A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE 



The Bagshot Beds form the high grounds of Cold Ash Common, 

 Hartshill and Bucklebury Commons. South of the Kennet they 

 extend from Inkpen Common to Greenham and Crookham Commons, 

 and the commons of Brimpton, Tadley, Silchester and Burghfield. Here 

 a gap occurs owing to the denudation of these beds from the valley of 

 the Loddon ; they reappear however near Risely Common, and the main 

 mass rises up to form the beautiful Finchampstead Ridges, and covers 

 a considerable tract of the country which extends from Wokingham and 

 Sandhurst to Ascot racecourse, Sunninghill and the border of Virginia 

 Water. The elevated ground of Cassar's Camp, Wickham Bushes, 

 Easthampstead Plain, Tower Hill, etc., belong to the upper Bagshot 

 sands, and are often covered with pebble drift. In the Windsor district 

 the lower Bagshot Beds are to be seen about Cranbourn Lodge, and in 

 the wood near the stream has cut itself through to the London Clay. 



A very interesting flora is to be found on the great tracts of heath- 

 lands, pine woods, numerous and rather extensive bogs and open com- 

 mons which is formed of the Bagshot Beds, but it is much too large to 

 be quoted in full ; moreover, as has already been hinted, the occurrence 

 of certain plants appears to be induced by the condition of porosity or 

 imperviousness, by the presence or absence of peat or humus, by sun and 

 wind exposure, by shade from sun or shelter from wind, and such 

 physical causes, rather than by the various geological strata on which 

 they grow, except inasmuch as these in themselves act as any of the 

 above factors in plant distribution. 



The contrast between the country formed by these Bagshot Beds is 

 however very marked from that of the more northern parts of the 

 county. Instead of the rich meadows of the Oxford Clay and its oak 

 woods, studded with primroses or blue with wild hyacinths, or the stone 

 walls and houses of the Corallian Beds, or the flat uninteresting agrestal 

 districts of the Kimeridge and Gault, or the gently undulating and 

 fertile greensand, with its fields of blazing poppies and crimson clover 

 (Trifolium incarnatum), or the crisp turf of the chalk downs, redolent of 

 thyme, with its maple and buckthorn hedges and its fields sometimes 

 dazzlingly yellow with mustard, at other times white with corn camo- 

 mile instead of these we have an area to a great extent uncultivated, 

 sometimes showing a golden coloured common owing to the abundance 

 of the dwarf gorse (U/ex minor), or crimson with the heath (Erica 

 cinerea), or amethystine with the heather (Calluna Erica). In other 

 parts great tracts of sombre pine woods, showing on their borders the 

 grass Agrostis setacea, an Atlantic species here perhaps in its most 

 easterly situation ; or it may be we observe a shallow trough or valley, 

 with somewhat sombre colouring, caused by the combination of the 

 cross-leaved heath (Erica Tetralix) and the grass Molinia varia, among 

 which grow the sweet gale (Myrica Gtf&),with here and there the sedge 

 Carex echinata, the orchid O. ericetorum, the rich orange spikes of the 

 Lancashire asphodel (Narthecium ossifragum), and the meadow thistle 

 (Cnicus pratensis) . In drier and more exposed situations we may observe 



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