The fauna and flora of Hertfordshire, like those of other counties with varying geological formations, are not, however, by any means the same everywhere. On the contrary, there are well-marked local differences mainly associated with what naturalists call “station”; that is to say, differences of elevation, soil, geological formation, climate, etc., etc. The animals and plants of the high chalk downs in the neighbourhood of Gaddesden, Dunstable, and Ashwell, are for instance more or less markedly distinct from those of the lower level corn-growing areas of the centre of the county. On these elevated tracts we find, for example, wheatears, stone-curlews (near Tring), blue butterflies, burnet-moths, small brown-banded white snails, a periwinkle-like snail with a horny door to its shell known as Cyclostoma, blue gentians, certain orchids, and many other kinds of plants rarely or never seen on the low grounds. The open commons and heaths, on the other hand, as has been already mentioned, are the home of heather and gorse, together with various distinctive birds and reptiles, such as stonechats, whinchats, titlarks, goldfinches, vipers, slow-worms, and lizards. In the river-bottoms and other swampy localities we find marsh and water-birds, such as yellow wagtails, snipes, sandpipers, grebes (at Tring), herons, moorhens, water-rails, coots, dabchicks, and wild duck, together with (locally) the common grass or water snake, amber-snails, marsh-marigolds, purple loose-strife, ragged robin, reeds, and yellow flags.
Beech trees, as mentioned above, form the predominant timber on the chalk-lands other than the high downs, while on the heavier soils of the centre of the county their place is mainly taken by elm and ash. On these lowlands and other open cultivated tracts are found such birds as partridges, corncrakes, lapwings, pipits, and larks; while in the coppices, hedgerows, and gardens we look for nightingales (from which bird Harpenden takes its name, haerpen being a nightingale and dene a valley in Anglo-Saxon), blackcaps, whitethroats, wrens, and nuthatches; while the woods are the resort of green and spotted woodpeckers, wood-pigeons, jays, and pheasants. The low grass-growing clay-plains on the southern side of the county support, as already stated, an abundant growth of oaks to the almost complete exclusion of other timber trees; and this area doubtless also presents certain peculiarities in its fauna distinguishing it from the corn-growing tract to the north. The oaks grow to a very great size, especially at Sacombe and Woodhall Park, and three notable specimens in the county are Queen Elizabeth’s oak at Hatfield, Goff’s oak at Cheshunt, and the Panshanger oak.
In addition to these local peculiarities in the fauna dependent upon elevation, geological formation, soil, and the presence or absence of forest, there are, however, certain others for which climate may possibly account.
A case in point is afforded by the distribution of stag-beetles and magpies in the county. Both these species are unknown in the district immediately round Harpenden, while the former, at any rate, are likewise unknown in the St Albans district, and apparently between that city and London. If, however, we travel from Harpenden to the east, magpies may be met with when we reach Codicote, while in the opposite direction they occur in the Hemel Hempstead district. As to the exact point where stag-beetles make their appearance in the latter direction the writer has no information, but they are to be met with in the neighbourhood of Rickmansworth and elsewhere on the Buckinghamshire border, and become quite common in that county. Grass-snakes, so far as the writer is aware, are likewise absent from the Harpenden neighbourhood, although on the Cambridgeshire side of the county they are quite common, as they are across the border.
If the local distribution of these species were carefully worked out and mapped, we might perhaps be able to account for what is at present a puzzle.
With the increase of population and building the wild fauna of Hertfordshire, like that of England generally, has been gradually becoming poorer in species—probably indeed from the time the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros were exterminated, as they possibly were, by our prehistoric ancestors. When the wolf, the bear, the wild cat, and the beaver disappeared, is quite unknown; but it is in comparatively modern times that the marten has been exterminated, a solitary individual of this species having been killed in the county within a score of miles of London, that is to say near Watford, so recently as December, 1872. Polecats appear to have almost if not quite disappeared from the county, although a straggler may occasionally enter from Buckinghamshire, where a few still survive; and one was trapped in Ware Park about 1885. Otters are rare, although a few occasionally appear in the lower part of the Lea valley, and some may enter the county from Buckinghamshire, in parts of which they are much more common, the Buckinghamshire Otter-hounds having killed over a score of these animals in 1908. Some years ago badgers were to be found in many parts of the county, a well-known haunt previous to 1840 being “Badger’s Dell” in Cassiobury Park. They still occur locally in certain parts of the Buckinghamshire side of the county, and probably elsewhere. Foxes owe their preservation mainly to the sporting instincts of the county gentry and farmers.
Among birds that have disappeared from the county, the most to be regretted is the bustard, which in the early part of last century was still to be found in the neighbourhood of Royston, although the precise date of its extermination from this part of England is unknown. The bittern, too, is, at the very most, known only as an occasional straggler; but a specimen was shot in a small marshy pond on Harpenden Common some time previous to 1860. The Royston crow, by some naturalists held to be only a form of the common crow, has been named from the Hertfordshire town, though a widespread species throughout many parts of Europe.
Neither has extermination been confined to animals. Fern-hunters have in some instances made a clean sweep of certain species of ferns from many districts, if not from the county generally; and nowadays aspleniums, shield-ferns, polypodies, and false maidenhair (trichomanes) have completely disappeared from the Harpenden high roads and lanes; the present writer possessing in his garden what he believes to be the sole remaining indigenous specimen of the last-named species.
Among localities specially celebrated for birds in the county are Tring reservoirs, where vast flocks of water-birds congregate, especially in winter. Here breeds the great crested grebe; and here, too, was shot in 1901 the only known British example of the white-eyed pochard. The neighbouring downs, as already mentioned, form one of the chief English resorts of the stone-curlew, or thick-knee; a species of especial interest on account of the remarkable manner in which both birds and eggs assimilate to their surroundings.
