THE DISAPPEARANCE OF PLANTS 95 



and even the hedgerows have been stubbed up and 

 thrown into the fields. The Commons Inclosure Act 

 of 1845 li^s been inimical ahke to the fauna and 

 flora of the country. In parts of Essex the thick 

 hedgerows, beautiful in early summer with honey- 

 suckle and dog-roses, have almost entirely disappeared, 

 and hardly a bank is left for the violet and the prim- 

 rose and the lesser celandine. Not so many years ago 

 the rare and beautiful Martagon lily might be seen 

 growing plentifully up a green lane, bounded by high 

 banks and old copse-like hedges, in the neighbour- 

 hood of Saffron Walden. The banks have now been 

 levelled and the plant is gone. 



In some few instances the very beauty of a plant 

 tends to its destruction. The wild daffodil and the 

 wild snowdrop are becoming scarcer every year owing 

 to their eradication for purposes of sale. On some of 

 the Hampshire hangers, where every spring may be 

 seen the truly beautiful sight of 



" A host of golden daffodils 

 Fluttering and dancing in the breeze," 



it has become necessary to have a keeper constantly 

 on the watch in order to save the plants from total 

 extinction. In one parish in the Isle of Wight, for- 

 merly noted for the abundance of snowdrops to be 

 seen in the copses and hedgerows, the plant has become 

 so scarce that the writer could only find a few small 

 patches last spring. The flowers had been trans- 

 planted into gardens, he was told, or sold in the 

 neighbouring town. The same fate has overtaken 

 a colony of that most rare and beautiful plant, the 

 fritillary, or snake's head, which has almost entirely 

 disappeared from a damp meadow where fifty years 



