WESTERN EUROPE 293 



with a great development of large-leaved herbs and 

 climbers. In England, the Scots pine generally marks 

 poorer and drier grounds, such as sand or gravel or moors. 

 There are few shrub formations. The thickets of sloe 

 or sea-buckthorn on rocks or sandhills, or brushes of 

 gorse and broom are well known ; and on dry limestone 

 hills, with a thin layer of soil, may be found copses 

 of hornbeam, blackthorn, juniper, bramble, brier, hazel- 

 nut, dogwood, hawthorn, guelder-rose, either mixed or in 

 separate colonies, over a carpet of sheep's grass. Amongst 

 lower brushes may be counted the heather, usually asso- 

 ciated with sand or peaty or other poor grounds devoid 

 of lime ; or, again, succulent salt-bush brushes in salt 

 marshes near the sea. Herbaceous vegetations offer a 

 fairly large variety, from the tall reed-swamps, the rush-, 

 sedge-, and meadow-marshes, to the regular meadows 

 and pastures of different kinds. Under the name of 

 moors may be included grass moors, heather moors, or 

 mixtures of both ; or, again, brushes or brakes and other 

 more or less indefinite waste herbage. The peat bogs 

 formed by the accumulation of dead remains of several 

 kinds of mosses, chiefly of the sphagnum-moss, do not 

 occur so plentifully in this region as farther north, 

 in the belt of coniferous forests. A more frequent form 

 of marsh is the meadow-marsh or low moor in which the 

 water is moderately rich in lime and characterized by 

 rushes, reeds, sedges, and coarse grasses. 



The largest areas of peat bogs are to be found in an 

 intermediate zone between western and central Europe 

 on glacial, ill-drained soils, in the north of Holland, the 

 western German plain, and Denmark. Low marshes pre- 

 dominate in the fenlands and the corresponding tracts 

 of polders in Flanders and Holland. Heather moors are 

 often associated with peat moors. 



