WINTER IN THE MARSHES. 



OWHERE, perhaps, have 

 autumn rain and winter frost 

 left heavier traces than on 

 the wide levels of the turf 

 moor. These meadows, that all 

 the summer through were rich and 

 green, purple with sheets of orchis, 

 and aflame with flower de luce, and dotted over with 

 white plumes of cotton grass, like a touch of early 

 snow, are brown and dreary wastes. Cold and dismal 

 are the belts of marsh-land. Beaten down are all their 

 tasselled sedges, while a few forlorn bulrushes lift gaunt 

 and ragged heads among forests of their withered 

 leaves. 



In the patches of coppice, spared as yet by the 



