VIII. ] PLANTS AND ANIMALS. 131 
plants of the forest and moor exterminated, and with 
them insects and birds. It must have been a hard 
fight between the corn and the old occupants of the 
soil, for no doubt every time the share threw out the 
earth from the furrow, it brought to the light seeds 
which had long lain dormant in the earth; and these 
for a time would choke the corn, but eventually the 
persevering industry of the husbandman would be 
rewarded by triumph. But he must continually exer- 
cise the strictest watchfulness or the old flora would 
come back again from the neighbouring wild and 
take possession of the land once more. 
“That moor is a pattern bit left, to show what the 
greater part of this land was like, for long ages after 
it had risen out of the sea; when there was little or 
nothing on the flat upper moors save heaths, and 
ling, and club-mosses, and soft gorse, and needle- 
whin, and weeping willows; and furze and fern upon 
the brows; and in the bottoms oak and ash, beech 
and alder, hazel and mountain ash, holly and thorn, 
with here and there an aspen or a buckthorn, and 
everywhere where he could thrust down his long root, 
and thrust up his long shoots, that intruding con- 
queror and insolent tyrant, the bramble. There were 
sedges and rushes, too, in the bogs, and coarse grass 
on the forest pastures—or ‘leas’ as we call them to 
this day round here—but no real green fields ; and I 
suspect very few gay flowers, save in spring the 
sheets of golden gorse, and in summer the purple 
heather. Such was old England—or rather, such was 
this land before it was England ; a far sadder, damper, 
poorer land than now. For one man, or one cow or 
