CHANGE OF CLIMATE AND WOODLAND SUCCESSION 251 



exist. Place-name philology does not help us with the past 

 history of the pine, as it does with that of the oak, beech, ash, 

 alder, and other species in Lincolnshire. Pinesques were all over 

 on fitting soils at one time, as can be proved from the Early 

 Middle Period and late Subarctic Peat records ; but before the 

 Historic Period the pine seems to have been confined by a warmer 

 climate to a few isolated spots on moist but freely draining sands 

 in cool, low-lying localities. The most important fact about the 

 pine is that which Sir Joseph Banks first pointed out, though he 

 gave a wrong explanation for it — I mean that the grain of the 

 wood varies with the heat of the climate in which it has been 

 grown, from close to open texture, and then closer again in a few 

 places where the species still flourishes. 



As regards the beech we are not in exactly the same position. 

 There are, as might be expected, few peat records existing, and 

 these indicate a much wider extension eastwards of fagesques 

 than do the present woods of England. There are also the 

 remains of what appear to be areal beech-woods, at two places 

 wide apart in Lincolnshire — Bigby and Somerby, on the sheltered 

 escarpment of the wolds, is one of these. The trees there are 

 in the same position in relation to the hill and valley as in the 

 south-west of England. The name " Bigby " is most helpful, too. 

 " It is a comparatively modern corruption of ' Beykeby,' in which 

 it is easy to recognise the old Norse heyki, beech-wood."''' This 

 tree still forms the conspicuous feature in the villages named, as 

 no doubt it did in the period 800 to 1000 a.d., though in the last 

 twenty years the beech-tree canker has carried off many of the 

 finest specimens. 



The other spot is Summer Castle, Fillingham, on the Lincoln- 

 shire limestone with ninety-five per cent, of calcium carbonate. 

 From this place, " in an old beech wood, which is native with us 

 here, cut down, stubbed, and made into ploughed land before I 

 was born," Mrs. B. Portman-Dalton, his granddaughter, wrote to 

 me, that the Rev. James Dalton took and recorded Monotropa 

 in 1805. It is our only record, and " a distinct beech-wood 

 saprophyte," Mr. F. A. Lees told me, as far back as 1893, when 

 I was busy hunting for Dalton's Lincolnshire specimen.! 



These remains of former fagesques in both cases are on the 

 right soil and locality, to judge by the south and south-western 

 woods. We know from its name that at one spot at least its 

 history goes back approximately to the period of steadily growing 

 heat and length of summers. Is it safe to assume that these two 

 traces of fagesques are representative of other vanished woods ? 

 I think so, on account of the few peat records that we possess, 



* Eev. G. S. Streatfeild's Lincolnshire and the Danes, 1884, p. 227. 



t Curiously enough, the only spot where I personally have seen Monotropa 

 growing is as unlike a fagesque as can well be imagined. The Eev. W. W. 

 Mason pointed it out to me on the Lancashire coaat-dunes. This sand was 

 mixed with a large proportion of comminated sea-shells. How frequently are 

 these sources of lime ignored, both in recording and interpreting the facts of 

 environment ! 



