98 Natural Habitats and Nativeness. 
survive in the rich feeding pasture to which I refer, where the turf 
is like a well kept lawn in closeness. 
It is just the same with “ broken ground” or “ barren spots ” 
left temporarily without a covering on such rich soils. As for 
instance, the places where stock stand and cut up the turf, or where 
a tree has been blown up by the roots and has torn the soil, or the 
spaces left by the burning of hedge and ditch rubbish. The first 
year they are covered with the animals of cultivation, the second 
with annuals and biennials growing thickly together; during 
the latter part of the second and third year perennials are added, 
and continue to win till the turf gains the upper hand, and 
conquers the spot. 
Everything being so artificial although so natural around the 
botanist in fertile districts such as Lincolnshire, the great difficulty 
is to get a just criterion by which to judge complicated cases. A 
more than unusually striking example of this want is found in 
the little parish of Newstead, on Ancholme, by Brigg. ‘This farm 
was a Gilbertine Priory, founded by Henry II. in the 1173. The 
portion I have to refer td is a bed of Sandy Glacial Gravel, rising 
above the Peat level of the Ancholme fen around. In the days 
before the foundation, and till long after, Newstead was an island, 
called Rucholme, 1.e., Rook-island, in the charter conveying it. 
In the middle of one of its pastures, even of only medium or fair 
quality, is a round barrow, most probably of Neolithic age. Not 
very far away is found a grass-covered gravel pit from which the 
material for the barrow may have been obtained. Geologically 
the material is exactly the same. This pit presents a curious 
botanical problem. When it was first or last used, it is quite 
impossible to say. It is far larger than would be required for 
supplying the barrow material, and may have been requisitioned 
by the Priory people when they made their “ causeys,” as they 
rightly called them, to Cadney on the North, and Hibaldstow on 
the South, over the fen level. ‘here is no evidence, beyond the 
fact that such a gravel was certainly obtained for the purpose, 
and that this is the only pit near, and carriage was an almost 
insuperable difficulty in early times, 
