208 THE KSSKX FIKLD CLUH. 



belonged, which in warm countries grew to the height of forest trees. It might 

 be that these slenderly represented British plants were relics of the ancient 

 tro[)icaI flora of Eocene times. Similarly on the tops of our British mountains 

 would be found an abundance of flowering plants met wiih onlj' in similar situa- 

 tions in Switzerland, but which grew at the sea level in Arctic regions — such as 

 pinks, gentians, saxifrages, and others — and he drew attention to the fact that 

 nearly all our early spring flowers, which appeared before the warmth of the 

 summer, belonged chiefly to Arctic and Alpine orders. There was much reason 

 to believe that these cold-loving plants came over to Great Britain during the 

 Glacial Period, and had remained ever since. The lecturer also showed that in 

 the south of Ireland and Cornwall there were flowering plants which were 

 outliers of the Spanish flora, which had spread thither when the intervening 

 sea bed was dry land. He then turned to the fact of the recent formation 

 ot the German Ucean, proving that the depression of its bed had probably 

 taken place since the appearance of man upon the earth. Probablj' since then 

 also the chalk downs, which formerly stretched right across from Dover into 

 Picardy in France, had been breached through, so as to allow the waters of 

 the German Ocean and the English Channel to form the Straits of Dover. 

 When England and Ireland were a continuous western prolongation of Europe, 

 the common European plants would naturally spread over them. It was in this 

 way that our daisies, buttercups, primroses, cowslips, dandelions, campions, 

 roses, grasses, and other abundant wild flowers came to us. Dr, Taylor also 

 dwelt upon the ups and downs of floral life as related to the great climatic 

 and geographical changes which had taken place in Europe since the Pliocene 

 Period, or the time when the crags cf Suffolk and Norfolk had been formed. Our 

 plants, said the doctor, like the great English people, have come here from various 

 directions. Some of the plants that lived in cold climatic conditions adapted 

 t'lemselves to our changed climate by appearing only in the early spring, 

 others by surviving only on mountain heights. " Saxon, Dane, and Norman 

 are we," wrote Tennyson ; and the same might indeed be said of our British 

 flowering plants. 



Dr. Taylor having been warmly thanked for his interesting lecturette, the 

 ramble was continued along the Rodney Road towards "Cherry-tree Cottage" ; 

 then through ■' Fir-tree " and " Pheasant-house " woods (where a huge nest of 

 the wood ant (^Formica rufa) was seen), which include a large variety of forest 

 trees, notably some fine beeches ; and where the curious Butcher's-broom, the 

 only woody monocotyledonous plant in Britain, is abundant. Then across 

 Woodham Walter Common, covered with oak scrub, and the home of the 

 Lily of the Valley, Buckbean, Wood Pimpernel, many ferns and other inter- 

 esting plants. The Deptford Pink and Golden Saxifrage have been found 

 there, while the Badger once made the Common its home. Abundant -patches 

 of the Sundew (^Drosera rotundifolid) were found among the Sphagnums on the 

 boggy hill-sides, and two specimens were found, each of which had captured 

 by means of its glutinous tentacled leaves, a poor little blue butterfly (^Lyavna 

 icarus) ; one of the insects was already dead, the other was still struggling in the 

 clutches of its relentless captor.' 



But the special train was to leave Maldon at 8.45, and the hasty walk 

 rendered necessary to reach the station in time precluded any extended botanical 

 or other observations; nor could the other items on the programme be carried 

 out — the visit to Woodham Walter Church, and the Hall, interesting as being 

 the last place in England where the Royal Hawks were kept by the Duke of St. 

 Albans, Hereditary Grand Falconer, and Lord of this Manor, being unavoidably 



I As recorded in our " Journal of Proceedings" (vol. i., p. xxiii.) I have on two occasions in 

 in Epping Forest seen, on Drosera, butterflies thus entrapped — the species being Safyrus janira, 

 an insect measuring two inches across the wings. — W. Cole. 



