26 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF LEICESTER AND DISTRICT 
or Leighfield, in Rutland, and Rockingham in the north of Northampton- 
shire. ‘Thus, only remnants or vestiges of original forest survive, and 
no very old oaks are left, the communities named being derivations from 
woodland. A large area has been enclosed, cultivated, drained, and 
materially altered artificially. ‘The tendency, moreover, all over the open 
areas which have become drier, causing the moor peat to lose its character, 
is for bracken to overrun the district, and to oust less aggressive members 
of the communities named. A few illustrations with examples of a moiety 
of the more characteristic plants of each locality selected are all that can 
be attempted in so brief an analysis. ‘Thus, at High Sharpley, on Sharpley 
porphyroid and Beacon beds, at 600-700 ft. O.D., there is evidence of 
this spoliation of more natural vegetation, heather moor, calluna heath, 
siliceous grassland and grass heath, which of small extent individually, 
are intercalated, by the dominance of bracken, which has overrun them, 
and eliminated other species. Here grows one of the rarest plants in the 
county, the cowberry, Vaccinium Vitis-idea, which only extends to 
a few square yards. It is a northern montane plant, which here reaches 
its most southern limit in the Midlands. Bracken is dominant as a whole. 
Mat grass and purple moor grass form a belt around the lower part of 
the slopes, the former sometimes dominant, in drier places, the latter in 
wetter spots, as elsewhere on the Forest, where the peat layer has become 
exposed to drainage on the one side or waterlogged on the other. Old 
rills are filled with various rush species, bog moss (sphagnum), or 
Harpidia, etc. In between, hummocks are formed by Calluna, or ling, 
and Vaccinium Myrtillus, whortleberry. Cross-leaved heath or bell heather 
is scattered amongst the heather in more peaty, moister situations. Occa- 
sionally bog moss or sphagnum (where sundew also, no doubt, grew for- 
merly) fills the surface rivulets, formed to drain the enclosure, and occupies 
the lower, wetter slopes. Dwarf furze, characteristic of the Forest area 
generally, is more frequent on the more rocky slopes or dry knolls. 
Wood sage, sheep’s sorrel, heath hair grass, early hair grass, a montane 
glaucous form of annual meadow grass, buckler fern, circle round the 
higher ground near the rocks, with occasional patches of ling and whortle- 
berry in crevices. Bracken is generally dominant on the drier slopes, 
gradually eliminating other species and obscuring the traces of the various 
successions following the original oak wood. ‘There are a few small bog 
pools with a water buttercup (Lenormand’s crowfoot), water blinks, 
lesser spearwort, montane hepatics, lichens, desmids, diatoms, etc. 
On the rocks on the north side overlooking the old Blackbrook Reservoir 
(now Loughborough Waterworks), where sundews, etc., once grew, 
rupestral montane mosses and lichens are more abundant, and in wetter 
spots sphagna, whilst Empetrum probably grew in moist ground to the 
north-east. Bog violet, marsh pennywort, green-ribbed sedge, heath 
rush, heath wood rush, pill-headed sedge are other characteristic 
species that form small societies here and there. Generally speaking this 
then is upland moorland, very different to the great grassland tracts on 
the clay plains of the rest of the county. 
Spring Hill, Peldar Tor (7oo ft. O.D.), is another area, on Peldar 
porphyroid, which forms a similar modified type of heather moor and 
