FLOWERS OF THE ROADSIDES AND HEDGES 
In making any botanical survey of a country or district one has to 
consider that certain associations are natural, while others are artificial. 
If it were possible altogether to say how much of a given region were 
really aboriginal, probably that portion would require to be put down 
as an infinitesimal fragment. It is, moreover, clear that the artificial 
influence of man is an overlapping or obscuring mantle whose ample 
folds disguise all the small corners despised by man, from position or 
barrenness (from his point of view), or because they have been retained 
under the same conditions from time immemorial, where the last resort 
of truly native plants can still be seen. 
These islets in a sea of otherwise purely artificial fields, meadows, 
woodlands, &c. (and we must chiefly exclude water from the artificial 
tracts), are really to the far-seeing botanist the most interesting part of 
his quest or study. For he knows quite well that the enclosed fields, 
with their modern ditches, hedges, trees, and turf, are no more natural 
than the hovels provided in the fields for the shelter of cattle, that 
so largely cause this alteration of the land surface. 
None the less, since the entire crust has repeatedly undergone 
radical changes in surface vegetation, configuration, and so forth, it is 
necessary also to consider the composition of the essentially artificial 
tracts. Ps 
The artificial meadow and cornfields and bushlands have been 
already considered, and since roads and hedges are an important part 
of all regions and are best studied in a linear fashion, wherever they 
enclose or intersect the equally artificial fields or districts, we need 
make no apology here for making a special section devoted to the 
flowers of the roadsides and hedges which belong—as an appendix we 
may perhaps best consider them—to the previous section or meso- 
phytes. 
We have in the roads first the macadam, with a gritty border, 
fringed by Silverweed, a zone of grass of varying width which varies 
with the geological formation, where grasses, sedges, rushes, and 
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