On 7/8/04 9:16 am, in article ,
" wrote:

On Sat, 07 Aug 2004 00:04:32 +0100, Sacha
wrote:


I think we have more about just now. We took our glasses of wine onto the
big lawn tonight to let the dogs romp about and had plenty of wasps flying
around in an over-excited fashion.

I blame the wine Sacha :-)

I would too but I didn't let them share it. ;-)
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)

"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 7/8/04 9:16 am, in article
,
" wrote:

On Sat, 07 Aug 2004 00:04:32 +0100, Sacha
wrote:


I think we have more about just now. We took our glasses of wine
onto the
big lawn tonight to let the dogs romp about and had plenty of
wasps flying
around in an over-excited fashion.

I blame the wine Sacha :-)

I would too but I didn't let them share it. ;-)

That's what drove them mad.
{:-))

Franz

Janet Baraclough.. wrote:

The message
from contains these words:

On Fri, 06 Aug 2004 11:08:09 +0100, The Reids
wrote:

Following up to

Removing all the vegetation causes climate change.
Libya was the main source of wheat for the Roman Empire
--

Sure, but that hasnt happened in Britain. The soil is there, the
rain is there.

The trees don't grow, because the ground is too acid.

If you're talking about Scotland and Wales, that is not the case.
Wherever hill-grazing animals are excluded, trees regenerate naturally.
This can be seen in steep gullies, and where they have been fenced out.
Try a google search on "Reforesting Scotland", or "The Millennium
Forest". Remember that peat IS acid; native Scottish trees are adapted
to wet acid soil.

FWIW, most of what we see as moorland, even in Scotland was once
reasonably productive woodland. A lot of it was cleared for for
agriculture in the Bronze/Iron Age, but the soil was too poor for
prolonged cropping. Impoverishment of the soil plus climatic change (it
got wetter and colder) encouraged the development of the boggy/heathery
stuff we now regard as characteristic of such places.

regards
sarah


--
NB. Note change of *usenet* email address:
'amitiel.demon.do.uk' has ceased to function.
My other email address will remain valid.
Think of it as evolution in action :-)

On Fri, 06 Aug 2004 11:55:47 +0200, wrote:

There wasn't a shortage of water in sub Sahara until they removed most
of the vegetation.

Removing all the vegetation causes climate change.
Libya was the main source of wheat for the Roman Empire

I think you may be confusing cause and effect here.

My understanding (quite possibly wrong-headed, silly,
misinformed, and indicative of intellectual perversion) is that
there has been a slow, steady desiccation of a broad swathe of
Afro-Eurasia since the retreat of the glaciers ca. 10,000 years
ago. Thus you get the Sahara, the near-desert middle East, and
such, right through to the cold deserts of central Asia and the
Gobi.

Certainly there's strong evidence that many parts of this band
were considerably wetter than they are now. Just look at the
gradually shrinking salt lakes of Tibet, for example.

It's the climatic change that has lead to the desertification,
iow.

The domestication of the goat also has a lot to do with the
near-desertification of the Mediterranean basin.

--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
[change "atlantic" to "pacific" and
"invalid" to "net" to reply by email]

On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 14:04:43 +0100, sarah wrote:

FWIW, most of what we see as moorland, even in Scotland was once
reasonably productive woodland. A lot of it was cleared for for
agriculture in the Bronze/Iron Age, but the soil was too poor for
prolonged cropping. Impoverishment of the soil plus climatic change (it
got wetter and colder) encouraged the development of the boggy/heathery
stuff we now regard as characteristic of such places.

Trees will grow quite well in soils unsuited to any other crop.

"The Roadside Geology of Oregon", in describing the lateritic
soils of Oregon's Coast Range (the low mountains between the
Willamette Valley and the Pacific Ocean), remarks that the soils
of the Coast Range are so poor that they're only good for growing
trees. Hence, don't expect the place to ever be very populated.


--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
[change "atlantic" to "pacific" and
"invalid" to "net" to reply by email]

Rodger Whitlock wrote:

On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 14:04:43 +0100, sarah wrote:

FWIW, most of what we see as moorland, even in Scotland was once
reasonably productive woodland. A lot of it was cleared for for
agriculture in the Bronze/Iron Age, but the soil was too poor for
prolonged cropping. Impoverishment of the soil plus climatic change (it
got wetter and colder) encouraged the development of the boggy/heathery
stuff we now regard as characteristic of such places.

Trees will grow quite well in soils unsuited to any other crop.

"The Roadside Geology of Oregon", in describing the lateritic
soils of Oregon's Coast Range (the low mountains between the
Willamette Valley and the Pacific Ocean), remarks that the soils
of the Coast Range are so poor that they're only good for growing
trees. Hence, don't expect the place to ever be very populated.

And all the more beautiful for it! But the weather doesn't encourage
people, either.
I have fond memories of a botanical field trip that took in that area,
many years ago.

regards
sarah

--
Think of it as evolution in action.

"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 6/8/04 23:56, in article , "David
Hill"
wrote:

Tonight I've had to get rid of my 2nd nest of the year, this was/is in
the
corner of the packing /machinery shed, and the entrance to the nest is
only
about 4ft from the path to the cloths line and 10ft from the line
itself, so
it has to go.
Had to use step ladder to get to its height, but dusted it tonight after
dark, when there is no activity.
It's strange, I haven't had to remove any nests for the last 2 years,
and 2
already this year.

There was something in one of the papers today about wasps being a bit of
a
plague this year. Perhaps it's the result of a long hot end to last
summer
and a comparatively mild winter.


The BBC web site said it was due to a change in farming practices, using
less chemicals and leaving margins round fields.

--
Tumbleweed

email replies not necessary but to contact use;
tumbleweednews at hotmail dot com

Following up to Rodger Whitlock

The domestication of the goat also has a lot to do with the
near-desertification of the Mediterranean basin.

I suspect we are all right in a sense, all the factors mentioned
contribute + rising populations where applicable, the use of wood
for fires and other things.
--
Mike Reid
If god wanted us to be vegetarians he wouldn't have made animals out of meat.
Wasdale-Lake district-Thames path-London "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk" -- you can email us@ this site
Eat-walk-Spain "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" -- dontuse@ all, it's a spamtrap

Following up to Franz Heymann

I don't understand the problem with attributions: I use Google
Groups,
which isn't even _intended_ as a newsreader, but it does the
attributions automatically. Surely OE does, too?

Yes. It does. I use OE.

It is however possible to set up your newsreader differently from
the default and remove or substitute the s and have no
attribution or even "some burke said" instead. Although why
anyone would want to do any of this escapes me. Sadly the one
thing you cant do with Microsoft so called software is have a
valid sig file separator as I understand it strips out the
trailing blank of ".. ".
--
Mike Reid
If god wanted us to be vegetarians he wouldn't have made animals out of meat.
Wasdale-Lake district-Thames path-London "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk" -- you can email us@ this site
Eat-walk-Spain "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" -- dontuse@ all, it's a spamtrap

On 7/8/04 5:28 pm, in article , "Rodger
Whitlock" wrote:

snip

The domestication of the goat also has a lot to do with the
near-desertification of the Mediterranean basin.

This did make me grin a bit. A cousn of my ex father in law asked him to
become President of a new Jersey goat society she wanted to start up. He
refused on the grounds that goats had 'caused' the Sahara to become a
desert. ;-)
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)