299 
The roadside trees in the battle area have been equally 
destroyed, and in many cases they have been deliberately felled. 
It was interesting to notice that in a few cases the battered 
trunks were sprouting both from the stem and from the base, and 
in almost every case the sprouting trees were elms; very rarely 
were signs of life shown by poplars. 
The innumerable shell-hole ponds present many interesting 
features to the biologist. In July they were half full of water, 
and abounded in water beetles and other familiar pond creatures, 
with dragon flies flitting around. In nearly every shell-hole 
examined, just above the water level, was a band of the annual 
rush (Juncus bufonius, var. gracilis), and this plant appeared to 
be confined to these annular bands where the ground was relatively 
moist, and to occur nowhere else. With the Juncus, and often 
growing out of the water, were stout plants of Persicaria (Poly- 
gonum Persicaria) and water grasses, not in flower, were often 
seen spreading their leaves over the surface of the pools. 
In the battlefield area not only were the common cornfield 
weeds to be seen, but here and there patches of oats and barley, 
and occasionally plants of wheat, sometimes apparently definitely 
sown, perhaps by the Germans, though more often the plants 
must have grown from self-sown seeds of crops that were on the 
land before the war. Here and there, toc, could be seen opium 
poppies representing former cultivation and remnants of bat- 
tered currant and other bushes which alone remained to show 
where once had been a cottage garden. Both weeds and corn 
afford good evidence that the soil has not been rendered sterile 
by the heavy shelling, but how and when the land can be brought 
into a fit state for cultivation are questions not easily answered. 
Even were the ground not full of unexploded shells, barbed wire 
and every sort of obstruction, the levelling of the surface would 
present an immense problem. : 
Weathering in course of time will tend to fill the shell-holes 
and smooth down the separating ridges, but even then ploughing 
y any ordinary machine would appear to be impossible, and the 
only solution of the problem may be to convert the battlefield 
into a forest tract by planting trees as soon as conditions allow, 
thus forming a ‘Via Sacra,’’ both beautiful and useful. 
he re-surveying of the country and re-apportioning of the 
Plants were occasionally seen. - 
The clothing of this large tract of country with such a mass 
of vegetation composed almost entirely of common annual corn- 
field weeds is remarkable when one remembers that it has been 
the seat of encampments, and has for the most part been out of 
cultivation since the autumn of 1914. It is well nigh impossible 
: a2 
