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Holiday Excursions of a Naturalist [by R. Garner].
Holiday Excursions of a Naturalist - by R. Garner Author:Robert Garner General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1867 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. 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 book... more »s for free. Excerpt: ISLE OF WIGHT. 49 by the waterside, a rather unusual habitat, I fancy ; also the Sea-starwort; and nearer Portsmouth I picked the Butcher's Broom (Ruscus aculeatus) and the Proliferous Pink (Dianthus prolifer). I also noticed the Sea-grass, Zostera, in a creek over which I was ferried; and that the gorse on a common near the end of my walk was hoary with that curious little parasite the Dodder. On the west of the opening of Southampton Water stands Calshot Castle, the work of Henry VIII. From Portsmouth we of course went across to the Isle of Wight, but in the following historiette, if I may use such a term for my unpretentious account, we shall combine a few notes taken more recently on a second visit, and so in one or two other instances. Viewed from the sea, the lower lands formed by the fluvio-marine deposits are nearest, constituting the north of the island; in the distance are the Chalk downs. The Solent and Spithead are channels cut through the trough formed by these fluvio-marine or supra-cretaceous strata with those of Hampshire. There is a second ridge of chalk further south, and between the two ridges the denuded lower cretaceous system or Green-sand appears. On the south-east side of the island, and more extensively on the southwest, the Wealden rises from beneath the Green-sand. The island is about one-third less than the Isle of Man, and the population also is (or was) less by about a third; but this at a rough estimate. The Isle of Wight is, however, more fertile and cultivated; but homesteads are much less distributed throughout, and probably the properties are much less divided. My ...« less