THE WEEDS OF -BEDMOOR. 219 



dated levels where the glasswort and the sea-blite love 

 to crawl among the soft ooze are here so large and con- 

 tinuous, stretching long arms in and out among the rank 

 brown grasses and fluffy aster-heads that form the herb- 

 age of the intervening drier belts. A sluice at the mouth 

 of the tidal backwater shuts off the sea from these natur- 

 ally flooded branches of the little channel ; so that the 

 succulent weeds have it all their own way upon the con- 

 genial mud, where they creep and bask in crimson lux- 

 uriance without fear of competition from the drier plants 

 of the surrounding meadow. 



Taken in its minutest details, the vegetation of Bed- 

 moor is quaint and interesting to the highest degree. 

 Only a pair of skinny horses eat down the taller herb- 

 age ; while a. few lean, lank pigs of dolorous aspect grub 

 hopelessly for tubers along the edge of the slimy ooze. 

 The red weeds themselves are some of the strangest 

 among our native English plants succulent, cactus-look- 

 ing seaside denizens, which collect quantities of alkaline 

 material from the saturated soil in whose mud they grow, 

 and which used formerly therefore to be burned for 

 barilla, in the days when England was more dependent 

 upon home produce for feeding her industries than she is 

 now. That is how one of them got its popular name of 

 glasswort. As they grow together on the soft bed of the 

 dried pool Oxford clay well kneaded with salt water - 

 the two weeds look quite indistinguishable from one 

 another ; for both share the common succulence of seaside 

 plants, familiar to most of us in samphire and saltwort, 

 and both have turned to the very selfsame shade of red 

 under the influence of their identical conditions. When 

 you pull them and examine them closely, however, you 

 see that there are marked differences in their flowers and 

 their mode of growth. Both belong by origin to the 



