THE ENTOMOLOGISTS 
WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
No. 199.] SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1860. [Price Id. 
THE FENS. 
The Fens of Cambridgeshire are a 
mine of wealth to the entomologist: 
the number of new species turned up 
in the Fens during the last fifteen 
years is perfectly astonishing. We 
could therefore wish there was a rea- 
sonable prospect of the Fens being 
spared to us ; but, alas ! alas ! it is 
not so. 
“ The employment of steam,” writes 
Babinglon, “has made the remoral of 
water so certain that nearly the whole 
level may be cited as a pattern iii 
farming. With the water many of 
the most interesting and characteristic 
plants have disappeared, or are become 
so exceedingly rare that the discovery 
of single individuals of them is a sub- 
ject for wonder and congratulation. 
There is scarcely a spot remaining (I 
only know one, near Wicken) in which 
the ancient vegetation continues undis- 
turbed, and the land is sufficiently wet 
to allow of its coining to perfection.” 
In an Appendix, at p. 312, Mr. 
Babinglon gives a complete list of the 
plants which have been recently found 
growing in Wicken Fen, indicating 
which most abound there, and re- 
marking that “ the plant which forms 
the great mass of the herbage is Cla- 
dium mariscus, which is still there 
regarded as a crop, although an un- 
cultivated one.” 
We recommend this list to the care- 
ful perusal and study of all entomolo- 
gists who are about to visit the Fens, 
before they are utterly demolished and 
transmuted into corn-fields. 
Myrica Gale is already extinct at 
Wicken, though formerly abundant in 
the Fens; with its disappearance how 
many insects must have disappeared ! 
It must seem strange to a Darwinian 
that the gradual drainage of the Fens 
does not induce the plants, by a pro- 
cess of natural selection, to develope 
into something else more fitted for a 
drier soil; but no — the marsh plants 
become extinct, and the cereals and 
other plants now growing there are in 
no way descended from the fen-plants 
which have disappeared. 
A list of plants which have formerly 
been natives of Cambridgeshire, but 
have now not been found there for 
many years, is given at p. 314, and 
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