230 Lees: The Volte face of Flora — A Rejoinder. 



kill the individual root so brought down, whilst cool and safe 

 among- the roots of heather on the bleak moorland ridge, the 

 delicate wiry runners of both are killed neither by smoke nor 

 fire. But let some physiographic change turn the table land or 

 slope whereon they grow into a water-logged condition, and the 

 season thereafter nor Rubus nor Trientalis comes up there again 

 amid the bog moss or the moss-crop that begin to appear. If 

 this is not a true picture eyes have misled us older botanists, 

 and experience counts for naught. 



It is to the point, too, to mark that railway banks in the 

 Halifax district, now for many years have been clothed with 

 Hieracium boreale where, within the memory of many few grew 

 — I say not, none — intermingled with the Wood-Sage, Ling, 

 Bilberry, Holcns mollis of the banks before the cuttings were 

 carved out and sloped. Now, year after year — for their end is 

 not yet, their requirements prevailing — these strong, late-evolved 

 weeds usurp in serried array the barren pitch little else can live 

 upon. It is very different with the rail-banks of (say) Berkshire 

 or Lincolnshire ; although that is another question. The point 

 is, that the even-graded banks are not natural, but kept up by 

 culvert or stone-sluice drainage year after year in practically the 

 same condition. The same with the masonry of a reservoir or 

 canal : the species, be they tender, strong, or like Linaria 

 Cymbalaria from Italy, or Potentilla Norvegica from Scania, 

 which once get a footing keep it without much alteration for 

 a considerable period. Yet, even here, there will come a time 

 (with species not truly indigenous) when from some attenuation 

 of virility or constitution, the existing plants grow less semi- 

 ferous, an impotence comes upon pollen-tube, or some sterility 

 upon stigma ; and then they commence to go back — to dis- 

 appear. This has been so with the American water-weed ; and 

 is so with the Potentilla of the Aire and Calder Canal. Freshly 

 gathered seeds from Stanley, fifteen and nine years ago, germi- 

 nated promptly enough ; some tried the last two years have 

 * failed ' (though ripe enough), and at Armley locks this year the 

 plant is hardly to be seen. 



Another aspect of the volteface Flora presents us with as 

 part of her grand stage spectacle : Mr. Moss surely, does not 

 contend that, where trippers or what-not exterminate certain 

 plants, no others of different kinds clothe the ground the earlier 

 grew upon ! If earth on Beacon Hill-top were enclosed as 

 a garden it would ultimately produce Groundsel or small 

 Veronica or other weeds not there before, whatever its ill- 



Naturalist. 



