208 THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
belonged, which in warm countries grew to the height of forest trees. It might
be that these slenderly represented British plants were relics of the ancient
tropical flora of Eocene times. Similarly on the tops of our British mountains
would he found an abundance of flowering plants met with only in similar situa-
tions in Switzerland, but which grew at the sea level in Arctic regions—such as
pinks, gentians, saxifrages, and others—and he drew attention to the fact that
nearly all our early spring flowers, which appeared before the warmth of the
summer, belonged chiefly to Arctic and Alpine orders. There was much reason
to believe that these cold-loving plants came over to Great Britain during the
Glacial Period, and had remained ever since. The lecturer also showed that in
the south of Ireland and Cornwall there were flowering plants which were
outliers of the Spanish flora, which had spread thither when the intervening
sea bed was dry land. He then turned to the fact of the recent formation
of the German Ocean, proving that the depression of its bed had probably
taken place since the appearance of man upon the earth. Probably since then
also the chalk downs, which formerly stretched right across from Dover into
Picardy in France, had been breached through, so as to allow the waters of
the German Ocean and the English Channel to form the Straits of Dover.
When England and Ireland were a continuous western prolongation of Europe,
the common European plants would naturally spread over them. It was in this
way that our daisies, buttercups, primroses, cowslips, dandelions, campions,
roses, grasses, and other abundant wild flowers came to us. Dr. Taylor also
dwelt upon the ups and downs of floral life as related to the great climatic
and geographical changes which had taken place in Europe since the Pliocene
Period, or the time when the crags cf Suffolk and Norfolk had been formed. Our
plants, said the doctor, like the great English people, have come here from various
directions. Some of the plants that lived in cold climatic conditions adapted
themselves to our changed climate by appearing only in the early spring,
others by surviving only on mountain heights. "Saxon, Dane, and Norman
are we," wrote Tennyson ; and the same might indeed be said of our British
flowering plants.
Dr. Taylor having been warmly thanked for his interesting lecturette, the
ramble was continued along the Rodney Road towards "Cherry-tree Cottage" ;
then through ''Fir-tree" and "Pheasant-house" woods (where a huge nest of
the wood ant (Formica rufa) was seen), which include a large variety of forest
trees, notably some fine beeches ; and where the curious Butcher's-broom, the
only woody monocotyledonous plant in Britain, is abundant. Then across
Woodham Walter Common, covered with oak scrub, and the home of the
Lily of the Valley, Buckbean, Wood Pimpernel, many ferns and other inter-
esting plants. The Deptford Pink and Golden Saxifrage have been found
there, while the Badger once made the Common its home. Abundant-patches
of the Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) were found among the Sphagnums on the
boggy hill-sides, and two specimens were found, each of which had captured
by means of its glutinous tentacled leaves, a poor little blue butterfly (Lycaena
icarus) ; one of the insects was already dead, the other was still struggling in the
clutches of its relentless captor.1
But the special train was to leave Maldon at 8.45, and the hasty walk
rendered necessary to reach the station in time precluded any extended botanical
or other observations; nor could the other items on the programme be carried
out—the visit to Woodham Walter Church, and the Hall, interesting as being
the last place in England where the Royal Hawks were kept by the Duke of St.
Albans, Hereditary Grand Falconer, and Lord of this Manor, being unavoidably
1 As recorded in our "Journal of Proceedings" (vol. i., p. xxiii.) I have on two occasions in
in Epping Forest seen, on Drosera, butterflies thus entrapped—the species being Satyrus janira,
an insect measuring two inches across the wings.—W. Cole.