To ON FARLETON FELL 
The train speeds on through fertile ground with 
ripening crops and woods standing dense and green, 
and now on the right, where the low land merges 
with the sea, we view salt-marshes, which display yet 
another type of plant growth. Here trees and shrubs 
are absent, and the low-growing grey and green 
plants look fleshy and stunted. 
In the last thirty miles, indeed, since the train left 
the summit of Shap, we have seen a number of very 
different types of vegetation, which appear associated 
with different types of landscape—the moory uplands, 
the naked limestone, the deep woods, the desolate 
salt-marsh. Let us in imagination climb the steep 
scarp of Farleton Fell, the grey hill of our opening 
sentence, and consider at leisure some aspects of this 
teeming plant world and its relations to the Earth on 
which it grows. 
Clambering through a wilderness of stony screes 
we emerge at length on a bare grey tableland on 
which, in contrast to the rich country below, vegeta- 
tion is strangely sparse, and bare rock is everywhere 
in evidence. If we let the eye sweep round the 
horizon, we note a similar contrast displayed on 
broader lines. On the one hand is the mountain- 
land, with its carpet of grass and heather extending 
to the very summits; on the other hand the broad 
expanses of bare sand and mud fringing Morecambe 
Bay, apparently devoid of any vegetation. And it 
occurs to us that, before we ponder over the variety 
and distribution of plant life on this world, we are 
faced at once with a more profound problem. On 
this breezy summit, with our minds expanded and 
stimulated by the sunlight and the breeze, and the 
