VIIL] 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 



