NOTES ON THE RECLAIMED LAND OF THE 

 HUMBER DISTRICT. 



By T. Petch, B.A., B.Sc. 



" Look you, our foreshore stretches far, through Seagate, dyke, 

 and groin — 

 Made land all, that our fathers made, where the flats and the 

 fairway join." 



IN the Humber district, the reclamation of salt-marshes 

 and their transformation into valuable farms is such a 

 familiar operation that one fails to realise the oppor- 

 tunities which it offers for investigation. Under the intense 

 cultivation which prevails in these fertile areas, it is difficult 

 to follow the advance of the flora of the surrounding country 

 over the new land ; observation is practically limited to the 

 ditches, where Stum latifolium and meadowsweet gradually 

 give place to OEnanthe lachenalii and Phragmites, and the 

 latter yield in turn to Potamogeton pectinatus, Chcetomorpha, 

 and Ulva. Elsewhere, few but the ordinary weeds of 

 cultivation are encountered, though occasionally unexpected 

 species occur, as, for example, Listera ovata on an un- 

 cultivated bank at the outer edge of the 1850 enclosure 

 on Sunk Island, probably the only member of the Orchidaceae 

 on these areas. 



But it is more interesting to note the other side of the 

 question ; to find survivors of the original salt-marsh flora on 

 land one hundred, fifty, or twenty years old, and to discover 

 what changes have enabled them to adapt themselves to 

 their altered surroundings, and for how long such adaptations 

 are effective. It is not to be expected that such obvious 

 problems offer unworked ground. Much information may be 

 found in P. Lesage, " Influence du Bord de la Mer sur la 

 Structure des Feuilles," Rennes (1890), and "Contributions 

 a la Biologie des Plantes du Littoral" (1891), and in 

 C. Brick, ' ' Beitrage zur Biologie und vergleichenden Anatomie 

 der baltischen Strandpflanzen " (1888), though these only 

 touch on particular points, and by no means exhaust the 

 subject. 



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