Northern News. 431 
were it not for the moor sheep, the turf paring, and the annual 
moor burning, or ‘ swiddening,’ the seed blown from plantations 
of this tree would, everywhere where there is heather, give 
birth to natural woods. This may be seen on the Sneaton 
Moor Intake between the two Red Gates, round which there are, 
or have been, Scots plantations formed some eighty or so years 
ago. In one place seedlings of various sizes (some being already 
a few feet) stand thick on the ground for a considerable distance ; 
so that, if fenced, they would soon make a covert. On Silpho 
Brow, towards Hackness, where the soil is sandy and the climate 
less marine, a still better example may be noted ; for there nearly 
the whole moorland brow is becoming, and already has become, a 
scattered, picturesque, forest-like wood, the pines being in every 
stage of growth from small seedlings to middle-aged trees. 
Yet with all this the pine is clearly an exotic as far as 
regards this part of the country. There is no trace of woods 
of it that have not been planted, or, at least, sprung from 
artificial plantations, nor of any isolated specimens or seedlings 
at any distance from such plantations. Neither yet can we 
suppose that it has been extirpated by man. Had it existed 
here since the glacial period it must, with its facility for 
reproduction, have gained too firm a hold in the lower uplands 
to have been banished utterly from every corner and crag. As 
a matter of fact there are no remains of it even in the peat bogs.* 
The upper timber bed in the bogs between the two peat layers, 
where we should expect to find it, as we find it in Scotland, 
Ireland, and Norway, since the Scots pine surpasses perhaps 
any other tree in its adaptability to growing on pure peat, is 
occupied here by the remains of Birch woods. 
' During the summer of 1906 the Pine Beetle (Aylurgus 
piniperda) committed great ravages among young pines, some 
of the trees being killed outright. 
a el 
Mr. C. B. Crampton has a paper on ‘Fossils and Conditions of Deposit, 
and Theory of Coal Formation’ in the ‘Transactions of the Edinburgh 
Geological Society ' (Vol. 9, Pt. I., 1907). 
Amongst the many interesting papers bearing upon the natural history 
and archeology of Hertfordshire, which appear in the ‘Transactions of 
the Hertfordshire Natural History and Field Club’ (Vol. 13, Pt. I., 1907), 
are ‘On a recent Paleolithic discovery near Rickmansworth,’ by Sir John 
Evans; ‘ Witches’ Brooms,’ by J. Saunders ; and ‘ Ostracoda and Mollusca 
from the Alluvial Deposits at the Watford Gas Works,’ by the Editor of 
the Proceedings, Mr. John Hopkinson. 
* It occurs in the peat of South-east Yorks.—ED. 
1907 December 1. 
