Natural Habitats and Nativeness. 93 
of human origin. They are made by throwing up a bank of 
_ Estuarine Alluvium, which arrests the moving sands, and directly 
causes the dunes. ‘The original bank is so buried beneath the 
sand as to be lost to sight. “Their flora is characteristic enough. 
It acts as an admirable binder to the loose and shifting surface ; 
and as it is absolutely valueless for animal food—asses and goats 
being the only exceptions, for rabbits are not permitted—it 
"remains practically untouched. 
We have woods, and in some parts of the county soils of poor 
discription are heavily wooded, but in no spot known to me is 
there an old woodland, where human art has not forced nature 
out of her own negligent course. Roadsides, pasture and meadow 
_ too, are as conventional to the eyes that can read the truth, as the 
prosaic silt marsh which stretches in endless miles on a dead level 
under grass or arable cultivation. The whole alluvial area has 
all been reclaimed by periodical embanking from the salt-marsh, 
either during the Roman occupation, or since the departure of 
that practical race. The foreshore itself is an artificial production, 
thrown up by the sea in a short time on account of the effects of 
the contour of the bank of the last enclosure. Its flora, too, soon 
grows formal and artificial from heavy sheep grazing. 
Signs of the all-dominating influence of man are everywhere, 
when natural habitats are sought in all their pristine purity. 
The tilth is not more changed in proportion by agriculture, than 
the pasture is by the grazing of stock, or the meadow by the 
ular cutting of hay. Thisisso much the case, that anyone 
o has a full analyses and notes of any given soil, can almost 
rite the stocking and cultivation history of grass or tilth on 
the same bed, be it clay, silt, or lighter soil. 
Let us try to smooth down the harsh asperities and broken 
dences of ravished nature as we will, the task proves beyond 
‘utmost endeavour. As the shattered columns of the portico 
oclaim the heathen temple in classical lands, so the broken cycles 
x flora proclaim the dominating influence of man the whole 
ounty over. 
_ Passing, with some fellow naturalists, through a feld on the 
Marlstone Rock in South Lincolnshire, from which a crop of hay 
