xlii. THE FLORA OF HALIFAX. 



These are representative of a dry but undrained pasture ; 

 in wet ground many of the clough-swamp plants take their 

 places. Frequently these upland pastures are reverting to 

 moorland, and are more or less overgrown with heather and 

 bilberry (though both are small and inconspicuous) ; and 

 clumps of bracken, and such shrubs as hawthorn, bramble, 

 rose, gorse (U. Gallii), broom, and willows are scattered about. 

 The orchids also chiefly occur in these pastures, such as the 

 twayblade, frog, butterfly, and fragrant orchids, nor do the 

 plants mentioned exhaust the list. 



The plant associations of the moors present a number of 

 difficult and very much neglected problems. The origin of the 

 peat itself is still obscure, and whilst its relation to the vegeta- 

 tion which it supports has been elucidated to some extent in 

 recent years, a faithful representation of the botanical features 

 of a moor has hardly been attempted in England, though 

 the late Robert Smith has shewn the way in his " Botanical 

 Survey of Scotland."* But the popular belief that a moor is 

 a rolling stretch of heather is still supported by scientific 

 writers, in spite of the fact that on many extensive moors, 

 heather is conspicuous only by its absence. This is pre- 

 eminently the case in the parish of Halifax, where the 

 heather-clad moors are very much less in extent than the 

 cotton-grass moors. This comparative neglect of the study 

 of the peat-vegetation is the more surprising inasmuch as the 

 disturbing influence of man enters less into the problem than 

 anywhere else ; though it is probably due to the monotonous 

 character and the poverty of the moorland flora. 



To a certain extent, however, the moors are under cultiva- 

 tion, and round the edges especially, drainage and the 



disappearance of peat from one cause or 

 Grassy another, lead to the production of a type of 



floors. unenclosed moor where grasses are pre- 



dominant. The hill-pastures already described 

 are largely what is shown on the ordnance maps as land 

 brought under cultivation and enclosed, that is to say, they 

 have been ploughed at least once, at any rate where they are 

 not too steep. But in many respects the plant associations of 

 these hill-pastures are not distinguishable from those of the 

 grassy moor. The latter may be composed almost exclusively 



•Scottish Geographical Magazine, Vol. xvi., July-August, 1900, 



