THE COMMON POLYPODY IN ESSEX. 289
The testimony of otheis is to exactly the same effect. Thus,.
Mr. Shenstone writes me :—"Our Essex woodlands have been
largely cleared of the Male Feins, Lady Ferns, &c., which were
fairly abundant in the woods near Colchester in my early botani-
cal days." Further, Mr. E. E. Turner, who has an unrivalled
knowledge of the flora of the Coggeshall district, writes me that
the Hart's Tongue (Scolopendrium vulgare) "was fairly common
there when I was a boy, but I do not remember having seen a
specimen for years."
As to the main reasons for the disappearance of these ferns
from their old localities in the county, there can be no doubt
whatever. That disappearance is due in part to more intensive
cultivation and in part (as to those species which grow in bogs)
to the steady draining of bogs ; but, more than all else, it is due
to gradual eradication by trippers, trade-collectors, gardeners,
and others, who dig up roots for removal to their gardens, where,
more often than not. they are neglected and quickly die.
Yet one may well wonder whether there is not some other
cause also at work—at least in connection with the Polypody,
which, though still common, has decreased very markedly in-
deed in recent years.
When I was a boy, this fern was certainly immensely more
abundant in Essex than it is now. In the district already referred
to, including the whole of the Roothings and even beyond
Dunmow, it was then very common on rotting stumps and
among the roots of hedges growing on the banks of ditches,
both by the roadside and among the fields. I have in my diary
not a few notes to this effect. Thus, on 20th December 1875,
I noted it as "immensely abundant—more so than I have ever
seen it anywhere else—"on the road-side banks between Chignal
St. James and Dunmow. Again, on 30th December 1876, I
noted it again as "immensely common" on certain roadside
and other banks at Lindsell, together with its varieties acutum
and serratum, and with fronds which were not only bifid them-
selves, but had also some of their pinnae bifid.4 At the same
time and place, I also saw it growing on the crowns of pollarded
trees, and noted explicitly that "the top of one oak-tree was
covered thickly by one root two yards square." Again, on 18th
4 Specimens gathered on this occasion are preserved in my herbarium, now in the Club's
Museum.