Lees : The Volteface of Flora — A Rejoinder. 



2 35 



for a moment ; of old types Pyrola minor loves above all things 

 a bare, steep, soppy site, for where soil has slipped competition 

 {in the shade) is nigh nil at first. But in time, and I bear in 

 mind several particular instances, it gets ousted frorruits shelf, 

 and just there is known no more. Yet, years later, if another 

 slip occurs, or a storm uproots some neighbour tree, it may 

 appear, only a few paces away or a hundred yards from the 

 original site. God alone knows how many seeds or potentials 

 of life are in the soil of the woodland everywhere awaitant on 

 their resurrection ! Of • new ' types — though Mr. Moss would 

 have it an old one miscalled. — let us focus our attention on the 

 CEnanthe crocata, now in several of the cloughs and by the 

 river, always at lower levels than the reservoirs at their head. 

 Do we find it by the feeders of the dams on the open moor? 

 No. Do we always find it in suspicious stations where man 

 might have (very foolishly, for it is a virulent poison to cattle) 

 introduced it ? No, again. 



Then what is there against its being an 'old inhabitant,' 

 a survivor ? Only that Bolton mentions not such a fine striking 

 plant, whereas he took note of an inconspicuous Mcenchia ? 

 Again, hardly that, but that a marked substitution of one set of 

 species for another set is not without parallel, given twenty 

 years and a radical degeneration or amelioration of the physical 

 environment. I call up a twice-seen picture : a marsh at a 

 dough's mouth in 1880 (say) produces Stellaria aquatica, Galium 

 palustre and Witheringii, Epipactis palustris, Anagallis tenclla, 

 Paniassia, Ranunculus Flanimula, Veronica Anagallis, and 

 CEnanthe fistulosa. Owing to the growth of trees — alder.s, 

 willows, birches— the construction of a reservoir up the gorge, 

 the ground consolidates, the marsh dries up, the stream runs 

 intermittently straight through the outfall flat, and in twenty 

 years hardly one of the above could or would live on in the 

 resulting thicket. Equisetum hyemale^ if there at first (but it 

 wasn't), might : but in their place last year might be found 

 Stellaria nemoruni, Crepis paludosa, Veronica scutcllata , Galium 

 uligiuosuni, Lotus major, and CEnant/ie crocata ! Perhaps even 

 Solidago. If that change was possible in one York dale, why 

 not in another? 



The special likes and requirements of (E. crocata have been 

 already stated, but I would repeat what I said in 1895 regarding 

 the apparent strangeness of a lowland hydrophile like (l-l. fistu- 

 losa growing by Ripponden brook, or in Warley Clough, or 

 lower about Sowerby ; where now, says Mr. Moss, only 



1900 August i. 



