The Origin of our British Flora 
the heather moors, grass-heath, or cotton-grass, which 
are sharply marked out from the cultivated land or 
permanent pasture. 
One can also see the relative value of the land, what 
part of it is promising for plantation, and the amount of 
peat-moss or other really useless country. But unfor- 
tunately this is a matter which requires skilled botanists 
and money, so that at present but a very small part of 
Britain has been botanically surveyed. 
However, the main point which these survey maps 
bring out very clearly is the fact that pine forest does 
not occupy the interval between the summit floras and 
cultivation. 
But besides this present-day survey, there are the 
researches of Mr. Clement Reid and Dr. Lewis, who 
have studied the Scotch peats and other glacial and 
pre-glacial beds. From these we find indisputable 
evidence of the Scotch pine forest which we would have 
expected. 
On the desolate Merrick hills in the southern Scotch 
uplands, and at 800 to 1ooo feet altitude, Dr. Lewis 
found the remains of a forest of well-grown Scotch pines 
18 inches to 2 feet in diameter where to-day there is 
scarcely a shrub 3 feet high. 
On Tweedsmuir and the Moorfoots similar birch or 
pine forests were discovered buried in the peat and 
whose existence was quite unsuspected. 
Dr. Lewis found similar relics in various places in the 
Highlands. In fact his researches make it certain that 
there was once a splendid forest of Scotch pine covering 
those parts of Scotland where we would have expected 
them, if this succession of dryas, birch, and pine really 
existed.® 
In the peat-mosses and flows at lower altitudes there 
is, or used to be, plenty of oak logs, which show that 
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