72 
its immediate neighbourhood are found on a variety of geological 
outcrops and deposits. They occupy the greater part of the ex¬ 
posures of the Eocene sands: the fine Barton Sands, between 
Lvndhurst and Beaulieu, the Upper and Lower Bracklesham beds 
eastwards of Fordingbridge and towards the south-west, where 
they form the watershed between the Avon and Stour, and finally 
the Bag shot Sands. Beyond the Forest into Dorset the heaths are 
almost entirely on the hungry soils of the Bagshots. In addition 
the heathlands cover considerable areas of the wide sheets of 
ancient plateau and valley gravels, which form an irregular border 
around the central portion of the New Forest, where clays and 
loams are covered with woods and pastures derived from woods. 
Heaths on gravel occupy the high watershed in the north-western 
corner of the Forest, and spread broadly at a remarkably con¬ 
stant elevation, about 130 feet in two separate areas between 
Hvthe and Lvmington, there masking the naturally fertile Headon 
Clays, which, however, are uncovered in the sides of the Beaulieu 
and Lvmington rivers. 
Though the vegetation of the heathland is predominately 
heath, some considerable woods of oak and beech occur in the New 
Forest on the Barton and Bracklesham sands and loams, 
though in Dorset natural woods on the heath sands are far to seek, 
if not totally absent. The oak woods are either pure oak woods 
or mixed oak-with-beech. In either tvoe the chief associates f t' 
- i 
the middle shrub stratum are birch, holly and thorn. The ground 
vegetation is poor in species and but little higher in grade than 
the heath outside. The growth of bracken in the open glades is 
generally remarkably dense. Hair grass, moor grass, and other 
heath grasses form the greater part of the scanty herbage. Bilberry 
finds the shelter of the woods more favourable to its growth than 
the open dry heaths, from which it is absent. The most striking 
feature of the floor of the heathy woods is the almost (omple'V 
absence of flowers, others than those of ling and the heathers. 
The New Forest is the scene of a contest between the oak and 
the beech for dominance. The beech is a late invader and is 
restriced as a wood-former to the south-eastern counties of Eng¬ 
land. It dominates the woodland of the chalk along all the lines 
of downs as far as the eastern borders of Salisbury Plain, having 
displaced except here and there the earlier ash woods. In the 
New Forest it also challenges the dominance of the oak on a soil 
which has no evident similarity to the chalk. 
The heath scrub occurs on the borders of woods as belts of 
scattered oaks and beeches inter-mixed with birch and other 
associates of the middle stratum of the normal wood, and as areas 
covered by birch and holly, often with much yew, as near 
Sloden, scattered in a loose formation over the heath. This scrub 
on the whole appears to be a stage in the degeneration of the wood¬ 
land into heath. Cases of the reverse change, where the heath is 
being naturally brought again under woodland, are confined to 
