Berkshire

by Horace Woollaston Monckton

7. Natural History.

The fertile district of the Vale of White Horse, the wide chalk downs, and the forest country with its sandy tracts covered by heather or pines, together with the river Thames and its tributaries, give us a considerable variety of soil, of climate, and of general conditions; and we consequently have a large variety of species both of animals and of plants, though being an inland county, many forms which people the coast are absent, or merely come as rare visitors. Naturally, too, the increase of population and the advance of civilisation have caused a great change in animal and plant life. Many species, once common, are no longer to be found and many new species have been introduced.

Probably the most imposing of the animals which have roamed over our district since the advent of man was the form of elephant known as the mammoth. It possessed enormous tusks and was covered with long coarse hair with an under pelage of short woolly hair so as to be fitted for life in a cold climate. Its bones have been found in several places in Berkshire, and teeth from Abingdon and Reading are in the Reading Museum.

The rhinoceros once lived in Berkshire, for bones, probably belonging to a woolly species, have been found in a railway cutting near Chilton. Bones of the bear, wolf, and bison have been found in the Drift deposits, and the wild boar was hunted in Berkshire in historic times.

The badger is a harmless animal which lives a quiet life, spending the daytime in a burrow, often in a fox earth, and only coming out at night. It is in consequence much more common than is generally supposed, and our county forms no exception.

The history of the various forms of deer in Berkshire is of considerable interest. The red deer is a native of the county, for its remains have been found in the marsh deposits. It lived in various parks until the Commonwealth, when most of the deer were killed. It has been reintroduced and is now to be seen in Windsor Park, Calcot Park, and at Hampstead Marshall. The fallow deer lives in a more or less tame state in several parks in the county, and it is probably an original inhabitant of Berkshire, for it occurs as a fossil at Brentford, in Middlesex. The roe is certainly a native, for remains have been found in the Newbury marshes. It now lives in the woods about Virginia Water and Sunningdale. The reindeer has been found as a fossil at Windsor.

An imperfect skull of the musk ox was found in a bed of gravel near Maidenhead in 1855, and is now in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. It was the first discovery of the remains of this animal in Britain.

As might be expected there are no very outstanding features in Berkshire ornithology. The midland position of the county is against any long list of foreign visitors, and there are no fens or broads to tempt the special birds affecting such localities. The heron is often to be seen, and there is a heronry at Virginia Water, and others at Coley Park, Buscot, and Wytham Abbey. Woodpeckers, as might be supposed, are more especially common in the forest districts of eastern Berkshire. The carrion crow is a resident but is very local in occurrence. The hooded crow is a rather uncommon winter visitor. The peregrine falcon often visits us, but the buzzard, which used to live and breed in the county, is now but a rare visitor. The great bustard was a resident up to the end of the eighteenth century but is now no longer to be counted as a British bird. The swans which we see on the rivers and on many lakes and ponds are for the most part private property, but there are often wild birds amongst them.

Of reptiles found in Berkshire, the slow-worm, common snake, and lizard abound on the moorlands, and the first of these on the chalk; the adder is not at all common.

Time was, and that not so very long ago, when the salmon might be caught in the Thames. In the reign of Edward III (1341), a petition was made to the King, complaining that salmon and other fish in the Thames were taken and destroyed by engines placed to catch the fry, which were then used for feeding pigs. The King was asked to forbid the use of these engines between London and the sea, and also to decree that no salmon be taken between Gravesend and Henley bridge in winter. A book on angling published in 1815 speaking of salmon says, “some are found in the Thames which the writer believes were justly considered to be superior to any bred in other rivers.”