Many years have now passed away since we were presented with that very interesting and amusing book, the “Natural History of Selborne:” nor do I recollect any publication at all resembling it having since appeared. It early impressed on my mind an ardent love for all the ways and economy of nature, and I was thereby led to the constant observance of the rural objects around me. Accordingly, reflections have arisen, and notes been made, such as the reader will find them. The two works do not, I apprehend, interfere with each other. The meditations of separate naturalists in fields, in wilds, in woods, may yield a similarity of ideas; yet the different aspects under which the same things are viewed, and characters considered, afford infinite variety of description and narrative: mine, I confess, are but brief and slight sketches; plain observations of nature, the produce often of intervals of leisure and shattered health, affording no history of the country; a mere outline of rural things; the journal of a traveller through the inexhaustible regions of Nature. CONTENTS. Residence of the Author—Extensive prospect on the banks of the Severn—Welsh mountains, and passages of the river—Roman encampment upon a British site—Remains of the Romans—Coins—Skeletons of men and horses—Traces of a forest—Soils of the parish—Limestone, its abundance and uses—origin—Rocks formed in the parish by the coral polypi—analysis of—Rocks of deposit—analysis of—Lead ore—Carbonate of strontian—Traveller’s foot burned off—Residences upon Limestone supposed healthy—Employment for laborers—Amount of stone disposed of—A worthy peasant—Analysis of soils considered as fallacious—Dairy processes—Grass lands, their nature—Wild plants—predominating plants in corn-fields—Soils will produce particular herbage—Mode of saving hay—Wheat—Culture of the potato—sorts—expense and profit—effect upon the soil—not considered as injurious—sketch of its history—its introduction—some soils not favorable for the root—introduced later than tobacco—value to mankind—Ignorance of the first habitants of the Cerealia—Tendency of plants to revert to their original creation—Original species of the potato cannot now be ascertained—Component parts of some varieties—Teasel crops—its introduction—culture—gathering—value—its cultivation not injurious to the soil—variety of names—application-consumption—Bad custom in Page 9 farming—“clatters” to 41