BOTANY RUTLAND is essentially a county of undulations. The land is only level for short distances. It rises into gentle acclivi- ties which can hardly be dignified with the name of hills, and it falls into valleys and extensive basins. A noticeable feature of Rutland is the large amount of grass land as compared with arable land, though this is less observable now when so much grass has been laid down throughout England. The commonest tree in the hedgerows is the ash. Here and there a landowner will have planted a fine row of English elms, or beeches, or of horse-chest- nuts, but the natural growth is that of the ash. Vast forests once covered a large portion of the south of Rutland and of the neighbouring county of Northampton ; to wit, Lyfield Forest and Rockingham Forest. Though these have disappeared, they have left behind them so many woods and spinneys that Rutland, for its size, is perhaps richer in them than any other county. It is not an uncom- mon view from the shoulder of some hill to look over a wide expanse of valley intersected by a brook at the bottom, irregularly clothed with tree masses on the opposite side and dotted with villages. It is a curious peculiarity of Rutland that, though it has a large number of villages and hamlets separated from one another by a few miles, isolated farms or cottages are seldom to be seen. This article does not concern itself with questions of geological formation, but the area of the county is so small, and the nature of the soil so uniform, being, on the surface, principally a mixture of oolitic rocks, more or less disintegrated, and lias clays (forming rich loams and stubborn top clays), that they hardly concern us. The natural botany of the district depends much more on the river courses ; the present woods ; the great area of the ancient Lyfield Forest (taking in all the south-west part of the county),^ with its indigenous flora not yet exterminated ; and, till the last fifty years, the vast tracts of uninclosed hillside waste land, long since turned into arable fields and upland pastures or grass land. There are but few bog plants, as most of such marshy land as once existed has long been drained. The county is naturally divided into three parts by the Rivers Wash (or Gwash) and Chater, running fairly parallel to one another from west 10 east. On the south-west it is separated from Leicestershire by the ' Beaumont Chase, now treeless, once stood in the middle of this forest, hence the name. 19
