250 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



To go into this matter a little more fully, the following seems 

 to be the law : — The pedunculate oak may be found under peat 

 with any and every surrounding geological combination of rocks 

 without exception ; the pine with sands and gravels near at hand ; 

 yew especially in the neighbourhood of limy gravels carrying oak, 

 not far from beech-woods, which acted as the covering species, as 

 at Cadney. Bog birch comes before and follows after all the 

 species, especially near damp sands. Alder is only rarely recorded, 

 where alluvial valleys, with w^ater fairly free from lime, have been 

 engulfed. Maple is associated with limy clays and gravels, the 

 nut w^ith limy clays and estuarine alluviums ; beech with lime- 

 stone escarpments, limy gravels, marls, or low-level clays rich in 

 limewash from escarpments above ; holly with limy gravels on 

 clays ; ash with limy clays ; and wych elm only along with it. 



This is as much as saying that the conditions found from the 

 earliest peat records to the latest are such as might be expected 

 from the known requirements and geological distribution of 

 species to-day. While this may generally be allowed to be true, 

 the statement must be carefully qualified. In particular cases it 

 is far from the fact, unless a great change of climate is allowed 

 for. The past history of tw^o trees will illustrate what I imply 

 perfectly clearly. Let us take Pinus and Fagus. 



Three men of fairly wide experience have given special study 

 to the Scotch pine in Lincolnshire, and have come to identical 

 conclusions about it. The late Mr. Spencer, of Market Easen, a 

 wood-buyer by profession, of the widest experience, told me in 

 1896 that he had tried to gather the traditions, as far as he could, 

 of the one hundred and fifty years before his own data. He 

 believed that pinesques — or Piiuis wood — had cdicays flourished 

 round Market Easen. They were self- seeding on the sands of 

 Holton, Linwood, and the whole Warren district, unaided by man. 

 My friend Mr. F. A. Lees was resident in Market Easen during 

 1877-79, and after carefully studying the matter, came to the 

 same conclusion. His argument he told me was this. Pines- 

 ques require moist but rapidly draining sands, such as are found 

 in the Easen district. These sand-dunes, at all depths, contained 

 pine-cones and traces of woods that had flourished freely at 

 former dates. The latest of these Eolian sands must be about 

 contemporary with the first enclosures designed to stop their 

 drift. These enclosures were contemporary with the first planted 

 woods in Lincolnshire, w4iich were wind-breaks after 1780. I 

 myself came back to work in this county again in 1891, aiming at 

 more exact floral analyses than had been made before. I soon 

 discovered that the ground flora of the existing pinesques has the 

 facies of old w^oodlands, not of new ones, i. e., a distinct cha- 

 racter of their own. They are the same in species so far as 

 climate wdll allow, and, more important stiU, are of practically 

 of one in frequency with the allowed areal pinesques of Scotland. 

 In Lincolnshire Fyrola minor may safely be taken as the best 

 index species ; wherever it is found growing in the county to-day 

 pine- woods can be proved formerly to have been present or still 



