THE PRESERVATION OF OUR WILD PLANTS. 



397 



Cathedral — where many of these species were growing in 1815 : we shall 

 not find the Gipsy-wort on " ditch-banks about Piccadilly" ; the Grass- 

 vetchling (Lathyrus Nissolia) or the Flowering Rush (Butomus umbellatus) 

 in Battersea Fields, where they grew in 1840 ; or the rare Gyperus fuscus 

 on Walham Green, where it lingered down to 1865. It is, in fact, 

 remarkable that Mr. W. Clarkson Birch should have been able recently 

 to collect 130 species of wild flowering plants in the parish of Fulham. 

 His collection, now at St. Paul's School, includes Gipsy-wort, Skull-cap, 

 Purple Loosestrife (Lythrum Salic:iria), the interesting American Balsam 

 (Impatiens biflora) which has spread down the Tillingbourne and the 

 Wey since 1822, and the Peruvian Galinsoga which has spread so abun- 

 dantly from Kew Gardens during the last fifty years.* Building has 

 destroyed a site for the rare Pink (Dianthics prolifer) on Boar's Hill, near 

 Oxford ; t and, by an unfortunate accident, a lovely situation on the North 

 Downs, which happened to be the only locality over a wide district for 

 Herminium Monorchis, was pitched upon for a house. It was also pre- 

 sumably the needs of surrounding houses that caused the Metropolitan 

 Board of Works to desiccate with a main drain the locality at the head 

 of the Leg-of-Mutton pond at Hampstead, where thirty years ago I used 

 to study Drosera and where Menyanthes used then to flower. 



Quarrying is, no doubt, as necessary as building ; but most kinds of 

 stone are obtainable in several places, so that it ought to be possible to 

 protect from such destruction some of the most beautiful spots in England, 

 which happen also to be localities for some of our rarest species, such as 

 the gorge of the Bristol Avon at Clifton, the home of Arabis stricta and 

 Sedum rupestre, the Cheddar rocks with their rare Pink (Dianthus 

 gratianoyolitanus) and Meadow-rue (Thalictrum montanum), and the 

 gorge of the Wye. 



If our losses by forest-clearing, drainage, agricultural improvements 

 and extension, building and quarrying are inevitable, others are certainly 

 not. Among the avoidable causes of loss I class the needless deruralising 

 of rural districts, smoke, trade-collectors, and the excesses of children, 

 tourists, and botanists. 



A recent measure for decentralising our local government seems to 

 have created the necessity for some means of expending rates. The 

 lighting of our country lanes by gas may be desirable ; but I fail to see 

 the necessity for replacing the turf edging of our footpaths by stone or 

 cement kerbs, the destruction of many a roadside strip of grass and 

 flowers where the width of the roadway is greater than the traffic requires, 

 and the wholesale plastering over of our hedge-banks with the mud 

 laboriously excavated from our now formalised roadside ditches. Such 

 trimming of the turf along Watling Street by a County Council destroyed 

 the only locality in Northamptonshire for the beautiful Eryngium 

 campestre, the " Chardon Roland " of French flamboyant architecture. % 

 No doubt employment is provided by this policy, and the rates are 

 increased ; but the beauty of our country roads is being proportionately 

 destroyed. 



* C. J. Cornish in the Times. Oct. 17, 1903. 



t Cotteswold Report previously quoted. 



% G. C. Druce in the Cotteswold Report, as above. 



