8 2 Peacock: A Critical Catalogue of Lincolnshire Plants. 



bodily removed to work the Middle Lias Ironstone lying- below. 

 I once visited them when the pit cliffs showed the old contour 

 lines of former surfaces which had been buried one after 

 another. Sometimes a little marshy spot had been buried and 

 converted into a hill by a single storm apparently. At other 

 times a wide and deep peat bog had only been covered by such 

 a weight of sand that the compressible middle had sunk below 

 the water level again to become a peat bog, and once more be 

 buried. In one place this process had been repeated five times, 

 the basin ever diminishing in size. In the last three cases the 

 changes had been rapid, for the humus beds and sand were all 

 shallow. . The highest ground, though it was a fairly flat surface 

 which was being removed, was almost in what must have been 

 the centre of the section of- the original bog. It was not far 

 from this spot that the Rev. W. Fowler gathered Lycopodinm 

 alpinum Linn., now in the Brit. Mus. herbarium. It is needless 

 to say it has not been seen for years ; how it survived as long 

 as it did is wonderful. What chance can rare dry sand-loving 

 species of these hills, or their damp, peaty, sand-loving' con- 

 geners of the valleys, have under such circumstances ? 



This rapid change of surface, too, is not alone confined to 

 sand dunes ; on entirely enclosed arable land wind-drifts 

 frequently work wholesale destruction. Between Blyton and 

 Scotton Common, as late as May 1898, my brother Max and 

 I found sand drifted from the newly-sown fields five feet deep, 

 blocking the road for some distance about half a mile from 

 Laughton Wood. A countryman who was busily engaged in 

 removing it to such an extent that a cart might pass, laconically 

 remarked as I expressed wonder, ' I've known worser windles.' 

 I have, too, for it is my experience that no soil drifts so much 

 as dry arable peat during spring cultivation. The seed and 

 seed-bed have been known to leave a lordship together ; and 

 mangel-wurzel have been scattered over a wide area. 



A single storm spread Tklaspi arvense Linn., which had been 

 introduced with wheat seed, all over the carr-land on one side 

 of this parish, where it flourishes still. 



The seaside dunes, which lie on a very flat shore in 

 N. Lines. 54, consist for the most part of much worn sand 

 derived from frost-shattered or shore-broken white or grey 

 flints, or the impure quartz detritus of more distant rocks from 

 which the less indestructible parts have perished. The flints 

 and other stones are obtained from the slow shore-wave denuda- 

 tion of the boulder clay, on which for the most part the sandhills 



Naturalist, 



