TOPOGRAPHICAL REMAEKS. XV 



mostly confined to small waste spots by road-sides, pits, and 

 the very few banks which are too steep for the plough. Thus 

 many species which were formerly abundant have become 

 rare; so rare as to have caused an unjust suspicion of their 

 not being really natives to arise in the minds of some 

 modern botanists. Even the tumuli, entrenchments, and 

 other interesting works of the ancient inhabitants have 

 seldom escaped the rapacity of the modern agriculturist, 

 who too frequently looks upon the native plants of the 

 country as weeds, and its antiquities as deformities. 



Clayey District. — Until within about sixty years of the 

 present time the whole of the clay district was open, although 

 cultivated. The homesteads were collected together so as 

 to form villages, and each had one or two little paddocks 

 attached to it; the remainder of the parish, the "field," 

 being without fences, and divided by slender lines of ancient 

 turf, denominated " balks," into long narrow strips, called 

 "yard lands." With a very few slight exceptions all the 

 " field " is now inclosed, and the " balks," with the various 

 plants which grew upon them, destroyed by the plough. 

 Thus the plants native to the clay have suffered nearly as 

 much as those indigenous to the chalk. Where they were 

 once abundant they are now rarely to be found. 



Fens. — The Fens are usually supposed to be absolutely 

 flat and depressed below the level of the sea. But such is 

 not the fact ; since they slope with tolerable regularity from 

 their inner border to the coast so as once to have possessed 

 a natural drainage. Dugdale states that there was in the 

 seventeenth century a fall of 10 feet from the general level 

 of the country to low water-mark at the junction of Salter's 



