Nature in Downland Author:William Henry Hudson General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1900 Original Publisher: Longmans, Green Subjects: Natural history Shepherds Nature / General Nature / Essays Science / General Science / Life Sciences / Biology / General Travel / Europe / Great Britain Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the origi... more »nal. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV A FAIRY FAUNA Insect life of the downs -- Common snail -- Adder-like colouring of some snails -- The "thrushes' anvil" -- Eccentric motions of flies -- Peculiar colouring of some flies -- The cow-dung fly -- A thyme-loving fly -- Butterflies -- Disposition and habits of the small blue -- Sleep in insects -- The humble-bee -- Intoxicating effect of thistle flower on bees -- The unknown faculties of insects -- De Quincey"s " gluttonism." In the last chapter we had an account of a fairy flora, as we call the numerous minute herbaceous plants, mixed with small grasses and clovers, which clothe the sheep-fed downs in a grassy and flowery mantle. The fairy flora has a fairy fauna to match it. Where there is no bush vegetation nor heath and rough herbage for shelter, there are no birds. At all events none breed on the naked unsheltered ground, unless it be a wheatear that makes his nest in an old rabbit-hole in some open stony spot. But of the birds and beasts of downland I shall treat in the next chapter. The creatures that mostly impress us in all the open shelterless places are the insects. We think less of the innumerable small inconspicuous snails, whitey-grey like the small fragments of chalk seen in the turf; indeed we think of them not at allunless we hear by chance the crunching of their frail shells beneath our soles as we walk. Alas that, glad to exist ourselves, we should thus unw...« less