354 WILD FLOWEKS OF 



where all the hues of red, pink, purple, green, and the 

 purest pearly whites, tinge corollas swelled like a flask, 

 narrow as a tube, diluted like a vase, or round as an 

 air-bubble; and these again are hairy, silky, shaggy, 

 glutinous, or polished with a finish superior to the 

 finest glass or porcelain. Yet it is asserted that this 

 favourite tribe of plants is by no means so handsome 

 in its native country as when cultivated, as they there 

 form scraggy shrubby bushes, to which the colonist 

 boors have not even vouchsafed a name. 



While, however, the Cape alone furnishes those 

 delicate or showy heaths, so ornamental to the green- 

 house, it is principally in the northern parts of Britain 

 that any of the species are employed for economical 

 purposes. There, ale is frequently made by brewing 

 one part malt and two parts of the young tops of 

 heath; the flowers furnish an abundant store of honey 

 to the bees ; besoms are made of its branches, faggots 

 of its old stems, it is used to thatch houses, and forms 

 a fragrant couch, that even poets have celebrated 



" The stranger's bed 



Was there of Mountain Heather spread." 



Its general use in the Highlands for beds, has sug- 

 gested the following remark from the editor of the 

 last edition of Withering, which, as a contribution to 

 imaginative botany, may deserve consideration. " If 

 it be true, as there is reason to believe, that the an- 

 cients were wont to repose on the leaves of particular 

 trees, not doubting their powers of inspiration : as 

 Agnus-Castus to compose the troubled mind, the 

 Laurel to excite poetic fire, or the Bay to awaken 

 visions of glory, why may not the Heather-couch not 

 merely refresh the wearied limbs of the rough sons of 



