218 COLIN- CLOUT'S CALENDAR, 



detail that even a Dutch painter con Id never aream of 

 reproducing on his toilsome canvas. 



I spoke just now of Bedmoor as red ; and the epithet 

 is really the only one that will exactly fit it at the pres- 

 ent moment. It is not purple, like a side of Brae- 

 mar covered thickly with a great sheet of flowering 

 Scotch heather ; nor yet pink, like a bit of the Lizard 

 promontory, clothed from end to end with the flesh- 

 colored panicles of the Cornish heath ; nor is it pale 

 mauve, like a patch of some midland common richly 

 overspread with our ordinary little English ling : it is 

 simply red and nothing else, crimson with the brilliant 

 hue of the Virginia creeper in Magdalen cloisters when 

 the frost first catches its dying foliage in the opening 

 days of October term. Not that the whole expanse is 

 red alike all over : the crimson bits spread here and there 

 in great patches between taller herbage of mingled green 

 and gray. At first sight, even those who know and love 

 the marshy lands would hardly guess what it is that gives 

 these exquisite passages of warm color to the quiet vege- 

 tation of Bedmoor ; but when one descends upon the 

 low-lying land itself, the crimson patches reveal them- 

 selves as semi-tidal mud -flats overgrown by two common 

 little seaside weeds, glasswort and sea-blite. Even in 

 their green summer dress they are curious and interest- 

 ing plants ; but when the autumn v hues begin to tinge 

 them in great masses, as on these muddy reaches among 

 the salt marsh, they come out in a perfect blaze of deep 

 crimson such as no other English foliage can ever equal. 

 It is not often, however, that they grow together over 

 large enough spaces, unmixed with other weeds, to 

 form the one main element in the coloration of a con- 

 siderable tract : and what makes Bedmoor at this moment 

 so beautiful and interesting is just the fact that the inun- 



