106 The soil cmd the con/ntryside 



heather, the splashes of yellow from the ragwort or the 

 gorse and the dark pine and larch plantations. In the 

 spring the young shoots of bracken lend a beautiful light 

 green colour to the scene, while in the autumn the faded 

 growth covers it all with a rich brown. People now 

 like to live amid such surroundings, and so these heaths, 

 that have been untouched for so long and are part of 

 the original primeval England as it was in the days 

 of the Britons, are becoming dotted with red bricked 

 and red tiled villas, and are fast losing their ancient 

 character. The heaths are not everywhere dry ; there 

 are numerous clay basins where the sand lies wet, where 

 peat forms (see p. 37), and where marsh plants like the 

 bog asphodel, sundew, or cotton grass can be found. 

 In walking over a heath you soon learn to find these 

 wet places by the colour of the grass and the absence of 

 heather. In some places there is a good deal of wood, 

 especially pines, larches, and silver birches : all these 

 are very common on the Surrey sands, willows also grow 

 in the damp places. Fig. 48 shows a Surrey heath — 

 Blackheath — with heather, gorse and bracken; with 

 pine-woods in the distance and everywhere some bare 

 patches of sand. Much of the New Forest is on the 

 sand, as also is Bournemouth, famous for its fine pine 

 woods. Fig. 49 is a view of such woods on Wimbledon 

 common. But elsewhere there is no wood : the peasants 

 burn the turf, and so you find their cottages have huge 

 fireplaces : instead of fences round their gardens or 

 round the plantations there are walls made of turf. 

 Such are the Dorchester heaths so finely described by 

 Hardy in The Return of the Native and other novels. 

 Other sands, however, are covered with grass and not 

 with heather, and many of these have a special value 



