In former days, when the mammoth or hairy elephant, the extinct woolly rhinoceros, and the wild ox, together with the African hippopotamus and spotted hyaena roamed over the Thames valley and afforded sport to our prehistoric ancestors, England was joined to the Continent across what is now the English Channel; so that the animals and plants of the southern portion of our islands, at any rate, were more or less nearly identical with those of France and Belgium. The advent of the great ice age, or glacial period, caused, however, a vast disturbance of the fauna and flora (as the assemblages of animals and plants characteristic of different countries are respectively termed), especially as about this time there occurred several oscillations in the level of our country, during one or more of which Great Britain was temporarily separated from the Continent. How much or how little these and other changes had to do with the poverty of the British fauna as compared with that of the Continent is too long and difficult a question to be discussed in this place; but certain it is that even the southern counties of England do possess fewer species of animals and plants than France or Belgium; that this poverty increases with the distance from the Continent; and that Ireland is much poorer in species than England. It may perhaps be well to add, although it does not really concern our subject, that there appears to have been another land-connection by means of which Scotland and Ireland received a portion of their faunas from Scandinavia by way of what is now the North Sea.

At the date of the final insulation of Great Britain from the Continent there is every reason to believe that all the land animals of the former were identical with species inhabiting adjacent regions of the latter. And even at the present day, when isolation has for centuries been exerting its influence on the non-migratory (and in some degree also on the migratory) animals, there are no species of quadrupeds (mammals), birds, or reptiles absolutely peculiar to our islands, with the exception of the grouse; and in the opinion of many naturalists that bird should be regarded rather as a local variety or race of the willow-grouse of Scandinavia than as a distinct species.

Minor variations, however, characterise many, if not indeed all, of our British quadrupeds and birds when contrasted with their continental representatives. The British squirrel is, for instance, very markedly distinct from all the continental races of that animal in the matter of colouring, while somewhat less decided differences characterise our badger, hare, field-mice, etc. Similarly, among birds, the British coal-tit is so decidedly distinct from its continental representatives that it is regarded by some naturalists as entitled to rank as a species by itself; and minor differences from their continental cousins are displayed by the British redbreast, bullfinch, great titmouse, and many other resident species. Indeed, if careful comparisons were instituted between sufficiently large series of specimens, it is almost certain that all species of resident British land animals, as well as exclusively fresh-water fishes, would display certain differences from their foreign representatives; while in some instances, at any rate, as is already known to be the case in regard to certain species, more than one local race of an animal may exist in our own islands.

It is, however, a question as to what is to be gained by the recognition of such comparatively trifling local differences in animals (and still more by assigning to them distinct technical names), as the splitting process may be carried to an almost endless degree. A large London fishmonger is, for instance (as the writer is informed), able to distinguish a Tay from a Severn or Avon salmon; while a wholesale game-dealer will in like manner discriminate between a Perthshire and a Yorkshire grouse. In like manner a Hertfordshire badger or stoat may be distinguished from their Midland or North of England representatives; but it is difficult to see in what respect we should be the better for the recognising of the existence of such differences.

Accordingly, the fauna and flora of Hertfordshire may be regarded for all practical purposes as more or less completely identical with that of the south-east of England generally; and nothing would be gained, even if space permitted, by giving lists of the species which have been found within the limits of our county.

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.

Rare birds, as well as various maritime species driven from their normal resorts by stress of weather, make their appearance occasionally in various parts of the county, but references to very few of such cases must suffice. During the great visitation of sand-grouse (a bird normally characteristic of the steppes of Central Asia) to the British Isles in 1863, some individuals reached this county. In the early part of last century a little auk, or rotche, was taken on the millhead at Wheathampstead during very severe weather; a great northern diver has been seen on Tring reservoir; a pair of storm petrels were killed some five-and-twenty years ago at Hemel Hempstead, where snow-buntings have likewise been seen; while various species of gulls from time to time put in an appearance in winter. Among recent events of this nature the appearance at Harpenden of an immature specimen of the great purple heron is certainly noteworthy. In 1878 the late Mr J. E. Littleboy had recorded 201 species of birds from the county, and a few others have been added since, bringing up the number to 210 in 1902.

In regard to fishes, it is of interest to quote the following passage from Sir Henry Chauncy’s Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire, published early in the eighteenth century. After referring to its other fish, it is there stated, in the author’s quaint language, that the river Lea also contains “some Salmons; which (like young Deer) have several denominations: the first Year they are called Salmon-smelts, the second Year Salmon-sprats, the third Year Salmon-forktails, the fourth Year Salmon-peall, the fifth Year Salmonets, and the sixth Year Salmon; and if these Fish had free Passage by the Mills, and thro’ the Sluices at Waltham up the Stream towards Ware and Hertford, where they might Spawn in fresh Water and were carefully preserved from Pochers, they would greatly increase in that River, and be of great benefit, as well to the City of London as the Country; for some Water-men have observed, that they delight in this Stream, and play much about those Sluices at Waltham.”

Chauncy likewise mentions that trout from the Lea below Hertford, where it has peaty banks, are much less red than those from the gravelly streams of the chalk districts.

For botanical purposes the county has been divided into six districts corresponding to the river-basins; the first two belonging to the Ouse system, and comprising the Cam and the Ivel basins, and the other four, comprising the Thame, the Colne, the Brent, and the Lea, pertaining to the Thames system. Of these the Lea area is the largest, the Colne next in size, the Ivel considerably smaller, and the other three quite small. In some respects the local characters of the flora are, however, better brought out by taking the geological formations as a basis of division. The Upper Chalk area, capped with much Boulder-clay on the eastern, and with clay-and-flints and gravel on the western side, corresponds very closely as regards these divisions with the Lea and the Colne basins. The Middle Chalk, which as we have seen is exposed on the flanks of the continuation of the Chiltern Hills in the north-west, is peculiar in being the only area in the county in which grows the pasque-flower, or anemone; this chiefly flourishing on south-westerly slopes, as at Aldbury Towers, near Tring. The Middle Chalk is also the chief home of the various kinds of orchis; the dwarf, the man, and the butterfly orchis being apparently restricted to this formation. The Tertiary area has a vegetation of a totally different type from the so-called “dry-plant type” characteristic of the Chalk area, but it cannot be further mentioned here.

In the five adjacent counties there occur 110 species of flowering plants unknown in Hertfordshire. On the other hand, Hertfordshire has about a dozen plants (exclusive of varieties of the bramble) unknown in the adjacent counties. Of the 893 native flowering plants of Hertfordshire about 110 have not been recorded from Cambridgeshire, while about 120 are wanting in Bedfordshire, 170 in Buckinghamshire, 140 in Middlesex, and 100 in Essex. These figures may, however, be subject to considerable modification by future research. The following passage on the relations of the Hertfordshire flora is quoted from the Victoria History of the Counties of England:—

“Taking the number of species in any adjoining county which are absent from Hertfordshire as the best index of the degree of relationship, it would appear that the flora of Bucks is the most nearly allied to that of Herts, and that those of Cambridge and Essex are the most divergent.... This is just what might be expected from the physical features and geological structure of these counties. The floras of Cambridge and Essex have also a more northern or north-eastern facies [character] than that of Hertfordshire, which is of a decidedly southern type. The large number of Hertfordshire species which have not yet been recorded from Buckinghamshire is probably due to the flora of that county not having been so thoroughly investigated as ours has been.”