Some diversions of a naturalist / by Ray Lankester.

  • Ray Lankester
Date:
[1925]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Some diversions of a naturalist / by Ray Lankester. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/250 page 13
    DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST CHAPTER I ON A NORWEGIAN FIORD HE splendour of our Sussex Weald, with its shady X forests and lovely gardens, around which rise the majestic Downs sweeping in long graceful curves marked by the history of our race, has charmed me during these sunny days of June. The orchids, the water-lilies, the engaging and quaintly named “ petty whin,” and the pink rattle are joined with the tall foxgloves and elder-blossoms in my memory. And for some reason—perhaps it is the heat—I am set thinking of very different scenes—the great, cool fiords of Norway, with their rocky islets and huge, bare mountain-tops, where many years ago I had the “ time of my life ” in exploring with the naturalist’s dredge the coral-grown sea-bottom 1000 and even 2000 feet in a straight line below the little boat in which I and my companion and three Norwegian boatmen floated on the dark purple waves. To let a dredge—an oblong iron frame some three feet long, to the edges of which a bag of strong netting is laced, whilst the frame is hung to a rope by a mystical triangle—sink from the side of a boat and scrape the
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