Chapter XII: The Natural History and the Fossils

An extended account of the flora of Lancashire, or of its fauna, or of the organic remains preserved in the rocks and the coal strata, is impossible in the space now at command: it is not demanded either by pages which profess to supply no more than general hints as to where to look for what is worthy or curious. A bird's-eye view of Lancashire, its contents and characteristics, would nevertheless be incomplete without some notice, however brief, of the indigenous trees and plants, the birds ordinarily met with, and the fossils. The zest with which natural history has been followed in Lancashire, for over a century, has resulted in so accurate a discrimination of all the principal forms of life, that the numbers, and the degree of diffusion of the various species, can now be spoken of without fear of error. In those departments alone which require the use of the microscope is there much remaining to be done, and these, in truth, are practically inexhaustible.

Being so varied in its geology, and possessed of a hundred miles of coast, Lancashire presents a very good average flora, though wanting many of the pretty plants which deck the meadows and waysides of most of the southern counties. The wild clematis which at Clifton festoons every old thorn is sought in vain. In Lancashire no cornfield is ever flooded as in Surrey with scarlet poppies; the sweet-briar and the scented violet are scarcely known, except, of course, in gardens; even the mallow is a curiosity. Many flowers, on the other hand, occur in plenty, which, though not confined to Lancashire, are in the south seldom seen, and which in beauty compare with the best. Mr. Bentham, in his _Handbook of the British Flora_, describes 1232 native flowering plants, and 53 of the cryptogamia--the ferns and their allies--or a total of 1285. Of these the present writer has personally observed in Lancashire more than 500. In the remoter corners another score or two, without doubt, await the finding. In any case, the proportion borne by the Lancashire flora to that of the entire island is, in reality, much higher than the figures seem to indicate, since quite a sixth part of the 1285 consists of plants confined to three or four localities, and thus not entitled to count with the general vegetation of the country. It is not, after all, the multitude or the variety of the species found in a given spot that renders it enviable. The excellent things of the world are not the rare and costly ones, but those which give joy to the largest number of intelligent human beings; and assuredly more delight has arisen to mankind from the primrose, the anemone, and the forget-me-not, than from all the botanist's prizes put together. Better, moreover, at any time, than the possession of mere quantity, the ceaseless pleasure that comes of watching manners and customs, or a life-history--such, for example, as that of the Parnassia. Not to mention all that precedes and follows, how beautiful the spectacle of the milk-white cups when newly open, the golden anthers kneeling round the lilac ovary; then, after a while, in succession rising up, bestowing a kiss, and retiring, so that at last they form a five-rayed star, the ovary now impurpled. In connection with the dethronement of the natural beauty of the streams in the cotton manufacturing districts, it is interesting to note that, while the primroses, the anemones, and the forget-me-nots, that once grew in profusion, here and there, along the margins, have disappeared, the "azured harebell"[45] holds its own. Even when the whitethorn stands dismayed, the harebell still sheets many a slope and shelving bank with its deep-dyed blue.

[45] Usually miscalled "blue bell," _vide_ "The Shakspere
Flora."

On the great hills along the eastern side of the county, and especially in the moorland parts, the flora is meagre in the extreme. Acres innumerable produce little besides heather and whortle-berry. When the latter decreases, it is to make room for the empetrum, or the Vitis Idæa, "the grape of Mount Ida"--a name enough in itself to fling poetry over the solitude. Harsh and wiry grasses and obdurate rushes fill the interspaces, except where green with the hard-fern. Occasionally, as upon Foledge, the parsley-fern and the club-moss tell of the altitude, as upon Pendle the pinguicula and the cloud-berry. The hills behind Grange are in part densely covered with juniper, and the characteristic grass is the beautiful blue sesleria, the colour contrasting singularly with that of the hay-field grasses. The choicest of the English green-flowered plants, the trulove, _Paris quadrifolia_, is plentiful in the woods close by, and extends to those upon the banks of the Duddon. Everywhere north of Morecambe Bay, as these names go far to indicate, the flora is more diversified than to the south; here, too, particular kinds of flowers occur in far greater plenty. At Grange the meadows teem with cowslips, in many parts of Lancashire almost unknown. Crimson orchises--Ophelia's "long-purples," the tway-blade, the fly-orchis, the Lady's tresses, the butterfly-orchis, that smells only after twilight, add their charms to this beautiful neighbourhood, which, save for Birkdale, would seem the Lancashire orchids' patrimony. The total number of orchideous plants occurring wild in the county is fourteen; and of these Birkdale lays very special claim to two--the marsh epipactis and the _Orchis latifolia_. In the moist hollows among the sand-hills, called the "slacks," they grow in profusion, occurring also in similar habitats beyond the Ribble. The abundance is easily accounted for; the seeds of the orchids, of every kind, are innumerable as the motes that glisten i' the sunbeam, and when discharged, the wind scatters them in all directions. The orchids' Birkdale home is that also of the parnassia, which springs up less frequently alone than in clusters of from six or eight to twenty or thirty. Here, too, grows that particular form of the pyrola, hitherto unnoticed elsewhere, which counts as the Lancashire botanical specialty, looking when in bloom like the lily of the valley, though different in leaf, and emulating not only the fashion but the odour. It would much better deserve the epithet of "Lancashire" than the asphodel so called, for the latter is found in bogs wherever they occur. Never mind; it is more than enough that there is whisper in it of the "yellow meads," and that in high summer it shows its bright gold, arriving just when the cotton-grass is beginning to waft away, and the sundews are displaying their diamonds, albeit so treacherously, for in another week or two every leaf will be dotted with corpses. No little creature of tender wing ever touches a sundew except under penalty of death. Only two other English counties--York and Cornwall--lend their name to a wild-flower, so that Lancashire may still be proud of its classic asphodel.

No single kind of wild-flower occurs in Lancashire so abundantly as to give character to the county, nor is it marked by any particular kind of fern. The most general, perhaps, is the broad-leaved sylvan shield-fern (_Lastrea dilatata_), though in some parts superseded by the amber-spangled polypody. Neither is any one kind of tree more conspicuous than another, unless it be the sycamore. Fair dimensions are attained by the wych-elm, which in Lancashire holds the place given south of Birmingham to that princely exotic, the _campestris_--the "ancestral elm" of the poet, and chief home of the sable rook--a tree of comparative rarity, and in Lancashire never majestic. The wild cherry is often remarkable also for its fine development, especially north of the sands. The abele, on the other hand, the maple, and the silver willow, are seldom seen; and of the spindle-tree, the wayfaring-tree, and the dogwood, there is scarcely an example. They do not blend in Lancashire, as in the south, with the crimson pea and the pencilled wood-vetch. When a climber of the summer, after the bindweed, ascends the hedge, it is the Tamus, that charming plant which never seems so much to have risen out of the earth as to be a cataract of foliage tumbling from some hidden fount above. Wood-nuts are plentiful in the northern parts of the county; and in the southern wild raspberries, these equal in flavour and fragrance to those of garden growth, wanting only in size. Bistort makes pink islands amid hay grass that waits the scythe. Foxgloves as tall as a man adorn all dry and shady groves. The golden-rod, the water septfoil, and the Lady's mantle, require no searching for. At Blackpool the sea-rocket blooms again towards Christmas. On the extremest verge of the county, where a leap across the streamlet would plant the feet in Westmoreland, the banks are dotted for many miles with the bird's-eye primula.

THE BIRDS[46]

[46] Condensed in part from the chapter on Lancashire Birds in
_Manchester Walks and Wild-flowers_, 1858, long since out of
print.

With the Lancashire birds, as with the botany, it is not the exhaustive catalogue that possesses the prime interest. This lies in the habits, the odd and pretty ways, the instincts, the songs, the migrations, that lift birds, in their endless variety, so near to our own personal human nature.

Adding to the list of birds known to be permanent residents in Great Britain, the names of those which visit our islands periodically, either in summer or winter, the total approaches 250. Besides the regular immigrants, about a hundred others come occasionally; some, perchance, by force of accident, as when, after heavy weather at sea, the Stormy Petrel is blown ashore. In Lancashire there appear to be, of the first-class, about seventy: the summer visitors average about thirty; and of winter visitors there have been noticed about a score, the aggregate being thus, as nearly as possible, one-half of the proper ornithology of the country. The parts of the county richest in species are naturally those which abound in woods and well-cultivated land, as near Windermere, and where there are orchards and plenty of market-gardens, as on the broad plain south-west of Manchester, which is inviting also in the pleasant character of the climate. Here, with the first dawn of spring, when the catkins hang on the hazels, the song-thrush begins to pipe. The missel-thrush in the same district is also very early, and is often, like the chief musician, remarkable for size, plumage, and power of song. Upon the seaside sand-hills it is interesting to observe how ingeniously the throstle deals with the snails. Every here and there in the sand a large pebble is lodged, and against this the bird breaks the shells, so that at last the stone becomes the centre of a heap of fragments that recall the tales of the giants and their bone-strewed caverns. This, too, where the peacefulness is so profound, and where never a thought of slaughter and rapine, save for the deeds of the thrushes, would enter the mind. The snails are persecuted also by the blackbirds--in gardens more inveterately even than on the sand-hills--in the former to such a degree that none can refuse forgiveness of the havoc wrought among the strawberries and ripening cherries. Both thrush and blackbird have their own cruel enemy--the cunning and inexorable sparrow-hawk. When captured, the unfortunate minstrel is conveyed to an eminence, sometimes an old nest, if one can be near, and there devoured. In almost all parts of Lancashire where there are gardens, that cheerful little creature, the hedge-sparrow or dunnock, lifts up its voice. Birds commence their song at very various hours. The dunnock usually begins towards sunset, first mounting to the loftiest twig it can discover that will bear its weight. The sweet and simple note, if one would hear it to perfection, must be caught just at that moment. The song is one of those that seem to be a varied utterance of the words of men. Listen attentively, and the lay is as nearly as may be--"Home, home, sweet, sweet home; my work's done, so's yours; good night, all's well." Heard in mild seasons as early as January, the little dunnock sings as late as August. It rears a second brood while the summer is in progress, building a nest of moss, lining it with hair, and depositing five immaculate blue eggs. The robin, plentiful everywhere in the rural districts, and always equal to the production of a delightful song, never hesitates to visit the suburbs even of large and noisy towns, singing throughout the year, though not so much noticed in spring and summer, because of the chorus of other birds. The country lads still call it by the old Shaksperean name:

... "The ruddock would,
With charitable bill (O bill, sore-shaming
Those rich-left heirs that let their fathers lie
Without a monument!) bring thee all this;
Yea, and furr'd moss besides."--_Cymbeline_, iv. 2.

The great titmouse is almost as generally distributed as the robin, and in gardens never a stranger, being busy most of its time looking for insects. Were coincidences in nature rare and phenomenal, instead of, to the contemplative, matter of everyday delight, we should think more of its note as the token of the time of blooming of the daffodils. Making the oddest of noises, as if trying to imitate other birds, poor innocent, it only too often gets shot for its pains, the sportsman wondering what queer thing can this be now? The blue titmouse, like the great, would seem to be very generally diffused. Exquisite in plumage, it attracts attention still more particularly while building, both the male and the female working so hard. The meadow pipit, or titling, loves the peat-mosses (those decked with the asphodel), upon which the nests are often plentiful, a circumstance the cuckoos, when they arrive, are swift to take advantage of. No bird that builds on the ground has more work to do for the "herald of summer." From the end of April onwards--the cuckoo arriving in the third week--the titlings, whether they like it or not, get no respite. The young cuckoos are always hungry, and never in the least anxious to go away. How exemplary the fondness of the cuckoo for its mate! Though apparently void of affection for its offspring, no bird, not even the turtle-dove, is more strongly attached to the one it has taken "for better for worse." Where either of the pair is seen, the other is sure never to be far away. Greenfinches and chaffinches are plentiful, the song of the former sweet, though monotonous, the latter rendered liberally, and always welcome. The chaffinch becomes interesting through choice of materials so very curious for its nest. One has been found--where but in Lancashire could it occur?--constructed entirely of raw cotton. The nest-building and the choice of abode constitute, in truth, a chapter in bird-life more charming even than the various outflow of the melody. The pied wagtail goes to the very localities that most other birds dislike--rough and stony places, near the water and under bridges; the tree-sparrow resorts to aged and hollow oaks, rarely building elsewhere; the long-tailed titmouse constructs a beautiful little nest not unlike a beehive, using moss, lichens, and feathers; while the redpole prefers dead roots of herbaceous plants, tying the fibres together with the bark of last year's withered nettle-stalks, and lining the cavity with the glossy white pappus of the coltsfoot, just ripe to its hand, and softer than silk. The common wren,--a frequent Lancashire bird,--a lovely little creature, sometimes with wings entirely white, and not infrequently with a few scattered feathers of that colour, is one of the birds that prefigure character in man. When the time for building arrives the hen commences a nest on her own private account, goes on with it, and completes it. Her consort meantime begins two or three in succession, but tires, and never finishes anything. Among the Lancashire permanent residents, and birds only partially periodical, may also be named, as birds of singular attractiveness in their ways,--though not perhaps always tuneful, or graceful in form, or gay in plumage,--the skylark that "at heaven's gate sings"; the common linnet, a bird of the heaths and hedgerows, captured, whenever possible, for the cage; the magpie, the common bunting, the yellow-ammer, the peewit, and the starling or shepster. The starlings travel in companies, and lively parties they always seem. The "close order" flight of the peewit is well known; that of the starling is, if possible, even more wonderful. The sudden move to the right or left of thousands perfectly close together upon the wing; the rise, at a given signal, like a cloud, from the pastures where they have been feeding, is a spectacle almost unique in its singularity. Near the sea the list is augmented by the marsh bunting, the curlew, and gulls of different kinds, including the kittiwake. In very tempestuous seasons gulls are often blown inland, as far as Manchester, falling when exhausted in the fields. They also come of their own accord, and may be seen feeding upon the mosses. Upon the sand-hills a curious and frequent sight is that of the hovering of the kestrel over its intended prey, which here consists very generally of young rabbits. The kestrel has little skill in building. Talents differ as much in birds as in mankind. Seldom its own architect, it selects and repairs an old and deserted crow's or magpie's nest, or any other it can find sufficiently capacious for its needs.

The history of the Lancashire summer visitants is crowded with interest of equal variety. The nightingale stays away. She has come now and then to the edge of Cheshire, but no farther. Very often, however, she is thought to have ventured at last, the midnight note of the sedge-warbler being in some respects not unlike that of Philomel herself. The earliest to arrive, often preceding the swallows, appear to be the wheatear and the willow-wren. The sand-martin is also a very early comer. It cannot afford, in truth, to be dilatory, the nest being constructed in a gallery first made in some soft cliff, usually sandstone. While building it never alights upon the ground, collecting the green blades of grass used for the outer part, and the feathers for the lining, while still on the wing. The advent of the cuckoo has already been mentioned. In the middle of May comes the spotted fly-catcher, an unobtrusive and confiding little creature; and about the same time the various "warblers" make their appearance. The males usually precede the females by a week or two; the black-cap going, like the hedge-sparrow, to the highest pinnacle it can find, and singing till joined by the hen; while the garden-warbler keeps to the bushes and gardens, and is silent till she arrives. The whinchat, the yellow wagtail, and the stone-chat, haunter of the open wastes where gorse grows freely, never forget. Neither do the dotterel and the ring-ouzel, the latter in song so mellow, both moving on speedily into the hilly districts. To many the voice of the corncrake, though harsh and tuneless, becomes a genuine pleasure, for she is heard best during those balmy summer evening hours while, though still too light for the stars, the planets peer forth in their beautiful lustre, clear and young as when first noted by the Chaldean shepherds, bryony in bloom in the hedgerows, "listening wheat" on either hand.

The winter visitants comprehend chiefly the fieldfare and the redwing. In October and November these birds, breeding in Norway and Sweden, appear in immense flocks. Winging its way to the vicinity of farms and orchards, the one piercing cry of the redwing may be heard overhead any still night, no matter how dark. Siskins come at uncertain intervals; and in very severe seasons the snow-bunting is sometimes noticed.

Such are the ornithological facts which in Lancashire give new attraction to the quiet and rewarding study of wild nature. The few that have been mentioned--for they are not the hundredth part of what might be cited were the subject dealt with _in extenso_--do not pretend to be in the slightest degree novel. They may serve, nevertheless, to indicate that in Lancashire there is lifelong pastime for the lover of birds no less than for the botanist.

THE FOSSILS[47]

[47] One or two paragraphs condensed from the seventh chapter of
_Summer Rambles_, 1866. Long since out of print.

Although the new red sandstone, so general in the southern parts, offers scarcely any attractions to the palæontologist, Lancashire is still a rich locality in regard to fossils. The coal-fields and the mountain limestone, the latter so abundant near Clitheroe, make amends. The organic remains found in the mountain limestone almost invariably have their forms preserved perfectly as regards clearness and sharpness of outline. The history of this rock begins in that of primeval sea; the quantity of remains which it entombs is beyond the power of fancy to conceive, large masses owing their existence to the myriads, once alive, of a single species of creature. A third characteristic is that, notwithstanding the general hardness, the surface wears away under the influence of the carbonic acid brought down by the rain, so that the fossils become liberated, and may often be gathered up as easily as shells from the wet wrinkles of the sands. Access to the mountain limestone is thus peculiarly favourable to the pursuits of the student who makes researches into the history of the life of the globe on which we dwell. How much can be done towards it was shown forty or fifty years ago by the Preston apothecary, William Gilbertson, whose collection--transferred after his death to the British Museum--was pronounced by Professor Phillips in the _Geology of Yorkshire_ at that moment "unrivalled." Gilbertson's specimens were chiefly collected in the small district of Bolland, upon Longridge, where also at considerable heights marine shells of the same species as those which lie upon our existing shores may be found, showing that the elevation of the land has taken place since their first appearance upon the face of the earth.

The quarries near Clitheroe and Chatburn supply specimens quite as abundantly as those of Longridge. Innumerable terebratulæ, the beautiful broad-hinged and deeply-striated spirifers, and the euomphalos, reward a very slight amount of labour. Here, too, are countless specimens of the petrified relics of the lovely creatures called, from their resemblance to an expanded lily-blossom and its long peduncle, the crinoidea, a race now nearly extinct. A very curious circumstance connected with these at Clitheroe is that of some of the species, as of the _Platycrinus triacontadactylos_, or the "thirty-rayed," there are myriads of fossilised _heads_ but no bodies. The presumed explanation of this singular fact is, that at the time when the creatures were in the quiet enjoyment of their innocent lives, great floods swept the shores upon which they were seated, breaking off, washing away, and piling up the tender and flowerlike upper portions, just as at the present day the petals of the pear-tree exposed to the tempest are torn down and heaped like a snowdrift by the wayside, the pillar-like stems remaining fast to the ground. There is no need to conjecture where the _bodies_ of the creatures may be. At Castleton, in Derbyshire, where the encrinital limestone is also well exhibited, there are innumerable specimens of these, and few or no examples of heads. The bodies of other species are plentiful at Clitheroe, where the actinocrinus is also extremely abundant, and may be detected, like the generality of these beautiful fossils, in nearly every one of the great flat stones set up edgeways in place of stiles between the fields that lie adjacent to the quarries.

The organic remains found in the coal strata rival those of the mountain limestone both in abundance and exquisite lineaments. In some parts there are incalculable quantities of relics of fossil fishes, scales of fishes, and shells resembling mussels. The glory of these wonderful subterranean museums consists, however, in the infinite numbers and the inexpressible beauty of the impressions of fern-leaves, and of fragments of the stems--well known under the names of calamites, sigillaria, and lepidodendra--of the great plants which in the pre-Adamite times composed the woods and groves. In some of the mines--the Robin Hood, for instance, at Clifton, five miles from Manchester--the roof declares, in its flattened sculptures, the ancient existence hereabouts of a vast forest of these plants. At Dixonfold, close by, when the railway was in course of construction, there were found the lower portions of the fossilised trunks of half a dozen noble trees, one of the stone pillars eleven feet high, with a circumference at the base of over fifteen feet, and at the top, where the trunk was snapped when the tree was destroyed, of more than seven feet. These marvellous Dixonfold relics have been carefully preserved by roofing over, and are shown to any one passing that way who cares to inquire for them. Beneath the coal which lies in the plane of the roots, enclosed in nodules of clay, there are countless lepidostrobi, the fossilised fruits, it is supposed, of one or other of the coal-strata trees. Two miles beyond, at Halliwell, they occur in equal profusion; and here, too, unflattened trunks occur, by the miners aptly designated "fossil reeds." Leaves of palms are also met with. The locality which in wealth of this class of fossils excels all others in South Lancashire would appear to be Peel Delph. In it are found calamites varying from the thickness of a straw to a diameter of two or three feet, and as round as when swayed by the wind of untold ages ago. The markings upon the lepidodendra are as clear as the impress of an engraver's seal. In another part there is a stratum of some four feet in depth, consisting apparently of nothing besides the fossil fruits called trigonocarpa and the sandy material in which they are lodged. With these curious triangular nuts, no stems, or leaves, or plant-remains of any description have as yet been found associated. All that can be said of them is that they resemble the fruits of the many-sided Japanese tree called the salisburia.

At Peel Delph again a stratum of argillaceous shale, five or six feet in thickness, contains innumerable impressions of the primeval ferns, the dark tint thrown forward most elegantly by the yellow of the surface upon which they repose. The neighbourhood of Bolton in general is rich in fossil ferns, though Ashton-under-Lyne claims perhaps an equal place, and in diversity of species is possibly superior.

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Thus whether considered in regard to its magnificent modern developments in art, science, literature, and useful industries, its scenery and natural productions, or its wealth in the marvellous relics which talk of an immemorial past, Lancashire appeals to every sentiment of curiosity and admiration.

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_

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Transcriber's note:

Archaic and inconsistent spelling and punctuation were retained.