Brittany 2

Brittany 2

BRITTANY

 

 

 

 

I. GENERAL FEATURES AND GEOLOGY

 

 

Brittany, the extreme Western promontory of the North of France,

comprises the five departments of Côtes-du-Nord, Ille-et-Vilaine,

Finistère, Morbihan, and Loire-Inférieure. It is distinguished into

Upper and Lower Brittany. In the former the French language is spoken,

in the latter the Breton, and French is an acquired tongue.

 

The back-bone of Upper Brittany is the chain of the Menez that runs

from East to West, and then branches, forming on the North the

Montagnes d'Arrée, and on the South, the Montagnes Noires. The system

may be likened to a hay-fork or a pair of tongs, where the prongs of

the fork form the above-named ranges. The whole rests on an elevated

plateau that slopes to the sea North and West, and on the South dies

down into the plain of the Vilaine and the Loire.

 

On the North this plateau is seamed by the rivers that have cut narrow

valleys and ravines through which they make their way to the sea. Such

are the Rance, the Gouet, the rivière de Morlaix, with the result

that there is no coast-road, and the traveller passes along the main

arteries of traffic at some distance from the sea, catching a glimpse

of it only once at the Anse d'Iffinac, and has to branch off from it

to the coast so as to make acquaintance with the bold and picturesque

coast.

 

The mountain range is nowhere high, and rarely reaches a thousand feet.

The highest point is the Mont Saint Michel which attains to slightly

over 1200 ft. The freshman arriving at Cambridge asked where was the

Gogmagog range, and was told that he might see it when an intervening

cart got out of the way. Owing to the ridges rising out of an elevated

plateau, they are almost as insignificant as the Gogmagogs. However,

the Menez-hom most nearly attains to the dignity of a mountain, as it

stands above the Bay of Douarnenez, reaches however only to 990 ft.

 

Along the Western confines of the department of Ille-et-Vilaine, the

Menez spreads out into high tableland sown with lakelets acting as

feeders to the Vilaine.

 

The Monts d'Arrée, starting from the Coat-an-Noz in Côtes-du-Nord,

extend to the peninsula of Crozon, they attain their highest point at

the Mont S. Michel, and decline as they approach the sea. They rarely

rise 300 ft. above the tableland on which they are planted, and this

prevents them from having an imposing appearance.

 

The Montagnes Noires flank the central plain on the South. Their

maximum height is 1050 ft. After running S.W., they bend abruptly

towards the N.W., and terminate in the Menez-hom in the Crozon

peninsula.

 

In the Morbihan, the Lande de Lanvaux, running from W. to N.E., extends

50 kilometres, and rises to the height of from 240 to 320 ft. between

the basins of the Claye and the Arz which unite at Redon to feed the

Vilaine.

 

The North coast of Brittany is eaten into bays from which the sea

retreats to considerable distances, and is fringed with reefs and

islands. It is a favourite resort of Parisians, throughout its stretch,

from Dinard to Plestin.

 

The West of this peninsula is torn into shreds of promontories with

deep inlets between them. The promontories of S. Mathieu, Crozon,

Sizun, and Penmarch are bald, but bold. Below the point of Penmarch

the coast rapidly trends S.E. and alters in character; it loses its

bleak desolation and ragged rocky nature, and forms landlocked seas, as

those of Belz and the Morbihan; and the rocks make way for sand-dunes.

The island chain that constitutes a natural breakwater to the bay of

Quiberon is the wreckage of the barrier of another inland sea, broken

up by the Atlantic surges. South of the mouth of the Loire the island

of Noirmoutier stretches almost sufficiently far out to enclose another.

 

The plateau formation of the country is not conducive to beauty, and

its lovely sites must be sought in the valleys, and its wildest scenes

on the coast. The deep cleft ravine of the Rance, the sweet valley of

the Elorn, that of the Aulne, canalised, the Blavet, the Laïta and the

Arz, will richly repay tracing upward.

 

The promontories of Crozon and Sizun till of late years were bare and

untilled, and heath-grown; but the use of sardine heads as manure has

given a great impetus to agriculture, and the demand for fir balks for

the South Welsh mines has caused the planting of vast tracts with the

Austrian pine.

 

* * * * *

 

The geological structure of Brittany is simple. It consists of an

immense upheaval of granite through beds of Silurian and Cambrian

schist. Rare deposits of lime occur in the folds of these beds. Dykes

of quartz and diorite have traversed the schist and granite, and the

face of the country is spotted with eruptions of igneous matter. It is

as though the crust had been full of blowholes through which the molten

diorite had rushed to the surface. The presence of quartz or diorite in

the neighbourhood can always be recognised by the employment of one or

the other to metal the roads.

 

The granite extends from the bay of Mont Saint Michel to the extreme

point of Finistère and reappears in the isles beyond; it is interrupted

only here and there by the sedimentary beds. The Châteaulin district,

however, and the basin between the prongs of the mountain fork, are all

of Cambrian and Silurian beds. But from the Pointe du Raz the granite

extends almost uninterruptedly to the Rhone.

 

The Brittany granite is for the most part fine grained and soft, so

that it lends itself easily to be carved, and has been freely employed

in churches and secular buildings from the 11th century. But it is

readily corroded by the weather, and this has given to denuded surfaces

a smooth and rounded shape, and has taken the angles off exposed masses

that form tors, and has occasioned the fall of many into utter ruin.

 

A band of syenite runs from near Lamballe to Cap Fréhel, where it forms

magnificent cliffs. Syenite again comes to the surface at Trégastel

and on the coast north of Morlaix. The Monts d'Arrée are of Cambrian

schist and furnish slates here and there of good quality. Taking a

section across the inner basin, the granite is quitted at Plounéour,

then the ridge of Cambrian schist is reached, after crossing the

culminating point of S. Michel, which is of Cambrian sandstone; when we

reach S. Herbot we are on Silurian beds. Continuing our course south,

the sandstone makes way for slaty schists, and to this succeeds the

grauwacke of Brasparts. The Montagnes Noires belong to the Silurian

system.

 

The Kersanton stone, so extensively employed for figure and foliage

sculpture in Lower Brittany, is an amphibolite with mica freely

comminuted and distributed through the substance. It is very dark in

colour, and hardens with exposure. It comes from quarries to the south

of the Rade de Brest.

 

An interesting deposit is the tertiary limestone of S. Juvat beside the

Rance. It is of no great extent, but is of vast commercial importance.

The bed is composed of an agglomerate of shells and bones. In places it

lies under a deposit of as much as 45 ft. of sand. It is a veritable

mine of wealth in a country so destitute of lime as is Brittany.

 

A mineralogical curiosity is the staurotides found at Baud, Scaer,

and in various places about the Blavet. The peasants attach a

superstitious value to them as marked with the cross, and in some

they affect to recognise the nails. They are often sold on stalls

at a Pardon. They are formed by trapdykes that have penetrated the

schist, and fused and run together some of its constituents, which have

afterwards crystallised, sometimes as parallel prisms, at others as set

transversely forming the ordinary or the S. Andrew's Cross.

 

 

 

 

II. BOTANY

 

 

The botany of Brittany is little varied owing to the slight variation

in the soil and subsoil, schist and granite. It is but in rare spots

where occurs limestone that the flora is different. It may be roughly

divided into the class of plants that affect the inland districts and

the moors, and that which flourishes on the seaboard. The flora of a

slate and granitic region, whether in Scotland, Cornwall or Brittany,

is much the same. In the Guérande, where there are extensive marshes,

an interesting collection may be made of aquatic plants, both those

living in sweet water bogs and those that grow in brackish water.

 

A complete flora cannot be here attempted; a brief account must

suffice, with indications as to the habitat of the rarer specimens.

 

As one leaves the Loire, pre-eminently the mouth of the Vilaine, it

is easy to note the gradual disappearance of many plants that are

common south of them. A few that abound there may still occur, but as

stragglers and stunted. And this contrast becomes more striking the

further north we go. The cause of the poverty of the Breton flora is

the uniformity of the soil and the absence of calcareous rocks, and

this deprives us of an entire series of plants that abound in Normandy

although the climate there is more rigorous. A small number does exist,

but only, as already intimated, where there are pockets of limestone,

or else on the seaboard, where they can feed on the wreckage of shells

cast up by the sea, and carried inland by the gales with the sand.

 

The following is a list of the plants found in calcareous soil in Brittany:--