26 ON FARLETON FELL 
is not well suited to human habitation or coloniza- 
tion. The early arts of peace—pastoral and agricul- 
tural—called for open ground. To operations of 
war, also, forests are unfavourable. So it came about 
that by the use of fire and axe the forests passed 
away before the march of man, until now we can 
study only fragments of the original all-prevailing 
woodland. But it is important to note that certain 
portions of the British Isles were never, in recent 
ages, under woodland, and that these mostly preserve 
still much of their ancient facies. Thus, increase of 
exposure—a lower temperature and higher wind- 
velocity—appointed a limit on the hills beyond which 
trees couldnot and cannot grow. Wind wasand is also 
responsible for a dwindling of tree growth along 
the exposed western coastlines. Again, the shallow, 
porous soil of the chalk downs, very dry in summer, 
probably never supported woodland, but has pastured 
sheep since the earliest shepherds fought wolves in 
Sussex. The scanty soil of Farleton Fell probably 
never harboured plants larger than the herbs and low 
shrubs which it now supports; and no doubt the salt- 
marshes looked the same five thousand years ago as 
they do to-day, though their positions have changed 
with each slight alteration in the relative level of 
land and sea. 
To sum up, then, the greater portion of the surface 
of our country consists of former woodland now 
reclaimed for the purposes of agriculture, the general 
aspect of its vegetation altered beyond recognition, 
though from the fragments left we can still recon- 
struct with tolerable accuracy its ancient condition, 
and the flora of which it was composed. In the re- 
