Lindow Common. 119 



been going on, the approaches to the Common show their 

 enormous powers of productiveness. This is marked 

 even more strongly on the Chorley side of Lindow, 

 reached by way of Alderley, Brook-lane, and the row of 

 twenty-nine lime-trees. The confines of a partially-re- 

 claimed peat-bog always present a greater variety of 

 life, and a richer luxuriance, than is done either by the 

 bog itself or the adjacent fields ; just as the salt space 

 that lies between high-water mark and low is richer 

 in natural-history than either the sandhills or the open 

 sea ; and much the same as that grand territory which 

 lies just beyond the confines of the actually Known, and 

 yet is allowed by Providence to be viewed by the imagi- 

 nation, is inlaid the most richly with material to allure 

 us onwards. 



About the year 1780, Lindow was burnt like a prairie. 

 The summer was hot and dry, and great quantities of 

 peat cut for fuel lay piled, as at present, in different parts. 

 One of these piles was accidentally ignited, and the flame 

 catching the heath, which at that period was tall and 

 dense, the conflagration spread for the space of a mile, 

 destroying not only all the peat, but every morsel of 

 vegetation on half the common. Remaining from the 

 time when the peat was formed, in the trenches cut for 

 draining are found branches of birch-trees, still retaining, 

 as at Carrington, their silvery bark, though the interior 

 is brown and earthlike; not uncommonly, also, the 

 labourers exhume great masses of fir-tree bark. 



