CHAPTER II. 



ON MOORLANDS AND ROUGHS.^ 



IN a previous volume, dealing with bird-life in a 

 southern county, we expressed disappointment 

 not only with the miniature moorlands of Devon- 

 shire, but with their lack of feathered inhabitants. 

 Tame these lands must ever seem by comparison 

 with the typical moors, and from an ornithological 

 point of view wanting in interest to persons familiar 

 with the grand expanse of heath and mountain waste 

 in the north. For many years we lived within little 

 more than an hour's walk of the Yorkshire and 

 Derbyshire moors. At one period we used to visit 

 them several times a week in quest of ornithological 

 information, varying our experience by occasional 

 much more extended excursions over them. We 

 know them in the heat and the brightness of spring 

 and summer; in the autumn, when their rollino- 

 expanse is aflame with a glow of purple and brazen 

 bloom from the heath and gorse; as well as in winter, 

 when the wind sweeps across them in resistless fury, 

 and the snow covers them with a dazzling pall, level- 



^ " Rough", a local name for wild, uncuUivated, rocky lands on the borders 

 of the moors, clothed with coarse herbage, bramble, heath, and a variety of 

 Vacciniaceae, sphagnum, and other plants. 



