Grassland and Pasture 67 



sheep, and horses, all essentially grass-eaters, and thus adding to the factors 

 of the grass complex, as they may prefer distinct types of grass, sheep the 

 finest, horses the coarsest, and bullocks the most nutritious. By close- 

 cropping the grasses they prefer, these animals encourage the growth of new 

 shoots, increasing the vegetative system below the dead herbage, and inci- 

 dentally supplying manure. To this may be added the question as to 

 how many of these useful pasture-grasses, not available in local woodland 

 nor in swampy bottoms, were really introduced by man from other lands, 

 apart from casual distribution from dry grassland of the Chalk or adjacent 

 tracts. 



The chief ecological constituent of the land-area of the district is 

 maintained in the form of broad stretches of flood-meadow following the 

 alluvium on either side of the Isis and Cherwell, broadening into the mile- 

 long stretch of Port Meadow, the Marston Fields along the Cherwell, and 

 south of the town in Osney and Christ Church Meadows to the Iffley Fields, 

 over an area of approximately 5 square miles. 1 



As already indicated, in the earlier historical epoch the original facies of 

 the country must have been mainly swamp-forest of dense thorn-scrub, with 

 dominant trees as Ash, Alder, Willow, and intersected by numerous water- 

 channels carrying a rank vegetation of aquatics and reeds, on clay bottoms 

 difficult to cross, and full of wild-fowl and wild animals. 



The clearing of these alluvial flats by early English settlers, who came to 

 find cornland and pasturage for cattle on a larger scale, not only gave the 

 happy solution of the agricultural problem which made life successful in this 

 region, but also affords the clue to the present existence of the city as a market 

 town and University centre. 2 



Whether cleared by fire, or by clear-felling in the approved manner of colonial 

 pioneers to whom timber is mere ' lumber ', it is evident that the success of the 

 early farmer depended as much on getting food-supplies for his herds, as corn 

 for his own family. The alluvial flats, dry in summer and flooded in winter, 

 affording green pasture all the summer season, as they do at the present time, 

 even in seasons of greatest drought (1921), also provided abundant hay for use 

 in winter when the floods were out. 



Being too wet to plough, the alluvial flats were thus cleared exactly to the 

 flood-line for pasture, and tillage for corn followed the rising levels, on higher 

 clays, bottom terraces of gravel, or the higher outcrops of Corallian soils. 



Improved agriculture seeking to ameliorate the damp of winter-flood time, 

 cleared the streams of weeds, opening up the flow of water for mills, giving 

 a scheme of clear open streams, abounding in fish, flowing through broad green 

 meadow-flats, lined with planted willows and poplars, or residual alder and ash 

 retained for a convenient source of fuel and agricultural timber ; while the tops 

 of the hills were left as open woodland, predominantly oak, still maintaining 

 game, and affording food for hogs. There can be no doubt that by early Saxon 

 times the district was a model of the agriculture of the period, as a flourishing 

 countryside, peculiarly adapted to the genius of the English race, with wholly 

 indefinite supplies of clear water, and permanent pasture throughout the 

 summer, when other parts of the country were dry and burnt up, as on the 

 adjacent chalk downs. 



From the fact that the situation is fairly central for the whole country, with 

 pasturage and water-supply for an army, exigencies of transport marked the 

 town which grew up by the ford on the gravel-bank between the confluence 

 of the Isis and the Cherwell, as an ideal situation for political conferences of the 



1 Cf. Plot (i75)> p- 52. ' Though Oxford, almost in every part where Industry of the 

 Husbandman hath anything showed itself, doth produce corn of all sorts plentifully enough, yet it 

 has much more cause to brag of its Meadows and Abundance of Pastures, wherin as in rivers few 

 countries may be compared, perhaps none preferr'd.' 



2 Plot, loc. cit., p. 20. "Twas the sweetness and commodiousness of the Place that (no 

 question) first invited the Great and Judicious King Alfred to select it for the Muse's Seat.' 



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