PREFACE 
| oan study of vegetation in the British Isles, begun by the 
late Robert Smith, is being vigorously prosecuted by the 
members of the British Vegetation Committee. Already, 
several vegetation maps and memoirs have been published of 
parts of the central and northern Pennines, Scotland, Ireland, and 
Somerset by W. G. Smith, Lewis, Pethybridge, Praeger, Rankin, 
and myself, in addition to several minor publications by these 
and other members. Whilst this book was going through the 
press, Tansley’s Types of British Vegetation appeared, where, 
for the first time, a sketch of the plant formations and plant 
associations of the whole of the British Isles is given. Several 
vegetation maps, of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Norfolk, 
north-eastern Yorkshire, Lanarkshire, and other districts, have 
been finished by various members of the Vegetation Committee, 
but cannot be published at present owing to lack of funds. 
The present volume and the accompanying maps owe their 
publication to the generosity of the Royal Society and the 
Royal Geographical Society, whom I take the present oppor- 
tunity of thanking on my own behalf and on that of British 
phytogeographers and ecologists in general. I fear, however, 
that, until government recognition is taken of the botanical 
survey of the country, publication of this kind of work will 
continue to languish. 
The present work is the result of a botanical survey of the 
Peak District of the southern Pennines begun in January, 1903. 
In preparing the vegetation maps, the Ordnance maps on the 
scale of six inches to the mile (1:10560) were used for field 
work. However, these were not found so superior to the 
