Natural history -- Outdoor books; Nature; Nature study; Paris (France) -- Description and travel
I found, while I was shooting every day, that the reeds, and ferns, and
various growths through which I pushed my way, explained to me the
jungles of India, the swamps of Central Africa, and the backwoods of
America; all the vegetation of the world. Representatives exist in our
own woods, hedges, and fields, or by the shore of inland waters. It was
the same with flowers. I think I am scientifically accurate in saying
that every known plant has a relative of the same species or genus,
growing wild in this country. The very daisy, the commonest of all,
contains a volume of botany; so do the heaths, and the harebells that
hang so heavily under the weight of the September dew. The horse-tails
by the shore carry the imagination further back into the prehistoric
world when relations of these plants flourished as trees. The
horse-tails by ponds are generally short, about a foot or eighteen
inches high, more or less, but in ditches occasionally there are
specimens of the giant horse-tail as high as the waistcoat, with a stem
as thick as a walking-stick. This is a sapling from which the
prehistoric tree can readily be imagined. From our southern woods the
wild cat has been banished, but still lives in the north as an English
representative of that ferocious feline genus which roams in tropical
forests. We still have the deer, both wild and in parks. Then there are
the birds, and these, in the same manner as plants, represent the
inhabitants of the trackless wilds abroad. Happily the illustration
fails mostly in reptiles, which need not be regretted; but even these,
in their general outline as it were, are presented.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account