Botanists and gardeners will be glad to know that the
Kew Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information for 1917 (Stationery Office, 4s. 6d.) has appeared as usual, despite the war, and contains many instructive and curious articles. An account of " The Flora of the Somme Battlefield," written last summer, is important as showing that, " instead of the new surface soil being sterile, the shelling and weathering have ' cultivated ' the land." " No more moving sight can be imagined than this great expanse of open country gorgeous in its display of colour, dotted over with the half-hidden white crosses of the dead." Here and there were patches of corn, usually self-sown. The writer of the article thinks that the only solution of the problem of restoring the battlefield to cultivation may be to convert it into a forest tract, " thus forming a ' Via Sacra' both beautiful and useful."
Previous page
