ESSEX AND THE EARLY 

 BOTANISTS 



It is sometimes asserted that Essex is a dull county, 

 and offers but few attractions to the lover of nature. 

 And in comparison with many parts of England it 

 will, of course, be admitted that the scenery is tame 

 and commonplace. Essex can boast of no hill of a 

 higher elevation than four hundred feet above the level 

 of the sea ; its rivers — the Blackwater, the Chelmer, 

 the Colne, and the Roding are, it is true, the reverse of 

 rushing torrents ; while its forests, which in Norman 

 times stretched from the Thames to the Stour, have 

 almost entirely disappeared. Except towards Walton 

 and Harwich the coast is remarkably flat, and bor- 

 dered with vast stretches of salterns and marshland 

 reclaimed from the sea. The soil, too, is mostly of the 

 same geological formation, belonging to that known as 

 the London clay ; and though the chalk crops up here 

 and there in the north of the county, yet there are no 

 elevated downs, such as give charm and character to 

 the scenery of Sussex and Hampshire. The county 

 is, in short, mainly an agricultural one, devoted chiefly 

 to wheat and barley growing, with but little grazing 

 land except in the marshes, and mapped out into 

 interminable corn-fields, divided by elms and hedge- 

 rows. 



