Review. 
THE VEGETATION OF SOMERSET. 
51 
Geographical Distribution of Vegetation in Somerset, Bath 
and Bridgwater District, By C. E. Moss, M.Sc., Royal 
Geographical Society, 1907. 
[71 pp., 24 figs, and coloured vegetation map.] 
T HE appearance of the ninth memoir on the Geographical Dis¬ 
tribution of Vegetation in the British Isles is of special interest 
because it is the first dealing with a southern district of England, 
and in none of the previous maps is there so large a proportion of 
cultivated land. The problem of dealing with cultivated land is a 
difficult one for the vegetation surveyor. Robert Smith in 1900 
decided to divide such land into lowland cultivation with wheat, and 
upland cultivation with oats, and no improvement upon this has yet 
been arrived at. Such a division does not, of course, represent the 
actual vegetation, which is largely grass-land, but only the potential 
wheat-land or oat-land, i.e., land that could bear these crops if 
economic conditions were favourable to growing them. It is obvious 
that it is no part of the botanist’s business to map what is actually 
grown when this is constantly fluctuating, owing to economic and 
other causes remote from the physical conditions. Mr. Moss gives 
good reasons for adhering to Robert Smith’s division and, at the same 
time, he has made a definite advance by distinguishing a third type. 
This is the alluvial cultivation, occupying the low-lying land called the 
Levels, which consists partly of marine and partly of freshwater 
estuarine and lacustrine deposits, separated from the Bristol 
Channel only by a narrow belt of dunes and marshes and extending 
many miles inland to the eastward where it forms the lower parts 
of the basins of the Parrett, Brue, Axe and Yeo. Part of these Levels 
forms the historic Sedgemoor, and the whole is very characteristic, 
perfectly flat country, mostly under pastoral cultivation, the fields 
being separated by “rhines” or ditches, and the whole being quite 
comparable with similar tracts of country in the Fens of Cambridge¬ 
shire and Lincolnshire, etc. In the inland parts of the Levels there 
are considerable stretches of peat-moor, some of which is still 
uncultivated heath-land with Calluna, Tetralix, Molinia and Myrica, 
while peat-bogs occupy the wetter places. What arable land there 
is on the Levels supports root-crops with some oats, but wheat is 
rare and does not ripen well. Most of the woods are comparatively 
recent plantations, but alder, birch and oak may be native, though 
there are no undoubtedly native woods. 
While the Levels occupy quite one half of the western moiety of 
the area mapped, the eastern half of the map is mainly potential 
wheat-land on a great variety of soils, and this wheat-land extends 
westward to the coast on the higher ground, in the neighbourhood 
of Clevedon, along the flanks of the Mendips, along the low 
Polden Hills, and to the west of Bridgwater. It forms the second 
great zone of vegetation (excluding the maritime formations). Over 
the whole of this area “arable fields may be found in places, and 
wheat enters into the rotation,” though the actual amount grown 
has greatly decreased of late years. 
The third general zone is marked by upland cultivation with 
oats and roots. Wheat is occasionally grown, but not with any 
great success. This zone is comparatively small in the district, 
being confined to the Mendip uplands and roughly lies above the 
800-ft. contour. 
