I believe
it not to be uncommon; and most probably to be found, by those who will
look, both in the New Forest and Woolmer. The third is the Natterjack,
or running toad (_Bufo Rubeta_), a most beautifully spotted animal, with
a yellow stripe down his back, which is common with me at Eversley, and
common also in many moorlands of Hants and Surrey; and, according to
Fleming, on heaths near London, and as far north-east as Lincolnshire; in
which case it will belong to the Germanic fauna. Now, here again we have
cases of animals which have just been able to get hither before the
severance of England and France; and which, not being reinforced from the
rear, have been forced to stop, in small and probably decreasing
colonies, on the spots nearest the coast which were fit for them.

I trust that I have not kept you too long over these details. What I
wish to impress upon you is that Hampshire is a county specially fitted
for the study of important bio-geological questions.

To work them out, you must trace the geology of Hampshire, and, indeed,
of East Dorset. You must try to form a conception of how the land was
shaped in miocene times, before that tremendous upheaval which reared the
chalk cliffs at Freshwater upright, lifting the tertiary beds upon their
northern slopes. You must ask--Was there not land to the south of the
Isle of Wight in those ages, and for ages after; and what was its extent
and shape? You must ask--When was the gap between the Isle of Wight and
the Isle of Purbeck sawn through, leaving the Needles as remnants on one
side, and Old Harry on the opposite? And was it sawn asunder merely by
the age-long gnawing of the waves? You must ask--Where did the great
river which ran from the west, where Poole Harbour is now, and probably
through what is now the Solent, depositing brackish water-beds right and
left--where, I say, did it run into the sea? Where the Straits of Dover
are now? Or, if not there, where? What, too, is become of the land to
the Westward, composed of ancient metamorphic rocks, out of which it ran,
and deposited on what are now the Haggerstone Moors of Poole, vast beds
of grit? What was the climate on its banks when it washed down the
delicate leaves of broad-leaved trees, akin to our modern English ones,
which are found in the fine mud-sand strata of Bournemouth? When,
finally, did it dwindle down to the brook which now runs through Wareham
town? Was its bed sea, or dry land,