8o 
R. H. Yapp. 
group of bushes may include a Rhamnus or two, a Viburnum, and 
perhaps a couple of species of Salix. This grouping of the bushes 
may perhaps be largely influenced by the periodic cutting of the 
sedge. The young bushes are cut with the sedge so long as they 
offer no great resistance to the cutters. Many are perhaps killed 
in this way, while others form coppiced growths. When however, 
a bush is large enough to interfere with the cutting, it is left alone, 
and so may attain maturity. Immunity from cutting will be more 
frequent when several bushes are growing together, and this may 
account for the mixed character of the clumps. Of course it may 
be that in other cases a single bush has attained maturity, and 
beneath its shelter, seedlings of other bushes have been able to 
grow protected from the Fenman’s scythe. 
We have seen that Wicken Fen is not in a “ primaeval ” 
condition. It can scarcely be said to be even in a natural condition. 
As almost everywhere in our country, man has left even here, his 
impress on the vegetation. The draining of the surrounding lands, 
and the embanking of the lodes, have increased the dryness of even 
Wicken Fen, and introduced many new land plants ready to seize 
on any available dry spot. The cutting of the sedge, by penalising 
plants of slow growth and encouraging those of rapid growth, has 
played its part in more completely mixing up the Fen plants. It 
has also affected the distribution of the bushes, while the periodic 
removal of so much of the surface vegetation doubtless slows down 
the rate of peat formation. But after all, in spite of these artificial 
modifying influences, events would seem in the main to be following 
pretty much a natural sequence. A few species may have been 
introduced and a few exterminated. The vegetation may be more 
mixed than it would have been if left alone. But still Wicken Fen 
is now, what it has been before, and what it would sooner or later 
have become again, a drying-up marsh* And on the whole the 
process is a natural one. 
And now what of the future ? There can be little doubt that 
Wicken Fen is becoming drier, and that the number of “dry 
plants ” is increasing. The bushes are also certainly becoming 
more numerous, apparently with considerable rapidity. Already a 
few trees from drier lands, such as mountain ashes and oaks, are 
invading the Fen. It therefore seems probable that Wicken is on 
the verge of another forest period, and that sooner or later it will 
become practically a huge marsh thicket. Then finally, if the Fen 
is not in the meantime appropriated by man for other purposes, the 
