FIR-WOODS AND HEATHER 



295 



foliage. White specimens of the purple bell-heather are the 

 scarcest. The pink bell-heather lapses more easily into 

 white and many shades of pale rose. 



On many moors the soil itself adds strong colour to the 

 heather-clad landscape. The peat which forms on the 

 sandy and gravelly soils lacking in lime sets a black back- 

 ground in gaps of the purple bloom ; and where the sand is 

 scarped in pits, or washed into steep banks by the rain, it 

 often introduces a striking contrast. The crumbled silica of 

 the rock on the east Yorkshire moors gleams white like 



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FRENSHAM POND 



quartz, and the tertiary sands of the southern English 

 heaths are also white where they have been exposed to rain 

 and wind. Mixed with peat-dust this white sand becomes a 

 cool grey ; but the predominant colour is a hot, raw orange- 

 red, which, when exposed in a sand-pit, makes a violent and 

 surprising contrast with the mantle of purple above, and 

 makes the green of the bracken cool and welcome. As the 

 hill-roads in the chalk-country wind in long white ribbons, 

 the by-roads on the southern heaths stripe their purple with 

 yellow and red. Round about stand the deep green fir- 

 woods, with toothed crests cutting the summer sky ; and pre- 

 sently we may come to a dip in the orange and purple heaths 



