Pictures of nature in the silurian region around the Malvern hills and vale of Severn : including incidental excursions with the Malvern and Worcestershire naturalists' clubs; and notices of the natural history, pictorial scenery, botany, geology, customs and superstitions of many interesting localities in Worcestershire and Herefordshire

Front matter

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Preface

The Excursions of the Malvern and Worcestershire Naturalists' Clubs have brought out many points of interest that previously lay in obscurity ; and they have been productive of so much pleasurable association^ that a connected record of them seemed desirable, not merely for the observers themselves, but for all who might take an interest in the localities to which their rambles extended.

Many years' close observation of the country described in this volume, and references to notes taken in former explorations, have enabled me to add many facts and remarks that no single excursion could have itself produced. In arranging these Pictures of Nature, I have therefore enlarged the views sketched in company with my friends, and given the additional colouring of after study. Yet I have not neglected the aid that arises from the vicinity of critical eyes, when comparisons can be made and mistakes corrected, and when the most indolent are stimulated to look about them for some good purpose, when they see all their friends engaged in research.

These pages may at any rate recall pleasant hours of observation, and the opportunities then given of sketching bright portions of landscape scenery, tracing

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VI PREFACE.

incidents as they occurred in the company of my brother Naturalists, and making reflections, which are of course excluded in mere catalogues of natural objects, or formal technical descriptions.

I have always been of opinion that Nature may be studied in holiday fashion; and that pleasure is derivable from every exploration of the woods and fields, whether the object be strictly confined to scientific purposes, or joined with an earnest regard to that mental tinting that makes a picture from each out-of-doors study on every excursional occasion, and "looks on Nature with a poet's eye."

The pictures here given are necessarily local selections ; but I may possibly extend the subject to other places in a second series, if the present work receives adequate support.

E. L.

Hbnwick, Worcester, February 1856.