172 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



in July, which has wholly vanished, seas ; and when we see it thus expend- 

 except at dawn, from the heat-stained ing its " labour for that which satisfieth 

 fields and woods of more pastoral not " over an endless field of the 

 regions. moor, the deep, underlying sense of the 

 Nowhere has age-old Nature been utter indifference of wild Nature to 

 less disturbed than among all linger- human needs seems expressed in its 

 ing tracts of marsh and fen ; and even highest power. Another characteristic 

 in the smallest patches of wet ground plant of the undrained patches in the 

 that stud the heaths there is a fugitive heath is the bog asphodel, with its grace- 

 northern flora which has long been ful six-inch spire of golden stars ; and 

 banished from subdued and cultivated in the same wet places cluster the 

 lands. Though some of the most char- strange and cruel little sun-dews, with 

 acteristic flowers of the wet northern their small, flat leaves bristling with 

 moors, such as the dew-spangled but- red, glutinous hairs which entangle 

 terworts, and the single, white, veined and seize the small gauzy flies which 

 blossom of the grass of parnassus, are alight on their watchful trap. Both 

 lacking to the heaths of Hampshire sun-dews and asphodel come into bloom 

 or Surrey, their absence is not enough during the great July outburst of 

 to diminish the true impression of colour and life in the heath-country, 

 remote and ancient wildness in these and both are typical plants of desolate 

 moorland scenes, where the long wind moorland bogs and marshy mountain- 

 comes sighing in the sun over rolling sides. The flower of the sun-dews of 

 heather, and flutters a thousand pen- which there are two common species, 

 nons of the cotton-grass on the tus- one with thong-shaped leaves, and the 

 socked mires. There is no other plant other with round is a small spray of 

 that seems so full of the lonely freedom dull white blossoms on a hair-like stem 

 of the wastes as this white-tufted a few inches high. Though not a very 

 sedge, that gleams and flutters so conspicuous or beautiful blossom, it is 

 keenly both in the sunshine and in the graceful in form, and well proportioned 

 obscurity of the moonless nights. Its to the small cluster of prostrate leaves ; 

 lavish and prodigal harvest, the crown while the whole carnivorous little 

 of the whole year's suns and rain, is plant, as it lurks on the wet peat 

 as void and sterile for man as the white among the grass and heather, is one 

 wave-tops that fleck the unharvestable of the most interesting species in a 



