250 THE FLORA OF FAVERSHAM. 
west, on which side it is crossed diagonally by these gravel hills. 
The chalk appears on the surface in the hilly country to the south 
of the loam, which however still hides it under a shallow cover- 
ing in the valleys, and the London road divides the loam-belt 
from the chalky tract pretty accurately. There is plenty of wood- 
land both upon the chalk and gravel, but chiefly copse and un- 
derwood. We have no bog or moorland, scarcely any mland 
meadows and pastures, for except the marshes I should say that 
nineteen-twentieths of the land not under wood is arable; nor 
have we a stream which deserves the name, except perhaps the 
brook that runs through Ospringe into the creek. 
There are many causes at work which are, I fear, gradually— 
but alas ! too speedily—thinning the ranks of our local Flora. The 
first and by far the most formidable of these is high farming,—the 
very highest of the high. It is scarcely credible the miles of hedges 
that have been extirpated, of hedge-banks that have been levelled, 
of ditches that have been filled up, and the thousands of roadside 
trees that have been felled in this neighbourhood within the last 
fifteen years. You may walk now across the fields, or rather 
field, from Preston Mill to Mr. Apsley’s farm, a distance of two 
miles as straight as an arrow, and the only bit of hedge you will 
see is the few yards in length round the farmstead at Westwood. 
And who that knows and loves our English lanes and hedgerows, 
with all the treasures that they hide, can help feelmg some sym- 
pathy for one who has the same heart, the same likes and dis- 
likes, and yet is condemned to watch year after year the rapid 
march of this Vandal host of improvements? And this is not 
all. High farming makes clean land, and surely such clean land 
Was never seen in any other county. I have passed through 
wheat-fields in which not a Poppy, a Cockle, a Bluebottle, or even 
a Sowthistle was visible! Would that nothing rarer than these 
ever fell before the ruthless hoe, or helped to fill the apron of the 
weeder ; but, woe is me! the clean-land farmer spares no “ weed.” 
Our untamed marsh-lands begin to feel the plough; man en- 
eroaches while the sea forbears, and will do so still further if 
wheat keeps up such a tempting price, for they often make the 
best of wheat-lands when duly drained and put through a course 
of “radical” physic. Some small bits of woodland have vanished 
under the same iron rule. Nor is the plough the only enemy our 
marsh-land Flora has to fear: the “ manufacturing interest” 

