BOTANY 



known species, though not large, is for a lowland and mostly alluvial 

 district a moderately good one. About 220 species have been recorded, 

 a number which compares favourably with most of the adjoining counties, 

 though as we proceed westwards, and the fertile alluvial valleys of the 

 eastern and midland counties give place to the more rocky streams and 

 harder exposed strata of the west, we find, as might be expected, a richer 

 flora of the lower orders of plants. The development of Cryptogamia in 

 a district is probably as a rule in an inverse ratio to its agricultural pro- 

 ductiveness. We cannot therefore expect a very rich moss-flora in a 

 county so highly cultivated as Northamptonshire, where there is an 

 entire absence of peat bogs, a total lack of any natural outcrop of hard 

 rock, where the rivers all run (if the term may be allowed to our sluggish 

 streams) through alluvial valleys, and where heaths and other waste lands 

 are for the most part conspicuous by their absence. Even the large tracts 

 of wood and forest land for which the county is remarkable, while 

 exuberant in fungi, do not add largely, in proportion to the area they 

 cover, to the richness of our moss-flora ; for being to a great extent on 

 clay soil, at low elevations, and with scarcely any water beyond a few 

 small ponds, they present but little variety of surface, and their contribu- 

 tion towards our moss-flora with certain exceptions lies rather in the 

 multiplication of individuals than in the number or rarity of their 

 species. 



The chief interest of our moss-flora is therefore not to be looked for 

 in a great variety of species, or a great profusion or high development of 

 individuals, but rather in its somewhat special character as determined 

 by the nature of the soil and of the various other substrata on which 

 these plants are found. Perhaps the most noticeable features are the 

 almost entire absence of any quantity of Sphagna or peat-mosses, the 

 presence of a characteristic flora on the oolitic limestone, and the traces 

 of an earlier, richer moss-flora, now in process of extinction through 

 various causes, of which the development of agriculture is undoubtedly 

 the chief 



Few counties can be so poor in Sphagna as Northamptonshire. A 

 real peat bog does not occur throughout the county, and each of the 

 four species of Sphagnum that occur is confined to a single station, and 

 even there is found over a space of a few square yards at the most. 

 Moreover of these four species two, S. acutifolium and S. intermedium, are 

 only found in pools in a now disused clay-pit, and can have no claim to 

 be considered as truly native in our county ; while the two remaining 

 species exist but as remnants of an older flora, and their ultimate dis- 

 appearance is doubtless but a question of time. 



The oolitic limestone beds that appear over a great part of the 

 surface of Northamptonshire produce a somewhat distinct moss-flora of 

 their own. Characteristic mosses are found on the stone walls in the 

 northern districts, on the mud cappings of our walls throughout the 

 county, and in the calcareous bogs of the extreme north and south. No 

 species are known to occur that are not found in other counties, but 



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