CHAPTER VII 



SUMMER ON THE MOORS 



June 



June is the leafy month elsewhere ; and even on the moor- 

 land, where there are no trees, there is an equivalent for the 

 absence of foliage in the intense greenery of the highland 

 vegetation. Even heather is now green, as is the bent, 

 and with fern and fell-grasses, sedges and sphagnum, the 

 whole blend into one living green carpet of varied and 

 vivid tones. The moorland landscape, at this period, is 

 all green — there is no contrast of colours such as it 

 afforded in autumn, when not only does heather-bloom 

 empurple the hills, but a wave of changing hues — russet, 

 gold, and tawny red- — adorns each bracken-clad height, 

 and lends a blaze of colour to every moss and flowe. 



Mosses and flowes, I should perhaps explain, are 

 those flat expanses filling the floor of some shallow 

 basin among the hills. At a casual glance, either might 

 be mistaken for a snipe-bog ; but they are not bogs, 

 nor specially beloved of snipe. A "moss" is entirely 

 composed of the green spongy sphagnum, with some 

 slight growth of moor-grass and sedge — no place for 

 snipe. Though equally level, the "flowes" are far more 

 varied in character, being composed of miry peat with 

 infinite tussocks, whereon survives a stunted heather- 

 growth, and where bog-grasses, blaeberry-ling, creeping 



