which, year after year, come singing about our homes; and, on the other hand, when told of the wonders of a foreign vegetation, differing essentially from our own, when hearing of the habits of strange creatures from other and distant climates, we listen eagerly as to a tale of novelty.

We Americans, indeed, are peculiarly placed in this respect. As a people, we are still, in some sense, half aliens to the country Providence has given us; there is much ignorance among us regarding the creatures which held the land as their own long before our forefathers trod the soil, and many of which are still moving about us, living accessories of our existence, at the present hour. On the other hand, again, English reading has made us very familiar with the names, at least, of those races which people the old world. From the nursery epic, relating the melancholy fate of “Cock Robin,” and the numerous xviifeathered dramatis personæ figuring in its verses; from the tragical histories of “Little Red Riding Hood,” and the “Babes in the Woods;” from the winged and four-footed company of Gay and Lafontaine, from these associates of our childhood to the larks and nightingales of Shakspeare and Milton, we all, as we move from the nursery to the library, gather notions more or less definite. We fancy that we know all these creatures by sight; and yet neither “Cock Robin,” nor his murderer the Sparrow, nor his parson the Rook, is to be found this side the salt sea; the cunning Wolf whose hypocritical personation of the old grandame, so wrung our little hearts once upon a time, is not the wolf which howled only a few years since in the forests our fathers felled; the wily Fox of Lafontaine,

“Certain renard Gascon,

D’autres disent Normand,”

is not the fox of Yankeeland—albeit we have our foxes too! Neither the Marten,

“The temple-loving martlet, does approve

By his lov’d mansioning that the heavens breath

Smells wooingly here. * * *

where they

Most breed, and haunt, I have observed the air

Is delicate;”

nor the nightingale who

xviii“Sings darkling, and in the shadiest covert hid,

Tunes her nocturnal notes;”

nor the lark

“The herald of the morn,”

flies within three thousand miles of our own haunts. Thus it is that knowing so little of the creatures in whose midst we live, and mentally familiar by our daily reading with the tribes of another hemisphere, the forms of one continent and the names and characters of another, are strangely blended in most American minds. And in this dream-like phantasmagoria, where fancy and reality are often so widely at variance, in which the objects we see, and those we read of are wholly different, and where bird and beast undergo metamorphoses so strange, most of us are content to pass through life.

But there is a pleasant task awaiting us. We may all, if we choose, open our eyes to the beautiful and wonderful realities of the world we live in. Why should we any longer walk blindfold through the fields? Americans, we repeat, are peculiarly placed in this respect; the nature of both hemispheres lies open before them, that of the old world having all the charm of traditional association to attract their attention, that of their native soil being endued with the still deeper interest of home affections. xixThe very comparison between the two is a subject full of the highest interest, a subject more than sufficing in itself to provide instruction and entertainment for a lifetime. And yet, how many of us are ignorant of the very striking, leading fact that the indigenous races of both hemispheres, whether vegetable or animal, while they are generally more or less nearly related to each other, are rarely indeed identical. The number of individual plants, or birds, or insects, which are precisely similar in both hemispheres, is surprisingly small.

It will probably be unnecessary to observe that the writer of these remarks must be understood as laying no claim to the honorable position of a teacher, on either of the many branches connected with Natural History; a mere learner herself, she can offer the reader no other guidance than that of companionship, in looking after the birds, or plants, or insects, mentioned by Mr. Knapp. It has indeed been a subject of regret with her, that the task of editing the “Journal of a Naturalist” should not have fallen into hands better able to render the author full justice in this respect. But it is the object of the present edition to prepare this English volume for the American public generally, and for that purpose simple explanations were alone necessary. Anxious, at least, to do all in her power, the editor has consulted the best printed authorities within her xxreach, and she has also availed herself of the valuable and most obliging assistance of Professor S. F. Baird, Major Le Conte, and Mr. M. A. Curtis, while preparing several of the notes, which will be found in the appendix.

S. F. C.

August, 1852.

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