tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52551804531777978492024-03-13T16:11:08.530+00:00Our Vital EarthWords and images by Tim Holt-WilsonTim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-45947113633551030282022-05-19T13:11:00.017+01:002022-05-22T10:32:29.775+01:00No-Mow-May<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">May returns
and “<i>the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land</i>”. Sadly, the voice of the lawnmower is more likely to be heard today, as
the grasses, dandelions and daisies surge ahead, and normalising lawn
management fires up again. A lawn is a meadow passed under the yoke of culture.
For some people even a striped lawn is too wild, and they replace it with
plastic green turf. All this ‘normalising’ comes at a cost to the diversity of
living things which thrive in grassland. </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">Grasses were
invented by nature about 120 million years ago, though it is unlikely that
dinosaurs ever rolled on a prairie. It would take 70 million years or more
before grasses were prolific enough to carpet the ground, so the pleasure of
rolling on a greensward belonged to browsing and grazing mammals of the early
Tertiary epoch. Later, whole ecosystems such as savannah, steppe and pampas
evolved as a joint project of mammals and grasses. Grazers such as aurochs are
likely to have maintained forest clearings and floodplain grasslands in prehistoric
Britain (Yalden 1999, p.72). Wrested from woodland and valley scrubland for the purpose of livestock farming, hay meadows and grazing pastures are a Neolithic creation (Rackham 1987, p.330). Sheep, cattle and horses need
them, and we need these animals. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Sadly the
familiar British meadow has become a rarity, particularly in the lowlands where
90% of it has been lost in the past century (Lake et al, 2020, p152). Ploughed
up in favour of arable or replaced by monocultural grass leys, too many old
meadows and pastures have been deleted from the landscape and, along with them,
the vibrant populations of herbs, insects, birds, mammals, fungi, et
cetera, which had thrived on them for many hundreds of years.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">One place in
Suffolk with long-established grassland was Brome Park. The Hall was built in
Tudor times, about 1550, and an engraving dated 1707 shows the house surrounded
by extensive parkland and trees. The Park survived until about 1963 after which
it was converted to arable land. The only areas not ploughed up were the
grounds of the Hall, its tree-lined avenue and a scrap of land attached to a
cottage known as The Bungalow, which is where I have lived since 1992.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKewDLXwilzQR9larT1DdbrLGQeJV02FVm4uxpjVoFNcv27fWecH7j0KibcAM3irh8u9RB7ZNrfwTG8TPe2gJ4qviSQM1ImCqTZLcJi7RDXW9gk5Si1rNB90DkjxuxO5ictSjhuwVegmZqV49YvCF0K6S4rFHhqHG-H3e3Fc0aYB23TTxyRHusF4KrCA/s800/Jan%20Kip%201707%20Brome%20Hall.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="593" data-original-width="800" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKewDLXwilzQR9larT1DdbrLGQeJV02FVm4uxpjVoFNcv27fWecH7j0KibcAM3irh8u9RB7ZNrfwTG8TPe2gJ4qviSQM1ImCqTZLcJi7RDXW9gk5Si1rNB90DkjxuxO5ictSjhuwVegmZqV49YvCF0K6S4rFHhqHG-H3e3Fc0aYB23TTxyRHusF4KrCA/w640-h474/Jan%20Kip%201707%20Brome%20Hall.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brome Hall, illustrated by Jan Kip, 1707.<br />The site of the Bungalow is just out of the picture, beyond a pond and dovecote (far left).</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><br /><div>At first I mowed the lawns assiduously, to keep on top of the vegetation in a drive for order. I was worried what the neighbours might think if I didn’t. Later, led by a mixture of laziness and botanical curiosity, I began to make a first cut much later in the season. I began leaving some areas of grass longer than others – frankly, I hadn’t the heart to mince up the flowers that began showing themselves. As years went by, the lawn began to lose its carpet-like quality and became more like a meadow, with a tussocky grass structure interleaved with a variety of other plants. Some patches were left longer than others, following a three-tier regime. I became aware of the diverse flora within my care. I noticed discrete populations in different parts of the lawn: stands of cocksfoot grass and common sorrel on brown soils contrasting with timothy grass, ground ivy and mosses on sandier soils.</div><div><br /><br /><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPjphaggEd0QSiPy8DjJpAOVqL7quvfwOHmiZ7CBaRGGbnFnuybqTevIRJLi6hA8753Tkm1cp5eILO8QSihBAwbS7VYS8xjQ4sNPfL4iRep4Mnkdfnx-Dk8Pk-zAmk1RmFOFLujoPv1D9_-zHps-IIk7dNouFrAuOP__JcqxHbr02CSBOmaPdGpAoLeg/s1000/1000%20lawn%20845.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="1000" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPjphaggEd0QSiPy8DjJpAOVqL7quvfwOHmiZ7CBaRGGbnFnuybqTevIRJLi6hA8753Tkm1cp5eILO8QSihBAwbS7VYS8xjQ4sNPfL4iRep4Mnkdfnx-Dk8Pk-zAmk1RmFOFLujoPv1D9_-zHps-IIk7dNouFrAuOP__JcqxHbr02CSBOmaPdGpAoLeg/w640-h360/1000%20lawn%20845.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable"><tbody><tr><td style="padding: 0cm;"></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 0cm;"><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">Germander speedwell (<i>Veronica chamaedrys</i>), ground ivy (<i>Glecoma hederacea</i>) and creeping buttercup (<i>Ranunculus repens</i>) in a sward of springy turf moss (<i>Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus</i>), May 2022.</p></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN50ukyzQbbR4mL4ztlOZvhvvZT21049UBiXZr07MFPFsGfNAOZqHa1KgiD0ignpjGxIBIhWdCiZaLwokwxa64j6kf4wJWvXnotvWRL0043zEfapqzapTieqCDwtRMoONBqsg2MKEmWhzPljEQzTPiHDKgfjs-60jW58iigx88oUlqzyzU3wyHjb25-g/s1000/1000%20cuckoo%20flower%20236.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="1000" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN50ukyzQbbR4mL4ztlOZvhvvZT21049UBiXZr07MFPFsGfNAOZqHa1KgiD0ignpjGxIBIhWdCiZaLwokwxa64j6kf4wJWvXnotvWRL0043zEfapqzapTieqCDwtRMoONBqsg2MKEmWhzPljEQzTPiHDKgfjs-60jW58iigx88oUlqzyzU3wyHjb25-g/w640-h360/1000%20cuckoo%20flower%20236.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lady's smock (<i>Cardamine pratensis</i>) starring the lawn, with a large anthill (right), May 2022.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0arWUHyqI_WFbREIuEBvBK_2DlT3p5bc2IngQrX5Kx3F20_5a0bt37JzNEPwYTwzCrqEOn08376J5_yqyoIzcXjOl_UHabwTPDLP9PiOOdf3IrQ4-ALg53mK8s19b9jyziTu14FF6_40f8PZIhk0tJD6_KGRUlLHsy7JDwr8Vnx4nKoXmvXXrpK0cWg/s800/800%20125_8~2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="800" height="363" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0arWUHyqI_WFbREIuEBvBK_2DlT3p5bc2IngQrX5Kx3F20_5a0bt37JzNEPwYTwzCrqEOn08376J5_yqyoIzcXjOl_UHabwTPDLP9PiOOdf3IrQ4-ALg53mK8s19b9jyziTu14FF6_40f8PZIhk0tJD6_KGRUlLHsy7JDwr8Vnx4nKoXmvXXrpK0cWg/w528-h363/800%20125_8~2.jpg" width="528" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirW679GbRYhplbl7dxS8RaJgUPsvdyNszj6H49hK5oiCLjYjlVltoh-QQPVDhDgizLBriP3kha0NC3VfsczQbSOasmh5bMZnQkC3ynA2qZjUE7D96NobmTllQvKXr_eewVPyClIa6KrW23JIiDp7PAi8yq4_rzLrw7vJsd8Xf71KmurLMA_aIslMWiJA/s912/800%20twayblade%20588~2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="912" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirW679GbRYhplbl7dxS8RaJgUPsvdyNszj6H49hK5oiCLjYjlVltoh-QQPVDhDgizLBriP3kha0NC3VfsczQbSOasmh5bMZnQkC3ynA2qZjUE7D96NobmTllQvKXr_eewVPyClIa6KrW23JIiDp7PAi8yq4_rzLrw7vJsd8Xf71KmurLMA_aIslMWiJA/w351-h400/800%20twayblade%20588~2.jpg" width="351" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Twayblade orchid (<i>Listera ovata</i>), May 2022.</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">In 1999, I
began making a list of as many species of plants and insects as I was able to
recognise. I counted seven species of grass and two kinds of speedwell. I was
amazed to find a twayblade orchid in one place and a spotted orchid in another;
my lawnmower had never given them a chance to grow before. I found an incipient
anthill beneath a plant pot, with yellow meadow ants scurrying about. I
replaced the pot, and later discovered they had earthed up around it. This gave
me the idea of encouraging anthills, of which I now have four – the largest is
30 cm high x 70 cm across. The lawn is now a texturally rich habitat: it may
look a bit ragged and untidy in places but it now supports a much richer flora
and fauna. In August I notice small moths flying up from the grasses round my
feet. Frogs shelter beneath cool, matted tussocks, and voles forge a
complicated network of tunnelled pathways. The spotted flycatcher swoops from a
vantage point to snatch flying insects. The green woodpecker bangs away
at the ant hills. Rabbits scuff holes and leave scatterings of bare earth which
are host for fresh seeds. Plumes of gnats dance overhead, sometimes following
my head disconcertingly as I move about. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTlSKyQVoWVE64BRDkXwo1m8gtnmCdhNDB_Xhxg3ONQRZN4XgxhbO3qRcq3HLqYGkUAVx62jeEdUoi6Me8iT9jZ_qZmNqhZaNemnz2dvZfq6Qhd1uerWH_3S6M1CnPpNbb9cXVSe1qK9OkkbsXQC2y0gtn2YE7yf0NH8VRcgG0ugbnHdV1NE72DO8fqQ/s800/800%20ants%20IMGP2423.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTlSKyQVoWVE64BRDkXwo1m8gtnmCdhNDB_Xhxg3ONQRZN4XgxhbO3qRcq3HLqYGkUAVx62jeEdUoi6Me8iT9jZ_qZmNqhZaNemnz2dvZfq6Qhd1uerWH_3S6M1CnPpNbb9cXVSe1qK9OkkbsXQC2y0gtn2YE7yf0NH8VRcgG0ugbnHdV1NE72DO8fqQ/w640-h480/800%20ants%20IMGP2423.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ant activity amid leaves of creeping cinquefoil (<i>Potentilla reptans</i>) and tufted vetch (<i>Vicia cracca</i>), May 2021. </td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">Having this
meadow on my doorstep has transformed my engagement with and understanding of
wildlife, particularly plants and insects. It has prompted photography,
microscopy and the gathering of a small reference library. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">What I have
done here is allow the inherent richness in this small corner of Suffolk to
express itself. The diversity - the seven species of grasses, for example – is
a legacy of the past, and argues for habitat continuity here. I didn’t plant
them. I argue that my lawn is the final, biodiverse remnant of the old Brome
Park which goes back to Tudor times, at least. </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The sward reminds me of old churchyards; it may
never have been ploughed. None of the other land round here – not even the
grounds of the Hall – is anything like so rich. I admit of having made
additions to the garden over the past 30 years, for example alexanders,
hyacinth, marjoram, lungwort, mahonia, box, magnolia, and – on the lawn – a
clump of greater knapweed. I argued that none of these have modified the
baseline plant population, which I think is an ancient one. I fear that when I
leave here this little world will be endangered by someone who does not
appreciate just what a special place it is.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ-HTpjVqMkxYysock-FjlLoN-6Z0CCBtQJMfPYoxupobrv96CF8potCnZLmuvMkNjjttH0V9k59QQiGRcjWsP6tvhhhQncEfFRr6B_T09X9x60S3w5bXGFhVoI7sYsxRrpUb7ihXhATu5ldEDkihMeIanYZPXbupQNmUvPO2YO2hRmQFYtPKfuUfu6w/s800/800%20sorrell%20608%20cut.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="592" data-original-width="800" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ-HTpjVqMkxYysock-FjlLoN-6Z0CCBtQJMfPYoxupobrv96CF8potCnZLmuvMkNjjttH0V9k59QQiGRcjWsP6tvhhhQncEfFRr6B_T09X9x60S3w5bXGFhVoI7sYsxRrpUb7ihXhATu5ldEDkihMeIanYZPXbupQNmUvPO2YO2hRmQFYtPKfuUfu6w/w640-h474/800%20sorrell%20608%20cut.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Common sorrel (<i>Rumex acetosa</i>) and fading leaves of lesser celandine (<i>Ficaria verna</i>), May 2022.</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">My advice to
gardeners is to stop mowing in May and see what comes up on your lawn. See what
plant and animal diversity you already have – get to know and identify it,
discover it close up; take macro photographs. If you find a monoculture then by
all means diversify it, with native species chosen to typify a Suffolk meadow
in your corner of the county. Someone in the future will thank you. Vary your mowing regime – I use a hand
scythe in July to cut the longest grasses in the centre of the lawn while carving
out swathes of different lengths in other parts with a petrol lawnmower. Sit
back and note what happens. Give yourself a decadal timescale. Prepare to be
surprised and delighted by what you find. Remember: it’s not all about ‘you’:
the world is a fabric of other lives, from slugs to hedgehogs, frogs to
daisies, and your lawn is part of the tapestry which makes theirs possible.
Make space for nature, and remember that there is nowhere on Earth that we can
take wildlife for granted any more. You have a scrap of our planet in your
care.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZXVmAVfJbeeW6EJFwH5AlTtM6cIOovjJsK7XdJQUITvAgXv27z7Q5t8BtbrLvstoeh0SDSH1xdl-SMDLKikkQlujFH3tne3kUFQHcTP4mtOm1JcHB4eIOIqheceqnfUzI4ErO0THViaTMEW-tRcJjkdeGIHKy11pPFIEKkUKC-V_yF8uva_epAro3_Q/s800/800%20395%20cut%202.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="800" height="482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZXVmAVfJbeeW6EJFwH5AlTtM6cIOovjJsK7XdJQUITvAgXv27z7Q5t8BtbrLvstoeh0SDSH1xdl-SMDLKikkQlujFH3tne3kUFQHcTP4mtOm1JcHB4eIOIqheceqnfUzI4ErO0THViaTMEW-tRcJjkdeGIHKy11pPFIEKkUKC-V_yF8uva_epAro3_Q/w640-h482/800%20395%20cut%202.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A small hay meadow in the making - first growth of grasses <i>Alopecurus pratensis, Arrenatherium elatius, Dactylis glomerata, Lolium perenne, Poa trivialis, Poa pratensis </i>and others, May 2022</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: center;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p><br /><hr /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">REFERENCES</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Lake, S. et
al 2020. <i>Britain’s Habitats</i>. Princeton University Press.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Rackham, O.
1987. <i>The History of the Countryside</i>. J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Yalden, D.
1999. <i>The History of British Mammals</i>. T & AD Poyser Ltd.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: left;"></p><hr /><p></p></div></div>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-69189234103587895852022-03-17T10:06:00.000+00:002022-03-17T10:06:39.823+00:00In memory of a friendGrief comes as a sudden surprise, like a sudden shower in May, and I remember you.<br />
<br />
I never imagined this day would come - you, strong as a horse, brave as a bear - you now underground, and all my crowding memories in your stead: the places we saw, the times we had, our expeditions, which were always purposeful adventures. You had a way of condensing action, like a lens with the rays of the sun; of gathering purposes from a frayed spray of ideas; seizing an idea then running with it - to chaos or glory, failure or success.<br />
<br />
You inherited your father Adam's instrumental, but slightly unhinged and experimental, approach to life. Mythic passion was your driver. You're the sort of man who'd cut his way through forests, axe in hand with tinder & flint in his pocket. You'd climbed trees in order to see further, like Strider scouting a way through Mirkwood. You'd know how to play a tune on a hand-made whistle or squeeze drinking water from moss. You are just the sort of man I'd want in my tribe. Your passion spanned trees and songs, handicrafts and tools, hounds and gunpowder. <br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Remembering that time at Hellions Barton when we made a bomb and pushed it deep into the clay of a river bank. When it went bang and after the smoke and spray had cleared we found we had almost dammed the stream. </li>
<li>Or trespassing into the gloomy woods at Heyford Hall on Dartmoor, where Arthur Conan Doyle got his inspiration for 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'. Setting up sheeps' skulls on a row of stakes. "What are you doing on my land"? the man demanded to know "Just doing some Ju-Ju, sir!", replied Jonathan coolly, "Well clear orff and take those bloody skulls with you".</li>
<li>New Year, 2015, with Bede and Beaumont in the South Downs, treading in the footsteps of Edward Thomas, climbing up through a slippery chalk wood, with badger setts and prehistoric flint flakes under foot; each tree a storied thing, a bearer of tales or, potentially, timber. </li>
</ul>
<br />
Your generosity. When I was ill you drove 175 miles - and back - to bring me a load of fire wood.<br />
<br />
I cannot understand how all your strength has been laid low. Who was your foe: a treacherous branch, or your own brave inattention? Whatever, the wood elves have taken you for their own, my friend, and you have gone with them into the West.<br />
<br />
We find ourselves standing here, alone in the Grey Havens, humming our wistful songs.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<i>I sit beside the fire and think</i><br />
<i>of all that I have seen</i><br />
<i>of meadow-flowers and butterflies</i><br />
<i>in summers that have been;</i><br />
<br />
<i>Of yellow leaves and gossamer</i><br />
<i>in autumns that there were,</i><br />
<i>with morning mist and silver sun</i><br />
<i>and wind upon my hair.</i><br />
<br />
<i>I sit beside the fire and think</i><br />
<i>of how the world will be</i><br />
<i>when winter comes without a spring</i><br />
<i>that I shall ever see.</i><br />
<br />
<i>For still there are so many things</i><br />
<i>that I have never seen:</i><br />
<i>in every wood in every spring</i><br />
<i>there is a different green.</i><br />
<br />
<i>I sit beside the fire and think</i><br />
<i>of people long ago</i><br />
<i>and people who will see a world</i><br />
<i>that I shall never know.</i><br />
<br />
<i>But all the while I sit and think</i><br />
<i>of times there were before,</i><br />
<i>I listen for returning feet</i><br />
<i>and voices at the door.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">You are forever in my heart, my friend.
You are gone with the stars. You are off rolling, like Beaumont, with Orion. I
know one day I'll join you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcw1QYZBpXIFDb5qhCBwbzC7xj0qo5hl4Q9gs-SZ9HApPoupC9DKL5icKwiCLykw8mlay_W9EiEYLbpL24hGftppAN0Yt4XewdBPjOqn0M49FY0kiB-7K8VFCCJ_V0IiLc92c1uX9rUvMz/s1600/600+sloe+gin+appreciation%252C+winter+2013+THW_018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="In Memoriam Jonathan West" border="0" data-original-height="442" data-original-width="600" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcw1QYZBpXIFDb5qhCBwbzC7xj0qo5hl4Q9gs-SZ9HApPoupC9DKL5icKwiCLykw8mlay_W9EiEYLbpL24hGftppAN0Yt4XewdBPjOqn0M49FY0kiB-7K8VFCCJ_V0IiLc92c1uX9rUvMz/s400/600+sloe+gin+appreciation%252C+winter+2013+THW_018.jpg" title="In Memoriam Jonathan West" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-44839213300129158782022-02-14T14:36:00.007+00:002022-02-14T14:55:48.778+00:00Carstone and Chalk<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><i>'Carstone I will mention in order to abuse it"</i> </span></h4></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">(Jacquetta Hawkes ('A Land', 1951).</span></div></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Why not? This orangey-coloured Norfolk sandstone does not look attractive on its own nor does it combine attractively with other materials. It presents a burning, gingery face to the world and does not weather gracefully. It outcrops between Hunstanton and the Nar valley, where several quarries - such as Snettisham and Middleton - specialise in producing blocks of 'big carr' for masonry or 'small carr' for hardcore or shillet walling. </span> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2rkKKDq7LftOfjGJ0EWZ_QGUF8cMiV-PoNVzaHymHwyLp1_0XpgjanylgZxwjQ-vdaHmDCIooc8FXY6NGT4zEHZDYdXIZPvGEqvWOllhecG3KlNcyIQq8kesLQ1WHMLek3F6bfFFB39qb/s600/600+Snettisham%252C+Carstone+wall.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2rkKKDq7LftOfjGJ0EWZ_QGUF8cMiV-PoNVzaHymHwyLp1_0XpgjanylgZxwjQ-vdaHmDCIooc8FXY6NGT4zEHZDYdXIZPvGEqvWOllhecG3KlNcyIQq8kesLQ1WHMLek3F6bfFFB39qb/s16000/600+Snettisham%252C+Carstone+wall.jpg" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The Carstone is at its finest and boldest in the famous geological layer-cake of Hunstanton Cliffs. It underlies the Red Chalk and Grey Chalk and forms a sort of solid biscuit base for those more mellow, pastel layers. Its only fossils are worm burrow traces, and it is laced with liesegang rings: patterns of dark and light cementation brought about by migrating iron compounds. Here, it looks like a sort of industrial slag. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoe26ZTSdo6t3BtLKdaVad2U2NAyeKxwzYcWCzwVV9F8haRlMrc1RuYpel67ooWcTAR-ylXU1-9bPQl7KHpRcJoEH8PMjIqZnmj_benwYNfwfu6wEAdnvKsyNg4ZDTUipGl7c-8SYZH5wD/s600/600++carstone+THW_0196.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoe26ZTSdo6t3BtLKdaVad2U2NAyeKxwzYcWCzwVV9F8haRlMrc1RuYpel67ooWcTAR-ylXU1-9bPQl7KHpRcJoEH8PMjIqZnmj_benwYNfwfu6wEAdnvKsyNg4ZDTUipGl7c-8SYZH5wD/s16000/600++carstone+THW_0196.jpg" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The only way the Carstone can achieve aesthetic lift-off is probably as a crude pigment. It is so gritty that its iron oxide is a chore to extract for creating home-made paint, but its bold, uncompromising colouration lends itself to astonishing, disharmonious juxtapositions in the landscape. At outcrop it colours the soil a rusty brown and on Hunstanton beach it yields a brown, exotic-looking sand. Hawkes called its effects 'strident': sometimes stridency is needed to shock us out of our visual complacency. Consider this photograph taken in the Snettisham Carstone Quarry. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBRgpXZzRiBPex_VyNrCenagvwT8Pja5gUi0PU9dUGiwmdAgiA4KI4qhgN65ulzNbkOyLxjiNWQPK7hDIN46S5Yr_D4cGXBkHF8UQKMVGSRGzSgh-MwfqyPmWQ1eLMe8gO0QHEMQ95z9w0/s600/600+P1010039.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBRgpXZzRiBPex_VyNrCenagvwT8Pja5gUi0PU9dUGiwmdAgiA4KI4qhgN65ulzNbkOyLxjiNWQPK7hDIN46S5Yr_D4cGXBkHF8UQKMVGSRGzSgh-MwfqyPmWQ1eLMe8gO0QHEMQ95z9w0/s16000/600+P1010039.jpg" title="Image with acknowledgements to Frimstone Ltd." /></span></a></div><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-small;">Image courtesy Frimstone Ltd</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Grey Chalk is as different from the Carstone as cheese. It is indeed it looks like a type of moon-cheese, with a glimmering and dulcet milkiness which is readily ground into lime and - in the right circumstances - can be cut into blocks of stone known as clunch. The Grey Chalk and overlying White (Upper) Chalk span over 40 million years of time. They were deposited on the seabed in a world which was much hotter than our own and had a much higher percentage of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Hawkes calls the Chalk the </span><i style="font-family: helvetica;">'prime creation of later Cretaceous times</i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">'. Indeed, the carbon dioxide went into the skeletons of countless billions of planktonic marine organisms whose lime-rich remains rained down through the water and were laid down as calcium carbonate mud. The Chalk now forms ancient seabed deposits as far afield as Russia and Kansas as well as the White Cliffs of Dover. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQcAMVCxqAXoMk6s3uqfcZaGz7mW5mvlKbTTSvrdxACCl3M7PhF-7v6DeoBUHfqrTL4TXxMk_i-G5OhBFkZD_zvlBv9LOZ_IFEdfNruu9aF4fECUCxhBORlTceu7M-bX3GcceIvnHAaBun/s600/600++hillington+IMGP2897.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQcAMVCxqAXoMk6s3uqfcZaGz7mW5mvlKbTTSvrdxACCl3M7PhF-7v6DeoBUHfqrTL4TXxMk_i-G5OhBFkZD_zvlBv9LOZ_IFEdfNruu9aF4fECUCxhBORlTceu7M-bX3GcceIvnHAaBun/s16000/600++hillington+IMGP2897.jpg" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: small;">Hillington Chalk Pit.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: small;">Image courtesy West Norfolk Lime Ltd</span></div><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Unlike the White Chalk, the Grey Chalk does not contain flints. Instead, it has a variety of body fossils such as echinoids and bivalves and is composed of various horizons of harder or softer texture. It has been extracted in a series of quarries along its outcrop, as at Gayton and Hillington. Where they intercept the groundwater, flash ponds may result on the quarry floor and surprise the eye with a tropical turquoise-blue. </span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh76KWXdSOpBBdfcKyUGm7UwRIzT2SsITWsesrs2HdzQTuQ7I60oy98kCHgKv1ZVE_eW8-JMAgL67CGai5tb-ckQAZu06oVswAAnd7P7HmuTkIcw9sWi7ZXEz8-WaIeaWhd0hH_DOmPwmTV/s16000/600+hillington++IMGP2907+rot.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Hillington Chalk Pit. <br />Photo with acknowledgements to West Norfolk Lime Ltd</span>.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh76KWXdSOpBBdfcKyUGm7UwRIzT2SsITWsesrs2HdzQTuQ7I60oy98kCHgKv1ZVE_eW8-JMAgL67CGai5tb-ckQAZu06oVswAAnd7P7HmuTkIcw9sWi7ZXEz8-WaIeaWhd0hH_DOmPwmTV/s600/600+hillington++IMGP2907+rot.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span><p>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Some thoughts towards '<a href="https://www.groundworkgallery.com/exhibition/extraction-art-on-the-edge-of-the-abyss/" target="_blank">EXTRACTION : ART ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS</a>' at Groundwork Gallery, King's Lynn, 2021.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-33994407807171775922021-05-11T22:09:00.005+01:002021-09-13T15:34:38.967+01:00Insatiable<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">About five years ago I came across the painting 'Insatiable' by Theodore Bolha and Chris Davis. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It graces the cover of<i> '<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/climate-change-capitalism-and-corporations/9FD46E7FF5F9FE71508831A23D43DEE0" target="_blank">Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations: Processes of Creative Self-Destruction</a>’</i> by C. Wright and D. Nyberg (Cambridge University Press, 2015). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This painting sums up the reason I do what I do, and sums up what I want to say to the people of today and of the future. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It speaks to me - as I believe it speaks to anyone who has a heart.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAU2vq3IiJhFBYdE_-qagOSYLkwzminPN_9rDU0FblfHzOBVtI5ilIWzKU8F9Fne5eYALJ92iqkaZfGDM4iXkj1_4fxjDRIiADRNxy2sTHVY5XhqeVJXScLV5Qc4hceDLhvBb1p1nbGWio/s720/800+6.52+Insatiable+%2540+Theodore+Bolha+%2526+Chris+Davis.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="627" data-original-width="720" height="557" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAU2vq3IiJhFBYdE_-qagOSYLkwzminPN_9rDU0FblfHzOBVtI5ilIWzKU8F9Fne5eYALJ92iqkaZfGDM4iXkj1_4fxjDRIiADRNxy2sTHVY5XhqeVJXScLV5Qc4hceDLhvBb1p1nbGWio/w640-h557/800+6.52+Insatiable+%2540+Theodore+Bolha+%2526+Chris+Davis.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The ecological crisis is a profound crisis of meaning and value. </span><div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Dealing with it is the greatest task of our time. </span><p></p></div>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-68640696328907309542020-05-10T12:56:00.001+01:002021-01-06T10:42:54.715+00:00Ferment<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The garden is - as ever - a wealth of life: a ferment of greenery and flies, birds and song, sunlight patterns on leaves: myriad changes in which each moment is entirely and absolutely different from any other in the world's story. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Here is my key point: the ceaseless difference at the core of existence: the ever-new.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Were there ever to be a recurrence it would surely signal the end of this world. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There are repeat elements, for instance the nodding of a branch in the wind, the structure of the song-thrush's call, the form of a daisy flower. But this all happens within the frame of the phenomenal present, which is a process of ceaseless self-differentiation. Every instant is utterly new in detail, unrepeatable.</span></div>
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Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-85764335481102883562020-05-04T10:19:00.004+01:002022-05-24T12:56:14.318+01:00Clinging On<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">As the human world reels under the malign influence of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019" target="_blank">Coronavirus</a>, my thoughts turn to Cretaceous barnacles. </span><br />
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span>
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">This sudden interest in extinct <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnacle" target="_blank">cirripedia</a> is prompted by a paper published a month ago by <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andy_Gale" target="_blank">Professor Andy Gale</a>: <i>New thoracican cirripedes (Crustacea) from the Cretaceous of Europe and North Africa</i>.[1] It announces the discovery of new extinct genera and species of barnacle. There are two sorts: the acorn/wart-type (sessile) barnacles familiar from rocky shores and the stalk-type (pedunculate) 'goose barnacles' sometimes found attached to drift wood. </span></span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">I have never really thought about these crustacea before. They are easily overlooked - that is until you gash your hands or feet on them at the seaside, or eat them in a Portuguese restaurant. What crystallises my interest in them now is that one of the Zeugmatolepadid family now bears my name: <i>Subsecolepas holtwilsoni</i>. It is a lepadid barnacle - one of the stalked type. My thanks go to Andy for the honour. I think i</span></span><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">ts taxonomic status is:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Phylum - <i>Arthropoda</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Clade - <i>Mandibulata</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Clade - <i>Pancrustacea</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Subphylum - <i>Crustacea</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Class - <i>Maxillopoda</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Infraclass - <i>Cirripedia</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Superorder - <i>Thoracica</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Order - <i>Pedunculata</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Suborder - <i>Scalpelliformes</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Clade - <i>Thoracicalcarea</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Family - <i>Zeugmatolepadidae</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Subfamily - <i>Martillepadinae</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Genus - <i>Subsecolepas</i></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Species - <i>holtwilsoni</i> </span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Andy Gale is one of a very small band of palaeontological researchers active in the field of fossil cirripedes. Their most illustrious forebear is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_taxa_described_by_Charles_Darwin" target="_blank">Charles Darwin</a>. Thomas Withers was active from 1910 to the 1960s, and catalogued the fossils specimens at the Natural History Museum, London. <i>" There can be no doubt the Wither's 'Catalogues' are to fossil lepadomorph and verrucomorph barnacles what Darwin's 'Monographs' are to Recent barnacles</i>."[2] Andy has been one of the most prolific cirripede researchers in recent decades, focusing on the Cretaceous Chalk and publishing many papers. He says that <i>S.holtwilsoni </i>is common in chalk of the Upper <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campanian" target="_blank">Campanian</a> stage in the UK, and that 400 fossil specimens have been found at various old pits in the Norwich area. He named it after me for helping him dig in these pits and for having been involved in their conservation, including Keswick, Catton, Cringleford and Whitlingham.</span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPOXbO9kOHCac1i85EY9_dfvAGFWCzVtMdLsbKpJUkA1ywp3VXw4U81rrajxeA_IZazh5OkxjjgZlLPRLkosROCC_1Q2kzkmawrGW-2AiaCF_H9nMcN-Y-3gY5pZ81GPkfFqW85ZRhTdsF/s1600/600+keswick+038.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="867" data-original-width="650" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPOXbO9kOHCac1i85EY9_dfvAGFWCzVtMdLsbKpJUkA1ywp3VXw4U81rrajxeA_IZazh5OkxjjgZlLPRLkosROCC_1Q2kzkmawrGW-2AiaCF_H9nMcN-Y-3gY5pZ81GPkfFqW85ZRhTdsF/s640/600+keswick+038.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Collecting samples at Keswick, 2015</span></td></tr>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">I have not visited any chalk pits lately. Britain today is in emergency 'lock-down', and I feel sorry for city-dwellers cooped up in flats and terraced houses. At least I have an extensive wildlife garden to ramble in, and </span><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">I also enjoy exploring the meaning of our geological heritage.</span><br />
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><br /><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Crustaceans of the Campanian seas are a great imaginative diversion - a <i>dépaysement</i>, as the French say. Geology and palaeontology call us out of o</span><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">ur own time and down into the profound depths of planetary and biological evolution. I try to imagine the lifeworld of the extinct species that now bears my name. </span></span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Here are photos of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_(biology)" target="_blank">type specimens</a> of <i>S.holtwilsoni, </i>variously sourced from chalk pits at Keswick and Cringleford, and all are now archived in the Natural History Museum. They show elements of the set of hard, calcareous plates which enclose the head of the barnacle. </span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Type specimens of Subsecolepas holtwilsoni. Image courtesy Andy Gale [1]</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOdj4R9P4_TEZVisQE0LxSL2QkskeTugQ-QK8tFgfWlvHyz2iowa-dkAI5DQ9QwvqXd2ZjqzrXgjaM9CxlKHwFPB9fxkJ2CSl2ig0xF6spo8kPHfDp3ugzzjzap6_VKLRiobgLmMsPw-pW/s1600/Wood+1863%252C+p647+edited.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="361" data-original-width="444" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOdj4R9P4_TEZVisQE0LxSL2QkskeTugQ-QK8tFgfWlvHyz2iowa-dkAI5DQ9QwvqXd2ZjqzrXgjaM9CxlKHwFPB9fxkJ2CSl2ig0xF6spo8kPHfDp3ugzzjzap6_VKLRiobgLmMsPw-pW/s1600/Wood+1863%252C+p647+edited.jpg" title="From JG Wood. 'The Illustrated Natural History'. Routledge, London, 1863." /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Stalked barnacles from JG Wood: 'The Illustrated Natural History'; Routledge, London, 1863</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ9MWuoFgKUhMa0bUicK5iYbVYuB8dVwMXzCgaF-Iw85H2y9TBe6j4H-c1grd9DxTzNSuG4HwZ2AIJN8NsODpcdHj0AG7bpeoHspIoce9NyWgAtCdn9IVcpIqo6mK3exSiIdiUxDxUGhOq/s1600/Darwin+1851+Plate+3+Fig+1+Pollicipes+concinnus+as+found.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="815" data-original-width="742" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ9MWuoFgKUhMa0bUicK5iYbVYuB8dVwMXzCgaF-Iw85H2y9TBe6j4H-c1grd9DxTzNSuG4HwZ2AIJN8NsODpcdHj0AG7bpeoHspIoce9NyWgAtCdn9IVcpIqo6mK3exSiIdiUxDxUGhOq/s640/Darwin+1851+Plate+3+Fig+1+Pollicipes+concinnus+as+found.jpg" width="582" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Darwin's drawing of a Middle Jurassic stalked barnacle <i>Pollicipes concinnus</i>,<br />
as found attached to the shell of an ammonite.[3]</td></tr>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Contemporary stalked barnacles attach themselves to floating objects, particularly driftwood, turtles and ships. According to Andy Gale, <i>S.holtwilsoni </i></span><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">and other Zeugmatolepadids probably had a similar lifestyle, attaching to the shells of free-swimming ammonites and seabed-dwelling inoceramid bivalves as well as floating wood.[1, p.245] There must have been a steady rain of their plates falling into the carbonate-rich mud of the sea floor, perhaps 100 to 500 metres down.[4] </span><br />
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The Campanian stage spans from 83.6 to 72.2 million years ago.[5], and chalk of this age is well-represented in Norfolk and Suffolk. I have visited many quarries of this period in the Gipping valley and Norwich areas. At Keswick and Cringleford I helped clear the chalk exposures so that Andy Gale could record the geological succession and take samples. The samples are treated with glauber's salt and freezing in a repeat process until the miniscule fossil fragments - echinoid spines, bits of coral, fish scale, shell, etc - are freed from their chalky matrix and can be examined under a microscope.</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> </span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtMyvFN4o9lItEWMr3ze45vsf-TwXtE9ipNs6ZrtH3PVY25EXakHbdWxfrEb_nRlPngFy4Kh9yuKZVyo64BdEfVgjsgjNNBm1HF89Lb1V_qytMrc1p1Fu38PKr01vbl9ttVbiBPJl7tPLB/s1600/600+tim2+%2540+Colin+Mould.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtMyvFN4o9lItEWMr3ze45vsf-TwXtE9ipNs6ZrtH3PVY25EXakHbdWxfrEb_nRlPngFy4Kh9yuKZVyo64BdEfVgjsgjNNBm1HF89Lb1V_qytMrc1p1Fu38PKr01vbl9ttVbiBPJl7tPLB/s1600/600+tim2+%2540+Colin+Mould.jpg" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Fossil residues from the Chalk (40x magnification)</span></td></tr>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">The contrast between the physical reality of an old chalk pit, with its crumbly, scrub-infested chaos, and the clarified world of knowledge compiled by over 150 years of scientific research into the Chalk is remarkable. We now know much about the Earth's geography during the Campanian, for example that Europe was an archipelago of islands.[6] We know much about biodiversity and details of climate and chemistry.[7; 8] </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The world as it was in the late Cretaceous. Image courtesy Andy Gale [1]</span></td></tr>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">All this is wonderful, radical stuff to explore during COVID-19 lock-down. Like astronomy, geology has the power to frame human life against an almost infinite scale of time and space. Like pedunculate cirripedes, we cling for a few seasons to our floating attachment points and then - like them - our debris will inevitably find its way to the metaphorical sea floor. Perhaps only our names, inscriptions and genetic coding will survive us, for a century or two at most. The history of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy_(biology)#Monograph_and_taxonomic_revision" target="_blank">taxonomic revision</a> makes clear that not even species names backed up with diligent taxonomic description may be proof against time. </span></span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><b>REFERENCES</b></span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">[1] - Gale, A.S. <i><a href="https://www.schweizerbart.de/papers/njgpa/detail/295/93249/New_thoracican_cirripedes_Crustacea_from_the_Cretaceous_of_Europe_and_North_Africa" target="_blank">New thoracican cirripedes (Crustacea) from the Cretaceous of Europe and North Africa</a></i>. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Abhandlungen Band 295 Heft 3 (2020), pp.243-282. [Link accessed May 2020]</span><br />
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">[2] - Southward, AJ. <i>Barnacle Biology</i>. CRC Press, 1987; chapters 2.1 and 2.2.</span><br />
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">[3] - Darwin, CR. <i>A monograph on the fossil Lepadidæ, or pedunculated cirripedes of Great Britain. </i></span><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Palæontographical Society, London, 1851 Plate 3, Fig.1. Downloadable <a href="https://archive.org/details/monographonfossi00darw" target="_blank">here</a>. [Link accessed May 2020]</span><br />
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">[4] - Rawson, PF. <i>Cretaceous: Sea Levels peak as the North Atlantic Opens</i>, in: Brenchley, PJ & Rawson, PF (eds). <i>The Geology of England and Wales</i>. The Geological Society, 2006; 2nd Edition.<i> </i></span><br />
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">[5] - Lee, JR, et al (eds). <i>British Regional Geology. East Anglia</i>. British Geological Survey, Fifth Edition, 2015.</span><br />
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">[6] - Csiki-Sava, Z et al. <i><a href="https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/4474/" target="_blank">Island life in the Cretaceous - faunal composition, biogeography, evolution, and extinction of land-living vertebrates on the Late Cretaceous European archipelago</a></i>. Zookeys, no.469, January 2015, pp.1-161. [Link accessed May 2020]</span><br />
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">[7] - </span><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Jarvis, I, et al. </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Late Cretaceous (Campanian) carbon isotope events, sea-level change and correlation of the Tethyan and Boreal realms</i><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, no.188, 2002, pp.215-248.</span><br />
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">[8] - Skelton, PF et al (eds). <i>The Cretaceous World</i>. The Open University / Cambridge University Press, 2003.</span><br />
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><b>THANKS TO</b></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Andy Gale, for naming the extinct beastie.</span></li>
<li><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Gilbert Addison, for suggesting the title of this article.</span></li>
</ul>
Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-9135180729507635262020-04-04T23:30:00.002+01:002020-05-04T22:48:56.579+01:00A Blackthorn Spring<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Cold winds easterly have been blowing across East Anglia for the past week, though temperatures are set to rise this weekend. Blackthorn blossoms are flourishing in this 'blackthorn spring': their froth of cold, white flowers starting out of the rattling, winter blackness of branch and twig. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><u>Prunus spinosa</u>, is respected by country dwellers for its fruit (sloe gin), its hard, durable wood and particularly for its long, piercing thorns like stiletti. They are able to pass straight through clothing, gloves and even boot soles and car tyres - things I know from experience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I now have a terrible story to relate. It was told me by my friend C. and began about a month ago when her boyfriend D. was working in a Suffolk wood. Blackthorns make bristling thickets that require careful handling. Even though he was wearing goggles, a chance branch whipped his forehead and embedded a spine in his brow down to the bone. Naturally he pulled it out, but that evening redness and swelling set in, followed later by deep inflammation. Over the following days his condition worsened as his head swelled up and he became very unwell, with symptoms similar to sepsis (blood poisoning). Luckily neighbours noticed his silent home and telephoned C. She drove over immediately and what she found appalled her; a man in delirium, shivering with fever, with a necrotic lesion on his forehead. He was taken to hospital by ambulance and given intensive care. Over the next few days the hallucinations faded - at one time he said he thought his bed was surrounded by tall trees - and his temperature subsided. It was evident that he would need a skin graft to repair the damage, but this would have to be delayed because the hospital had started dealing with a flood of Coronavirus casualties. That is the situation now: D. is waiting and convalescing, wearing a head bandage and lucky to be alive.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What is it about blackthorn that makes it wound so grievously?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A look through my bookshelf did not turn up much useful information.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>"A scratch from the thorns would cause blood poisoning. This was thought to be because Christ's crown of thorns was made from it</i>".<b>(1)</b></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"<i>Long associated with dark forces</i>".<b>(2)</b> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"<i>Other tannin-rich barks were also used </i>[for making inks]<i> particularly those of blackthorn ...</i>".<b>(3)</b></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A trawl through the WWW was more promising.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"<i>On Tuesday evening I was scratched on the hand by a blackthorn, not deeply, but enough to draw blood. Fortunately, I know about blackthorn poisoning: it can be very unpleasant. A piece of blackthorn burying itself under the skin might cause severe infection, blood poisoning, swelling and pain. If left too long before treatment, amputation might be the result. Blackthorns are covered in unpleasant bacteria. If you have a piece buried in your flesh, the best course of action is to get yourself off to the hospital if you have a rapidly escalating and unpleasant reaction; don’t leave it until the area around the wound turns black</i>. <i>My light scratch was reacting badly to the blackthorn toxins within 5 minutes. I sprayed the area liberally with surgical spirits on my return home, which quickly reduced the angry redness and swelling. I woke in night with the swelling raging ... ".</i><b>(4)</b> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A comment was appended to this blog post: <i>"Our friend has just died from black thorn poisoning. Thought it was flu …".</i><b>(5)</b></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: italic;">"Years ago I ignored a blackthorn wound. Within a week I had a red line running from the inside of my wrist to my elbow warning of the onset of sepsis".</span><b>(6)</b> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>"Blackthorn injury can give rise to a wide variety of manifestations ranging from mechanical dermatitis, cellulitis, abscess, foreign body granuloma, peritendinitis, tendinitis, pericapsulitis, synovitis to acute septic arthritis. Human synovial tissue is very prone to react to organic substances like blackthorns. Removal of the blackthorn fragments causes prompt resolution of the inflammation"</i>.<b>(7)</b></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is clear that blackthorn wounds can be dangerous, particularly if remnants of thorn are left in the wound. I think D.'s injury was down to more than just a bad-luck thorn-prick.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"<i>Why do </i>[blackthorns] <i>cause so much trouble? Clinical research undertaken at Oakham suggests that the painful tissue reaction to blackthorn injury is not caused by infection. In fact, contrary to popular belief among the equine veterinary community, the joint is sterile after a thorn penetration. The substances that make blackthorns black are alkaloids, and this thorn contains more alkaloids than other plants. Our research indicates it is this that causes the severe tissue reactions</i>".<b>(8)</b></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The website 'Botanical Online' in its '<a href="https://www.botanical-online.com/en/medicinal-plants/blackthorn-toxicity" target="_blank">Blackthorn Toxicity</a>' page states that the toxic principles of blackthorn are: prussic acid (seeds, bark, leaves); hydrogen cyanide (seeds); tannins. Anecdotal evidence from online discussion forums suggests that the blackthorn is particularly poisonous during the growing season.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, I suggest that what makes a blackthorn wound so grievous is that the bark and thorns at this time of the year are exuding small quantities of plant toxins known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycoside#Cyanogenic_glycosides" target="_blank">cyanogenic glycosides</a>, notably hydrocyanic acid (HCN, aka prussic acid), "<i>one of the most toxic of all plant compounds. ... The occurrence of cyanogenic glycosides is widespread. Amygdalin and prunasin are very common among plants of the Rosaceae, particularly the Prunus genus</i>".<b>(9) </b>Oakham Veterinary Hospital is probably wrong about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaloid" target="_blank">alkaloid</a> poisoning: the blackness is caused by tannins, and the toxicity is caused by HCN. The presence of other pathogens such as bacteria from bird muck may play a secondary role, although I imagine most humans and other animals have a measure of immunity against them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">HCN has been tested as a chemical weapon to be absorbed through the skin. According to a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_cyanide#As_a_poison_and_chemical_weapon" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>, a concentration of 2000 ppm will kill a human in about one minute. "<i>The toxicity is caused by the cyanide ion, which halts cellular respiration by acting as a non-competitive inhibitor for an enzyme in mitochondria called cytochrome c oxidase"</i>. Basically, it kills cells. No wonder D. suffered toxic shock and now has a necrotic lesion on his head.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">According to the University of Maryland, <i>"All 400-plus Prunus species are toxic to livestock. ... The most commonly recognized species are the stone fruits: cherries, peaches, plums, almonds, apricots, and nectarines. All parts of the plant are toxic except the mature fruits. ... Hydrogen cyanide acts as a poison by preventing red blood cells from releasing oxygen".</i><b>(10)</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I think I now understand how D. came to be so badly affected by a single puncture wound. Fragments of thorn are likely to have released HCN which led to localised cell death, followed by toxic shock from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepsis" target="_blank">sepsis</a> and a dermal necrosis. His immune system struggled to cope with the chemical arsenal of <u>Prunus spinosa</u>, and also probably the effects of some bacteria and algal detritus.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I think it would be worth somebody researching more about HCN in blackthorn For instance, I'd like to know whether it is the live or dead thorns that do the most damage. The results would be worth publicising for farmers, gardeners and any other outdoors people likely to encounter this baleful, though attractive and interesting, bush. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">SOURCES</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(1) - R. Vickery (ed.). 'Unlucky Plants - a folklore survey'. Folklore Society, 1985.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(2) - Tess Darwin. 'The Scots Herbal'. Mercat Press, 1996.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(3) - Richard Mabey. 'Plants with a Purpose'. Collins, 1977.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(4) - Michael Griffiths. '<a href="https://thewildenmarshblog.com/2015/12/03/blackthorn-poisoning-a-warning/" target="_blank">Blackthorn Poisoning. A warning</a>'. The Wilden Marsh Blog, 3-12-2015.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(5) - Ibid, comment from 'Debra', April 17, 2018.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(6) <span style="font-style: italic;">- </span>John Shelley. '<a href="http://www.mayonews.ie/?option=com_content&view=article&id=19668:nature-a-thorny-issue&catid=50:outdoor-living&Itemid=144." target="_blank">Nature. A Thorny Issue'</a>. The Mayo News, 1 April, 2014.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(7) - H Sharma & AD Meredith: '<a href="https://emj.bmj.com/content/21/3/392" target="_blank">Blackthorn injury: a report of three interesting cases</a>'. Emergency Medical Journal, vol.21, no.3, April 2004.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(8) - Oakham Veterinary Hospital, online: '<a href="https://www.oakhamvethospital.co.uk/equine-surgery/equine-blackthorn-injury/" target="_blank">Blackthorn injury in hunters / sport horses</a>'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(9) - Andrew Pengelly. 'The Constituents of Medicinal Plants'. Allen & Unwin, 2009; pp.44-45.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(10) - Sara BhaduriHauck. '<a href="https://extension.umd.edu/learn/toxic-plant-profile-prunus-species" target="_blank">Toxic Plant Profile: Prunus Species</a>'. University of Maryland Extension, 3-8-2015.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All online sources accessed April 2020.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Text and pictures © TD Holt-Wilson, April 4th 2020.</span></div>
Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-20246947910773507082018-08-05T13:12:00.001+01:002021-09-06T11:40:47.897+01:00Islay<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">4th June 2018</span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">I'm back from staying with my uncle on the Isle of Islay. This is the most southerly large island of the Inner Hebrides. It looks northwards to Colonsay, eastwards to Jura, southwards to Ulster and westwards to nowhere - or rather into the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean and beyond, to the chilly coast of Labrador. For better or worse, its climate and weather are intimately connected with the ocean.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">A misty, eventide view looking south from Ben Cladville, with Donegal in the distance</span></td></tr>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Spacious Islay - open to the elements. It's a marked contrast to my cramped Suffolk homeland, with its woods, hedged fields and clustered villages. Houses on Islay are white-painted and built of stone and slate; they are strung in rows through 19th century settlement towns such as Bowmore and Port Charlotte, or scattered in farmsteads with strange, hybrid Gaelic, Norse and English names. Many of them have fine views over rough pastureland or boggy moorland, greenish-grey, brown and dotted with rocky outcrops and boulders, and a backdrop of mountains. Many of them have fine views over the sea, which is never far away with its stormy grey or shades of passionate blue and green. The inlets of Loch Indaal and Loch Gruinart almost divide the island in two.</span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">My uncle lives in the Rinns of Islay, a broad peninsula ten miles long at the south-western end of the island. The family farm is perched on a south-facing hillside with spectacular panoramic views to Portnahaven and a scattering of islets. The place is buffeted by wind and rain for many months of the year. The land includes over half a mile of sea cliffs, with caves, precipices and a natural arch, and even a prehistoric </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">dun</i><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"> (promontory fort) and a </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">cleit</i><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"> (burial mound). There are choughs and ravens, peregrines and curlews, stonechats and skylarks. Starlings bubble and squeak from the chimney pots. Sparrows and siskins jostle for space at the bird table.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">View over Cladville and the south-western tip of the Rinns</span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: small;">.</span></td></tr>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">The Rinns is founded on very ancient bedrock: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gneiss" target="_blank">gneiss </a>dated to about 1.8 billion years old (by way of comparison the Earth is 4.6 billion years old). Chemical analysis tells us the gneiss originated in the roots of a volcanic mountain range[1], perhaps 20 miles down. Tectonic processes over eons of time have since brought it to the surface. The rocks of the Rinns Complex, as it is called, lie all round Cladville and Portnahaven in the form of the pinkish-coloured gneiss and a greenish-grey <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphibolite" target="_blank">amphibolite</a>. The one looks rather like frozen sausage meat; the other like frozen salt and pepper. Both are very hard, and were created through metamorphism of the deep crustal rocks <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syenite" target="_blank">syenite </a>and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabbro" target="_blank">gabbro </a>respectively. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">A boulder of syenitic gneiss<br />with a quartz vein and lichen, Claddach</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFBbhgMrxiu1xCsRPtM5uB3OHywH2kgYOtkd9i3y3X-WjX6sXdYavMmOjxwjLwVf7EXxUeS_YysYByZ_PwE6dnVABPhZT8cuOzYgO6aZJbE3_S1j5BG654OHJaLLvcf4udgVmsaRVRlEga/s1600/300+amphibolite+053.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="300" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFBbhgMrxiu1xCsRPtM5uB3OHywH2kgYOtkd9i3y3X-WjX6sXdYavMmOjxwjLwVf7EXxUeS_YysYByZ_PwE6dnVABPhZT8cuOzYgO6aZJbE3_S1j5BG654OHJaLLvcf4udgVmsaRVRlEga/s400/300+amphibolite+053.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Sea-smoothed gabbroic amphibolite, Lossit</span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYhmYIbTCV5R0U1m-_t_u_RtT8A4uzfABhT5TcmAz2xRwnr7ca7cAuSN_djqL3SfXwsrUqziFGgLx_ysIxiZsj6bIWDE4U0KcdMNxNimcc-I_V2k854vCb39oQD9SDp_ojcBTZW8yh7JcB/s1600/600+geniss+THW_0006+rot+cut+adj.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="598" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYhmYIbTCV5R0U1m-_t_u_RtT8A4uzfABhT5TcmAz2xRwnr7ca7cAuSN_djqL3SfXwsrUqziFGgLx_ysIxiZsj6bIWDE4U0KcdMNxNimcc-I_V2k854vCb39oQD9SDp_ojcBTZW8yh7JcB/s400/600+geniss+THW_0006+rot+cut+adj.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-YeEBvNx0Eg6Ro-ZyyoVn7JVanZWnl7kNrdueN0nv3Z_I1c3eHiyLn-XlcB7yv2BvPC0G2NSD0Exlo4aGeiqlpceM9IKyFINR2_jGGtVjAVX8Y0H9qOZm_QhSU6cRVcN9fs4Ddyipk2S7/s1600/600+THW_0025+amphibolite.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-YeEBvNx0Eg6Ro-ZyyoVn7JVanZWnl7kNrdueN0nv3Z_I1c3eHiyLn-XlcB7yv2BvPC0G2NSD0Exlo4aGeiqlpceM9IKyFINR2_jGGtVjAVX8Y0H9qOZm_QhSU6cRVcN9fs4Ddyipk2S7/s400/600+THW_0025+amphibolite.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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</span><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">These rocks are the oldest thing I have ever contemplated. </span><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">They originated in the late </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoproterozoic" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Palaeoproterozoic</a><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"> Era of the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precambrian" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Precambrian</a><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"> Supereon. They are thought to have formed deep within a volcanic arc where the crust of the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_(supercontinent)" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Columbia Supercontinent </a><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">was being subducted. Today - risen from the depths - they form the cliffs and underlie the boggy moorland of the Rinns.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpZ4n440ENf7FiOuJ0oDxSpR-0a2rMTwHvT-Od9fCof7YbrbzcRPUxIDQJc9yH0nFnuXCgKyNmFZwKnAklr87SvYPrkAPpCD3TWA0vNZAHXBsaXg-SV7Axnz8R29DRHdt4AuCyO85sDguj/s1600/600+Ben+Tart+a+Mhill.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpZ4n440ENf7FiOuJ0oDxSpR-0a2rMTwHvT-Od9fCof7YbrbzcRPUxIDQJc9yH0nFnuXCgKyNmFZwKnAklr87SvYPrkAPpCD3TWA0vNZAHXBsaXg-SV7Axnz8R29DRHdt4AuCyO85sDguj/s1600/600+Ben+Tart+a+Mhill.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">These rocks push my understanding into a new dimension: they take me as far back in time as I can go in British geology. The only life-forms on Earth then were bacteria and algae.[2] They belong to a world dominated by physical processes in which micro-organisms had a precarious foothold. Today, 1.8 billion years later, the same natural processes continue but micro-organisms are everywhere, forming the foundations for the pyramid of complex life which surrounds me, and of which I am a tiny part. Apparently I may well have more micro-organisms inside me than there are cells in my body.[3] Elements of the Palaeoproterozoic world survive, and not just on Islay.</span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><b>Snowball Earth</b></span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">A week ago today I took a bus trip up to Port Askaig, crossing the island diagonally. On the way, I stopped at the <a href="https://www.islayinfo.com/islay-natural-history-trust.html" target="_blank">Islay Natural History Trust </a>centre in Port Charlotte, where there are displays about geology as well as wildlife. It was an opportunity to get a better overview of local Earth history. Among the specimens on display were samples of the Port Askaig tillite.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5KoAXqIRQSJuxrlzjJAvMynQs82-FcsdgNPBWcmn38SfafBk-BKjGZccXVjd6aCPmPyNgM1wu2JIrQEtjvLJUEJFVp-lP8l2kVJO7jICEUzA5sf9F-RBNBzWPC0Kj6UeUXQ7otByOfDzN/s1600/600+THW_0006+tillite.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5KoAXqIRQSJuxrlzjJAvMynQs82-FcsdgNPBWcmn38SfafBk-BKjGZccXVjd6aCPmPyNgM1wu2JIrQEtjvLJUEJFVp-lP8l2kVJO7jICEUzA5sf9F-RBNBzWPC0Kj6UeUXQ7otByOfDzN/s400/600+THW_0006+tillite.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Tillite from Port an t-Seilich, near Port Askaig. </span></td></tr>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Seen here, the specimen has a grey, sandy <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudstone" target="_blank">mudstone</a> matrix containing pebbles of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granite" target="_blank">granite</a>. The mudstone is a lithified example of glacial <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Till" target="_blank">till</a> (hence 'tillite') deposited in very shallow sea water, with its matrix derived from the erosion of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shale" target="_blank">shales</a> and granites[4]. The pebbles dropped into it either from melting ice floes or - more likely - melt-out from the grounded base of a wasting ice sheet.[5]</span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">The tillite is exposed along the coast at Port Askaig and also in the road cutting next to the ferry terminal. On arrival, I knew only had two hours before my bus returned so decided to focus on the cutting, which has recently been extended. I soon found examples of granite and other pebbles embedded in mudstone.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuP6TJ9LIEzSYeGSGC2jZPEO8wehmF7a8HZk3xb5q6CVAJc0uC9s3T881Y68Of8vbjWxRKIjf61s_DTqNt-0tVnPYvBskpk6tQZI9tCvPsQKUr33rWoU7zXR-jA4elN_S2GeIc6bkbJB_B/s1600/600+THW_0032+Bealach+Askaig.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="437" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuP6TJ9LIEzSYeGSGC2jZPEO8wehmF7a8HZk3xb5q6CVAJc0uC9s3T881Y68Of8vbjWxRKIjf61s_DTqNt-0tVnPYvBskpk6tQZI9tCvPsQKUr33rWoU7zXR-jA4elN_S2GeIc6bkbJB_B/s1600/600+THW_0032+Bealach+Askaig.jpg" /></a></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">A granite pebble in mudstone matrix.</span></td></tr>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">This tillite has a special place in geology. It was first recognised as a glacial rock formation as far back as the 1870s, and attributed to the early Cambrian.[6] Where does it fit in the geological timescale today? It is classified lithostratigraphically as part of the <a href="http://www.bgs.ac.uk/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?pub=DBIS" target="_blank">Islay Subgroup </a>within the Dalradian Supergroup, and deposited during the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenian" target="_blank">Cryogenian</a> Period of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoproterozoic" target="_blank">Neoproterozoic</a> Era of the Precambrian. Evidence from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_remanent_magnetization" target="_blank">remnant magnetism</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonate" target="_blank">carbonate chemistry</a> in these rocks suggests that Britain lay close to the Equator at this time, however the fact that we have clear evidence for glaciation at this very low latitude has suggested that the Earth may have undergone periods of very extensive ice cover. This has given rise to the '<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth" target="_blank">Snowball Earth</a>' concept, which envisaged prolonged periods in the Neoproterozoic when the Earth was frozen as far south as the Equator. The Port Askaig tillite is most likely attributable to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturtian_glaciation" target="_blank">Sturtian Glaciation</a>, part of which has recently been dated to 716.5 million years ago.[7]. Back in Victorian times, Thomson speculated about the origin of the granite clasts. He found he couldn't relate their mineralogy to any extant granites in Scotland:</span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">‘<i>If ... we compare the embedded boulders of granite </i><i>with the granites found in situ throughout the Highlands, we feel the necessity of tracing them to another source, and hope we do not overstep the bounds of prudent speculation in suggesting that those erratics are the reassorted materials of some great Northern Continent that has yielded to the ceaseless gnawing tooth of time, leaving scattered fragments as wreckage of its former greatness, and that the material of which the mass is composed have in time, deeper than we have hitherto suspected, been transported by the agency of ice.’</i></span></blockquote>
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">We now know that the mudstone matrix was derived from some now-vanished source rocks somewhere south-east of Islay.[4] The granites may well have been derived from rocks related to the syenites of the Rinns Complex, probably an eroding part of the 'igneous province' of tectonically mobile crust which then spanned Scandinavia, Greenland and north-west Canada as part of the Neoproterozoic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodinia" target="_blank">Rodinia </a>Supercontinent.[8] I touch my hat to Thomson for his scientific insight.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF1DrHnGSOp6_GaKMmpyloGv9elVXzlgzyAbiGtn_MvmLZmBKpz0T8Z9lTANOLVLMdHzrgl8yVWSI3Vx-vJAScCzjAfwFQ8jEr5-KCNRzpgg2ynR_MSj_BzZB7afSdGKecu0Qc1DrdnJ3G/s1600/600+Fig+2+Fitches+el+al+2016+annot.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF1DrHnGSOp6_GaKMmpyloGv9elVXzlgzyAbiGtn_MvmLZmBKpz0T8Z9lTANOLVLMdHzrgl8yVWSI3Vx-vJAScCzjAfwFQ8jEr5-KCNRzpgg2ynR_MSj_BzZB7afSdGKecu0Qc1DrdnJ3G/s1600/600+Fig+2+Fitches+el+al+2016+annot.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Image courtesy Fitches <i>et al</i>, 1996.</span></td></tr>
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<b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">An ice age legacy</b><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Jumping forward 716,250,000 years in time, Islay was covered with ice at the height of the last cold glacial period, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_glacial_period#Devensian_and_Midlandian_glaciation_(Britain_and_Ireland)" target="_blank">Devensian Stage</a> of the late <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene" target="_blank">Pleistocene</a>. The limits of the ice sheet are thought to have lain many miles to westward at this time.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ0VdCQWl7wyv4Q8cHoAdsJ8M9cQ0n3Xxs3ZSD9Sxfhvo0wvcCxeIiQsmmB8pIuAt7pYn7CsvRcvF5Zs14BN4DMRTEGaVp9fjGZvfK40mYjzOHF7ZTXlRQhC2csNGzEWzdyYT0HP9DbKwI/s1600/Clark+et+al+2012+-+ice+sheets+at+23+ka+BP+annot.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="825" data-original-width="621" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ0VdCQWl7wyv4Q8cHoAdsJ8M9cQ0n3Xxs3ZSD9Sxfhvo0wvcCxeIiQsmmB8pIuAt7pYn7CsvRcvF5Zs14BN4DMRTEGaVp9fjGZvfK40mYjzOHF7ZTXlRQhC2csNGzEWzdyYT0HP9DbKwI/s640/Clark+et+al+2012+-+ice+sheets+at+23+ka+BP+annot.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Devensian ice limits about 23,000 years ago. <br />Image courtesy Clark <i>et al</i>, 2012, fig.18.</span></td></tr>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">The Devensian, and presumably earlier glaciations, have left traces everywhere on Islay. There is ice-scratched and -scoured bedrock and other glacially-sculpted topography; there are eskers and moraines, sub-glacial meltwater channels; layers of till and outwash gravel. The general direction of ice flow was towards the Atlantic. The till is unevenly distributed, and underlies the most fertile parts of Islay. My cousin William has noticed that his best farmland lies to the south-west side of Ben Cladville, and speculates that the till was deposited more thickly in the lee of the hill as the ice flowed over </span><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">it. This seems very plausible to me.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmt8IAl-4TUk2lXStuUFGy07mcSGwxGAjvABGttQyv20usxOq0-aToJ-lz74B67gisSIrTMrRWQsgV1KYZpDwP5wyzEg9WdIIaoKaDDglyzsHcCZDi5KVHAjCXDWny63mOs7-Ac8zrraoc/s1600/600+roche+020+cut+adj.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="459" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmt8IAl-4TUk2lXStuUFGy07mcSGwxGAjvABGttQyv20usxOq0-aToJ-lz74B67gisSIrTMrRWQsgV1KYZpDwP5wyzEg9WdIIaoKaDDglyzsHcCZDi5KVHAjCXDWny63mOs7-Ac8zrraoc/s1600/600+roche+020+cut+adj.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Cnoc Bhi Bhuirn, a glacially-sculpted rocky knoll in the classic shape of</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">a <i>roche moutonée</i>, The direction of ice flow was from the right (north-east).<br />Ben Cladville is in the far distance.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBOG7k9pLuns5KIxoFi8zqBIeJ6uWqIJbcyo0kmEHNOHtNpbriUmU0cf1piDSHYIJuoKZEJqv0fGsH-Z9t0T_pQ7C6sKVUkpIXE5e-7gDCfs6hdTFO9IJgPkx2vwIJaxsD4BN3l27w2Zmr/s1600/600+scoured+rock+0114.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBOG7k9pLuns5KIxoFi8zqBIeJ6uWqIJbcyo0kmEHNOHtNpbriUmU0cf1piDSHYIJuoKZEJqv0fGsH-Z9t0T_pQ7C6sKVUkpIXE5e-7gDCfs6hdTFO9IJgPkx2vwIJaxsD4BN3l27w2Zmr/s1600/600+scoured+rock+0114.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">A glacially-scoured outcrop of gneiss bedrock, with accentuated jointing. </span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSaqzNoDPCBd_Lr65pbQzeygnAATori2u5nJy-8z5yIupC7ZIvwKUCO6q4RpzNOEtpW8FS3H7FtHcfLRQl2YNyKwCGf0Wi9VCG_ZtxTz5SSy_JvRI4Re7IOQPq_AlYpzMHMHwi5MfugWGK/s1600/600+THW_0100+basalt+erratic+adj+cut.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="461" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSaqzNoDPCBd_Lr65pbQzeygnAATori2u5nJy-8z5yIupC7ZIvwKUCO6q4RpzNOEtpW8FS3H7FtHcfLRQl2YNyKwCGf0Wi9VCG_ZtxTz5SSy_JvRI4Re7IOQPq_AlYpzMHMHwi5MfugWGK/s1600/600+THW_0100+basalt+erratic+adj+cut.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">An erratic boulder of dolerite in glacial till at Claddach.<br />Dolerite is found on Islay as intrusive igneous dykes of early Tertiary age.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Al3kwDjPwAeoEzG4y_bcarCzgCUYX_rwzdkN12NOE5vAfr6q0wu_mQQ1QsNhtIZ8QwzkQVubmKtk-SRiz7xXik6ghiSpcrUWK8ctKfb3ZhvUcss8gvhJtDHwLblDNEZlokkX8ccCtFE8/s1600/600+moraine+composite.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="186" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Al3kwDjPwAeoEzG4y_bcarCzgCUYX_rwzdkN12NOE5vAfr6q0wu_mQQ1QsNhtIZ8QwzkQVubmKtk-SRiz7xXik6ghiSpcrUWK8ctKfb3ZhvUcss8gvhJtDHwLblDNEZlokkX8ccCtFE8/s1600/600+moraine+composite.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">A distinctive ridge of glacial moraine (the 'Blackrock Moraine') at the head of Loch Indaal.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">It is thought to have developed in a retreat phase of the last ice sheet.[10]</span></td></tr>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Another legacy of the last ice age is a suite of raised beaches on Islay. They were formed at a time when the land was depressed by its overburden of ice, but were raised up as the land rebounded after the ice sheets melted and retreated. These are well displayed as a series of planed surfaces in the coastal landscape around Portnahaven.</span><br />
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilUChKA4-m7U_MxgxnASIzYQHlxz7u7X1VW6bkFS2Z0jKFKj9CuPmILRxWnCZbZ12hnY4WpUpcXnNMOlv4ImbPRRZCbvsSrg8EP91KCyVGlWsITB5ld4sgG-WlumRQixIhh4ZJ2U-vX1ek/s1600/600+Orsay+view+composite.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="147" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilUChKA4-m7U_MxgxnASIzYQHlxz7u7X1VW6bkFS2Z0jKFKj9CuPmILRxWnCZbZ12hnY4WpUpcXnNMOlv4ImbPRRZCbvsSrg8EP91KCyVGlWsITB5ld4sgG-WlumRQixIhh4ZJ2U-vX1ek/s1600/600+Orsay+view+composite.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Raised beaches on two levels at Orsay island, Portnahaven:<br />c.+ 15 m OD near the lighthouse and c.+10 m OD at St Oran's Chapel (right).</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj58METUDoJEYGd5CefJJUy1oMeGlBXb_Qf6RFNQoJKr7P5ZbH9BlT9HCVi7ri1lqfTgqprgO5Zc1Ve-i9Igda0Kc4fO62weAR4NWtOchd0GvMDoA0PJ42miouZqm-sBlFO567GEIF9Rh2S/s1600/600+raised+beach+at+Phaven+032.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj58METUDoJEYGd5CefJJUy1oMeGlBXb_Qf6RFNQoJKr7P5ZbH9BlT9HCVi7ri1lqfTgqprgO5Zc1Ve-i9Igda0Kc4fO62weAR4NWtOchd0GvMDoA0PJ42miouZqm-sBlFO567GEIF9Rh2S/s1600/600+raised+beach+at+Phaven+032.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">A raised beach at c. +15 m OD behind the houses at Portnahaven.<br />(Snoozing grey seals in the foreground.)</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4MhdoQOxP22xXrmakli6jNMy9eARvMTUe1V-Qke2T-okUh-duUfj1uewLZ1A_CvhubA0IcmcnY5-JbadWu42a7tWjlI3NF58Kro-eT1kKGPNrnaAtx89VEuINK2uMD6AneYsY85fImShg/s1600/600+raised+beach+deposits+029.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="602" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4MhdoQOxP22xXrmakli6jNMy9eARvMTUe1V-Qke2T-okUh-duUfj1uewLZ1A_CvhubA0IcmcnY5-JbadWu42a7tWjlI3NF58Kro-eT1kKGPNrnaAtx89VEuINK2uMD6AneYsY85fImShg/s1600/600+raised+beach+deposits+029.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Coastal deposits on a raised beach at Portnahaven, at the +10 m OD level.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><br /><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><b>After the ice</b></span></span><br />
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span><span style="text-align: left;">The ice sheets have retreated, but seemingly only just. The blanket of meadowland, bog and heather can scarcely cover the the bare bones of the recently glaciated landscape. I say recently, but the ice sheets vanished from Islay between 16,000 and 17,000 years ago.[9]</span></span><br />
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><span style="text-align: left;"><br />There is a pass called Bealach Froige on the north side of Ben Cladville. It looks like a glacial overspill channel through which meltwater once flowed westwards. It has a gently sloping long profile and a level, boggy floor which terminates abruptly in a steep declivity, breaking down to a narrow, rocky inlet called Port Froige. The level floor may be the remnant of a raised beach or - more likely - a moraine-dammed lake, as there appears to be a bar of glacial till defining the steep break of slope and marking the still-stand of a small retreating lobe of ice. </span></span><br />
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxDIrVl03hkRWBn9spC8grO5tZNyP4TFYINCVBKhQWUjDf4cN6CvZeWS_PH1gfijBTekoDk1OUgqDjAQx4jnqVpOnxlozek1ufG0GzDUL7KCRLgtRN2dBumI96iNOrZ0Dkc9prm8TP1diM/s1600/600+bealach+017.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxDIrVl03hkRWBn9spC8grO5tZNyP4TFYINCVBKhQWUjDf4cN6CvZeWS_PH1gfijBTekoDk1OUgqDjAQx4jnqVpOnxlozek1ufG0GzDUL7KCRLgtRN2dBumI96iNOrZ0Dkc9prm8TP1diM/s1600/600+bealach+017.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Bealach Froige, a likely glacial meltwater channel - view looking west.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmT40h9gG62O_c1n-MWcVNkYHUBl_drW55xsIug1b9Imge1gCqASRV00MJTdGXvA7q4sBYRsV66933SvMvjHM20UvuxeMKC6AGj59oredEhlQ3BO48TDNrL8beV525QGU_hptkAKFGRqmd/s1600/600+bealach+til+039.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmT40h9gG62O_c1n-MWcVNkYHUBl_drW55xsIug1b9Imge1gCqASRV00MJTdGXvA7q4sBYRsV66933SvMvjHM20UvuxeMKC6AGj59oredEhlQ3BO48TDNrL8beV525QGU_hptkAKFGRqmd/s1600/600+bealach+til+039.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Reddish-brown till exposed at the seaward lip </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">of Bealach Froige</span></td></tr>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">In the 1980s the valley's sediments were cored to a depth of 7.5 metres and analysed for fossil pollen. The results have provided information about the environmental history of Islay in the early post-glacial period.[11]</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwflPW8kC9IWaXRXEhC8zPFlAvXcNSxmFnXn3DQMGACkyurMFt-aSmjvprSgC0WO1hahTAE61yRNQqpkLiQzy-bzlZCJpL-zgILlyVx4U_hGOnZXCRm6_9DO8-m52yv8OAL2WZPjSW5Kzc/s1600/600+Bealach+Froige+pollen+diagram+in+Edwards+2000.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwflPW8kC9IWaXRXEhC8zPFlAvXcNSxmFnXn3DQMGACkyurMFt-aSmjvprSgC0WO1hahTAE61yRNQqpkLiQzy-bzlZCJpL-zgILlyVx4U_hGOnZXCRm6_9DO8-m52yv8OAL2WZPjSW5Kzc/s1600/600+Bealach+Froige+pollen+diagram+in+Edwards+2000.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Far from being the treeless moorland we see in the Rinns today, the pollen record shows that the Cladville area was once forested with birch, Scots pine, elm, oak, alder, hazel and willow. The Bealach Froige profile is undated, but comparison with dated profiles from nearby Loch a' Bhogaidh suggests the expansion of forest took place about 9,000 years ago.[11] There is oak and hazel woodland elsewhere in sheltered parts of Islay, no doubt directly descended from the first colonising trees.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNCOpGqDaoO9Csn8MbSmt5f9sD50aWwbHm0Vz-Dc7ynmVN2SJCOcpcWTjvPyj0QGrIns7pKuZbK0sT5mRYxJ3eG2N5CL9dvkKvbPovorcLoKpgQT9kaB-Ycjn2DS8xwa0JDtQ2jtasegab/s1600/600+Kildalton+view+0058.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNCOpGqDaoO9Csn8MbSmt5f9sD50aWwbHm0Vz-Dc7ynmVN2SJCOcpcWTjvPyj0QGrIns7pKuZbK0sT5mRYxJ3eG2N5CL9dvkKvbPovorcLoKpgQT9kaB-Ycjn2DS8xwa0JDtQ2jtasegab/s1600/600+Kildalton+view+0058.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Oak woodland at Kildalton in south-east Islay.</span></td></tr>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">The earliest evidence of human life on Islay after the ice sheets retreated is flint tools of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahrensburg_culture" target="_blank">Ahrensburgian</a> industry, product of late glacial and early post-glacial horse and reindeer hunters. Ahrensburgian-type chipped stone tools have been found beneath Mesolithic layers at Port an t-Seilich.[12] The excavators speculated as to whether these people may have been seal hunters.</span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">The Mesolithic site of Bolsay Farm, close to Loch a' Bhogaidh, has yielded large quantities of microlithic flintwork,[12] and is dated to about 7,930 years BP. David has found a single worked flint flake on his cliff top, so perhaps there is a prehistoric campsite under the peat close by. It could be Mesolithic or equally Neolithic, as there is evidence of Neolithic activity at Loch a' Bhogaidh in the form of stone tools and pollen profiles that indicate forest clearance.[13]</span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><b>For peat's sake</b></span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Peat is found everywhere where there is poorly-drained land on Islay. Initially formed over wet patches and hollows, it spread and coalesced to form a blanket over areas of level moorland. Dead plant debris marinades in a deoxygenated stew of its own decay, becomes compacted, turns into layers of peat. It has been forming across Islay for millennia, but received a boost 4,000 years ago in the early Bronze Age when the climate became wetter and forest clearance was well advanced.[13]</span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">I first came to Islay in the summer of 1968, and remember seeing drying stacks of peat dotted across the landscape near Porthahaven. It was a picturesque sight. Today, fifty years on, very few people continue the practice; David tells me that the struggle to cut the stuff, dry it and cart it away are now beyond most people's patience and endurance. The trenches near Portnahaven are now healing over. Elsewhere, it seems the only large-scale peat cutting still carried out on Islay is destined for the whisky distilleries. They rely on peat smoke to lend its distinctive aroma to the drying barley used in the <a href="http://www.whiskyforeveryone.com/whisky_basics/influence_of_peat.html" target="_blank">malting process</a>. The barley itself was originally grown on local areas of loamy</span><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"> soil, though today most of it is imported.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3mYLe_540WEx60YpQrH8GNgdna71-qyXWFRS-UXJDUuC38Ixr9_sCYRftuSUGVB1qmXq90L0OWwDgGYQJ_Oqtr2NtvWG_wcaBvVyerNRnzZT0us007uIuAnPOkaJB6BF1rx-3_YG6Upnr/s1600/600+peat+scars+015.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3mYLe_540WEx60YpQrH8GNgdna71-qyXWFRS-UXJDUuC38Ixr9_sCYRftuSUGVB1qmXq90L0OWwDgGYQJ_Oqtr2NtvWG_wcaBvVyerNRnzZT0us007uIuAnPOkaJB6BF1rx-3_YG6Upnr/s1600/600+peat+scars+015.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Vegetated former peat cutting scars near Claddach, Portnahaven.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Ws4c21buY6mTVNCRZb_OfLk2HouNBogobK_1mcVQbwn2xgqjvv67Uct0e_l8BTHJf2h0cDTQpZ1PZqqIFO_y6ohWN4JM58_t5wuH_thX8WHzcqTxZxRdPE1lXwwzz7h4WIU0Ua6TPA5O/s1600/600+peat+057.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Ws4c21buY6mTVNCRZb_OfLk2HouNBogobK_1mcVQbwn2xgqjvv67Uct0e_l8BTHJf2h0cDTQpZ1PZqqIFO_y6ohWN4JM58_t5wuH_thX8WHzcqTxZxRdPE1lXwwzz7h4WIU0Ua6TPA5O/s1600/600+peat+057.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Some small-scale peat cutting near Airigh Sgallaidh, north-east of Ben Cladville.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoR4q0T46_CqoNMbIg-48a4gzEjs9pRt_WL6yKs4l8N3iLIT2wm5e0ooEocmFlUSI5NaYHiGlG2rRRRcGjVTNLB9j8cyPV1O3LEiXOMvmkV13OvxLccRfIOjeAk36JoQc_niBXCTF9laNv/s1600/600+peat+stacks+095.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoR4q0T46_CqoNMbIg-48a4gzEjs9pRt_WL6yKs4l8N3iLIT2wm5e0ooEocmFlUSI5NaYHiGlG2rRRRcGjVTNLB9j8cyPV1O3LEiXOMvmkV13OvxLccRfIOjeAk36JoQc_niBXCTF9laNv/s1600/600+peat+stacks+095.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Peat cutting at Duich Lots. Perhaps the peat is going to one of the nearby distilleries </span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">at Ardbeg, Bowmore, Lagavulin, Laphroaig or Port Ellen.</span></td></tr>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><br /></span>
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">As compacted plant remains, peat contains the layered history of the successive plant communities of which it was formed. Its twigs, leaves and pollen are an immediate archive of plant history in the landscape. The deepest peat contains the longest archive. Yes - this means that peat on the fire is part of an ancient landscape library going up in smoke.</span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">But we needn't worry too much, as each volume - each shelf even - is pretty much the same for a given patch of landscape: small variations on a theme in a repetitive music score; a few changed words in otherwise identical paragraphs. Only when we have research questions to answer, as at Bealach Froige and Loch a' Bhogaidh, is it worth the time and trouble to play the score or decipher the text.</span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Life goes on, oblivious, over and within the Holocene peat bogs of Islay. They hum with insects of all kinds, from infuriating midges to serene damselflies; from gadding cleggs to bumbling bees. Bacterial and fungal action as ever carries out its dark alchemy. Cotton grass flurries in the Atlantic wind which almost constantly buffets the island. Sphagnum moss absorbs water, swells and dies; provides nutrients for its neighbours and descendants. Sundews clasp flies and draw them down into dissolving liquors.</span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Out on a bog near Airigh Sgallaidh a cuckoo calls incessantly from the echoing walls of a forestry plantation. Palaeoproterozoic rocks continue their unimaginably long journey to becoming grains of sand. It is a Monday morning, and everything has its special place in the world's story.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;">Variations on a theme of peat.</span></td></tr>
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><b>REFERENCES</b></span></div>
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<ol>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Muir, RJ. <i>The Precambrian Basement and Related Rocks of the Southern Inner Hebrides, Scotland</i>. PhD thesis, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 1990.</span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Conway Morris, S.. <i>The Early Evolution of Life</i>. In: Brown, GC, Hawkesworth, CJ & Wilson, RCL (eds). <i>Understanding the Earth</i>. Cambridge University Press, 1992.</span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Sender, R, Fuchs, S, & Milo, R. <i>Revised estimates for the number of human and bacteria cells in the body</i>. PLoS Biol 14(8), 2016. Online at <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002533">https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002533</a>. [Accessed June 2018]</span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Panahi, A & Young, GM. <i>A geochemical investigation into the provenance of the Neoproterozoic Port Askaig Tillite, Dalradian Supergroup, western Scotland</i>. Precambrian Research, Vol.85 (1–2), 1997.</span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Spencer, AM. <i>Late Pre-Cambrian glaciation in Scotland</i>. Geological Society of London Memoir, no. 6, 1971.</span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Thomson, J. <i>On the stratified rocks of Islay</i>. Report of the 41st Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Edinburgh, John Murray, London, 1871.</span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Macdonald, FA <i>et al</i>. <i>Calibrating the Cryogenian</i>. Science, 327 (5970), 2010.</span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Fitches, WR <i>et al</i>. <i>Provenance of late Proterozoic Dalradian tillite clasts, Inner Hebrides, Scotland</i>. In: In: Brewer, TS (ed.) (1996). <i>Precambrian Crustal Evolution in the North Atlantic Region.</i> Geological Society Special Publication No. 112, 1996. </span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Clark, CD <i>et al</i>. <i>Pattern and timing of retreat of the last British-Irish Ice Sheet</i>. Quaternary Science Reviews Vol. 44, 2012.</span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Peacock, JD. <i>Late Devensian palaeoenvironmental changes in the sea area adjacent to Islay, SW Scotland: implications for the deglacial history of the island</i>. Scottish Journal of Geology, 44, 2008.</span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Edwards, K. <i>Vegetation History of the Southern Inner Hebrides during the Mesolithic Period</i>. In Mithen, S (ed). <i>Hunter-gatherer Landscape Archaeology: The Southern Hebrides Mesolithic Project 1988-1998</i>. McDonald Institute, Cambridge, 2000.</span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Mithen, S, Finlayson, B, Finlay, N & Lake, M. <i>Excavations at Bolsay Farm, a Mesolithic Settlement on Islay. </i>Cambridge Archaeological Journal, no. 2, 1992. </span></li>
<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Edwards. KJ & Berridge, JMA. <i>The Late-Quaternary vegetational history of Loch a'Bhogaidh, Rinns of Islay SSSI, Scotland</i>. New Phytologist, no.128, 1994.</span></li>
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<b><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS</span></b><br />
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<li><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">To William for interesting local details, and to David and Morven for making it all possible.</span></li>
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Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0Portnahaven, Isle of Islay PA47 7SL, UK55.681117 -6.507585100000028430.1590825 -47.816179100000028 81.2031515 34.801008899999971tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-82119085559928092522018-02-04T22:21:00.000+00:002018-11-16T09:02:53.359+00:00A Red Crag whaleA fossil whale vertebra can be a beautiful thing. I was delighted when a friend gave me one he'd found on Landguard beach, near Felixstowe, south-east Suffolk.<br />
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The front (anterior) side of the specimen still has its flat articular surface, but the back (posterior) side has been worn away by the sea. There are two projections on either side. These are the eroded bases of the bony projections supporting the neural arch.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thoracic vertebrae of Greenland right whale, showing<br />
centrum and bones of the neural arch. <br />
Image courtesy Eschricht & Reinhardt (1866)</td></tr>
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Given its findspot, a Red Crag origin for the specimen is likely. It must have been washed out of the Red Crag strata which outcrop in the Felixstowe area. The town is founded on these reddish-yellow, sandy, fossiliferous sediments of Pliocene age about 2.5 million years old. They also outcrop to the north at Bawdsey and to the south at Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex.<br />
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My first exposure to whale fossils was when I was working on the geological collections at Ipswich Museum in 2004/05. There were racks and boxes full of Crag specimens like this, but very few of them had any firm identification. Spencer (1970) recounts everything known about the Crag cetaceans in Ipswich Museum.<br />
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I contacted the Natural History Museum in London to see whether I could find out more. <a href="https://travisparkpalaeo.com/" target="_blank">Dr Travis Park</a>, a fossil cetacean specialist, gave helpful replies to my questions.<br />
<blockquote>
<i>It is a partial thoracic vertebra from either a small baleen whale or a big toothed whale... it's likely [to be] either an anterior or mid-thoracic. ... </i></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>In terms of size, it’s probably closer to something in the 5-10 metre range. That’s a very rough estimate given the degree of wear of the specimen. So it could be a small sperm whale or one of the beaked whales which easily get that size and even bigger. If it’s a baleen whale then a minke whale would be a good proxy although there was quite possibly other small baleen whale lineages around at that time too</i>. </blockquote>
It's unfortunate that the specimen is so worn as to make it impossible to narrow down to Order level (mysticete or odontocete), let alone Family. Still, it's an attractive thing to have on my shelf, and it prompts me to find out more about the cetaceans of our beautiful 'Blue Planet' as they were in the Pliocene.<br />
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<u>References</u><br />
<ul>
<li>Eschricht, DF & Reinhardt, J. 'On the Greenland Right Whale <i>Balaena Mysticetus. </i>In: Flower, WH (ed). <i>Recent Memoirs of the Cetacea</i>. Ray Society, London, 1866.</li>
<li>Spencer, HEP (1970). <i>A Contribution to the Geological History of Suffolk. Part 5. The Early Pleistocene. The Crag Epochs and their Mammals</i>. Transactions of the Suffolk Naturalists’ Society, vol.15, pt. 4.</li>
</ul>
For further information about the geology of the Suffolk coast see my booklet '<a href="http://www.touchingthetide.org.uk/assets/Documents/Tides-of-Change-2-million-years-on-the-Suffolk-coast.pdf" target="_blank">Tides of Change</a>' (2015).<br />
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-59471030462602659282018-01-31T11:32:00.001+00:002023-01-06T14:07:17.134+00:00Land gulls<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Two 80-acre fields at Cookley, near Halesworth, with winter wheat</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(<i>shades of yellowish green,
blueish green</i>) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">on clayland, undulating, empty - just the crop, the soil, the flint.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Setting for a cold wind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">January the last.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Beyond me in space: white gulls.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Gulls in flight, over the field's face, roving. A few standing,
breasting the sun.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A skylark sings, aloft. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The gulls think downward. Raised on ocean-space and sprats, they turn
to terrestrial matters: beetles and worms. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">All beneath a milky, blue and infinite sky.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">They flutter to and fro: staring, stopping, turning to drop
and rise - a mere second or two. Focused then refocusing. Steady
meditation. Body thinking. Time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">How many are there – forty or fifty? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But who watches gulls - those dustbins of the bird world!?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One could map their delicate trajectories: a script of white on green. Their nodes
and lines, objectified. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Instead, each bird enters my vision, enters my thoughts. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In this moment each one enters my heart.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Their wavering flights criss-cross my sight in a ceaseless, white-winged
ballet. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">They catch the sun, like dew on wheat and roof-lines in distant villages. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Land gulls.</span></div>
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Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com1Cookley, Halesworth IP19 0LW, UK52.325789 1.446842000000060626.8037545 -39.861751999999939 77.8478235 42.75543600000006tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-59334241455078608232018-01-27T13:19:00.002+00:002018-03-21T21:53:04.681+00:00Norfolk Island Pine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There's a Norfolk Island Pine (<i>Araucaria heterophylla</i>) sapling on the 6th floor at County Hall, Norwich. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It is not looking particularly happy, but I'm told it is a lot happier here than in its previous location downstairs in the foyer. A gift to the County Council from a well-wisher, it was given a home by the Environment team last year when a decision was taken to remove all potted plants from the foyer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I am delighted to make the plant's acquaintance. It is a member of the <i>Araucariaceae</i>, a family of primitive conifers with their evolutionary roots over 200 million years ago, in the late Triassic period. The <i>Araucariaceae </i>once thrived around the globe, including Europe, but since the great extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous, about 65 million years ago, they are only native to the southern hemisphere. Members include the monkey puzzle tree (<i>Araucaria araucana</i>) which makes spectacular forests in Chile, the towering New Zealand kauri (<i>Agathis australis</i>) which produces kauri gum, and the extraordinary <i>Wollemia nobilis</i>, a living fossil discovered in a remote Australian ravine in 1994. They are thought to have diverged from a common ancestor in the early Cretaceous period.<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The plant has an upright stem covered with pointed, scale-like leaves towards the top and bristling branches that emerge radially. It has an aromatic, resinous smell. I can imagine a small Composognathid dinosaur hiding behind it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I'd like to have a specimen of <i>A.heterophylla</i>. It is not hardy in the British climate, so it would have to be kept in a plant pot then brought indoors in autumn. However, it is said to be fast growing and can reach a height of over 50 metres. I may have to think twice about the idea!!<span style="font-size: x-small;">[2]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[1] - Kunzman, Lutz (2007). <i>Araucariaceae (Pinopsida): Aspects in palaeobiogeography and palaeobiodiversity in the Mesozoic</i>. Zoologischer Anzeiger. 246 (4): 257–77. Online at <a href="http://www.thefossilforum.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=364312">http://www.thefossilforum.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=364312</a> [accessed Jan 2018]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[2] - <i>Araucaria heterophylla</i>. Wikipedia. Online at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_heterophylla">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_heterophylla</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_heterophylla" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_heterophylla</a> [accessed Jan 2018]</span></div>
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Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0Norwich, UK52.6308859 1.297355000000038752.476717900000004 0.97463150000003873 52.7850539 1.6200785000000386tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-88598288182994502602017-04-30T19:56:00.000+01:002018-02-05T11:46:24.283+00:00The Wisdom of Solomon<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It is Spring, and <i>flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land</i>.<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1]</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sadly I expect turtle doves will be in short supply this year, despite the best efforts of bird conservation organisations, Chris Packham <i>et al</i> to explain the catastrophic decline of this species - along with the cuckoo and other precious summer visitors. According to Project Turtle Dove, its numbers have plummeted by 91% since 1995.<span style="font-size: x-small;">[2]</span> Cuckoos have declined by 65% since the 1980s.<span style="font-size: x-small;">[3]</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Instead, the voice of the lawn-mower is heard in our land, as some people strive to achieve uniform, level, striped surfaces. I suppose such lawns are the outdoor equivalent of a plain fitted carpet. The result is just lawn. It is not even 'lawn with flowers', or 'lawn with flowers and bees', or 'lawn with flowers, bees, ants and moles'. Lawn means lawn. It is monoculture.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Here is an example of a lawnista's approach to gardening.<span style="font-size: x-small;">[4]</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I'm delighted to have some of these species on my lawn. What is a weed?<br /><br />About 15 years ago, the Bungalow garden was visited by a local TV reporter. Somehow she had discovered a web page I'd made explaining that I have notable biodiversity here, including </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelled_slug" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Testacella haliotidea</a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, a rare carnivorous, subterranean slug living in the vegetable patch. As we wandered round the garden trying to find the slug I wittered on about the wildlife, for instance the seven species of grass and sedge I have identified on the lawn, and its notable anthills. She then asked why I did not destroy the ants. They are "bad for lawns", she said. I was dumbfounded. I did not know what to say. I didn't say how much I love watching green woodpeckers probing around in the anthills or that all the piled up earth must indicate the existence of a phenomenal network of subterranean tunnels. I fell silent, struggling with my disgust at her question.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I feel a similar disgust when I see uniform lawns. A biodiverse lawn i</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">s more useful to birds, mammals, insects and plants; it has more ecological value. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">From a biosemiotic point of view, a biodiverse lawn is more meaningful than a monocultural one because it intrinsically contains more encoded 'difference', and hence more meaning. In my eyes that makes it more beautiful. Where a card-carrying lawnista might see disorder I see beauty and a wealth of meaning - and my heart rejoices. This wealth is not just there for me to perceive but for many other organisms to thrive in, as they search for home habitat and food. This is a shared world.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I suspect the lawn here is the last remaining fragment of the ancient parkland surrounding Brome Hall. The rest was been ploughed up many decades ago.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Uniform lawns are instances of the tide of biocidal monoculture flooding through the world. Rainforests are being replaced by plantations.<span style="font-size: x-small;">[5]</span> Faced with this creeping impoverishment of biological meaning, I invite all lawn owners to cherish their biodiversity in practical ways. For instance, wait a few weeks before first cutting, and see what species are already present. (It was only after doing this that I discovered I had two orchid species.) Don't use fertilisers or herbicides. Use a rotary mower with a grass box. Leave areas uncut until later in the summer and cut other areas in rotation. Don't kill all moles. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Perhaps we should also go out and buy a kelim or Isfahan rug for the house - one featuring a Tree of Life or floral design !</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As a joke currently doing the rounds has it, <a href="http://www.comptechdoc.org/humor/garden/" target="_blank">God and St Francis </a>would surely approve of both designs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">FOOTNOTES</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[1] - The Song of Solomon 2.12.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[2] - Project Turtle Dove - http://www.operationturtledove.org/ [accessed April 2017]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[3] - 'Cuckoo decline' - https://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/bbs/research-conservation/cuckoo [accessed April 2017]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[4] - Lawn Weeds website - http://www.lawnweeds.co.uk </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[accessed April 2017]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[5] - 'The Impact of Industrial Agriculture in Rainforests' - http://rainforests.mongabay.com/0811.htm </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[accessed April 2017]</span><br />
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</span>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com4Brome and Oakley, UK52.350379900000007 1.155544899999995352.311373400000008 1.0745208999999953 52.389386400000006 1.2365688999999953tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-51377130571249400222017-04-24T17:09:00.001+01:002017-10-07T12:04:27.043+01:00Flat field - Ancient oak<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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The parish of Bressingham (south Norfolk) is hardly a hilly place, but it does have 'upland' and 'lowland' areas. Its uplands are the gently rolling till plateau north of the A1066 turnpike; its lowlands are the flatlands of the Waveney valley lying south of the road. The one given over to clayland arable farming; the other to pasture and woodland on relict valley fenland.<br />
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Prof Tom Williamson (University of East Anglia) gave a walking talk today on the parish's cultural landscape history. The event was hosted by the fledgling Bressingham History Group, courtesy Linda Holly, and was enjoyable and well attended. I contributed a geological dimension to the discussions. <br />
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Apart from the congenial company, two features of the walk were outstanding.<br />
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Firstly, the view south from Fen Street. A long, narrow field - flat as a runway - leading the eye south towards woods known as Horse Fen and the hidden River Waveney. It looks a suitable pasture for sheep. The BGS map tell us this field is underlain by peat. If so, what we see today are the dried-out and shrinking remnants of the thick mattress of decayed swamp woodland and fen vegetation which has covered this land for most of the last 10,000 years. Our ancestors cut turf here and went wildfowling. According to Faden's map of 1797 it used to be part of Bressingham Fen. Today, drainage has reclaimed much of the the land for farming, and it is a remarkably flat expanse of pasture. It owes its long, thin shape to the historic pattern of 18th and 19th century enclosures in the Fen. This can be seen in the early 19th century tithe map. Four of the old fields have now been knocked into one.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcARKZat9cgTJtSDjmpGmgGP6u_kpeZnEq59-_OsveVLhbDyV99KOuOT5gDJbUgum4DctCauBuBniTt8i7CWwUT3h67IMbMJyCbvoP9Hi5HUybyXV0uDsv3bvyccmJ5_uI3yo4rau0nTRI/s1600/415+Tithe+map+%2540+NH+Explorer+adj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcARKZat9cgTJtSDjmpGmgGP6u_kpeZnEq59-_OsveVLhbDyV99KOuOT5gDJbUgum4DctCauBuBniTt8i7CWwUT3h67IMbMJyCbvoP9Hi5HUybyXV0uDsv3bvyccmJ5_uI3yo4rau0nTRI/s640/415+Tithe+map+%2540+NH+Explorer+adj.jpg" width="424" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tithe map [1840s] courtesy Norfolk Heritage Explorer<br style="font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">http://historic-map.norfolk.gov.uk/mapexplorer/ </span></span></td></tr>
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Secondly, the view of an immense, ancient oak tree in a clayland meadow at Valley Farm.<br />
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The tree has a stalwart trunk and colossal boughs, and is as stag-headed as the horns of Herne. It must be over 500 years old, as Tom suggested. It is truly an ancient, Mediaeval being, worthy of veneration. I wonder when the crown began to die back. Perhaps the field was ploughed for agriculture in one of the World Wars? Nevertheless, I am impressed that the occupants of Valley Farm have come & gone over the centuries without significantly interfering with this extraordinary tree. I am reminded of the celebrated <a href="https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-winfarthing-oak-868" target="_blank">Winfarthing Oak</a>, sited only a few miles away, once the largest in England, which finally died in the 20th century. What makes people preserve such trees rather than fell them for firewood?<br />
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Horse Fen field and the Valley Farm oak - the one smooth and the other craggy - are phenomena of the parish; both are products of human cultivation, and both have stories to tell about Norfolk's landscape history.<br />
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0Bressingham, UK52.3854357 1.055923600000028326.863401200000002 -40.252670399999971 77.9074702 42.364517600000028tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-20508306274572835522017-02-12T22:43:00.002+00:002018-03-21T22:14:26.991+00:00Hockham Mere<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">9-12-16</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My friend Julia B and I met yesterday at Great Hockham for a
wilderness expedition.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Julia is researching a book on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland" target="_blank">Doggerland</a>, the inhabitable land area in
the North Sea basin which was drowned as sea levels rose at the end of the last
glacial period, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_glacial_period#Europe" target="_blank">Devensian</a>. Its
landscape changed from tundra to forest, then marsh and finally sea, in a
process that spanned the transition from the Devensian into our own </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flandrian_interglacial" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Flandrian</a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">warm period, roughly from 10,000 to 7,000 years ago. This ancestral land is now
out of reach of our exploration: we needed somewhere else to experience
elements of its vanished wilderness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Is it possible to talk of 'wilderness' in Norfolk? Other countries have
tracts of land we can easily label wilderness - areas defined by the lack of
human habitation or disturbance, graced with plant and animal communities and
geomorphological processes that operate in ways unshaped by human agency. 'Tis
true, we are hardly likely to encounter wolves or frost-shattered peaks in
Norfolk - let Ansel Adams picture them for us - but I think the intertidal zone
is implicitly wilderness. We have some 90 miles of coastline at the land/sea
interface, where the fluxes of wind, waves and tides shape the sand and shingle
without reference to humans, and plant and animal lifeworlds may create their
biological meshes of meaning undisturbed.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Og0PzDs_gPFrNkP4Dyy2qL4AnUr0C6WcvUDvqXglUs_4ZuNLA6E_QYucPveOE8pqGtYm4KBCC8Po4KR9OPSrh78wXBCCvDak-F4SGAjhPlU5554lIvatKDDDy-YBfG87nTCugp8DN218/s1600/600+titchwell+P1010023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Og0PzDs_gPFrNkP4Dyy2qL4AnUr0C6WcvUDvqXglUs_4ZuNLA6E_QYucPveOE8pqGtYm4KBCC8Po4KR9OPSrh78wXBCCvDak-F4SGAjhPlU5554lIvatKDDDy-YBfG87nTCugp8DN218/s1600/600+titchwell+P1010023.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wind, sand and razor shells on Titchwell beach.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">W</span>e also have wilderness at the micro-level: life with its processes, unmediated and raw, at the levels of cell and leaf, in every wood, field or garden, under every stone, in every lump of rotting wood. There are beings for whom this spatial level is their life's horizon, and I imagine it is<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> pure </span>wilderness down among the grass roots in my <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">l</span>awn - the selfsame lawn I walk or picnic on. Wilderness is the landscape that belongs to the Germanic <i>vill</i> or <i>wild</i>, the Latinate <i>desierto</i>, <i>selvaggio</i> or <i>sauvage</i>. The word enfolds, in English, a sense of the alien, empty and untamed. At its heart is wildness.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We carry wildness in ourselves, for instance in our blood flow, breathing, dreams and borborygmus which have their own strange, <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">untameable</span> life-logic, even though we know them to be truly and organically <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ours<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">elves</span></span>. There is <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">also </span>wildness we experience in others when we realise that they are simply 'not me'; they have their own life-logic which may overlap with our own but it is radically Other and different, perhaps alien. It could be a friend, a neighbour or a bird. We find they are partly 'me' - but mostly not.<br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thus, o</span>ur perception of wilderness may have its roots in the radical Otherness of a landscape: we are forced to meet it on its own terms and not ours. We may be able to find resources and affordances within it, <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">places of </span>identity,<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span>attachment and utility, </span>but it remains - at its core - essentially 'other' and wild. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tyresta forest, Sweden - beavers at work. Photo courtesy Lena Ohre.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Our expedition had prehistoric wilderness in mind - specifically any
evocative traces of the lost life-world of Doggerland to be found in the
Hockham area. Its task would be bot<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">h</span> dreamwork and a perceptive attention to the
present landscape through which an imaginative experience of the late glacial
and early post-glacial landscape might become possible. The result would be
writing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>'A text of nature writing is a representational model of the meaning
relations that a writer has perceived in the environment under specific
conditions, determined by the time, location, and the biological and cultural
abilities of the perceiver.' </i>[1]</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As a 'representational model', nature writing is a translation from the
Otherness of nature, as we <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">experience </span>it, into the selfhood of words. We go outward into Otherness: we
return to Ourselves. In the case of Doggerland we are dealing with a world of
plants, animals and human life which can no longer be directly experienced.
Translation may risk going awry and descending into ungrounded phantasmagoria
that have the ring of fantasy but not of vital truth. What we need is
eye-opening places where what is experienceable today and what was
experienceable 10,000 years ago can come together and bear fruit: the fungi and berries of lifeworld visions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Suppose we wanted to experience a Devensian environment today we'd need
to go north, to the Arctic. The last ice age lingers there, clinging to the
circumpolar zone in the face of the planet's encroaching hyper-warmth,
along with its refugees the snow buntings and musk oxen, beetles and midges,
pingos and permafrost. My studies tell me this part of Norfolk is awash with
physical (and even some biological) evidence for life in the Devensian.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If we wanted to experience an early Flandrian environment we'd need to
go north-east, to visit the low-lying landscapes around the Baltic, for example <a href="http://www.wow.com/wiki/Soomaa_National_Park" target="_blank">Soomaa </a>in Estonia, where bogs and boreal forest go hand in hand; landscapes of birch and
pine, beetle and midge, lake and moraine. The marshy, forested land at Frost's
Common and Cranberry Rough, Hockham, has a similar aspect, though no longer inhabited <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">by</span> wolf, elk and lynx.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For Doggerland itself, scientific research has begun to lay bare the
geography using remote sensing and sampling techniques[2].We are beginning to
chart the layout of drowned estuaries and <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">low</span> hills, fens and plains, on the
seafloor<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> and be<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">neath it.</span></span> We know about the kinds of plants and animals present, and the timing
of the submergence. We now have details of this lost, low-lying<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span>landscape available
to us in words and maps. It probably looked rather like parts of Norfolk.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For understanding the people of Doggerland, we could draw on the
experience of the hunting & gathering peoples of the northern forests, co<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">asts </span>and tundras. They are the ones who grappled in deed and myth, in
actions, words and songs, with the realities of life in this kind of
environment. This would complement the traces of <a href="http://www.heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/record-details?mnf15363" target="_blank">local Mesolithic occupation</a>.
Perhaps some of the people settled at Hockham were refugees from Doggerland.
What language, stories and skills did they bring with them?</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW9O7-vuK_P0NfWTtoDwkXPujzRVTVhsGsfy7bWYVyGgrHbECiywL4M_48nY-ltFwUSzMRheiqLIaDDwEa_gANDlIJpp1MCVRhsPH9Hd4g8ABOZ4Juta2p5hzKNYt-QxmdWlsIaBmy9cnv/s1600/620+Frost%2527s+Common+%2540+QT+2+white.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW9O7-vuK_P0NfWTtoDwkXPujzRVTVhsGsfy7bWYVyGgrHbECiywL4M_48nY-ltFwUSzMRheiqLIaDDwEa_gANDlIJpp1MCVRhsPH9Hd4g8ABOZ4Juta2p5hzKNYt-QxmdWlsIaBmy9cnv/s1600/620+Frost%2527s+Common+%2540+QT+2+white.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A digital terrain map (DTM) of Frost's Common (right), with the eastern margin of Cranberry Rough (left). <br />
A pattern of ditches can clearly be seen, evidence of 20th century drainage work. <br />
Imagery © Forestry Research, courtesy Breaking New Ground data.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Hockham Mere</b> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Our expedition was focused on the western side of Hockham parish. It included Frost's Common, an area pockmarked with a concentration of ponds. As a
digital terrain map shows, the land slopes hence gently westward into a
broad basin area, a shallow sump for water draining from the glacial sands,
gravels and clays which underlie it. This is <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">the </span>area called Cranberry Rough, the
site of an ancient lake known as Hockham Mere. <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Its muds<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span>w<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ere</span> investi<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">gated </span>by researchers in the 1940s, <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">who cored down and recovered samples to a depth of 30 ft (9 m). They we<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">re able to show </span>th<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">at the Mere holds a sedimentary seq<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">uence going bac<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">k to the end of the last ice age, <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">with</span></span> a fossil pollen sequence to match[3]. </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />The Mere </span>probably existed in some form until Tudor times
before being drained with a network of ditches. 19th century maps show this reclaimed land as <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">swamp woodland </span>and rough pasture, with the eastern part set aside as a Poor's Fen allotment; altogether it covered some
190 acres (76 ha). Patches of worked flint near the western end and traces of
charcoal in the lake muds are evidence of occupation by Mesolithic hunters
& gatherers, more than 7,000 years ago. There is a Roman road, the Peddar's
Way, tracking nearby, and the vestiges of a deserted railway line cutting
across it. The southern half of the site is managed by the Forestry Commission,
and so theoretically it is publicly- accessible. Until recently almost all Cranberry Rough was covered
with woodland, but a programme of publicly funded works has now cleared <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">trees and bushes</span> from the southern half of the site, revealing a flat<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> t</span>ract of <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">boggy</span> pasture. <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The </span>oozing, privately-owned core of </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">i</span>ts northern <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">half </span></span>is </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">swamp carr<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, </span></span>pristine and impenetrable. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEGrZ9sipJcL4S6haSlXdOX_9VIWQzUdg7kwfvFqf6JEN1t5V_FwxvsEXun0XL9rUrtQ3rqcw_A0-b2Yu75u49TDeMGRomTD7snB8s6CxfVPyKMUNivrAn8qtFyM_00y7rx0UOcuc4kFww/s1600/600+swamp+scene+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEGrZ9sipJcL4S6haSlXdOX_9VIWQzUdg7kwfvFqf6JEN1t5V_FwxvsEXun0XL9rUrtQ3rqcw_A0-b2Yu75u49TDeMGRomTD7snB8s6CxfVPyKMUNivrAn8qtFyM_00y7rx0UOcuc4kFww/s1600/600+swamp+scene+3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Swamp carr at the heart of at Cranberry Rough, May 2015</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We parked that car near the entrance to Fire Route 83, and entered the
forest. We followed our own trackless path.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Frost's Common</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>'Maa iidse tiigid'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">'The land of ancient ponds'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Deadened by crowding trees, the sounds of traffic on the A1075 are
muffled and soon die away. Frost's Common has an extraordinary power of <i>dépaysement</i>,
of taking one elsewhere - in this case somewhere boreal and strange. I have
been in similarly odd, crumbly forests in Sweden where the delightful and the
sinister are woven together equally. An attractive variety of broad-leaved and
coniferous trees presides over a complex of brooding ponds; the tracks of deer
(and some bigger animals) are woven here and there over the earth; in some
places dense mats of dead bracken mask a jumble of rotten trunks. Mosses,
lichens and fungi abound. Time passes and - pixie-led - one finds oneself going
in green circles, for one cluster of ponds looks much like another. One steers by instinct
- or the sun, if its position can be discerned.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibRVJJxPd2ouqKKPfp3VsB9RihmSkaOQft6Jdasr1_8omBezc5k5SbsXjFK2td_CYYAtDiC3VjCkWZ5Wf0IrsdtxNvxA3fqIYgjfsyzsaUIaGIoA31CCzslP0q0dji2x7ajrcqMDzPjHuy/s1600/600+Frosts+002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibRVJJxPd2ouqKKPfp3VsB9RihmSkaOQft6Jdasr1_8omBezc5k5SbsXjFK2td_CYYAtDiC3VjCkWZ5Wf0IrsdtxNvxA3fqIYgjfsyzsaUIaGIoA31CCzslP0q0dji2x7ajrcqMDzPjHuy/s1600/600+Frosts+002.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A forest glade</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6WhpP39i6VC3ohJejwLPm_3uFMg5SuPJJmoGFlbn8K_53U6__wade9AHY5ozbLPcSm7XWNpRq7tHEnPuRuCBb1LHnRtqTC8gjx_b7luSBODy_Vr1rPWOJ69ferDwW4Vh2WXkC0kFsKrAG/s1600/600+FC+0001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6WhpP39i6VC3ohJejwLPm_3uFMg5SuPJJmoGFlbn8K_53U6__wade9AHY5ozbLPcSm7XWNpRq7tHEnPuRuCBb1LHnRtqTC8gjx_b7luSBODy_Vr1rPWOJ69ferDwW4Vh2WXkC0kFsKrAG/s1600/600+FC+0001.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Evergreens beside a periglacial pond.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Lp6YcKp0hb-N-09CvV_MNZ-XZo6GCfsnMw2sDssvqxtdDC8T4NUO6SeOKNc1VktyRsw_b_nXmSoIkDFN0djslM4mra5YIrBnN73O51Jt5BIxI3B-VvgZGHE1_JWFu4tK9J3f4898FeMz/s1600/600+julia+%2540+frost%2527s+common+007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Lp6YcKp0hb-N-09CvV_MNZ-XZo6GCfsnMw2sDssvqxtdDC8T4NUO6SeOKNc1VktyRsw_b_nXmSoIkDFN0djslM4mra5YIrBnN73O51Jt5BIxI3B-VvgZGHE1_JWFu4tK9J3f4898FeMz/s1600/600+julia+%2540+frost%2527s+common+007.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reflections</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Geologically speaking, the land at Frost's Common is a mosaic of sands
and chalky clays, and the ponds are probably relict <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithalsa" target="_blank">lithalsa</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingo" target="_blank">pingo</a> landforms.
Fourteen thousand years ago the ground here would have been swollen with
permafrost ice. The surface layers would melt in summer then refreeze in
winter. Patches of water-bearing sand in the subsoil would swell up and form
large blisters of ice, with freezing and thawing happening on a seasonal basis.
At the end of the ice age these active frost mounds became permanent ponds.
There must be fifty such ponds and wet depressions surviving at the Common. It
is a landscape ravaged by periglacial pox.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>'Piirneva niiske luht' </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">'Bordering a damp meadow'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The hummocky terrain of Frost's Common gives way, on its western side,
to an open area surrounded by forest. It is less a glade than a rough,
tussocky, damp heath. The ground undulates with a few ground-ice depressions,
and is sporadically studded with willow, hawthorn and gorse. It seems to be a
tract of clear-felled forest that was not replanted. It is not attractive, but
does have a very strong sense of place about it. Many years ago, in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85land_Islands" target="_blank">Åland Islands</a> of the Baltic, I waited at dusk for elk (<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose" target="_blank">Alces alces</a></i>) to emerge in such
a place as this. Stepping into the open here, one is aware that other eyes may
be watching.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB7tgHfbUn8woKIc_bU7pbXRxc4Ku853JLWzGEBzd-YnGrOIeDp024oUDaEhiP6YN0cf6Crd2IiKWnHoJkh8Qs0b2E72Vysmmv8G6uWl9QLUmhml4a8Q8hrwxXIvYPNBFgl5goImm9maYQ/s1600/600+THW_0056%253D%253D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB7tgHfbUn8woKIc_bU7pbXRxc4Ku853JLWzGEBzd-YnGrOIeDp024oUDaEhiP6YN0cf6Crd2IiKWnHoJkh8Qs0b2E72Vysmmv8G6uWl9QLUmhml4a8Q8hrwxXIvYPNBFgl5goImm9maYQ/s1600/600+THW_0056%253D%253D.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWLWeaDunHYX5Fr233476m9JzYOKR6Y_GGjW-U4EOVIbf6e_4P-dZq5hxauCre3mEyCUaGAw1ujhfuD-30Z1G_jmDRTX51Bbk_bkVwAQZTPaPFMgsrwYs4FG4T-5GCf7U0lrArlJRqiqVF/s1600/600+THW_0052%253D%253D+adj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWLWeaDunHYX5Fr233476m9JzYOKR6Y_GGjW-U4EOVIbf6e_4P-dZq5hxauCre3mEyCUaGAw1ujhfuD-30Z1G_jmDRTX51Bbk_bkVwAQZTPaPFMgsrwYs4FG4T-5GCf7U0lrArlJRqiqVF/s1600/600+THW_0052%253D%253D+adj.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>'Ja tume männimets'</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">'And a dark forest of pine trees'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The damp meadow gives way to patchy, mixed woodland of oak, pine, poplar and willow. This in turn gives way to regular pine plantation. Passing through it means
treading underfoot a spongey carpet of dead needles; one's horizon is reduced to <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">a brown world of </span>spiky and straight-planted bole corridors; one's hearing is h<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ushed and closeted</span>. Vestiges of freedom<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> still remain </span>in the tree tops, however, where occasional titmice twitter and flit, and breezes <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">may </span>ruffle greenery in the topmost <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">twig</span>s. Our attention is mostly on the ground. We stumble over half-buried snags. We find a startling splash of chrome yellow slime, a creeping myxomycete. We notice the landscape's resources,
its tracks, trails and signals. Deer droppings; scraps of egg shell; the tang
of a fox; tufts of foxglove or fern. Overhead, away above the tree tops, passing pigeons and carrion crows. The trees are mostly young,
perhaps 20 years old, but have none of the casual spontaneity of youth: they
are already dry, serious characters. It seems a human body could lie here, </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">in the silence at
their feet, </span>buried </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">beneath a steady rain of needles</span> for decades before being
discovered. But I suspect my imagination is running away with me here: the
foxes would soon make it their own and the crows would strip what remained,
leaving just wreckage. The place is more populated than it seems, and there are large</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, fresh-looking </span> animal tracks<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span>meandering among the pines<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, evidence of other<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">-</span>than<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">-</span>human wills <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">contributing to making the place.</span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixsIQJNqlfCit9trAyPz7EFvxN_wudr-MRz8rdAPV6kTQjL26iFhdESguPFvBLsc6dzMXKzlrnw5WvnkA16QcknPzFLleyDX1BEMlRSM6HGAfM3CTV0-r84VbRPZk9BGah_mygnojkLS7Z/s1600/600+THW_0079+adj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixsIQJNqlfCit9trAyPz7EFvxN_wudr-MRz8rdAPV6kTQjL26iFhdESguPFvBLsc6dzMXKzlrnw5WvnkA16QcknPzFLleyDX1BEMlRSM6HGAfM3CTV0-r84VbRPZk9BGah_mygnojkLS7Z/s1600/600+THW_0079+adj.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trackway</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAnArAduC3nnJpdVjefxbWD2a3uKKhWhJs3whu6ABJBchYaba_iAnS-JNcgYJR2RTz_eH4QFi86tenZFrlgliZ4K8CNJX2DaNn0lw2jnICV_Tp3jjDbpV_J1BC7dTz2upghqMW3xUf9XRV/s1600/600+yellow+slime+mould+017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAnArAduC3nnJpdVjefxbWD2a3uKKhWhJs3whu6ABJBchYaba_iAnS-JNcgYJR2RTz_eH4QFi86tenZFrlgliZ4K8CNJX2DaNn0lw2jnICV_Tp3jjDbpV_J1BC7dTz2upghqMW3xUf9XRV/s1600/600+yellow+slime+mould+017.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The myxomycete</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg25TMUnjxPBSiTcz09FRhfpV1iWj0O-veZqgYuUMD01hubDRnTEy42CMjWXCeDlJ9i1-XxEoaOUW2rw3w_bC5fnV_hBHgKm01j9vLD71x2rXL7x4h89rxqazuZnuzV826WoV2ExdZi8Tet/s1600/600+THW_0100%253D+adj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg25TMUnjxPBSiTcz09FRhfpV1iWj0O-veZqgYuUMD01hubDRnTEy42CMjWXCeDlJ9i1-XxEoaOUW2rw3w_bC5fnV_hBHgKm01j9vLD71x2rXL7x4h89rxqazuZnuzV826WoV2ExdZi8Tet/s1600/600+THW_0100%253D+adj.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Corridors of forestry brash</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We navigate westwards through the forest, until the pines loosen as the
ground becomes wetter. Birches and willows step in once more. They mark the
eastern margin of the former Mere. We reach a gate from which, <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">10</span>00 years ago,
we might have surveyed wild water and fen. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Cranberry Rough</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>'Siin on sissepääs suur raba'</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">'Then the entry to a large swamp' </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We are walking across the old lake <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">groun<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">d </span></span>and its soggy, partly-drained<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span>successor. Dark, peat-rich soil has been mechanically stripped of encroaching
trees to reveal a wetland in the remaking. Cattle have poached the ground into
a black chaos of wet potholes which we step through to reach a balk of higher
ground which runs westward across the site. This will be<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> o</span>ur only access route.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Like hunters, our senses take in the layout of <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">woodland and </span>water bodies, the direction of the wind, the evidence of bird
and animal life. At each step we evaluate threats and resources, check our
orientation, adjust our thoughts to the terrain and to each other. We find we are not alone.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This marsh is alive with living things that shy in our presence - the
birds. They are signs in our wilderness, and we in theirs. Geese, ponderous and
clamouring as they rise. Herons, craking. An explosion of teal in a whirr of
wings that peels off the marsh, swings round then refocuses farther off, each
bird dropping back with a white splash to water. And distant, about <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">8</span>00 yards away,
the eye discerns what look like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs" target="_blank">aurochsen</a> - ochreous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_cattle" target="_blank">cattle</a>, hairy and over-horned -
pasturing on what the swamp has to offer by way of December's dying herbage. If
we want to reach cross the Mere and find the place where the Mesolithic flints
were found we shall have to pass them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Courage fails me. I am unnerved by the aurochsen and the birds. We are standing exposed in a chilly emptiness. Is it wilderness or nature reserve; public or private space? It's only two o'clock but daylight seems already to be fading.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I notice that I have lost or misplaced my mobile 'phone. I want to
retrace my steps - our steps - to look for it before the light fails, and Julia
agrees. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We turn back.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>The return</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>'Suur raba,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Piirneb tume männimets,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Siis niiske luht,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Ja maa iidse tiigid'.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">'A large swamp,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Bordered by dark pine forest, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Then a damp meadow</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And a land of ancient ponds'.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Walking back, our attention is on the ground, on little details, as we
walk; they become <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">the</span> thread back through the labyrinth of our expedition:
back across the great swamp - through the forest of pines - across the damp
meadow - <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">between </span></span>the ancient ponds. We revisit our walk's geography in reverse, following my memory's representation<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> (such as it is)</span>. I recognise my boot-prints. I remember whe<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">re </span>I stood to watch a pair of carrion crows. We cross the same beast paths; navigate between the same boles (or just about). I notice a patch of yellow slime. Here is the place among the
damp pine needles where we picnicked on green olives, boiled eggs and black
chocolate. I recal<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">l</span> the crossing of a clearing or the skirting of a pond; the
place where we doubled certain bushes, or stepped over a fallen trunk; <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">a </span>pile of <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">droppings <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">or a feather. </span></span>It is extraordinary how vivid some memories are<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">: </span>I find myself able to retrace tracks and relocate <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">localities </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">we <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">were</span></span> at two hours
earlier. The hunter/gatherer in me is impressed: I am an asset to the tribe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Back at the car park I find my mobile phone buried safely in a bag, so
all is well there. This story poses some awkward questions about
the quality of my memory. Perhaps I'm not such an asset after all. However Julia has been discovering the landscape and taking notes about it, and I am pleased to have been her guide.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I have since learned that the yellow myxomycete is <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuligo_septica" target="_blank">Fuligo septica</a></i>, a species
with a strange Fenno-Scandinavian mythology: said to be the vomit of troll cats or,
in Estonia, the leavings of the demon Kratt. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Each society in each age
interprets natural phenomena in its own way. Today, in 2016, the texts books can
tell me a lot about the biology of slime moulds, and I find the idea that troll
cats may roam the Hockham Woods an appealing one. However, the most important
thing seems to me that Julia and I encountered this strange organism together here
– out in the heart of a Norfolk wilderness – much as our ancestors, some 9,000
years and perhaps 500 generations ago, might have found it on a pine forest
floor in old Doggerland – a landscape now submerged by more than time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>‘</i></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Seal on heita pilku kulla kõnnumaal'.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">'There is a glimpse of gold in the wilderness'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">How would our ancestors have named this thing?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[1] - Maran, Timo & Tüür, Kadri (2016): <i>From birds and trees to
texts: An ecosemiotic look at Estonian nature writing</i>. In: Parham, John &
Westling, Louise (Eds): <i>A Global History of Literature and the Environment</i>;
Cambridge University Press.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"></span>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[2] - Gaffney, V, Fitch, S, and Smith, D (2009): <i>Europe's Lost World -
The rediscovery of Doggerland</i>; Council for British Archaeology.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] - Godwin, H & Tallentire, PA (1951): <i>Hockham Mere, Norfolk</i>; Journal of Ecology 39.</span> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">With ac<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">knowledgements to Google for Estonian translation, and apologies for the inevitable faults of grammar and meaning </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">...</span></div>
Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-58901339484206130122017-01-18T14:07:00.001+00:002017-02-07T22:20:06.290+00:00A Pliocene big cat in SuffolkDreams are strange things - such spontaneous flights of invention which I could hardly conceive in my daytime life. <br />
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This morning, just before waking, I got up and pulled back the curtains. Instead of the usual startled muntjac or rabbit dodging away into the laurel bushes I saw something much larger and more disturbing. About the size of a spotted hyaena; its neck and legs quite long; its tail short; a glowing pelage of yellowish fur speckled all over with small brown marks; its head like a panther or lion, but profile more elongated and somewhat thicker or bearded under the chin - I couldn't quite see, as it was moving away from me. It had a smooth and fluid pace.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwdeXt42EabCBrH8T_-H-EyLyHXBAPp8GFvzZ7r3S45TTl9DregQ-A1arSo1NOuaj9wBQAVCPQBmcJ7uDnKHjEJyxZg-UMYRM7VXRn23QUdzqvLu1-A_6rG16xnQQdjLNWpL36r72uTaCJ/s1600/600+meganteron+site.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwdeXt42EabCBrH8T_-H-EyLyHXBAPp8GFvzZ7r3S45TTl9DregQ-A1arSo1NOuaj9wBQAVCPQBmcJ7uDnKHjEJyxZg-UMYRM7VXRn23QUdzqvLu1-A_6rG16xnQQdjLNWpL36r72uTaCJ/s1600/600+meganteron+site.jpg" /></a></div>
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I wanted to bang on the window to get it to look round, in order to see the head; however. I awoke before that was possible. It was gone.<br />
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Astonished, I ruminated on what I had just seen. A large felid of some sort, seen padding into a patch of Neogene <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_forest" target="_blank">laurel forest</a>. It was very similar to the extinct big cats of Pliocene / early Pleistocene age. How about the scimitar-toothed cat <i>Homotherium</i> or the dirk-toothed cat <i>Megantereon</i>?<br />
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Its head was similar to a <i>Megantereon cultridens</i> <a href="http://img08.deviantart.net/7bb8/i/2015/268/2/4/megantereon_cultridens_by_jurpavlik-d9aty6q.jpg" target="_blank"><b>illustrated here</b></a>, although I couldn't see the canine teeth. Its body shape was also similar (see <b><a href="http://prehistoric-fauna.com/image/cache/data/Megantereon-2016-738x591.jpg" target="_blank">here)</a></b> but the tail was shorter and the canines not clearly visible. Its size was similar to <i>M. cultridens</i> pictured <a href="http://prehistoric-fauna.com/image/cache/data/size/Megantereon-size-738x591.jpg" target="_blank"><b>here</b></a>, but not as large as <i>Homotherium</i> <a href="http://prehistoric-fauna.com/image/cache/data/size/Homotherium-738x591.jpg" target="_blank"><b>here</b></a>.<br />
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My verdict? A dream representation of an extict felid species, closest to the genus <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megantereon" style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">Megantereon</a> which became extinct in Europe about 900,000 years ago. The representations of <i>M. cultridens</i> by artists such as Mauricio Anton diverge from mine in having fur with much bolder spotting; the canine teeth more prominent; the tail slightly longer. <br />
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Early Middle Pleistocene fossils of <i>Homotherium</i> have been found in Suffolk (Pakefield) and West Runton and possibly Sidestrand (Norfolk), but no <i>Megantereon</i> - the closest finds are from France.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix1gn92U7qGoiNAP4Wcth8bghlP2AJjbwugOW5xzpP-nFKV0DgZmXi-IKVMRISLyGeDyg0YqAKfmvkNQIuRsCGGGMbIJPLIlQpt3aq8buvNlZB_MP9a3sPiON8WWvwW1GzilKNxeK4Dn0f/s1600/600+Homotherium.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix1gn92U7qGoiNAP4Wcth8bghlP2AJjbwugOW5xzpP-nFKV0DgZmXi-IKVMRISLyGeDyg0YqAKfmvkNQIuRsCGGGMbIJPLIlQpt3aq8buvNlZB_MP9a3sPiON8WWvwW1GzilKNxeK4Dn0f/s1600/600+Homotherium.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Mandible of <i>Homotherium</i> sp. from Pakefield / Kessingland cliffs, Suffolk.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Figured in Backhouse, J: '<i>On a mandible of Machaerodus from the Forest Bed</i>'; Quarterly Journal</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">of the Geological Society of London, no. 42. <span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Scale: 10 cm. </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Note the wide fossa between canine and premolar, where the </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">elongated upper canine tooth descended.</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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My friend Matt Salusbury (<a href="https://twitter.com/MysteryAnimals" target="_blank"><b>Mystery Animals Suffolk</b>) </a>collects information about big cat sightings in East Anglia. I doubt he will add my unique 'sighting' to his database, although he could add this new information to the body of mythopoeic knowledge that has lately grown up around big cats. Perhaps he can start a new database for 'Dream Sightings', and thus add the Bungalow garden to the oniric mythic geography of East Anglia.<br />
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<i>"A myth is a public dream, a dream is a private myth</i>", said Joseph Campbell. [1]<br />
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While dreams appear as highly subjective phenomena, Carl Jung argued for their potential for revealing elements of the transpersonal, ancestral, unconscious 'objective psyche' present in archetypal patterns. The symbols appearing in dreams may have their roots in the archaic human mind. <i>"Just as the body bears the traces of its phylogenetic development, so also does the human mind. Hence there is nothing surprising about the possibility that the figurative language of dreams is a survival from an archaic mode of thought"</i>.[2] Not just 'mode of thought' but perhaps the dream-thought itself may be archaic. It is likely that big, powerful predators left their mark in the ancestral psyche, and the numinous power which my dream cat possessed argues for its archetypal associations. It is up to me to meditate upon the many meanings that radiate from this symbolic animal and its dream setting.<br />
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One further thought: I don't think that paleontologists and reconstruction artists should dismiss the idea that <i>Megantereon</i> may have had an evenly brown-spotted pelage; it is normally represented as having a variety of leopard-like botches and mottlings or tiger-like stripes.Who's to say that some mysterious ancestral memory may not have visited me in the half-light of a winter dawn? A notable and archetypal dream image certainly did. <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">[1] - Cited in: '<i>Private Myths - Dreams and Dreaming'</i>, by Anthony Stevens; Hamish Hamilton, 1995. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />[2] - '<i>General Aspects of Dream Psychology</i>', in: Jung, CG: <i>'Dreams'; </i>Ark Paperbacks, 1982</span></span><br />
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Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-9194653459125305892016-09-25T20:28:00.000+01:002016-10-05T20:36:46.716+01:00Out on the heath<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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Out on the heath, low September sunlight and a warm, southerly wind over close-cropped turf and bristly gorse bushes. There are paths worn by dog walkers.<br />
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The heath is a place I read nature's stories: of rabbits and heather, sand wasps and moths, reindeer lichen and sundry, tough grasses.<br />
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The sands and flints below ground have their stories too; so does the ancient river terrace they belong to. One could imagine the life story of each and every stone. Of course, stones are not living things, but how else to describe their individual histories?<br />
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A spaniel is running over the heath, as though driven – tongue lolling, galloping, ranging to and fro, panting over hummocks and hollows. Driven by its own hyperactive, doggish lifeworld of smells and impulses.<br />
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Rabbits are burrowing here, unearthing reams of sandy soil. They nibble clumps
of heather and turn them into green pads. They scent-mark anthills with small marbles of brown dung. This is their lifeworld too.<br />
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<span style="color: white;">.</span><br />
I stray into some woodland. A goldfich sings from the top of a birch tree, a brief twitter from a sunlit summit, hidden from sight.<br />
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Then for a fleeting moment I perceive the world as it shines in the eyes of six year-old boy. He has been given a collection of old cigarette cards called ‘British Birds’; he studies them intently, trying to spell out their names. The pictures are icons; the words are puzzles - both holding a key to the world. Taking both in his imagination, he ranges out into the garden and woodland beyond it looking for birds, driven by joyous curiosity. This is his boyish, hunter's lifeworld.<br />
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The man who gave him the cards had no idea quite how far this gift would run, how far the joy would travel down the years.Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com1Wortham, Diss IP22, UK52.3500903 1.05929549999996226.828055799999998 -40.249298500000037 77.8721248 42.367889499999961tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-18357251113780247522016-09-21T14:35:00.002+01:002017-08-19T18:05:01.579+01:00I dunno - it just happens<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">How can a wasp fly?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The question is a 'how' question, asking about means and mechanisms. One answer would be to explain about wings and muscles, body fluids, centres of equilibrium, the physics of aerodynamics, and so forth. These biological and physical explanations are ones many people can agree on, although they do not explain how a wasp, in-itself, is able to fly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">How can I lift my legs to walk? Once again, I can give physico-chemical explanations involving, muscles, energy, etc. However, they do not explain how I - me in-myself - am able to lift my legs and walk. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Those scientific explanations represent a 'view from nowhere', a universalised and objectifying perspective. That is valid, as far as it goes, but it is not able to explain my experience of walking. For the act of walking or running is something directly experienced by me, and this experience is prior to, and underlies, my experience of walking understood as scientific information. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have <u>lifeworld information</u> given by experience that is <u>prior to</u> the world understood as objectivised information. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">How can I lift my legs to walk? "<i>I dunno - it just happens!</i>" If I am unsatisfied with that answer I now have to start investigating my experience of myself as agent. This will yield a different kind of explanation of how I am able to move my legs purposefully in order to walk. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">One thing's for sure: I know that I am embodied will-to-walk.</span><br />
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-9850650004062311162016-08-27T22:15:00.000+01:002017-05-10T09:00:03.043+01:00Mice and menToday I found a nest of wool and leaves containing six baby mice; they fell out of a box when I was emptying out my shed. If I were a dog or cat I would have eaten them straightaway. If I were the mouse-mother I would carefully have gathered them up and stashed them somewhere safe. Being myself, I studied them for a while; I felt pity for them; I found them attractive in a soft, velvety way; I dealt with them with a stick because I do not want more mice wrecking my storage boxes.<br />
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This episode has prompted some clear thinking about morality. What follows is an attempt to consider this subject in a fresh way, taking inspiration from Husserl's concept of intersubjectivity and Lifeworld, Bateson's systems theory, Von Uexkull's Umwelt theory and Schopenhauer's philosophy of will.<br />
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1) All human actions have moral value because they are enacted in a transpersonal (transsubjective) dimension. All actions impact on the world, including the lifeworlds of other beings.There is no such thing as a purely private action.<br />
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2) Whether the actions are considered to be morally 'good' or 'bad' depends on the outcome, not the motive. Motive is determined by personal character, which is a given. Morality is thus about outcomes and not motives.<br />
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3) The driver of all action is the organic Will to Life of the individual. The expression or enaction of this Will is determined by the participation of this individual in their transpersonal (social / ecological) context, which supplies information feedback. Other individuals (human or non-human) are maximising the expression of their respective Wills, either competing with or collaborating with their neighbours. The result is contested or participatory trophic action-space, with feedback loops tending to facilitate or to limit/sanction behavioural expression.<br />
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4) Moral value (meaning) is assigned by participants to incidental actions producing outcomes in their lifeworlds. All actions are interpreted by and signify to some person or some living thing; they have causal impact on lifeworlds.<br />
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5) All outcomes are in-themselves morally 'good' as well as 'bad'. Absolute good or bad is an idea, but nothing more. Assignment of moral value (i.e. place on the moral spectrum) relates to the context in which the outcome happens. Context is an open, layered system. A morally 'good' outcome at one systemic level may have a morally 'bad' outcome at another level or on the same level. Moral value is assigned to the outcome by fellow participants in the transpersonal dimension. The individual is not in a position to say whether their actions are morally 'good' or 'bad' except through a) direct feedback from contextual participants, or b) introjected feedback.<br />
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6) We pay attention to the various implications of our actions (ends as well as means) on as many levels as possible. That is morality in action. We provide feedback about the outcomes of the actions of others as they impact on our lifeworld. That is also morality in action.<br />
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My introjected feedback tells me I lack compassion. I suppose my fellow humans might tell me the same. The mouse-mother is not in a position to give me feedback about her reaction. Tonight a scavenging animal will probably find their bodies in the hedge where I chucked them; it will make them its own. A morally 'bad' outcome may have a morally 'good' outcome. This is the dance of creation and destruction, destruction and creation... <br />
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Some interesting reading<br />
* Simpson, B, Willer, R, and Harrell, A, 2017: <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/srep42844" target="_blank"><i>The Enforcement of Moral Boundaries Promotes Cooperation and Prosocial Behavior in Groups</i></a>; Nature Scientific Reparts 7, Online Article 42844.<br />
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-54774228957382170862016-07-10T12:01:00.000+01:002017-10-12T10:03:45.205+01:00The South HamsUnless you see it for yourself, it is hard to appreciate the level way the hill tops of the South Hams meet the Devon sky. Stopping my car between Malborough and Salcombe I see a flattish horizon lying around me: the hill tops mark the surface of a gently wavering plateau. Just a few gentle undulations here and there detract from the general impression of a broad concordance of summits in the countryside between Dartmoor and the coast. <br /><br />
You can only see this plateau landscape from high places; stand anywhere in between them and you will just see hills and valleys. Car drivers in the South Hams are forever climbing slopes or dipping into troughs - but summit views tell a wide and level story. In the same way, a trawler captain might rise to a wave top and see all crests forming a composite, flat horizon that belies the rising and falling of his little ship.<br />
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The high points include summits at East Prawle (443 m), Blackdown Rings at Loddiswell (580 m) and Stanborough Camp (700 m). Lying between them and the sea is a complex, rolling mass of lesser hills, slopes, valleys and coombes that form the physical heart of the South Hams. We should not forget the contribution made by the long, dendritic estuaries - the rias - that penetrate the land mass, where lower reaches of valleys such as the Erme and Dart have been drowned by the sea. These valleys continue inland and are fed by a welter of coombes scooped out of red-brown Devonian bedrock.<br />
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I have never understood the origins of this summit phenomenon. Old-time geographers talk about peneplanation, suggesting that the landscape was planed off in the late Neogene period. My teenage mind's eye used to hold an image of an immense wave-cut platform uplifted and then dissected by rivers. That does not make sense. What about glaciation - have the summits been planed by ice sheets? There is no evidence that this landscape has suffered anything more than periglacial processes in the freezing hinterland beyond the southern limits of Pleistocene glaciation. The slopes and coombes are thickly bedded with frost-shattered debris, but not outwash gravels nor till - not even on Dartmoor. There remains the idea of subaerial erosion as the most plausible agent, set against a history of rising and falling land levels over millions of years. <br />
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The rocks underlying the South Hams are mostly of Lower Devonian age - mostly slates and mudstones, perhaps 410 million years old. You can see them everywhere in walls, or in rocky lanes.<br />
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Supposing the South Hams were an extremely ancient terrain, perhaps tens of millions of years old. Suppose an eroded landscape of Devonian rocks was once covered by the sea, buried in sediment and then uncovered - then perhaps buried again, then exhumed once more - and all the while the land levels and sea levels were rising and falling over immense stretches of time. The South Hams landscape may have been roofed and unroofed several times over, and what survives is a battered and extremely ancient relict terrain, now seen as a complex of flat summits, hills and coombes - over which farms and villages, woods and hedgerows have been laid out in the blink of an eye. <br />
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I cast my imagination 60 million years into the future. Like HG Wells' time traveller, I see the land and its wrinkled skin of green landscape blur and then dissolve. <br />
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What's left there is ocean. <br />
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<span style="color: white;">.</span><br />
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0Malborough, Kingsbridge TQ7, UK50.2441699 -3.812080000000037250.2238599 -3.8524205000000373 50.264479900000005 -3.7717395000000371tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-42154454232195445312016-06-05T11:29:00.000+01:002017-09-08T09:04:28.971+01:00Pholcus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Spider life continues at the Bungalow, and so does my ongoing campaign to keep it under control. I first realised I had problem in August 2013, returning from a French holiday and shocked to find the house had
become a havishambling cat's cradle of webbery. I'm talking about <i>Pholcus phalangioides</i> - the daddy-longlegs spider, spindly and twizzling when touched - not the trad house spiders <i>Tegenaria atrica</i>
- large, brown, leggy gallopers. When the cat's away, the pholcids will play. Webs were everywhere, and a shocked
awareness that my fortnight's absence had provided them with a wonderful
opportunity to make jamboree. The work began: removal with plastic cup &
postcard or - at my most ruthless - vacuum suction. </div>
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Today, June 4th 2016, I have removed three more specimens: a hen with egg sac from the bathroom, a small male from the spare room and a large male from the lobby (see photo). They were not there yesterday. I have learned pholcid habits. They lurk about unseen among the furniture - "<i>in undisturbed, low light locations</i>", as one website puts it <b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1]</span></b> - until something (pheromones?) prompts them to rise: they climb up the wall then begin optimistically to spin next to the ceiling. That is when they become visible and removal become practical. The vacant space is likely to become filled again within a week, as natural territorial recruitment proceeds. Small spiders are so diaphanous that they are almost invisible in the shadows. It is best for me to wait until they rise - then cup them. It has become a form of domestic sport. All of them are taken out into the garden and released. Presumably the new environment is a bit of a shock to their system, as pholcids are a family preferring warmer climes, only holding on in Britain thanks to hospitable caves and anthropogenic living spaces. "<i>Pholcus inhabits houses where the average temperature throughout the year exceeds 50ºF (10ºC).</i>" <b><span style="font-size: x-small;">[2]</span></b><br />
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Yesterday I removed another hen with eggs and two small males. The day before that, one specimen; the previous day, three. The removal process has been proceeding smoothly, even through the winter when one might expect them to be a bit less active. The temperate atmosphere in the Bungalow seems to suit them in all seasons. Last year I reckoned I had been removing anything from between one and as many as six spiders per day. Given a rough average of three per day, that made a sporting total of 365 x 3, an estimated 1095 individuals. Removals have proceeded at the same rate this year. Going back to 2013, I am looking at a running total of over 3,000.<br />
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Although pholcids have their place in the ecology of the Bungalow (for one thing, they are efficient predators of house spiders, which I don't like), my sporting campaign will continue. Even if I move house I dare say one or two of them will follow me somehow, and begin again their attempt to spin wispy chaos in my domestic world. <br />
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<u><br />References</u><br />
1 - <a href="http://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Pholcus_phalangioides/" target="_blank">Animal Diversity Web</a><br />
2 - <a href="http://srs.britishspiders.org.uk/portal.php/p/Summary/s/Pholcus+phalangioides" target="_blank">British Arachnological Society</a>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-87404708946745759782016-04-13T09:07:00.006+01:002017-10-12T09:34:24.534+01:00SalcombeSalcombe is a Devon sea town of white houses and grey roofs set on a rounded hillside. Sometimes a quite modest house with a good aspect can sell for a million, especially if it looks onto the harbour or estuary - that steep notch in the coast where tidal waters surge in and out of the South Hams through a drowned valley or ría, flanked on one side by the craggy rocks of Bolt and the lower cliffs of Portlemouth Down on the other. This is the window frame through which Salcombe views the outer world and mariners see the town. Climbing tiers of houses are interlaced with dark holm oaks and umbrella pines, giving the town a Mediterranean feel. Its spirit looks seaward and southward.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyeVyxpTF5SUwyVvLnzRdO3tC73KlJrOGPgIqM8K5O2ODOI0dKp6m5jnr4R8KIsO2mPRMCwv0Ogww2xThXdYaaE67I8MQNzb1Zzo4Og1dcNyIYXjj_la4C6atCtsoDwU32vNIBLnKHoZ_T/s1600/600+harbour+magnolia+THW_0060.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyeVyxpTF5SUwyVvLnzRdO3tC73KlJrOGPgIqM8K5O2ODOI0dKp6m5jnr4R8KIsO2mPRMCwv0Ogww2xThXdYaaE67I8MQNzb1Zzo4Og1dcNyIYXjj_la4C6atCtsoDwU32vNIBLnKHoZ_T/s1600/600+harbour+magnolia+THW_0060.jpg" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxElyw31BOJnyvJZzuRoofIo-akViQ7rGMS18IjgwDwPU4GYupP7hmJ6WDwo8H3mVohTNsKY1Z8H2rClEeUc76h5QqxWawTeF5a71KNHemdUidq27K9TNFHA2j4AtPB_hPQ93y_rihYYaN/s1600/600+bolt+view+1THW_0152+b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxElyw31BOJnyvJZzuRoofIo-akViQ7rGMS18IjgwDwPU4GYupP7hmJ6WDwo8H3mVohTNsKY1Z8H2rClEeUc76h5QqxWawTeF5a71KNHemdUidq27K9TNFHA2j4AtPB_hPQ93y_rihYYaN/s1600/600+bolt+view+1THW_0152+b.jpg" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />28-3-2016<br /><br />My sister Pip and I went walking today in the sunny, breezy aftermath of a storm which had battered Devon with 70 mph winds and driving rain the night before. Salcombe has interesting routes for walkers to choose from: pretty, high-banked lanes that loop inland through woods and secluded coombes, or climb to bald summits with panoramic views; coastal paths that go tracking out round the estuary's gentle indentations or threading boldly the harsh, sea-girt declivities of Bolt.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKnmWlL7RzntJikYOhJ7NeMKTeMtf86bvb74WPzl0sJNjU-C_1d7Z5NlOgNPXrmX-2Yb5xK9i01tNnsg9lc1Tq7c2o7lBsMUSv17N5qZHksiexhm_fPWPKtUC5GTheKNDFui47bLmwrDSj/s1600/600+THW+0190+%252B+0120+lin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKnmWlL7RzntJikYOhJ7NeMKTeMtf86bvb74WPzl0sJNjU-C_1d7Z5NlOgNPXrmX-2Yb5xK9i01tNnsg9lc1Tq7c2o7lBsMUSv17N5qZHksiexhm_fPWPKtUC5GTheKNDFui47bLmwrDSj/s1600/600+THW+0190+%252B+0120+lin.jpg" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />There are also paths in the town where the nature of Devon and far-off places are mingled in startling southern conjugations. Wooded slopes too steep for houses show a native flora of oak and hazel, pennywort and primrose enriched by all kinds of exotic garden escapes. The mild oceanic climate means that local gardeners can be adventurous with their choice of plants: one of the footpaths is overhung with a pineapple palm (<i>Phoenix canariensis</i>) from the Canary Islands. Southern species such as the holm oak (<i>Quercus ilex</i>) may last have been native here 10 million years ago in the Miocene, when subtropical forest covered Britain, including elements of the beautiful <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_forest" target="_blank">laurissilva</a> now found in the Macaronesian group of islands off the African coast (e.g. Madeira, Tenerife, Cape Verde). They were later pushed south by advancing Pleistocene ice sheets, but have now returned - with human help.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip0cR7_zt8onDHjkzEzUQsJcNZxHcVgJV6yD6AviHoW5lBlW7pYk32p6TLP9DFeRkDp89El8wWcQ_RlSIfO8Qn3qN1yCDdtpYHUZDxizoPFxvRH5-Jo1WNY2WT-nDxShjjh9FUORXzt_-K/s1600/600+path+and+palm+THW_0035.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip0cR7_zt8onDHjkzEzUQsJcNZxHcVgJV6yD6AviHoW5lBlW7pYk32p6TLP9DFeRkDp89El8wWcQ_RlSIfO8Qn3qN1yCDdtpYHUZDxizoPFxvRH5-Jo1WNY2WT-nDxShjjh9FUORXzt_-K/s1600/600+path+and+palm+THW_0035.jpg" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />My most joyous discovery has been the tree echium, <i>Echium pininana, </i>from the Canary Islands. As we followed a wooded path we came upon spectacular, long-stalked, bushy plants, rather like dark-green shaggy clubs. Dried woody remnants of last year's dead stalks towered alongside us, reaching well above head height. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6TznXMlah1iyLXi2IZ96LGTMMhUicx3IfBttjLOAcVosiZLa1k6fDTL_VQLycg3zEO5u2L90VCZ5JjHzAUoiRPN-e9el5zrES_fxyULRhwKVNGUTPo3Z-rnYAWAxzHJcscVm4wex3mJqd/s1600/600+echium+THW_0011+cut+adj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6TznXMlah1iyLXi2IZ96LGTMMhUicx3IfBttjLOAcVosiZLa1k6fDTL_VQLycg3zEO5u2L90VCZ5JjHzAUoiRPN-e9el5zrES_fxyULRhwKVNGUTPo3Z-rnYAWAxzHJcscVm4wex3mJqd/s1600/600+echium+THW_0011+cut+adj.jpg" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUqiMpmuPAkE0wUk5KZ-0nPeCiCUSB0X6k79Nsguv2aV1aEyMn0MDjvUWwocE0pxuvEEIyDLvSRPY4sUwsgJ9Mqx8FoQaqORVUTLPz2lhYN8Z08-bhevoxbdsdG5BkjX428uD78bdua40U/s1600/600+dried+THW_0018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUqiMpmuPAkE0wUk5KZ-0nPeCiCUSB0X6k79Nsguv2aV1aEyMn0MDjvUWwocE0pxuvEEIyDLvSRPY4sUwsgJ9Mqx8FoQaqORVUTLPz2lhYN8Z08-bhevoxbdsdG5BkjX428uD78bdua40U/s1600/600+dried+THW_0018.jpg" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Tree echium has an interesting story, recently deciphered by botanists using molecular genetics [1]. The genus <i>Echium</i> originated as a herbaceous plant living round the Mediterranean, then spread to the Macaronesian islands when they formed, one after the other, by volcanic action over the last 20 million years. As Darwin and other have noted, herbaceous plants on islands tend to evolve a woody growth habit, so a new range of woody <i>Echium</i> species evolved in Macaronesia, able to grow to a remarkable height. <i>Echium pininana</i> is one of them, an endemic of La Palma in the Canaries. Research shows that it arrived in the Pliocene epoch about 3.73 million years ago [2]. <br /><br />I have never visited the Canary Islands, but I have been captivated by photos of their enchanting forests, volcanic mountains and luminous atmosphere. They are on my life's list of places to visit. I would not be put off by the thronging coastal holiday resorts; they'd just be a cheap place to roost in between day excursions to explore the vegetated, rocky interior. If I were on La Palma I'd make a point of seeking out <i>Echium pininana</i>. It is not too late for me to do it.<br /><br />Tree echium is a monocarpic plant. That means it flowers once then dies. It lays down wood then builds itself up over two or three years before spending itself in one final, magnificent, spire-shaped spasm of mauvy-blue flowers. I may never make it to the Canaries, but I'll be happy to visit Salcombe again one July or August to catch <i>Echium pininana</i> at its moment of Macaronesian glory. The plants I saw this week look as though they are preparing themselves for a mighty show.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"></div><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiycj3jueB48bjqQEc00NTFwbl0iFbxAFKbadfCHYA08djf5CqZu1A-WGAd8N65stDTsl2XqPZk1VS2L6b27CIZZLzQUtu3KmYVs1WZurES3IoMqLIkkYsULITsca_5hpcWpu2zJW6BDB15/s1600/600+echium+guernsey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiycj3jueB48bjqQEc00NTFwbl0iFbxAFKbadfCHYA08djf5CqZu1A-WGAd8N65stDTsl2XqPZk1VS2L6b27CIZZLzQUtu3KmYVs1WZurES3IoMqLIkkYsULITsca_5hpcWpu2zJW6BDB15/s1600/600+echium+guernsey.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Echium pininana photographed on Guernsey.<br />Image courtesy <a href="http://guernsey.net/~cdavid/botany/files/echium%20pininiana/index.html" target="_blank">La Société Guernesiaise</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><hr /><br /><u>References</u><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">1 - Bohle, U-R et al (1996): <i>Island colonization and evolution of the insular woody habit in Echium L. (Boraginaceae)</i>; Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol.93, pp.11740-11745/.</span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Online at: http://www.pnas.org/content/93/21/11740.full.pdf [April 2016]</span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">2 - Kim, S-C et al (2008): <i>Timing and Tempo of Early and Successive Adaptive Radiations in Macaronesia</i>; PLoS ONE. 2008; 3(5): e2139. <br />Online at: http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC2367450#pone.0002139-FranciscoOrtega2/. [April 2016]</span>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0Salcombe, Devon, UK50.23758 -3.769790999999941150.196954 -3.8504719999999413 50.278206000000004 -3.6891099999999408tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-86839207091509379902016-02-10T14:58:00.000+00:002018-11-02T10:11:50.096+00:00Les Rats de MontfauconI have been dipping into <i>'Gleanings in Natural History'</i> by Edward Jesse (John Murray, London, 1834). It is a collection of miscellaneous essays and notes on plants and animals, half bound in green leather with beautifully marbled boards. I have been searching for information about eels. However yesterday I allowed allowed myself to be distracted by stories about other animals. What I read about the rats of Montfaucon made my hair stand on end.<br />
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Montfaucon is an area on the north-eastern side of Paris, part of the unexceptional quartier called Les Buttes-Chaumont. As I remember from my days living in the city, its greatest attraction is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parc_des_Buttes_Chaumont" target="_blank">public park</a> with interesting rocky terrain, sited in some old sandstone quarries. Two hundred years ago it was a frightful place.<br />
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Until 1760 it had been home to the biggest gibbet in France: a square, three-storey building, like a stone-built warehouse with windows, open on three sides with an access ramp to the rear; each window could hold a hanged body, sixty windows all round. A factory of public execution. The smell of the place and the crowd of dogs and carrions birds were atrocious.<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1]</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Le Gibet De Montfaucon. Image courtesy http://www.parisenbreves.fr/breves/140</span></span></td></tr>
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At the same time, Montfaucon housed the capital's night soil processing factory, <span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>la voirie de matières fécales</i>, </span>at which excrement collected by cart was processed into valuable 'poudrette' fertiliser. It was sited in one of the disused quarries, and consisted in a descending series of linked basins. Liquid matter was gradually drained off, and the solids progressively matured into a nitrogenous earthy material for resale.<span style="font-size: x-small;">[2]</span><br />
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Two horse knacker's yards and rendering plants were situated in another quarry. They were able to process 15,000 carcases per year (that means 288 per week; 41 per day). Products included hide, hair, grease and maggots (for fishing and raising poultry). Every night a horde of rats sallied out from drain pipes and holes and stripped the carcases clean of anything edible. Only the bones remained by morning.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSusST3ZB8L_kvJ1gTvhz-vnV0fJUx5b1V7rBndDptHZEpuZteOMNgjdz7sgl6eV0ALCuXHQc8iTqWiNMDl6E4DA0j3bz_yXxBbn7U6lMPvq1bQR4M5PGNhwWtayFjnAJKlIwv-wbh5Rap/s1600/600+montfaucon+knackers+%2540+insitu.revues.org.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSusST3ZB8L_kvJ1gTvhz-vnV0fJUx5b1V7rBndDptHZEpuZteOMNgjdz7sgl6eV0ALCuXHQc8iTqWiNMDl6E4DA0j3bz_yXxBbn7U6lMPvq1bQR4M5PGNhwWtayFjnAJKlIwv-wbh5Rap/s1600/600+montfaucon+knackers+%2540+insitu.revues.org.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">The knacker's yard at Montfaucon (Parent-Duchatelet, 1827) Image courtesy http://insitu.revues.org/10512</span></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfXGF4dZnaY-8GCw4-M0ZOBuNb5wYj-zBYUO8g4QiXuH19SQlLTUVnJvJ6LAM36FU8wpigtmXbLixMLGnVriebOKcJLBxjva4GKd-pGVaW0nQ7vNQkqlY6Gm18nEcBy4qlgkmO1uij1rkb/s1600/550px-Mautfaucon_dessin_1831.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfXGF4dZnaY-8GCw4-M0ZOBuNb5wYj-zBYUO8g4QiXuH19SQlLTUVnJvJ6LAM36FU8wpigtmXbLixMLGnVriebOKcJLBxjva4GKd-pGVaW0nQ7vNQkqlY6Gm18nEcBy4qlgkmO1uij1rkb/s1600/550px-Mautfaucon_dessin_1831.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A knacker's shed at Montfaucon, 1831. Image courtesy <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mautfaucon_dessin_1831.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons </a></td></tr>
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Sometimes the rats themselves fell victim to campaigns of extermination and commercial exploitation - as many as 2,500 could be killed in one night, tackled with a poisonous mixture of arsenic and flour or by dogs, sticks and flaming torches. Their miserable skins had some value. The tricky thing was not to provoke them into making a panicky exodus into surrounding housing estates.<br />
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When the wind was in the north, all Paris suffered from the suffocating stench of Montfaucon. As the population of the city grew, people lost patience with the place. Also, the rats were becoming a mortal danger, and not just to lone drunkards and tramps. Buildings and public infrastructure were being undermined by their burrowing.<br />
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The trigger for change was an outbreak of cholera in the city in 1832, leading to a public health campaign and a final decision to close the site. The night soil processing was moved to the Forest of Bondy, some 15 km east of the city. But what of the knacker's yards?<br />
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The question had evidently been debated for some time, as Edward Jesse wrote:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>The most interesting account of rats I have met with, was made some time ago in an official report to the French government. It was drawn up in consequence of a proposition made for the removal of a horse slaughter-house at Montfaucon, to a greater distance from Paris, when one of the chief obstacles urged against such a removal, was the fear entertained of the dangerous consequences that might result to the neighbourhood, from suddenly depriving these voracious vermin of their accustomed sustenance.</i> (p.311)</blockquote>
The writer Théophile Gautier (1838) likened the potential rat problem to a volcano - '<i>Naples has its Vesuvius, and Paris has its Montfaucon</i>', he wrote <span style="font-size: x-small;">[3]</span>. He dramatically explained the situation for prurient readers:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>The rats of Montfaucon are no ordinary rats; the abundance and quality of their food has developed them prodigiously; these are Herculean rats, enormous, huge as elephants, ferocious as tigers, with teeth of steel and claws of iron; rats that make one or at most two mouthfuls of a cat; the fields they cross are trodden down as though an army had passed through with its artillery, baggage train, ammunition wagons and field smithies; the clay they carry on their feet gives this trackway a greenish hue that distinguishes it from other paths: these routeways, toughened as if by tarmacadam, terminate at subterranean ratopoli with immense tunnelworks where innumerable gnawing and devouring populations swarm…</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>Those who dine like Belshazzar at Montfaucon, suddenly missing their sustenance, will come into Paris to eat human instead of horse meat</i>.</blockquote>
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Montfaucon was finally closed in 1849 <span style="font-size: x-small;">[4]</span>, and re-opened as Buttes-Chaumont Park in 1867. I have not been able to find an account of the closure of the site. I suspect the feared rodent apocalypse never happened. Dogs, poison, sticks and flaming torches can accomplish great work. <br />
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If pure stench and carnal corruption are revelations of Hell then Montfaucon was surely a Hell on Earth. Sad to say, it was not an exceptional one. There were in those days many fragments of living Hell in the world, where living things were tortured or recycled without compassion by their fellow beings or obliviously by the plutonic processes of decay and putrefaction. The <a href="https://about1816.wordpress.com/2018/10/29/the-regency-slaughterhouse/" target="_blank">slaughterhouses of Regency England </a>are a case in point. Today such facilities are sanitised and closely regulated, as are facilities for sewage processing and capital punishment. Today they are conducted pretty well out of sight and mind. However, we need the story of places such as Montfaucon to remind us of the existential truths our civilisation has masked, and indeed what civilisation has accomplished over the last two centuries. Is there such a thing as progress? I think the story of Montfaucon is clear evidence that there is.<br />
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Who can say what further progress may yet be made in the spheres of justice, waste disposal and animal rights? <br />
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References<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] - Le Gibet de Montfaucon, at: Plateau Hassard: Le Blog - http://plateauhassard.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/le-gibet-de-montfaucon.html </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] - La Voirie de Montfaucon, at: Plateau Hassard: Le Blog - http://plateauhassard.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/la-voirie-de-montfaucon.html </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] - 'La Ville des Rats', by Théophile Gautier (1838) - http://www.theophilegautier.fr/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/La-Ville-des-rats.pdf </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[4] - La Voirie de Montfaucon, at Wikipedia - https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voirie_de_Montfaucon/</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /> </span></span>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-385466909299774412016-02-09T09:57:00.000+00:002017-11-24T14:00:35.168+00:00In the South Downs4-1-2016<br />
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I do not know the South Downs, but my visit to Petersfield last week was drawn into their power. They looked grey and brooding in the mizzling weather blowing up from the south.<br />
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Locals must be familiar with these hills and the bulk that forms a backdrop to their lives: southwards towards Burriton, westwards to Ramsdean, northwards to Steep. They frame all views except eastward, into Sussex, where the Weald lies.<br />
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The hills are chalk; their summits are mostly bare and their slopes are mostly wooded. In past centuries they would have been given over to sheep, with flocks crossing the downland turf. The Downs remain but sheep and downland are mostly a memory now, as arable or tree plantations have taken over. What would the poet Edward Thomas have made of this? He lived at Steep; he walked these hills, knew their paths and people; he digested what he saw and felt, he distilled it into his ungainly yet ecstatic, wild yet thoughtful writing, in which the character of nature is blended with his own troubled soul. He chronicled the pre-War world just before it crumbled. He wrote a book 'The South Country' and filled it with his response to the Downs.<br />
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My friend Jonathan runs a sawmill near Butser Hill. He manages <a href="https://www.facebook.com/whitelandswood.co.uk/" target="_blank">Whitelands Wood</a>, with its modern stands of ash and western red cedar climbing the northern flanks of the hill. He nurtures a few ancient yew trees in clearings. He delights in the wood's biodiversity. Old man's beard scrambles along the fences and up the trees; Roman snails still live in the rough chalky soil. Otherwise there are few traces of the ancient downland visible on old maps and which developed here since the Bronze Age. Constant grazing is just not practical. Times have changed.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQWp0fnm89ZkXC5xA0aPN0iAujajtInZNMTcxIeuElDhguuoGExIKOYfc41b9GAw9c3dzHrpL71QgndxeaG5egLXeOn9MrPOVeBMi4Yz3HqYzxROa7Tknx1K71QBCAuV72Own04tJmD0q-/s1600/600+THW_0025+adj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQWp0fnm89ZkXC5xA0aPN0iAujajtInZNMTcxIeuElDhguuoGExIKOYfc41b9GAw9c3dzHrpL71QgndxeaG5egLXeOn9MrPOVeBMi4Yz3HqYzxROa7Tknx1K71QBCAuV72Own04tJmD0q-/s1600/600+THW_0025+adj.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buried path - a former downland trackway, with flints and mosses underfoot</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
On Tuesday Jonathan and I drove to the Shepherd's Church at Didling, with his son Bede and grey, shaggy lurcher Beaumont for company. The chalk escarpment runs east-west here, fronted by a dark ribbon of woodland; its summits are green and bare. The church stands alone, surrounded by fields and is reached by a farm track, which becomes a footpath that continues towards Didling Hill. We paid our respects to this ancient shrine before walking on, with Beaumont trotting along in a universe of smells. The day was patchy sunlight with passing clouds. I became absorbed by the hill's wooded presence as we climbed towards it. Edward Thomas's words were flickering through my thoughts: old man's beard, '<i>that hoar-green feathery herb</i>' and how the scent of its shrivelled seed heads evoked unplaceable memories; the shell of '<i>a little snail bleached in the grass, chips of flint and mite of chalk</i>'; the badger, '<i>that most ancient Briton of English beasts</i>', dug from his sett and given to the hounds in a dark combe with '<i>sliding chalk by beech and yew and perishing juniper</i>'.<br />
<br />
We passed a chalk pit; we entered the wood.<br />
<br />
The world changed - ash and yew crowding around us. Deprived of grassy cover, the topsoil showed bare flint and chalk in the gloom beneath the trees, which the deer had browsed into a canopy just below head height. Brown and white earth from a badger's sett was mounded up between the roots of a large ash. A pile of yew seeds in various stages of decomposition marked a vole's winter feasting place. Beaumont was in his element, alert, alive and questing. We diverged from the path a bit, exploring tree bark with a forester's eye, reading the past written into its hard, rumpled textures. Jonathan noticed a scatter of prehistoric flint knapping debris underfoot, white shards glowing in tree shade - they would have been hidden by an overgrowth of turf had this been open downland. In places I found my feet struggling to grip on the sloping soil, the sliding chalk.<br />
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The old world of the downs finds shelter beneath the trees. Here, we move into a different, set-aside space on a north-facing scarp too steep for farming. Root and tree, teeth and fur, flint and bone; the smell of earth and vegetable decay; animal trails, invisible. The elder world seems closer here, with Thomas's sturdy footsteps close behind us and the whisper of corduroy as he walks past, struggling with his thoughts. He has a weekend's leave from the Army; he is walking to clear his head, clear the turbulence of a homecoming to his wife Helen and their three clamouring children ten miles way in the cottage at Steep. They only remember him as he was before he enlisted. He is walking to find the words he needs, to encounter places where his own nature can do its work of healing; he strides out to forget everything on earth 'except that it is lovelier than any mysteries'. He sees a fallow deer as it watches him under the trees; it stamps then runs. He finds himself alone.<br />
<br />
We turned and left the wood.We hadn't even reached its upper margins, where open skies and downland begin - I don't know why: I would have relished a summit view. For some reason the wood had been enough, a saturation. Beaumont trotted on across the reseeded grass ley, indifferent to its green monoculture.<br />
<br />
Meaning flourishes in spots of diversity in the landscape, like a 13th century flint church, a pile of yew seeds between the roots of a tree, or the smell of a badger.<br />
<br />
Such things are worth walking to find.
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7wQ_eoT7d8SL8Kd0eOfyW5ByjnMkutpo3GeS_jmKJzwN6Tg3X-V13frVmdFa0rK0qE7fUK_i5qFxWa9qRxo1BxU6cDoMpJ2WnG7F8wODETH0JodFuRu0lKQAm9HdC1Ay-h2-lB1w55QJg/s1600/Edward-Thomas-Photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7wQ_eoT7d8SL8Kd0eOfyW5ByjnMkutpo3GeS_jmKJzwN6Tg3X-V13frVmdFa0rK0qE7fUK_i5qFxWa9qRxo1BxU6cDoMpJ2WnG7F8wODETH0JodFuRu0lKQAm9HdC1Ay-h2-lB1w55QJg/s320/Edward-Thomas-Photo.jpg" width="245" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://warpoets.org.uk/worldwar1/poets-and-poetry/edward-thomas/" target="_blank">Edward Thomas</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-86335604516492263432015-09-28T14:40:00.001+01:002022-03-17T10:09:24.380+00:00Norwich 3000 AD<h3>
</h3>
What will Norwich be like in 3000 AD?<br />
<br />
That's only 40 generations away - just an instant in geological time.<br />
<br />
The city and its environs are likely to
look very different from today. We shall clearly be in the Anthropocene
Epoch. While we cannot be sure what local details will be like, we can
project something of the wider environmental changes which are likely to
set the scene. To guess the elements of the
biological and cultural environment at the dawn of
the 4th millennium means analysing present trends and extrapolating them into
a range of potential scenarios.<br />
<br />
Factors include the burning of fossil
fuels, shifts in biodiversity, the impact of human
population growth and migration, shifts in land-use, the likelihood of conflict and
warfare, technological changes including the growth of biotechnology,
growing resource depletion (notably soil and water), the possibility of
catastrophic events such as volcanic eruptions, and even the possibility
of human extinction.<br />
<br />
What follows is a conjectural reconstruction based on present trends, enlivened by some imaginative interpretation.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>The closest historical analogue we have for the predicted <b>climate</b>
over the next century is the Mid-Pliocene warm period c. 3 million years
ago. CO<span style="font-size: x-small;">2</span> values are estimated to have reached
360–440 parts per million, and global mean annual temperatures were
approximately 3 deg C higher than today (Salzmann et al 2009). However,
for 3000 AD the closest climatic analogue we have for the planet is the
early Eocene Epoch, c.50 million years ago, when the world was much
hotter and there little or no ice at the poles. See <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum</a>/.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>In our imagined scenario, fossil fuel consumption continued through
the 21st century, notably coal use in China, although peak oil
production occurred as early as 2022. The resulting <b>global
warming/heating</b> lasted for five centuries before the climate slowly
reached an equilibrium state in the 27th century. It caused deglaciation
of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and thermal expansion of the
oceans (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise</a>),
leading to <b>sea-level rise</b> of over 6 metres. Low-lying coastal areas of
Norfolk were inundated and there was a corresponding landward shift of
wetland environments. An estuarine environment now extends up the Yare and Wensum valleys as far as Bowthorpe and Drayton (<a href="http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/">http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/</a>), with fringing mud flats and saltmarshes.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The average global <b>temperature</b> in 3000 is over 6 deg C warmer than
today. Thus, the average annual temperature in the UK may be comparable
with southern Spain today. (<a href="http://www.climate-charts.com/World-Climate-Maps.html#temperature">http://www.climate-charts.com/World-Climate-Maps.html#temperature</a>).
However, in this imagined scenario dangerous exponential global heating
has not occurred (c.f. Wasdell 2007). If it had, we would be envisaging
a catastrophic scenario.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><b>Carbon dioxide levels</b> are much higher than today’s levels, at over
1500 parts per million. (In 2013 the Mauna Loa observatory records broke
the 400 ppm barrier; global pre-industrial levels were 280 ppm.) At
these levels, the area would be experiencing a climate approaching those
of the early Eocene Epoch (50 million years ago) see <a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=1380">http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=1380</a> (n.b. peak Eocene levels were 2000 ppm (<a href="http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/35021000?locale=en%29">http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/35021000?locale=en)</a>.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>
Atmospheric <b>methane levels</b> are likely to be higher than today.
Forcing factors over the 3rd millennium included release of methane
hydrates in the ocean and melting of tundra permafrost due to global
warming; there was also a volcanic eruption (perhaps in <a href="http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/03/global-cooling-what-happens-if-the-iceland-volcano-blows/1" target="_blank">Iceland</a>).
This resulted in abrupt shifts in global climatic patterns and
amplified positive feedback loops in the weather systems, which lead to
several centuries of intense weather instability. Methane levels
stabilised after 2400 due to natural attenuation., but remained at
concentrations eight times pre-industrial levels (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum">https://en.ikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum</a>; Sloan et al 2000). </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Unstable <b>weather </b>has become normal, with periods of drought
alternating with bouts of intense rainfall. This has led to widespread
loss of topsoil and extensive gullying of farmland. As a result, much
<b>agriculture</b> is now carried out using artificial media under shelter.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><b>Wildlife</b> is different from that of today. Some Norfolk species were
able to respond to the challenges of climate change by shifting their
geographical distributions and life-cycles; others became extinct both
locally and globally. Heightened temperature and CO<span style="font-size: x-small;">2 </span>levels
mean that plant growth rates are now enhanced, and fungi, bacteria and
algae different from today form the base of the trophic pyramid.
Immigrant species typical of Mediterranean, African and Asian habitats
today have become established, particularly hardy plants, insects and
spiders. These include the malarial mosquitoes <i>Anopheles atroparvus</i>,
which breeds in warm, brackish water along river estuaries. However,
overall biodiversity has been grossly reduced, with fewer species
forming the bulk of the biomass, including those resistant to pesticides
and other environmental stresses. Many genetically-engineered feral and
mutant species are present in the environment.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqqDtCUNOOU5SurKeYQw9YG5BPpPQuTaWP7Vef40SZ4yrDIuJcmS_2t0K3nhP02KoBfXSyfculcb95I0aa7gCPotcXgFJvhMHEG_Lqxynk_itFMTluRAjV14DKWQlwHa_qITgJjy-JXtXS/s1600/350+pistachier.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqqDtCUNOOU5SurKeYQw9YG5BPpPQuTaWP7Vef40SZ4yrDIuJcmS_2t0K3nhP02KoBfXSyfculcb95I0aa7gCPotcXgFJvhMHEG_Lqxynk_itFMTluRAjV14DKWQlwHa_qITgJjy-JXtXS/s1600/350+pistachier.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="font-size: medium; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Drought-resisting Mediterranean plants such as the pistachio </span></div>
<div style="font-size: medium; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">may be at home in Norfolk in 3000 AD</span>.</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<br />
<li>Catastrophic changes to<b> marine life</b> occurred in the 3rd millennium,
with the cumulative impacts of ocean acidification and warming,
over-fishing and pollution contributing to ecosystem collapse in the
North Sea, ecological phase shifting, and the rise of algal and
jellyfish blooms. The effects can still be seen in 3000 AD in the
ecology of the Yare estuary, which has a deeply impoverished fauna
compared with 2000 AD. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Globalised <b>human society</b> has undergone radical transformations.
Rapid social evolution and much migration of populations has taken place
in step with the forcing effects of environmental change, resource
depletion, population growth, political instability, disease and an increasingly hostile and
unpredictable climate. For instance, an influx of refugees from
drought-stricken lands bordering the Mediterranean led to 37% of the
Norfolk population being of Spanish and North African descent by 2200.
Natural Malthusian processes have acted to control the human population
through various decades of disease and starvation; this was particularly
true in the aftermath of an Icelandic volcanic eruption in the early
23rd century, which caused a Volcanic Winter lasting nine years and
triggered increased global warming feedbacks in the climate system. In
2000 the world population was just over 6 billion, and this climbed to 9
billion by 2040, boosted by continuing use of fossil fuels and
genetically engineered foodstuffs. Birth control policies were finally
implemented in the 2100s and again in the 2700s, and the world
population has now successfully been returned to what it was in the year
1950, and is now artificially maintained at that level.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>A variety of <b>technlogical solutions</b> to the problems of human life have
been attempted, which imitate the functional logic of biological systems
through biotech engineering, including bio-robotics and chlorophyll
technology. The result is sustainable modular hive technology which
guarantees human life is tolerable for the majority within certain
limits. The recycling of water, nutrients and wastes are key
considerations. Fabricated nutrients are an important component of human
diet. What happens in the environment beyond the hive is a matter of
general indifference to the human population; biodiversity is no longer a
meaningful value. Biological entities are now valued in functional
terms as sources of useful information and material resources to
mitigate the effects of living on the depleted planet.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilt-NhL3EHBG0CvJZ9CHe6ZLh95LW-iHu3XsM6uz7aCoAnHIFL1Ps7gvwmX3IF66w5Qb0_nGN3yQ66QMqI7Vis1ZTJEZytVgYl2jgRvSdjSXdWquXHiAYOQWm28vAii5-B7Nq9KVTcCe71/s1600/400__soylent_green_blu-ray_10_.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilt-NhL3EHBG0CvJZ9CHe6ZLh95LW-iHu3XsM6uz7aCoAnHIFL1Ps7gvwmX3IF66w5Qb0_nGN3yQ66QMqI7Vis1ZTJEZytVgYl2jgRvSdjSXdWquXHiAYOQWm28vAii5-B7Nq9KVTcCe71/s1600/400__soylent_green_blu-ray_10_.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="font-size: medium; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Artificial food production, from the film ‘Soylent Green’ </span></div>
<div style="font-size: medium; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(dir. Richard Fleischer, USA 1973). </span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Image courtesy <u>http://www.dvdbeaver.com</u></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Some local detail<br />
<ul>
<li>The Hub City of Norrich is surrounded by subcentres such as Catton and Erlem. The old University of East Anglia site was reclaimed in 2287 following the destruction of its buildings in the Third Boreal War a century earlier, which had been fought over the allocation of scarce water resources. The site was then used for hydroponic cultivation, and drew its fluid from the Yeh Estuary. An entry in the Solicon Archive for 2654 shows that the site was used as a location for a new Chlorofusion Reactor to power the Eton Sub. The view of the valley in 3000 is of an estuarine landscape seen through hot, misty air; a series of low buildings and plant growing installations line the valley sides. Biodiversity is dominated by hardy plants and insects; some herbivorous and insectivorous birds and small mammals are able to thrive in set-aside wilderness strips. The few trees permitted living space are those which been designed or selected for their functional value, and they are arranged in plantations sheltered by awnings and irrigated by a water collection system; rainfall is too erratic and violent for unsheltered and untended trees to survive.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>A tall stone monument to Old Earth was erected in the centre of
Norrich in 2128, and its remains are still visible in 3000. The
stonework has been eroded by acidic rainfall, and the lettering is
poorly legible. It shows a vertical scale marked with a series of global
CO<span style="font-size: x-small;">2</span> concentration levels linked with dates. The
design is topped with a stone ball chiselled in the likeness of the
planet, and the side and back panels are carved with a profusion of
interlaced plant and animal species, most of which are unfamiliar to the
city’s inhabitants.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Three attempts were made to colonise polar areas of the planet Mars
in the 22nd century. Norrich contributed three couples to one of the
expeditions. Each colony was abandoned after a few decades because of
supply difficulties, psychological problems among the colonists and the
adverse environment (Mars Colony II was buried by a dust storm). It is
now generally accepted that planet Earth is the only viable home for the
human species.</li>
</ul>
<br />
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<b>Sources and resources</b><br />
<br />
o International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme: <i>Have we entered the Anthropocene?</i> – see <a href="http://www.igbp.net/5.d8b4c3c12bf3be638a8000578.html">http://www.igbp.net/5.d8b4c3c12bf3be638a8000578.html</a><br />
o National Geographic (2004): <i>Six Degrees Could Change The World</i> – Video at: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKo4TSq40l0">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKo4TSq40l0</a><br />
o Lynas, M (2004): <i>Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet</i>; Harper Perennial<br />
o Mitchell, D (2004): <i>Cloud Atlas</i>; Sceptre<br />
o Reiter, P (2000): <i>From Shakespeare to Defoe: Malaria in England in the Little Ice Age</i>; Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol.6, No.1 – see <a href="http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/6/1/00-0101_article.htm">http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/6/1/00-0101_article.htm</a><br />
o Salzmann, U, Haywood, AM and Lunt, DJ (2009): <i>The
past is the guide to the future? Comparing Middle Pliocene vegetation
with predicted biome ditributions for the twenty-first century</i>; Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 367<br />
o Sloan, CL, Huber, H & Ewing, A (2000): P<i>olar stratospheric cloud forcing in a greenhouse world</i>; in: Abrantes, F & Mix, A 2000: <i>Reconstructing the Ocean History</i>; Springer Verlag<br />
o Warrick et al (1990): <i>The greenhouse effect and its implications for the European Community</i>; Commission of the European Communities<br />
o Wasdell, D (2007): <i>Feedback Dynamics and the Acceleration of Climate Change</i>; APPCCG – see <a href="http://www.apollo-gaia.org/BaliandBeyond.htm">http://www.apollo-gaia.org/BaliandBeyond.htm</a><br />
o World Bank (2012): <i>Turn Down The Heat - Why a 4 deg C warmer world must be avoided</i> – see <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2012/11/18/Climate-change-report-warns-dramatically-warmer-world-this-century">http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2012/11/18/Climate-change-report-warns-dramatically-warmer-world-this-century</a><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt1FssHnH1gJiYJLccicHuCnZRLtuuwh0lHgGIgwiNwkflhGBwlBQHkxpbyniQgDaeQm2H0pzsuF04ZiqseHGHu41ROQ2pSrWvasLrklteWh5SEGGqnpHCbD0hS-66jygW8qI4FCn9Q5Fn/s1600/550+Norwich+in+2035.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt1FssHnH1gJiYJLccicHuCnZRLtuuwh0lHgGIgwiNwkflhGBwlBQHkxpbyniQgDaeQm2H0pzsuF04ZiqseHGHu41ROQ2pSrWvasLrklteWh5SEGGqnpHCbD0hS-66jygW8qI4FCn9Q5Fn/s1600/550+Norwich+in+2035.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">‘Norwich in AD 2035 - A prophetic fantasy’, by WT Watling </span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(Norwich Almanac and Record, 1935). </span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Image courtesy Norfolk Record Office</span></div>
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© Tim Holt-Wilson</div>
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July 2013/ Sept 2015</div>
Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5255180453177797849.post-69610893740579564272015-09-27T23:09:00.000+01:002017-02-27T12:39:21.478+00:00The Blue Flower<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">19-9-2015</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Small, intensely blue flowers are scattered in the sandy soil at my feet. They are pricking their way up among grass stalks here at Barnhamcross Common, near Thetford, England. The terrain is hummocky, showing historic scars from many years of digging for sand and gravel. This secluded corner of the Common is clothed with sedge and gorse, scattered oak and pine trees. It has a typical sandy Breckland soil, and lies not far from the Little Ouse river on level ground that was once part of the floodplain. In common with several of the Breckland heathland specialities, this blue flowering plant is tiny and unobtrusive, and yet quite beautiful in small detail.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZoZ4ARurZWA1YfB9nM4LVram3tatJXQhxI6s4FfNc6TlF-hX2KGXbyfq9T-gxpZYhY4Heta1MCtBgxpaUX5hRJlMu-fc3NPrsw-YP7-AXHxu8QpqLpBeHEBrEcloXzkup2oB7FVUzhlbZ/s1600/600+sandy+bank+095%253D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZoZ4ARurZWA1YfB9nM4LVram3tatJXQhxI6s4FfNc6TlF-hX2KGXbyfq9T-gxpZYhY4Heta1MCtBgxpaUX5hRJlMu-fc3NPrsw-YP7-AXHxu8QpqLpBeHEBrEcloXzkup2oB7FVUzhlbZ/s1600/600+sandy+bank+095%253D.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_q5ORBCk39By8NlKoBGPw29DSQgtGntANLalxN9rMo_Ub3Bwh0lkAHDL7T7qsjJwhOFUgccAQP7Tpd5lnIEVF-w3C-Guu_7topfz9yxkmKBjMfBoMQpkOPNbPakuUt3hEl76I520HV1cv/s1600/600+sandy+bank+group+100%253D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_q5ORBCk39By8NlKoBGPw29DSQgtGntANLalxN9rMo_Ub3Bwh0lkAHDL7T7qsjJwhOFUgccAQP7Tpd5lnIEVF-w3C-Guu_7topfz9yxkmKBjMfBoMQpkOPNbPakuUt3hEl76I520HV1cv/s1600/600+sandy+bank+group+100%253D.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have a real sense of a discovery here. Not only is the plant's identity a puzzle to me - its flower-head reminds me of a scabious, but isn't like any kind of scabious I can identify - but its beauty calls out to me: all shades of blue are gathered in its complexion: azure, caerulean, gentian, lapis, sky. I take photographs that barely do justice to this luminous phenomenon.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_9gx1xusJNRoV9VA4TR6kYyZIBOd1kh_YJDcKwCMBf6IXTWIsdMocI4DtFjlOoNgxe8Iy_ExJQvmgmvD8sFX77cEC_ezXHZcKZGBnI5AWZZ7Ry9OcUXMGdmvE2mkzSQwQBj64HitxPSDH/s1600/600+treble+053%253D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_9gx1xusJNRoV9VA4TR6kYyZIBOd1kh_YJDcKwCMBf6IXTWIsdMocI4DtFjlOoNgxe8Iy_ExJQvmgmvD8sFX77cEC_ezXHZcKZGBnI5AWZZ7Ry9OcUXMGdmvE2mkzSQwQBj64HitxPSDH/s1600/600+treble+053%253D.jpg" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">24-9-15 </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I emailed a photo to Martin Sanford at the <a href="http://www.suffolkbrc.org.uk/" target="_blank">SBRC</a>, Ipswich, asking for an identification. He named it as Sheep's-bit, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasione_montana" target="_blank">Jasione montana</a></i>, a member of the Campanula family that grows on light, sandy or stony soils. He said Barnhamcross Common is one of its known Breckland strongholds. The species is sparsely present in Norfolk - Beckett and Bull's 'A Flora of Norfolk' (1999) shows it as very localised, 'confined to short, acid turf', with its principal population centred in the dunes round Winterton-on-Sea. The '<a href="http://eol.org/pages/577729/overview" target="_blank">Encyclopaedia of Life</a>' maps <i>Jasione montana</i> as a native of the temperate parts of Europe. <a href="http://www.luontoportti.com/suomi/en/kukkakasvit/sheeps-bit" target="_blank">NatureGate</a> in Finland says it is a native of rocky outcrops, sandy areas and hillsides. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The native distribution of Jasione montana @ <a href="http://eol.org/pages/577729/maps/" target="_blank">The Encyclopaedia of Life</a></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sheep's-bit has been expanding in my imagination. Its flowers are true-blue scintillae studded like stars against the gloomy backdrop of my daily thoughts. Harry Godwin's 'History of the British Flora' provides an interesting local history. Its fossil pollen has been identified from late Devensian (Weichselian) levels at Old Buckenham Mere, an almost dried-up natural lake about 15 miles away. The pollen was blown into it from surrounding land and preserved in the mud. This takes its history back over 12,000 years to the end of the Ice Age. It would have favoured the freely-draining, coversand soils and sparse vegetation of the period. He says it was also found in the Roman to Anglo-Saxon levels, and suggests it owes its presence here to agricultural disturbance of sandy soils thereabouts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such factors seem to be key to its survival at Barnhamcross Common. There is evidence that someone has deliberately broken the soil surface in places, presumably for bioconservation reasons - so preserving a suitable habitat. Instead of a blanket of over-shading sedge, gorse and trees, we have patches of open, disturbed ground that fosters greater floral diversity. In this way a delicate, late glacial species, with a local history of over 12,000 years, still flourishes in Breckland. Its flowers have the same blue that once reflected in the eyes of a Saxon farmer, a woolly rhinoceros or a tundra vole.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sources
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* Beckett, G & Bull, B: <i>A Flora of Norfolk</i>; Beckett, 1999.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* Godwin, H: <i>History of the British Flora - A factual basis for phytogeography</i>; Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, 1975. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* West, RG: <i>Plant Life of the Quaternary Cold Stages - Evidence from the British Isles</i>; Cambridge University Press, 2000.</span>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com1Thetford, Norfolk, UK52.412856 0.7516570000000228952.335401 0.590295500000023 52.490311 0.91301850000002283