MR. W. G. CLARKE ON BRECKLAND CHARACTERISTICS. 569 
gone out of cultivation. The alien Erigeron canadense has also 
become a striking feature in the plant-life of the district, giving 
some of the sandy areas a decided tinge of green when the 
young plants come up in the spring. It grows abundantly in 
the neighbourhood of Merton, Weeting, Santon Downham and 
Thetford Warren and has also been recorded from Croxton 
and gardens in Thetford. When the rabbits were killed off 
on the Shadwell estate, vast quantities of oak and furze seed- 
lings sprang up all over the heaths, and the season after such 
a procedure had been adopted on Thetford Abbey Heath its 
appearance was so changed as to be almost unrecognisable. 
An unusual phenomenon was also furnished by the ploughing 
of Rushford Heath — which had been fallow for abour 20 years 
— in the winter of 1904-5. In the following autumn it was 
covered with a dense growth of Reseda lutca, intermingled 
with Cardans nutans, Scabiosa arvensis, and Galium verum. 
Before it was ploughed I had been over each year for several 
years in the autumn and had noticed no mignonette, yet 
suddenly on the soil being disturbed it covered scores of acres 
as thickly as though it had been planted. One can only 
surmise that the seed had been lying dormant for a long 
period. The following year the heath was sown and only 
a few mignonette plants have been observed since. In 1668 
Sir Thomas Browne said, “ this groweth not far from Thetford 
and Brandon, and plentiful in neighbour places.” 
Perhaps the typical plant of the district is Cynoglosum 
officinale and on some of the heaths the abundance of Erophila 
vulgaris is so remarkable that in May it actually gives a faint 
pinkish-white tint to the ground. Writing in 1S47, Mr. 
Townsend* said of the country round Mildenhall. “ The open 
woods consist principally of fir, and little else but nettles, 
stonecrop, and chervil ( Cheer ophyllum anthriscus), which last 
is one of the most frequent weeds both of the woods and on 
the heaths, encircling the rabbit burrows with its welcome 
shade and climbing the sides of the tops of the mud walls in 
luxuriant profusion.” The poorness of the soil tends to 
produce dwarf forms of many plants including Erythrcea 
* ‘ Phvtologist,’ vol. ii. p. 581. ' 
