20
The Presidential Address.
Agrimony (Agrimonia eupatoria), Columbine (Aquilegia), Helle-
borus faetidus, Hound's-tongue (Cynoglossum), Deadly Night-
shade (Atropa), Iris foetidissima, Cow-wheats (Melampyrum
pratense and M. aristatum), Wood-sage (Teucrium scorodonia)
and Roses, 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, Rasp-
berries (Rubus idaeus), Broom (Sarothamnus), the Genistas
(G. anglica and G. tinctoria), St. John's-worts (Hypericum),
Harebells (Campanula rotundifolia), Potentillas, Bedstraws
(Galium), Scabious, and, I believe, three species of Ulex or
Gorse. The late flowering of Ulex europaeus, 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.