The Hand of Man 47 



Wick Copse), more usually in the form of derelict land in which swampy 

 conditions still prevail (Sandford Brake), or merely left as a convenient 

 source of rough wood for minor agricultural purposes, faggots and firing. 

 As the trees are cut down, and regeneration follows naturally from the old 

 stools or by seeds, or more effectively by planting, the original arboreal flora 

 is wholly replaced, and only the underwood remains in anything like its 

 original condition ; though in variety of species, again, this suffers rapid 

 diminution, as smaller sections are more and more isolated, and the leafy 

 canopy deteriorated. Extreme felling for timber and firewood leaves only 

 thickets of thorn or coarse scrub on dry situations, or willow and elder-scrub 

 in wet tracts. Other woods are allowed to run derelict with the undergrowth 

 encouraged as subserving the protection of game. 



The channels of the larger streams with their submerged and floating 

 aquatic forms, and the vegetation of their banks merging gradually into the 

 meadow and woodland associations adjacent to them, become subject to 

 arbitrary change. The stream is artificially banked (with concrete), and the 

 bed is dredged for ballast-gravel, or to deepen the navigable channel, to 

 control the flood-water in winter, and pass it off as quickly as possible from 

 low-lying levels, as well as scoured of weeds in summer. The main river is 

 locked (with equipment of weirs, lock-gates, and lashers) in order to subserve 

 transport, and with the effect of holding the water up over the dry summer 

 in irrigation channels, and differentiating the land above the lock from that 

 below. The bed of the navigable stream is subject to periodic cleaning of 

 the weeds. The original aquatic flora is to be sought in backwaters, ditches, 

 and smaller streams, often long uncontrolled, but again largely artificial, and 

 liable to interference by extended systems of drainage, as ' swamp '-land 

 becomes agriculturally ' improved ' and taken into cultivation. In repair of 

 lock- and weir-mechanism, whole sections of the main stream may be allowed 

 temporarily to run out. 



The broad water-meadows of the alluvial area are distinctly artificial, 

 and the result of human activity, as these levels, cleared of casual trees and 

 scrub, are laid down in pasture to be cut for hay each summer, with the effect 

 of keeping down all attempts at colonization by woody and larger perennial 

 growths, and thus relegated to grasses and the associated plants of meadow- 

 land ; as again a very secondary selection of the plants normally characteristic 

 of such localities, together with many intrusives and importations. In the 

 water-meadows this effect is the more emphasized by the mowing of a second 

 crop in September. Nor can it be claimed that the original flora persists 

 unchanged in the ditches and hedges of the alluvial district. The ditches are 

 artificial as drainage-systems, populated by a few stray aquatics brought by 

 flood-water; neither standing ponds nor streams can be depended on as 

 primary constituents, while the hedges with heaped and drained earth-banks 

 are stations equally artificial, which freely regress to scrub, and so far carry 

 vestiges and strays of more woodland habit ; in both cases, again, supporting 

 an enfeebled flora of a few common types, as they become the more isolated 

 and remote from similar stations and the conditions more restricted, mingled 

 with casual strays and the intrusive weeds of cultivation. 



Of the land above the alluvium, cleared by early settlers, and now 

 permanent pasture or under arable cultivation, the pastures, close-cropped 

 by cattle, become grass-land with intrusive weeds as thistles, thorns, briars, 

 and nettles ; and where, if kept down by mowing, these are more preponderant 

 along the hedge-banks, the latter are again artificial productions as well- 

 drained earth-banks of no great thickness, carrying a sparse population of 

 bushes with a few trees whose roots alone penetrate deep into the subsoil. 

 Such arboreal forms of residual underwood as hedgerow bushes afford shelter 



