478 REPORT— 1903. 



wooded commons. Descriptions of scenery found in novels and books of 

 travel are constructed on these lines. 



Of late years much has been written concerning the causes of scenery, 

 regarded almost entirely from the aspect of the geologist. To us, working 

 amongst the mountains of the Grampians and the Pennines, this view has 

 been extended, and a method has slowly evolved itself of regarding the 

 scenery as a function of the vegetation as well as of the rocks. Nor is 

 this all ; further points of view have presented themselves. There is that 

 of the meteorologist, who thinks of plant-life as aflected by climate, by 

 sunshine, by elevation ; that of the geologist, who notices startling varia- 

 tions of vegetation accompanying changes in subjacent soil or rocks ; that 

 of the geographer, who sees in woods and pasture items building up a 

 landscape ; that of the agriculturist and forester, who seeks to get the best 

 value out of his land, be it meadow, hill, pasture, or cragside ; that of the 

 economist, who sees one-time wheat-fields pasturing fur sheep, and fields 

 running back to the moorland from which a century ago they were won ; 

 and, finally, there is the point of view of the scientist, comprehending most 

 of the above, who draws deductions arising from a consideration of the 

 climatic, geologic, and human influences on the one hand, and, on the 

 other, of the numerous biological laws governing the growth, food, repro- 

 duction and dispersal of the ultimate units, the individual plants them- 

 selves. 



Probably to a stranger it would seem next to impossible to disentangle 

 the medley of plant-groupings which constitute the vegetation of a country- 

 side. Still, in that somewhat difficult area, the West Riding, one can dis- 

 tinguish some fifteen groupings or associations, whose limits are generally 

 well marked. Regarding, in the first place, the well-known moorlands, five 

 types are seen : these are the bilberry summit, the cotton-grass moss, the 

 heather moor, the grass heath, and the limestone hill-pasture. Woods 

 are divisible also into five groups : coniferous, upland and lowland oak, 

 ash-hazel copse, and beech. The aieas of cultivation are the lowland wheat 

 and the upland oats. Tn a few places a lowland swamp-vegetation is 

 developed. 



Most of the fifteen or so groupings can be recognised easily by the 

 dominant plant ; others by the circumstances and conditions of their 

 positions. An example of the former is the heather moor, in which 

 Calhtna or ling is the predominant shrub. Under its .shelter are many 

 other species, such as bilberry, cross-leaved heath, cranberry, crowberry, 

 mat-grass, bracken, itc. CaUuna is termed the dominant plant ; the 

 others are sub-dominant. Examples of the groupings which are not repre- 

 sented with that comparative ease observed above are the wheat and oat 

 areas. The farmland is subdivided into these two zones, wheat being 

 taken as the indicator plant, following its general recognition as such in 

 existing vegetation-maps on much smaller scales. The distribution does 

 not depend on soils alone, and one must look more to climatic factors as 

 determining its range ; these are chiefly the average summer-temperature 

 and annual rainfall. By actual observations of high-placed wheat-fields, 

 investigation of parish-records, the cataloguing of arable weeds, and Avith 

 the help of meteorological data, the limit of the wheat-area and oat-area 

 has been fixed, though not with that accuracy possible with upland vege- 

 tation. In lowland districts, it seems as if whole counties must come 

 under the designation of the wheat-type. This brings me to a chief point, 

 which must not be lost sight of. The mapping of a large area is not the 



