20 
The Presidential Address. 
Agrimony ( Agrimonia eupatnria), Columbine (Aquilegia), Helle- 
borus fcctidus, Hound’s-tongue ( Cynoglossum ), Deadly Night¬ 
shade ( Atropa), Iris fcetidissima, Cow-wheats ( Melampyrum 
pratense and ill. cristatum ), Wood-sage (Teucrium scorodonia) 
and Boses, plants that require sun, would then find a lodg¬ 
ment, together with some such as Golden-rod, Betony, and 
others, which I have already mentioned. The Foxglove 
(Digitalis) is in flower when some leaves have already fallen, 
and flourishes under dense heath or bracken, or even under 
trees. Of the plants I have mentioned nearly all are un¬ 
doubtedly indigenous, and a study of the growth of the 
Lesser Periwinkle in ancient woodlands in Essex and in 
Sussex, and of that of the Iris on broken ground in the 
south-east of Kent, has strongly impressed me with the 
native character of what are perhaps the most doubtful in 
my list. On elevated gravelly plateaux more especially, the 
heaths, when they have gained possession of the ground 
through a storm, or in human times through a clearing or a 
forest fire, will hold their own apparently against most of our 
forest trees, except perhaps the Birch. Capable, like the 
plants that accompany them, of living in very shallow and 
poor soil, mere sand, or pebbles, such as the lighter beds of 
the Bagshot series, the Heaths must, from the first, have 
formed open tracts, the grazing lands of herds of wild deer 
and cattle. Here they were accompanied by Bracken, Basp- 
berries ( Paibus ulceus), Broom (Sarothamnus), the Genistas 
(G. anglica and G. tinctoria), St. Jolm’s-worts ( Hypericum), 
Harebells (Campanula rotundifolio), Potentillas, Bedstraws 
(Galium), Scabious, and, I believe, three species of Ulex or 
Gorse. The late flowering of Ulex europceus, though perhaps 
an argument for its foreign origin in a remote past, is, since 
it ripens seed abundantly, no proof that it may not have 
spread to Britain without human aid. 25 
I have next to mention a class of localities often overlooked, 
the trodden-down, well-manured, resting-places of the forest 
herds, which are important as perhaps affording the only 
natural habitat for a large group of plants which afterwards 
25 See note on p. 16, supra. 
