THE AXCTEXT X'Sl) MODERN FLORAS OF MOXTPELLIER. 215 



now only be obtained from cultivated plants. It may be observed 

 also that (with the exception of trees) the utmost efforts man bestows 

 upon the destruction of a wild species possessing ordinary means 

 of reproduction, are as nothing compared to the havoc made by the 

 animals of every description, beasts, birds and insects, that feed 

 upon it at every stage, from the seed to the perfect plant, and to the 

 eifect of the innumerable diseases, injuries, and acci^^nts it is exposed 

 to from physical causes. 



The indirect agency of man in the destruction of spontaneous 

 vegetation, by cultivation, drainage, &c., within the three centuries, 

 has been very much more active in Britain than in Mediterranean 

 France, but as yet with scarcely more absolute results, except in 

 restricted regions. With the drainage of bogs and fens, and the 

 breaking up of heaths, especially in the eastern and southern dis- 

 tricts of England, the plants of those localities are necessarily more 

 confined in their areas, and some may have been entirely expelled 

 from particular counties, but the only authenticated record we can 

 find of losses to our Flora by this means, are those of Eriophorum 

 alpinum, " discovered in the Moss of Eestennet, about three miles 

 eastward of Forfar, in the year 1791 by Mr. George Don and Mr. 

 (Eobert?) Brown, but subsequently lost there by drainage," 

 (Qybele, iii. 81), and of Carex Davalliana, from Lausdowne, near 

 Bath, also reported as " lost by drainage." In neither case do we 

 know how far the species were previously abundant in the stations 

 given. The destruction of our woods took place chiefly before the 

 period in question. Within the last century a greater extent has 

 been planted than broken up, although such new homes are scarcely 

 an adequate compensation to the native plants for the loss of their 

 old ones. In a given district new plantations can generally be at 

 once distinguished from old woods of the same apparent growth and 

 species by the want of such sylvestral plants as MeJampyrum pra- 

 tense, &e., which swarm in the former. Wood and heath plants are 

 very slow in invading new stations, although they cling very long to 

 their old ones wherever there may remain a bank or corner where 

 they are comparatively undisturbed. 



The gradual contraction of the area of species, the diminution in 

 the average number of individuals, and the tendency to a final ex- 

 tinction from a combination of natural causes difficult to appreciate, 

 some as yet unrevealed to us, and but very slightly and indirectly 

 aided by man, are probably going on in Britain as in the South, but 

 their operation is here again so slow as to be scarcely appreciable 



