42. FEMALE CONE OF THE DOUGLAS FIR OF NORTH-WEST AMERICA, PSEUDOTSUGA DOUGLASII 327 43. THE FORE-ARM OF MAN, WITH THE SKIN REMOVED SO AS TO SHOW THE LARGE SUPERFICIAL LYMPHATIC VESSELS RESTING ON THE MUSCLES 334 Oh! how light and lovely the air is upon the earth! How beautiful thou art, my earth, my golden, my emerald, my sapphire earth! Who, born to thy heritage would choose to die, would wish to close his eyes upon thy serene beauties and upon thy magnificent spaces?--FEODOR SOLOGUB. DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST CHAPTER I ON A NORWEGIAN FIORD THE splendour of our Sussex Weald, with its shady forests and lovely gardens, around which rise the majestic Downs sweeping in long graceful curves marked by the history of our race, has charmed me during these sunny days of June. The orchids, the water-lilies, the engaging and quaintly named "petty whin," and the pink rattle are joined with the tall foxgloves and elder-blossoms in my memory. And for some reason--perhaps it is the heat--I am set thinking of very different scenes--the great, cool fiords of Norway, with their rocky islets and huge, bare mountain-tops, where many years ago I had the "time of my life" in exploring with the naturalist's dredge the coral-grown sea-bottom 1000 and even 2000 feet in a straight line below the little boat in which I and my companion and three Norwegian boatmen floated on the dark purple waves. To let a dredge--an oblong iron frame some three feet long, to the edges of which a bag of strong netting is laced, whilst the frame is hung to a rope by a mystical triangle--sink from the side of a boat and scrape the surface of the ocean-floor far below for some ten or twenty minutes, and then to haul it up again and see what living wonders the unseen world has sent you, is, in my opinion, the most exciting and delightful sport in which a naturalist can indulge. There are difficulties and drawbacks connected with it. You cannot, in a small boat and without expenditure of large sums on a steam yacht and crew, reach from our coast--with rare exceptions in the north-west--with a fair prospect of returning in safety, those waters which are 100 fathoms deep. And it is precisely in such depths that the most interesting "hauls" are to be expected. I had had in former days to be content with 10 fathoms in the North Sea and 30 to 40 off the Channel Islands.