Frederick contrived to get one of them to shew me, that I might know how to distinguish them from other species of the crow family. The rook is black, tail somewhat rounded, plumage glossy, the bill is more straight and slender, and its base is encircled by a naked white skin which is scaly, and takes the place of those black projecting feathers or bristles, which, in the other species of crow, extend as far as the opening of the nostrils.
Rooks, I am told, are birds of passage in France, but in England they are stationary. In Siberia, they are the forerunners of summer; and in France, they announce the approach of winter.
Now that they are busy building their nests, they make a noisy, hoarse cawing, which I have not yet persuaded myself to like; but it is agreeable to Mary and Caroline—I suppose, because it is united in their minds with the idea of spring.
21st.—After sitting a little time with my aunt, who, I am delighted to tell you, is much better, I had a botanising walk with Miss Perceval. What a very agreeable companion she is!
She told me that few countries, so limited in extent, comprise such a variety of plants as the British islands. Yet few of them are peculiar to these countries: those of our southern districts may be almost all found in France and Germany; those of Scotland are nearly common with the productions of Sweden and Denmark; and our elevated hills supply a vegetation similar to that of Norway and Lapland. The climate of Ireland varies so little from that of the corresponding parts of England and Scotland, that there is scarcely any difference in their native plants. She mentioned, however, two; the menziesia polifolia, or St. Patrick’s heath, and the saxifraga geum, with its varieties, which are found wild in Ireland only. I reminded her of the arbutus, but she seemed to doubt that it is a native of Killarney, which surprised me, as you told me that it was; and my uncle expressed the same opinion lately. On the contrary, she is inclined to believe the tradition, that the Monks of Mucross Abbey introduced it there from Spain—for, she says, trees are seldom found, in a state of nature, confined to one spot only: and it is well known that the arbutus does not grow naturally in any other part of Ireland; it grows, however, abundantly on all the shores of Spain, and from thence she thinks it may have been originally brought.
She gave me a very satisfactory reason why the native vegetable productions of Great Britain are inferior in number to those of countries on the continent; few seeds are furnished with the means of flying across the Channel so as to have naturalised themselves here. Where no sea intervenes, they are gradually but continually spreading from one place to another. On the road sides and in the corn-fields of France, Germany, and Holland, we see many plants which have been imported for our gardens; even in the Flora Danica there are many belonging to that small country, which are not possessed by us; and all the mountainous regions of Europe, though separated by a great distance, have several species in common, while we can boast of very few which are found in Great Britain only.
Miss P. told me, however, of some; for instance, the Isle of Man cabbage has not yet been observed in any other parts of the world than in that island, in the Hebrides, and on the north-western shores of England and Scotland. One of the most interesting of our British plants, she says, is pipewort; for in no part of the continent of Europe is it, or any individual of this genus, to be found; and, what is very remarkable, though all the other species of the family are inhabitants of the tropics, yet ours is found in one of the most northern of the Hebrides, and in a lake which is peculiarly cold.
It is the same among the cryptogamous tribes, such as lichens, fungi, and mosses. Though we think Britain rich in that extensive class, most of them are known in other parts of Europe, or in North America; and she says it is a singular fact, that the lower we descend in the scale of vegetation, the more universally are the individuals of those tribes dispersed over the surface of the globe. In Carolina, for example, a large proportion of the fungi are the same with those of France and Germany, while among what she calls the phenogamous plants, or those which have visible flowers, there are scarcely any that are common to Europe.
The mosses too, which have been received from the higher parts of North America, and from Kamtschatka, are almost all indigenous in Europe.
22nd.—I had often wished to see the contents of a set of nice little drawers under the book-cases on one side of the library; at last, to my great satisfaction, I have been allowed to examine the small geological collection which they contain. It consists of specimens of the different series of rocks, accompanied by the organic remains which distinguish them.