INTRODUCTION. ix 



III. For at least two centuries Jersey has been a muoh-cultivated 

 island. As early as Dr. Falle's day there was "little barren 

 ground," and "not a wood, hardly a thicket or coppice"; and 

 though he and later writers speak of the thickly wooded appear- 

 ance of the country, they all ascribe it to the trees which bordered 

 every hedgerow, and to the small size of the fields. In the 

 eighteenth century the chief production was cider, and the land 

 was largely occupied with orchards. Falle* thought that no 

 country produced so much cider, not even Normandy, though 

 little had been made in the time of William the Third. In 1808 

 more cider was still made than in any other equal area in Europe.i- 

 In 1833 it was still the chief export, J but potatoes were becoming 

 important. Now the orchards have to a very large extent dis- 

 appeared, and most of the land is devoted to the cultivation of the 

 profitable but prosaic early potato, to make room for which much 

 rough land has been doubtless broken up, and many wooded hillsides 

 deprived of their covering of trees. After the potatoes, which are 

 dug in May and June, a crop of " roots " of some kind generally 

 follows. In the sandy fields in low-lying parts of the coast, 

 lucerne and clover have been sown for at least a century and 

 a half, and with the seed have been introduced several Continental 

 plants which have established themselves and become naturalised, 

 e.g., Centaurea paniculata and Scabiosa maritima. 



Much of the waste land which once existed has been brought 

 under cultivation within the last fifty years, and some of the moat 

 interesting Jersey plants have been destroyed. St. Peter's and 

 St. Lawrence Marshes have been drained ; so has the marshy 

 tract which once existed between St. Heller's and Samaras. The 

 whole character of the sandy bays is being gradually altered by 

 the sea-walls which are being built in various parts. The Bay of 

 St. Aubin's, a great part of which was within living memory much 

 as Nature made it, is now occupied with an almost unbroken 

 succession of houses, and an imposing Promenade. The process 

 will doubtless continue. 



At the present time Jersey presents six different kinds of station, 

 and each, to a very large extent, has its own flora. 



{a) Sandy beaches, sand-dunes, and sandy fields near the sea. 



* Falle's " Cffisarea," p. 154. 



f Lyte's " Jersey," p. 32. 



J Inglis, " Channel Islands," p. 123. 



