Like their bigger relatives, the wetlands, these small ecosystems are threatened, and because of their diminutive size they often vanish unnoticed,unrecorded, unremembered, in a single scoop of a backhoe or bulldozer.

For instance I began my archaeological career beside Tonge Pond, a large millpond crammed with ducks which used to provide eggs to the adjacent bakery. The last few times I visited Tonge the pond had vanished, replaced at first by cracked mud and eventually by tangled vegetation.

Who cares? I do.

The smallest pond, unless it has been polluted to death, is crammed with life, both plant and animal. Ponds have inspired generations of zoologists and botanists, who as children lay on their stomachs and peered into the teeming water, or scooped jam-jars full of wriggling creatures, or plunged into stinky blue mud.A few damp rocks support a nursery of mosses, liverworts and ferns. Icy water issuing from a cleft is immediately inhabited by crustacea. Even an old gutter that dries up in the summer will be thronged with creatures that manage to squeeze their hurried life cycles into the damp seasons.

These are secret places. Feminine places. No wonder our ancestors appointed deities to look after them. No wonder some people still attach magical/religious properties to the apparently miraculous appearance of water. After all, some of these little bubbling pools are the sources of mighty rivers.

They are also peaceful, meditative places, sometimes absolutely still, sometimes whining with insects, sometimes burbling and muttering.

It is no wonder that the great thinkers and dreamers of the East often retreated to the misty, damp, moss-clothed mountains.