The Face of the Wilderness 293 



broom. Where the soil is passably fertile and its 

 contours so gentle that its whole surface has been 

 long brought under cultivation, all such waste 

 harvests were eradicated long ago. The weeds 

 which have partly taken their place are of the 

 kinds which find harbourage in meadows and corn- 

 fields, and are mostly of annual growth. But in 

 many parishes where this transformation is almost 

 complete, there remain a few square yards of ground 

 in which the old habit of the earth can still be traced. 

 Sometimes it lingers on some abruptly dropping 

 hillside, too steep, or too thinly covered with soil, 

 to be ploughed with the rest of the field ; and 

 sometimes a cart track across a former common 

 was left untouched when the land on either side was 

 enclosed. In such slight and casual refuges nature 

 still preserves a remnant of the old heath flowers ; 

 the ling draws the larks to nest by the level cart- 

 rut, and the broom-bush hangs bright in June from 

 the stones upon the hill. Sometimes these isolated 

 patches of sharper soil form outposts of the more 

 mountainous types of vegetation. Then the eye 

 of the wanderer is struck by a little clump of white- 

 stemmed birches, exiled, as it seems, among the 

 fields of southern elms. 



Heath and marsh plants once occupied, between 

 them, a great part of the whole soil of the country ; 

 and many of the most characteristic species were 

 formerly turned to common domestic uses, which 

 have grown rarer as the plants have declined. In 

 places where the reed is profuse enough to supply a 

 considerable crop, it is still often used for thatching 



