the scrap-metal, pieces enclosing hedges of trees and shrubs in the medium of which are disseminated hamlets and isolated farms, is the result of a long and progressive occupation of the ground. The hedges are not forest vestiges; planted on ground slopes, they are a peasant creation. On these grounds ranging between 200 and 400 m, considered as high in oceanic zone, prevails a hard climate.
The primitive forests were cleared up in the lowest schistous areas only towards theVth and the X century, around villages with the names finishing in - y, - ay, -é. Under the duchy of Normandy boroughs, castles, some abbeys are created. In XIIth and XIIIth centuries, a family wave of clearings submerges in all these areas, which one recognizes with their formed toponyms of a name of anybody preceded by the article and finished by a final in - ière or - erie. Around the buildings a small island of fields of agricultures extended enclosed of hedges to protect them from the cattle which grazed in the moors and wood. The population plants there little by little apple trees and pear trees which make it possible to produce drinks, then buckwheat which grows on the poor grounds. It also lives thanks to industries of iron and glass made possible by the wooden supply.
Between the end of XVth century and 1850, the division and the geometrical clearing of the moors increase the cultivated space which is always arranged out of scrap-metal. At the beginning of the XXth century, the ploughing is abandoned to the pasture and the dairy breeding. But since 1960, the handing-over of ploughing, the regrouping, some anti scrap-metal and the new livestock buildings of the black and white cows still modify the landscape.
Perche at 150 km far from Paris, between the vast plains of Beauce and the reliefs of the Norman scrap-metal, extends a country of solid masses forest of hills and scrap-metal. At the heart of this country, Parche, there where specificities of the landscape are the most marked, a regional Natural reserve was born.

Card of identity Created in 1975 on the departments of Manche, de l'Orne (Basse-Normandie), de la Mayenne et de la Sarthe (Pays de Loire). Nbr of townships : 150 Surface : 234 000 ha Nbr of inhabitants : 90 000

Normandie-Maine
Maison du Parc - Le Chapître - BP 5 - 61320 Carrouges
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