68 Distribution of Chief Forms of Vegetation 



prevents the return of the forest, and is of little use to 

 man in any way. On steeper and drier slopes, heath 

 develops on the poorer soils, and grass, used for hill 

 pasturage, on the better soils, which have been denuded 

 of forest. 



In the drier south and east, the fate of the soil from 

 which forest has been cleared is different. Such of the 

 land as was not actually tilled would be used, so far as it 

 became naturally colonised by grass, for the pasturage 

 of the numerous flocks and herds of this more thickly 

 populated part of the country, and would thus be turned 

 into grassland, which trees can only invade sporadically. 

 The poorer sandy soils would be colonised by the heaths 

 and other plants which flourish on such soils, and would 

 come to bear a vegetation akin to that of the moors, but 

 on a drier soil and not forming deep peat. In some 

 cases such heaths are partially or completely re-invaded 

 by woodland of the appropriate type. This is possible 

 because the more barren heaths afford no pasturage, and 

 the plant-community is of more open type and therefore 

 more easily colonised by trees of suitable kinds. 



With the exception of the Eoyal Forests, the heathy 

 woodlands and a few others (notably the 

 BteM^ardT " beechwoods of the chalk), the woods which 

 remained in the south, after the earlier and 

 extensive clearings, took the form of regularly exploited 

 " coppice- with-standards.'' This semi-artiflcial type of 

 wood no doubt originated by partial felling of the trees 

 of the original forest and the cutting of the shrubs for 

 small wood. The increased access of light would lead to 

 increased growth of the shrub layer, and it beca,me the 

 custom regularly to harvest the straight coppice shoots 

 springing from the cut " stools " of the trees and shrubs, 

 once every 10 or 15 years, while the few standard trees 

 were felled occasionally. The supply of coppice-wood 

 and timber so obtained was largely employed for the 



