THE LAP OF PROSERPINE 131 



others, there are a sort of distinctive minor ways that 

 wind about the footstool of Dartmoor, that lead 

 upwards through wood or over swelling heaths, 

 until their banks decrease and dwindle, and they 

 leap out into the central waste. Such lanes have 

 their proper flora, and in them, beneath wind-blown 

 beech and tough hornbeam, may be found a variety 

 of plants not seen in the deeper and more verdant 

 tracks that lie below. Here are sand and peaty 

 loam, with the herbs and grasses proper to them : 

 The greater and lesser furze flourish aloft, and 

 their flowers blow generously throughout the whole 

 passage of the months ; the shining broom is also 

 common, and beneath him, where the rabbits burrow 

 and tunnel, there spring heather and ling, rise purple 

 foxgloves and mulleins, wood-sage and delicate scor- 

 pion grass. The little heath galium and the tormentil 

 twine together ; the lesser dodder tangles furze and 

 heath in its pink meshes ; the eyebright twinkles on 

 the way; and the milk wort prospers with varied 

 blooms of blue, pink, white, and a lovely variety, 

 veined and fringed with blue, that I have met with 

 but once. 



When the bilberry's red bells are shaking in spring- 

 time, the tiny teesdalia dwells beside it here, and the 

 upright moenchia also. The red rattle and the yellow 

 follow them, with the hemp-nettle and sometimes those 

 weird robbers, the broom-rapes, though they may be 

 met with anywhere, given a fitting host. Water-crow- 

 foot and little blinks float in marshy corners, and where 

 the rills, that cut many a lane at right angles, eddy 



