Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/437

Rh from Reigate to Farnham. Between the chalk and the sand is an exceedingly narrow tract of blue clay, sometimes scarcely ten yards in width. These three distinct soils do not gradually intermingle, but are separated by the most abrupt transitions, and their effect on the produce where the three soils occur in the same field is very marked.... Wherever the sand bears the red tint of iron, the chief natural produce is furze; but this colour, as we proceed westwards, yields to a blue tint. The two colours stain the wool of the sheep which range the wastes, and the red and blue are very conspicuous in their fleeces, the blue being much preferred." In Hampshire, Mr. Starkie Gardner states, "the heath is in some patches of a magenta colour where a crimson clay patch forms the soil." Lord Walsingham's head keeper told Mr. R. Kearton that "stiff clay land on which pheasants feed produces dark-coloured eggs, and a light sandy soil pale-coloured ones"; and the writer remarks: "This contention he certainly supported by several instances which he brought under my notice, although other keepers to whom I have mentioned the circumstance have no faith in its accuracy."

"In British Guiana some have gone so far as to say that they can tell when an auriferous district has been reached by the prevalence of certain kinds of birds and Monkeys. This can be easily understood when the close connection of the trees with the soil, and the fruit with the animals, is considered." In the Magungo country of Equatorial Africa, Emin Pasha speaks of "the red clayey ground," and describes the red blooming Canna as "being everywhere abundant." These observations could doubtless be multiplied if interest was awakened on the question, as on the "reddish argillaceous earth, called 'Pampean mud,'" which overspreads the Rio Plata region, or on the immense granite formation which forms one of the geological features of the State of Perak in the Malay Peninsula, of which "the prevailing colour is blue." The nature of the environment has