A Country Parish

By A. W. Boyd

The natural history of an ordinary English country parish was one of the first subjects that suggested themselves when the New Naturalist series was planned. This edition is exclusive to newnaturalists.com

The natural history of an ordinary English country parish was one of the first subjects that suggested themselves when the New Naturalist series was planned. Being chiefly farmland and therefore practically all man-made, most country parishes are extremely complex from the naturalist’s point of view and also inevitably contain a vast amount of human history. Any attempt to describe their plants and animals has to be closely related with the ways of man himself, who must be regarded as the chief element in the community – a fact which has been obvious enough to naturalists ever since the days of Gilbert White. For this book we are fortunate to have found an author who combines a thorough all-round knowledge of natural history with a sound insight into human customs, history, pastimes and farming methods. Arnold Boyd has lived in Cheshire all his life – since 1902 in the parish of Antrobus, part of the old parish of Great Budworth, the character of which is typical of much of the Cheshire Plain. In keeping with the best tradition of English amateur naturalists, he excels as a collector of facts, as has been apparent from his previous books, his writing in the Manchester Guardian and other journals, and in his assistant editorship of British Birds. By weaving together his collection of facts he presents us with a book of remarkable unity and which shows a wide grasp of every aspect of the living communities. This charming yet erudite portrait will protect his beloved parish forever from the ravages of human forgetfulness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Mar 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9780007406111

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EDITORS’ PREFACE

WHEN THE New Naturalist series was first planned, one of the first of the subjects that suggested themselves was the natural history of an ordinary English country parish.

From the natural history point of view the typical English country parish is extremely complex. Being mainly farmland, it is practically man-made, with non-natural habitats. Its natural history contains a vast amount of human history. It is thus idle to attempt to dissect and describe the communities of these habitats without closely relating the lives of plants and animals with the ways of man, and regarding him as the chief element in the living community.

The natural history of an English country parish is largely a natural history of man. This has been a fact obvious enough to all naturalists ever since the days of Gilbert White. One of the troubles in finding an author for this book has been the fact that there are few naturalists living today who have the quality of all-roundness of the author of The Natural History of Selborne. There can be few who combine a thorough all-round knowledge of natural history with a knowledge of human history, customs and farming methods. Nevertheless, there are some such men working and writing today, all of them in the strict sense amateurs; farmers, business men, doctors, clergy. Arnold Boyd is such a one. He has lived in Cheshire all his life and has been devoted to natural history during such hours as he could win from business and farming. Since 1920 he has lived in the parish of Antrobus, part of the old parish of Great Budworth—a parish typical of much of the Cheshire Plain.

In keeping with one of the dominant traditions of English amateur naturalists, Mr. Boyd has excelled as a collector of facts. This delight in facts for their own sake has been apparent in his writings in the Manchester Guardian and other journals for many years, in his scientific papers and books, and in his assistant editorship of the magazine British Birds. In this book he weaves his collection of facts together, and shows himself to have a wide grasp of living communities. Throughout A COUNTRY PARISH Mr. Boyd’s own particular delight in birds, butterflies, moths, flowers, local customs and speech, shines out, as does a special knowledge of the social conditions of the 18th century; but nowhere does he lose sight of his goal, the description of his parish as a whole: and we feel sure that the reader will, like us, lay down the book with an impression of wholeness and unity. The portrait he gives will protect his beloved parish for ever from the erosion of history and the ravages of human forgetfulness.

In commending A COUNTRY PARISH to our readers we would like specially to mention the beautiful colour photographs taken by Mr. C. W. Bradley, in close collaboration with the author.

THE EDITORS

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

THIS IS an attempt to describe an English country parish. In a book of natural history, it is felt that no such description would be complete, or indeed possible, if it did not include much about man, the predominant and most interesting animal, and his influence on the countryside. The history of the parish, social conditions in the past, the systems of farming (which govern to a great extent the status and character of all wild life), local trades, sports, customs and speech all therefore have their part in an account of this kind.

The parish chosen is that of Great Budworth, in Cheshire. It lies in the north of the Cheshire plain, to the south of the Lancashire town of Warrington and the Mersey valley, and just on the north side of the Cheshire town of Northwich. Formerly it was a very large parish. In the 18th century it contained two chapelries and no fewer than 18 townships, one of which (Over Whitley Lordship—part of the royal Honour of Halton) was itself divided into smaller townships, but today it is very much smaller and at least seven new parishes with churches of their own have been carved out of the mother parish. An Honour was a seignority of several manors held under a lord paramount, in this case the Crown. A Lordship is a manor.

When discussing the history and human activities of Great Budworth, I propose to deal generally with all that portion of the old parish which lies to the west and north of Watling Street, the Roman road from Manchester through Northwich to Chester, and in greater detail with the ancient township and modern parish of Antrobus (which has recently absorbed Sevenoaks, a small township containing the hamlet of Frandley, where I live), and with the present parish of Great Budworth.

In dealing with the flora and fauna, however, exact boundaries may with advantage be disregarded. For this purpose an arbitrary but convenient area lying within a circle with a radius of 4¹/2 miles from the centre of Marbury Mere at Great Budworth has been taken, an area in which I have for the last quarter of a century to some extent concentrated my inquiries in natural history. In this way man-made boundaries, which perhaps follow the bed of a stream and which wild life disregards, are not allowed to divide a natural area, and a more real estimate of the fauna and flora of a district may be established.

INTRODUCTION

DESCRIPTION OF THE PARISH, AND A NOTE ON ITS WEATHER

KEUPER MARL underlies the entire area of this part of the Cheshire plain, over which lies boulder clay, much of it stiff clay of frequently varying density, which contains many of the rounded stones used for paving cobbled lanes and farmyards, with here and there impenetrable fox-bench and in some parts extensive beds of sand and occasional outcrops of sandstone; in the valleys of the Weaver and the brooks there are considerable deposits of alluvium and on the mossland peat overlying the clay. Large beds of rock-salt underlie much of the clay, Triassic salt-beds of great economic importance, which were deposited when the waters of the Keuper salt lake covering this part of the country began to evaporate, and there are some springs of wild brine. It is, in fact, a fairly typical stretch of lowland Cheshire, nowhere more than 284 ft. above sea-level dropping to 30 ft. in the Weaver valley; a gently rolling well-wooded area of the plain with, in parts of the parish, extensive views to the south across the valley of the Weaver to the hills of High Billinge, Eddisbury and Overton in Delamere Forest and, on clear days through a gap in these hills, a distant view of Moel Famma in Flintshire.

The surface of the land with its woodlands, peaty moss-lands and fertile arable and grass fields is normal to this formation, with oaks on the clay, birches on the peat, and alders in the valleys and swampy carrs. The actual nature of the soil is very varied and often changes from field to field. Thus, much of the land in the township of Antrobus and near the village of Great Budworth is considerably lighter than that in some other parts of the parish and so is admirably suited to potato-growing. This soil in Antrobus is dark in colour; where, however, beds of sand intrude it is naturally rather redder. These beds of sand sometimes divide lighter land from the heavier clay; for example, the high-road at Frandley divides sandy and lighter soil on the north side from heavier clay on the southward slopes of Frandley Brow and at Cogshall and this change is typical of many parts of the parish.

The river Weaver, the main stream draining much of the central and southern Cheshire plain, has a number of tributary brooks—the Peover Eye, Wade Brook, Cogshall Brook and others. Two large meres, Marbury (or Budworth) Mere, and Pickmere, formed according to some theorists by prehistoric subsidence caused by the dissolution of rock-salt (although in the opinion of others the general lie of the meres hardly suggests this), take a prominent place in the scenery of the parish.

A third large mere, that at Tabley, differs in no way from the others in flora or fauna, although originally of artificial formation.

By these meres reed swamps have formed and in places are in the process of growth. The alluvial valleys of the lowland streams before they were drained formed and still in part form boggy tracts of moderate width.

The fauna and flora of the parish show considerable diversity in so comparatively small an area. They vary according to habitat, and change as the nature of the soil changes. Man, the predominant animal, has long been established in numerous settlements. Some villages, such as Great Budworth itself and Barnton, were doubtless chosen for their defensive positions; others, like Witton, were a natural choice at the confluence of several streams; Lostock Gralam stands at the junction of two Roman roads. In certain areas, however, such groups of houses as occur are nothing more than hamlets, like Frandley in Sevenoaks or Pole Lane Ends in Antrobus township, and farmhouses are dotted at intervals and mark the place where a clearing in the woods or a reclamation of the waste made necessary the building of a dwelling to house the husbandman.

For other forms of life (as well as for man) the amount of water and marsh has played and still plays an important part in deciding the prevalent species. The meres are well stocked with coarse fish and are the home of otters. Water-birds, duck, grebes, coots and the like breed there; gulls visit them in great numbers and many migrants and wanderers from the coast; the reed-beds harbour reed-warblers and water-rails, and the marshy spots sedge-warblers and reed-buntings. Water and marsh plants grow in luxuriant abundance. The mosslands have a quite different flora: in addition to their birches, the sweetgale and buckthorn grow plentifully and their flowers include the bog asphodel, the cross-leaved heath and the climbing corydalis. Here the redpoll and whinchat are more numerous than elsewhere in the district and moss insects such as the orange underwing moth (Brephos parthenias), Crambus margaritellus, and many others find their proper habitat.

image 1

FIG. 1—Map of the Great Budworth district. Approx. scale 1: 13,900 or about 2¹/4 inches to the mile. The circle represents an area of radius 4¹/2 miles centred in Budworth or Marbury Mere. It includes the present parish of Great Budworth and parts of other parishes and is the area to which all details of natural history in this book are confined. Part of the older (and larger) parish of Great Budworth, to which some facts of history and folklore belong, lies a short distance outside the circle. Frandley is situated just east of the y in Whitley. From an Ordnance Map, by permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.

In the woodlands we find fox and badger, squirrel and rabbit and those birds which need the taller trees or good cover for their nests—woodpeckers, jays, hawks, crows, doves and pheasants. In the woods daffodils flower and wood anemones grow in profusion, and great stretches of bluebells where undergrowth is not excessive.

The life of the open fields is again different, but is largely the outcome of man’s activities and will be discussed in the following chapter.

As is shown in the accompanying graphs, for which, and other data, I am greatly indebted to Mr. Giles Owen, the weather of this district is usually mild, with a mean average shade temperature for the year of 47°F. 80°F. is reached only occasionally in summer and such heat waves as occur almost always culminate in thunderstorms with a drop of 20°. Some of these storms are particularly heavy: in July .97 ins. of rain in 40 minutes, and .38 ins in 8 minutes have been recorded.

Rainfall for the year averages 30 ins.—6.63 ins. in the first quarter, 6.10 ins. in the second, 9.11 ins. in the third and 9.03 ins. in the fourth quarter. Normally April is the driest month and August the wettest. Exceptionally, in 1921 and in 1933 only 18 ins. of rain fell in the year—12 ins. below the average. In the wettest month in 25 years, July 1939, no less than 7.83 ins. of rain were recorded, and 4.61 ins. in February 1946 brought serious floods to Northwich, when the rivers Dane and Weaver overflowed and the Flashes rose several feet.

The period of greatest cold is generally between mid-January and the end of February. The lowest temperature recorded was 5° below zero in January 1940. There was a memorable frost in 1895 when the canals were frozen 18 ins thick for 13 weeks. Snowfall is usually not very heavy, but on 28 January, 1940, a very severe snowstorm blocked the highroad between Warrington and Great Budworth in several places and some lanes were impassable for weeks.

The prevailing wind comes from the South-West on 33% of the days in the year, on the average, and it blows from the North-West on an almost equal number of days. A South-Easterly wind does not blow very often but not infrequently brings heavy rain, whereas an East wind is usually drier. The higher parts of the parish are exposed to the violence of Westerly gales, which sweep unimpeded up the Weaver valley and occasionally do considerable harm. I saw a hen-house high up in a poplar tree after a gale on 7 April 1943, which uprooted many trees all over the parish, big yews among them, and blew many herons’ and rooks’ nests out of their trees. Occasionally there is a freak storm. One in 1896 scattered haystacks in Barnton and blew spray high from the river; a narrow storm some years earlier swept for no more than two miles from Cogshall to Antrobus but took roofs off buildings on its way; and a violent storm which did much harm on 27 and 28 December 1854 was long remembered.

CHAPTER 1

MAN’S INFLUENCE ON THE FLORA AND FAUNA

O earth, what changes hast thou seen!

TENNYSON: In Memoriam CXXIII

IT IS notorious that nowhere in the more closely cultivated parts of Britain do natural conditions obtain. Our countryside, especially fertile tracts like the Cheshire plain, is man-made and his influence on its natural life infinite. In the old days much of our parish was covered with oak-scrub and was uncultivated. Thus in Domesday Book we read that in the time of Edward the Confessor the whole manor of Antrobus was waste and contained a wood one league long and half a league wide and that there were similar woods in Cogshall, Aston-by-Budworth and Whitley. And, indeed, until recent times there were large stretches of moss, heathland and common (as maps of 1777 and 1829 clearly show) at Bartington, Anderton, Comberbach, Hartford and Antrobus, much of which cannot now be distinguished from the surrounding farmland except that the names of heath or common are still in local use. But even now the farmer tells me he can trace the old heathland when ploughing the fields which once formed the old Thellow (or Thilley) Heath on the border of Antrobus and Sevenoaks.

RECLAMATION AND ENCLOSURE. Gradually throughout the ages the land was reclaimed, enclosed and brought into cultivation. Little evidence is available of the time and extent of the earlier enclosures, although some of them can be traced. Thus the small Deakin Yard field, now part of Antrobus, was at one time an isolated enclosed plot belonging to the neighbouring township of Sevenoaks, but separated from Sevenoaks proper by the heath of a few acres called Thellow Heath, which was enclosed at a later date. Evidently this field had been occupied and fenced by some Sevenoaks man, when the land surrounding it was still open heath or waste. Enclosure meant an eradication of ling and many other plants which have disappeared under the plough. The agricultural revolution of the 18th century intensified this process and rapidly a great part of the country was enclosed. A map of the large Arley Estate in 1790 (Plates XII, XIII) shows the land entirely enclosed with dozens of named fields. The potato, already grown locally early in the 18th century, and the introduction of the turnip and crop rotation altered the entire system of farming, and the natural herbage gave place to the cultivated grasses and clover which now form the admirable Cheshire pastures. This change will at once have increased the number of birds typical of open farmland: the skylark, yellow-hammer, lapwing, rook and partridge; and woodland birds will have suffered in proportion. And as the land was enclosed land drainage increased. Drainage of the fields by the use of pipes has converted much damp mizzicky land and slack places to cultivation and altered the marshes, such as lie in the valleys, like that between Pickmere and Marbury Mere or by the Weaver, into fertile pastures.

As recently as 1854 the last extensive enclosure in the parish was made. Whitley Reed, the deepest morass in Cheshire, some 316 acres in extent, was enclosed and drained and divided among the five townships of the old lordship of Whitley and another moss at Aston-by-Budworth, known as Arley Moss, has suffered the same fate. This altered the fauna and flora fundamentally. The bittern, which is said to have nested in Whitley Reed, and the polecat, which was certainly found there, disappeared. The Reed became fertile land for several generations but neglected drains caused it to deteriorate; once more rushes prevailed, the tall reeds formed a new bed, snipe nested in increasing numbers, and it appeared that it would eventually revert to something like its old condition. However the need for an increase in farm produce in the 1939–45 war brought about its redraining and once more the snipe and the rush were banished. Thus Hitler had a direct effect on the status of the snipe in Cheshire fields.

Another form of enclosure, which has continued in living memory, has been the addition of the roadside waste to existing fields by the advancing of the hedgerows. This has caused the destruction of many plants such as the milkwort and dyer’s greenweed which still survive where such strips of uncultivated turf are left intact, as in Cogshall Hall Lane.

The result of all this drainage has been to confine largely to the pits and ditches the native plants of the marsh. In their place have come the plants of cultivation, many of them originally aliens, and now on the ploughland, unless continually checked, flourish such weeds as the red-leg (Polygonum persicaria), goosefoot of several kinds, the bee-nettle (Galeopsis speciosa), spurrey, sow-thistle and dozens more.

Stretton Moss, which lies to the north-west of Whitley Reed, has never been properly drained, although deep ditches have been cut which have greatly altered its condition. One result is that the sweet-gale grows in the utmost profusion all over it—in greater plenty than would have been the case if it had been left untouched in its natural wet state.

The quickset HEDGEROWS and their oak trees which now border virtually all the enclosed fields—wooden fences are few in number—form a most important feature of our modern countryside, and it must be remembered that most of them have been planted within the last 200 years. They give to the landscape as viewed from a distance a well-wooded appearance and without them the flora and fauna of the district would be completely changed. In them nest chaffinch and greenfinch, throstle, blackbird, dunnock and many more, and on their banks yellow-hammer, robin and partridge; in these banks rabbits, stoats and weasels find quarters exactly suited to them. In winter finch and bunting flocks, fieldfares and redwings and immigrant blackbirds live and feed there. Indigenous flowers, which cultivation has driven from the open fields, survive in these whitethorn hedges, sheltered by a tangle of bramble and briar, and with them many of the weeds of cultivation also flourish, for comparatively few farmers now heed the saying that you cannot have a clean farm with a dirty hedge. Foxgloves in particular prosper on these hedge-banks.

Once again the recent war brought change. Many of the tall hedges, useful as a wind-break for cattle in the pastures, have been laid and in cases cut down completely to let in sun and air to the greatly increased amount of arable. A direct consequence has been a marked reduction in the number of turtle-doves which nested in them and the increase in the amount of wheat grown has been followed by a considerable increase in the number of partridges.

PARKLANDS. Large parks at Arley, Marbury, and Belmont (Great Budworth) and at Tabley, enclosed by the big landowners and particularly in the 18th and early 19th centuries, were planted with tall forest trees, such as the beech, which is comparatively seldom seen elsewhere in the parish. Much of this land is open, with small groups of trees or isolated trees standing in pasture used in summer as a ley for cattle and horses, and in addition oak woods of many acres have been planted. The tall trees attract the tree-nesting birds: the heron, woodpeckers of three species and occasionally the nuthatch breed there; jackdaws and stock-doves nest in the hollow trunks; rooks have their colonies; and under the trees the wood-wren nests. Wood-pigeons and turtle-doves also find suitable nesting sites, usually in the lower and more bushy trees.

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FIG. 2 Map of the rookeries and footpaths of the Great Budworth area from a sketch map by the author

FOX COVERTS planted and maintained for the one purpose of harbouring foxes for the hunt have had a far greater effect on other forms of life than those responsible for them have ever realised. All over our Cheshire countryside these little woods are scattered. A map, printed in 1829, shows Merryfall Wood in Whitley as a foxcovert, and that is still its function. Wherever there were groups of several marl or clay pits or uneven uncultivatable land, trees were planted to form additional coverts, known as Roughs—Charley’s Rough at Marbury, Newall’s Rough in Antrobus, Stockley Rough near Stretton and others. In these coverts and roughs birds flourish which the game preserver seeks to destroy: magpies, carrion-crows, jays, sparrow-hawks and kestrels. Here, too, the summer warblers, the blackcap, garden-warbler, and willow-wren find shelter. Here the rabbit shares sanctuary with fox, badger and stoat. These woods, like the hedgerows, provide refuge for plants, such as bluebell, banished from the areas which are now fields.

GAME PRESERVATION has broadly much the same effect, but in a different degree. At one time game was generally far more strictly preserved than it is today, when, for instance, a keeper looked after Sevenoaks and Cogshall and another the Marbury estate. Now only at Arley and Tabley is it seriously preserved. In game preserves, in direct contrast to the fox coverts, the sparrow-hawk and kestrel are destroyed, magpie, jay and crow kept down or at least discouraged, stoats and weasels trapped and even owls, most valuable of the farmers’ friends, are sometimes shot. Rabbits and rats flourish accordingly. But this process, although it may dishearten and reduce the numbers of raptorial birds, has a direct influence on the status of the smaller birds which here are more numerous than elsewhere. These small warblers and the woodland flowers which are disregarded and even unnoticed by many a keeper, owe much to him and to his employer.

MARL PITS. A stranger to Cheshire is often surprised to find in almost every field a drinking pit for cattle. These were formed by the practice of marling the land, a practice which continued here till as late as 1896. Marl, calcareous clay, dug by travelling gangs of marlers, who had traditional customs of their own, was spread over the fields; this added enormously to the land’s fertility and to the amount of wheat grown in the district, although it permanently destroyed part of the land to manure the rest. These pits have had a direct and great influence on the distribution of plants.

Prominent among these are the several species of Potamogeton on the water’s surface and at the edge rushes and sedges, reedmace, yellow flag, loosestrife, marsh and bur marigolds and other typical plants; and round them grow a ring of alders and sallows. Often they were dug in pairs with a narrow bank called the mid-feather between them, to hold up the water while the second pit was dug.

The moorhen nests in almost every pit; the reed-bunting commonly and sometimes the sedge-warbler build at the edge; siskins come to feed in the alders. Many contain fish—roach in particular—and are the home of newts and aquatic insects. Thus man has restored to the fields, and even increased, just what he destroyed by drainage and reclamation. Without these pits the ecology of the county would be entirely altered.

ARTIFICIAL WATER. In addition to the marl-pits permanent stretches of water of two kinds have been formed by the damming of brooks and the building of retaining banks: park lakes and mill-dams. The former have increased the number of meres in the county and in this parish alone there are the upper and lower pools in Arley Park, the pool at Belmont and the big mere in Tabley Park. Although they are artificial their fauna and flora differ little if at all from those of the natural meres: reed-beds of the same type are formed in which the great crested grebe and reed-warbler nest; there is a large heronry at Tabley, where many duck breed and the cowbane flowers; at Arley tufted duck and teal nest and the flowering rush grows by the pool.

Mill-dams play a similar though much smaller part. The mill at Arley is fed by the waters of the lower pool, which was no doubt originally formed for that purpose; Marbury mill pool, where the grey wagtail has one of its few Cheshire lowland breeding stations, is stocked with trout and there was formerly another large dam at Cogshall on the same brook. By the large mill pool known locally as Grimsditch Twigs the sedge-warbler sings among the sallows. But the artificial waters are more subject to the vagaries of man than the natural meres. The recent re-draining of Whitley Reed, during which the brook which ran through the upper pool at Arley was diverted, has caused this pool to silt up; a big reed-bed has been formed and was soon occupied by a colony of reed-warblers and although there are fewer duck, there are more snipe. Cogshall mill pool has been drained dry and its bed is now full of willows.

SALTWORKING has continued since Roman times and has had a far-reaching effect on the land. Subsidence in and around Northwich, where there were many rock-salt mines, began seriously in 1750 and many of the pits fell in during the next half century. The flooding of mines caused the supporting salt pillars to dissolve and the land collapsed, and brine pumping increased the danger, until large lakes of many acres known as Witton Flashes were formed and smaller flashes at Billinge Green to the east. As recently as 1912 a sudden inrush of water into a mine at Marston drained a big flash, which eventually filled again and continued to grow. And in addition to the formation of these extensive lakes much shelving land became derelict and other large areas were covered with cinders and waste from the chemical works. The flashes have been a great attraction to duck, grebes, dabchicks, redshanks and sandpipers which have bred there. Gulls in particular are drawn there daily from the Mersey estuary in great numbers and blackheaded gulls form a winter roost there; and passing migrants, some of them rare strangers, often drop in for a visit. When Marston Old Hole ran dry the muddy banks soon became weed-clad and birds of a different family—big flocks of bramblings and chaffinches in hundreds—occupied the sides of the hole.

The broken shelving waste ground which surrounds the flashes, and which at Anderton was once the site of long-destroyed salt-works, is an admirable sanctuary for birds typical of rough land and low scrub: the yellow wagtail in particular abounds; there alone in the district the meadow-pipit breeds; the jay nests in the bushes; and this is the place where goldfinches are most often seen in the parish. There, too, flowers flourish—such as the toadflax, dyer’s mignonette, teasel, fleabane, hedge mustard, St. John’s wort, aliens like the Oxford ragwort, and scores more, with the rose-bay willow-herb in the greatest profusion. A similar tract of waste land at Holford, where works recently stood, supports a rich flora among which butterflies, such as the large skipper, live among the undisturbed plants and grasses.

These flashes, however, have in the last few years, been once again the scene of violent change. Industrial lime-waste was pumped into and began to fill them. Gone are the nesting water-birds, the fish have been killed and for a time gulls were their only regular visitors, resting in big flocks on the newly-formed lime-beds. Another and remarkable change occurred when the pumping ceased. The brooks brought silt down at flood-time and covered much of the lime and the sand-banks thus formed attracted migrant waders in far greater numbers and variety than had ever been known in the district.

RAILWAYS have also caused changes. Traffic carries seeds and insects which find undisturbed sanctuary on the banks, especially in cuttings like that between Hartford and Vale Royal, where the wild carrot has its main station in the district; there, too, the five-spot burnet moth, for decades unknown in Cheshire, lives in thousands, the dark green fritillary flies and both grizzled and large skippers occur. By the branch railway at Billinge Green flowers like hare’s foot clover and Smith’s cress and the burnet moths have found a home—brought undoubtedly by passing traffic.

THE WEAVER NAVIGATION which, by providing locks and deepening the stream, has made the river Weaver between Winsford and the Mersey available to sea-going vessels, dates from 1730 and since that time various cuts have been made to straighten its course and the old bed remains as long shallow pools for water plants. For the natural historian its most obvious effect has been the introduction by means of barge traffic of coastal and alien plants and insects; these prosper on the river-banks and on town tips at Anderton and Northwich and penetrate to those