90 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



gives patches of bright green in a waste of sullen 

 heather, for the time of the heather's glory is not yet. 

 Tiny green fingers of fern and tormentil creep round 

 the base of the few grey blocks of gritstone which 

 the sea long ago carved and left on the summit of 

 our moor, now a thousand feet removed from the 

 eroding waves. 



After the sea went down the hillside, the mists of 

 heaven took up the work of carving and beautifying 

 the hills. The rains found out the softer streaks, 

 however winding they might be, and made runnels 

 that neither sea-pink nor cistus nor heather nor 

 whortleberry could protect. It sank gorges that 

 widened into mile-wide valleys ; formed island hills 

 far out in the plain that now stretches twenty miles 

 to the sea ; gashed a tidal river-bed five hundred feet 

 deep ; set modern piddocks to drill holes in the 

 fossil ammonites of ten million years ago. After the 

 deeper slashes of time's chisel the eye rests on the 

 more delicate work that graces the round edges of 

 the moor. The little runnel creeps hidden under the 

 heather stalks, then plunges down a fern-smothered 

 trench, then loses itself for awhile in deep green moss, 

 then, boring a deeper and wider V, brings up all 

 manner of bushes and trees, whose vivid green rejoices 

 in the summer that has been opened for them in the 

 flanks of the winter-teased mountain. 



The rain carves its channels where it will or where 

 it can. Perhaps the sea-urchins' cemetery proves 

 more soluble, or the slabs that prehistoric piddocks 

 fretted most, or the crack that a wanton sea filled 

 long ago with pebbles or more movable silt. At any 

 rate, the rain may not stay on the hill-top where the 



