MOORLANDS 



greatest care the pedestrian may sink to the waist in a hole 

 of black, slimy, peaty water. Moss, Heather clumps. Sedges, 

 Rushes, and occasionally Cotton-grass, almost at one dead 

 level, stretch right across from the one side of the huge valley 

 to the other. 



Even grouse are not common. In summer great numbers 

 of gulls lay their eggs upon the moss. This also is one of 

 the few places in Britain where great flocks of wild geese can 

 be heard and seen, but only at a distance. 



It is almost impossible to get near them, for the upright 

 neck of the sentinel cannot be seen by the stalker as he 

 wriggles towards the flock on his face, until long after the 

 stalker himself has been plainly visible to the bird. 



Of all useless stretches of barren waste, such a moss as this 

 seems one of the worst. It would, of course, be possible to 

 reclaim it; probably, fertile fields and rich meadows could 

 be formed over the whole valley, but it would not pay 

 nowadays. There is so much good land available in Canada, 

 the United States, and Australia, that this great stretch of 

 our native country will probably remain as useless as it was 

 in Agricola's days. 



In the Scottish Lowlands and Highlands the moorlands 

 are almost as desolate. At a height of 1500 to 1600 feet 

 in Southern Scotland there is nothing to be seen but the 

 undulating lines of hills, all dark purple with heather or 

 with the peculiar scorched reddish green of Deer's Hair and 

 dried sedges. 



Perhaps on the nearer hills small streams may have cut a 

 whole series of intersecting ravines in the black peat. They 

 may be six to ten feet deep, and here and there the bleached 

 white stones which underlie them are exposed. Now and 

 then the " kuk-kuk-kuk " of an irate cock grouse, and much 



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