130 COLIN" CLOUT'S OALEKDAK. 



circumstances brought about by extended cultivation. 

 But here on the peaty hillside hollows, and in the unre- 

 claimed bogs, bits of which may be found almost every- 

 where, a totally different type of vegetation still abun- 

 dantly survives. Reedy tussocks of cotton-grass and bog- 

 rnsh rise in little islands from the level turf ; and in 

 between them the shallow water stagnates and reddens 

 in the hollows with the iron-mould of decaying leaves 

 and skeleton club-moss. These lower bits, beside the 

 trickling rills that slowly drain off the overflow from the 

 pools, are the favorite haunts of sundew and butterwort ; 

 and what gives them their special interest to the rural 

 mind is this that here, side by side in treacherous 

 friendship, grow the two most ruthless and marvellous 

 among our English insect-eating plants. 



Sundew, perhaps, is the best known to the world at 

 large of the two uncanny things, by name at any rate ; if 

 for no other reason, at least on account of Mr. 

 Swinburne's exquisite and musical lines ; the only entire 

 poem, 1 fancy, which he has ever devoted to any single 

 natural object ; for, in spite of his vague pantheistic 

 nature-worship, man, not nature, is the real centre round 

 which the eddy of his thoughts revolves. Here you 

 have an entire plant, lifted, root and all, from its moist 

 bed as carious a herb to look at as any in the world ; 

 and indeed it is no wonder that so fantastic a creature 

 should have been the one weed to attract in passing our 

 wierdest poet's special attention. The leaves are round 

 and long-stalked, pressed flat in a tuft or rosette against 

 the ground, and rather red than green externally even at 

 a first casual glance. But when you look closer, you see 

 that the actual blade itself is more or less faintly green- 

 ish, and that the redness of its surface is due to a num- 

 ber of living and movable viscid hairs, each consisting 



