VEGETATION OF BLAKENEY POINT. 
535 
other species. If a plant be uprooted, the lower leaves of the 
rosette immediately curl round towards the root, so that the 
plant assumes a ball-like form, shewing that by the increased 
growth of the upper surface of the leaves as compared with the 
lower they are as it were sprung ” on to the soil beneath. 
All the species, except Convolvulus, which have the rosette 
habit pass the winter in that condition. In Silene the leaves 
remain through the winter, but the following year’s growth is 
continued by hibernating buds usually subterranean in position. 
In Arenaria peploides all the leaves die back, buds similar to 
those of Silene forming the foliage of the next season. In 
Care. x arenaria the leaves wither except at their bases, which 
persist as a protection around the new leaf bud. 
Psamma, Arenaria, and Convolvulus Soldanella, which all 
possess extensive rhizomes in the dune substance, shew modifi- 
cations of the growing apex. In the first two the outer leaves 
combine to form a tapering apex ending in a hard point, and 
thus eminently suited to sand penetration. In Convolvulus the 
growing apex bears a leaf which is bent back so that the petiole 
receives the pressure, as in many seedlings. 
Before leaving the dunes it should be said that the whole 
system is riddled with the burrows of rabbits, which, when they 
fall into disuse, give lodgment for plants that there find shelter 
and possibly added moisture. Thus, Aspidium recorded above, 
which shares with Epilobium hirsutum the distinction of being 
the rarest plant on the area, is found as an isolated specimen 
situated in a disused rabbit-hole. The rabbits also no doubt 
profoundly affect the vegetation in other ways more directly, as 
by their actual depredations and by their excrements acting as 
manurial agencies. 
IV. The Salt Marshes. 
The septation of the Salt Marshes at Blakeney into separate 
portions by the lateral banks gives us a whole series of small 
isolated marshes in different stages of colonisation (fig. 1), the 
ages of which are broadly relative to those of the hooks which 
bound them. An exception to this generalisation is given by 
the large intervals where hook formation has not proceeded 
