Fig. 48. A Surrey heath
The uncultivated sands are sometimes not really so very different, and some of them, perhaps many of them, might be improved or reclaimed and made to grow these special crops if it were worth while. But they always require special treatment and therefore they have been left alone. In days of old our ancestors disliked them very much; "villanous, rascally heaths" Cobbett always called them. There were practically no villages and few cottages, because the land was too barren to produce enough food; the few dwellers on the heath, or the "heathen," were so ignorant and benighted that the name came to stand generally for all such people and has remained in our language long after its original meaning was lost. As there were so few inhabitants the heaths used to be great places for robbers, highwaymen, and evil-doers generally; Gad's Hill on the Watling St. between Rochester and Gravesend, Finchley Common, Hounslow Heath and others equally dreaded by travellers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were barren sandy tracts. But in our time we no longer need to dread them; we can enjoy the infinite charm of the breezy, open country with its brown vegetation, the pink blossom of the bell-shaped heath and the lilac blossom of the heather, the splashes of yellow from the ragwort or the gorse and the dark pine and larch plantations. In the spring the young shoots of bracken lend a beautiful light green colour to the scene, while in the autumn the faded growth covers it all with a rich brown. People now like to live amid such surroundings, and so these heaths, that have been untouched for so long and are part of the original primeval England as it was in the days of the Britons, are becoming dotted with red bricked and red tiled villas, and are fast losing their ancient character. The heaths are not everywhere dry; there are numerous clay basins where the sand lies wet, where peat forms (see p. 37), and where marsh plants like the bog asphodel, sundew, or cotton grass can be found. In walking over a heath you soon learn to find these wet places by the colour of the grass and the absence of heather. In some places there is a good deal of wood, especially pines, larches, and silver birches: all these are very common on the Surrey sands, willows also grow in the damp places. Fig. 48 shows a Surrey heath—Blackheath—with heather, gorse and bracken; with pine-woods in the distance and everywhere some bare patches of sand. Much of the New Forest is on the sand, as also is Bournemouth, famous for its fine pine woods. Fig. 49 is a view of such woods on Wimbledon common. But elsewhere there is no wood: the peasants burn the turf, and so you find their cottages have huge fireplaces: instead of fences round their gardens or round the plantations there are walls made of turf. Such are the Dorchester heaths so finely described by Hardy in The Return of the Native and other novels. Other sands, however, are covered with grass and not with heather, and many of these have a special value for golf links, especially some of the dry, invigorating sands by the seaside. The famous links at St Andrews, and at Littlestone, are examples.
Fig. 49. Woodland and heather on light sandy soil, Wimbledon Common
In between the fertile and the barren sands come a number that are cultivated without being very good. They are much like the others, carrying a vegetation that is usually of the narrow leaved type (p. 72), and not very dense. On the road sides you see broom, heather, heath, harebells, along with gorse and bracken with milkwort nestling underneath: crested dog's tail and sheep's fescue are common grasses, while spurrey, knotwood, corn marigold, are a few of the numerous weeds in the arable fields. Gardens are easily dug, but it is best to put into them only those plants that, like the native vegetation, can withstand drought: vegetable gardens must be well manured and well limed. Fig. 50 shows some of this kind of country in Surrey, the barley field is surrounded by wood and very poor grass on the higher slopes.
