396 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



grass determined by Prof. Haeckel to be the var. borealis of Calamagrostis 

 neglecta (C. stricta Nutt.), and, therefore, distinct from the form which 

 still exists in Cheshire. Mr. Druce, visiting Loch Tay, found saw-mills 

 erected 100 yards from the marsh where the grass grew, so that there was 

 no apparent danger ; but on a subsequent visit he found that the sawdust 

 from the mills had been cast on the marsh and had utterly destroyed the 

 rare grass.* 



Drainage has perhaps been an even more prolific cause of local 

 extermination than has the clearing of woodland. The reclaiming of the 

 Fens has locally done away with many species of Carex, Scirpus, and 

 Juncus, such orchids as Malaxis paludosa, Liparis Loeselii, Epipactis 

 palustris and Orchis latifolia, Potentilla Comarum, and even to some 

 extent the Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris). The more completely 

 aquatic species, such as the Potamogetons, may survive in such localities 

 in the ditches constructed for drainage ; and it may be possible in some 

 cases to preserve small areas of bog nearly in their pristine condition, as 

 has been done at Wicken Fen and on the Black Hill of Cromarty, the 

 locality for Pinguicula alpina. Among our British Ferns Lastrea 

 Thelypteris, the Ophioglossums, and Botrychium are liable to diminution 

 by this same drainage. On even a larger scale than the drainage of our 

 own fen-land is the reclamation now in progress in the Everglades of 

 Florida, a vast plain covered with swamps and shallow lakes half- choked 

 with vegetation, a subtropical analogue of our Norfolk Broads having 

 perhaps no exact parallel in the world. This area is now being drained 

 for the cultivation of Pine-apples and Bananas.t 



Agriculture has probably added many more species to our floras than 

 has forestry, those "weeds of cultivation," mostly annual herbs with 

 small seeds, the migrations of which form a most instructive study. 

 Their name of " weeds " implies, alas ! that they are to the agriculturist 

 "plants in the wrong place"; and the necessary care of the modern 

 farmer to secure his very dubious profits means that the beautiful Corn- 

 cockle (Lychnis Githago), Corn-flower (Centaurea Cyanus), and others are 

 not as common now as they were thirty years ago, and even Poppies are, 

 perhaps, more confined to railway embankments and other uncultivated 

 margins of cultivated ground. Thus what Agriculture has given with one 

 hand she takes away with the other. Special planting operations may 

 do much local damage, as, for instance, the extermination of the Spider 

 Orchis by the sowing of coarse grasses, or that of Anemone Pulsatilla by 

 the planting of Larch on some limestone slopes.i 



The extension of buildings round our towns, and even in rural situa- 

 tions which may happen to be localities for rare plants, is quite inevitable. 

 We can no longer expect to find Saxifraga granulata at Gray's Inn, 

 where it grew in 1640, or Arrow-head, Skull-cap, Ladies-smock, St. John's- 

 wort, Fenugreek, and Trifolium subterraneum and T. filiforme in Tothill 

 Fields — that is to say, practically the neighbouring site of Westminster 



* Report of Committee of Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club in 1903, reprinted in 

 Nature Notes, vol. xiv., p. 118. 



f Mary Perle Anderson, 41 The Protection of our Native Plants," Journ. New Yo? k 

 Bot. Gard., vol. v., No. 52 (1904). 



I Report of Committee of Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club previously quoted. 



