SUMMER IN A HEATH COUNTRY 173 



most distinct and interesting group delicately unveiled ; and it is the 

 of neighbours. general lack of all such gentler shades 

 The heather ceases in these wet, which enhances the graceful delicacy 

 open flats of the bog-myrtle, the cotton- of the scarcest and most isolated of the 

 grass, and the dull green clumps of the heaths. But its delicate pink is wholly 

 deer-grass ; only on some of the larger submerged and lost in the general 

 emerging tussocks there cling a few view of these great sweeps of purple, 

 pink-belled sprays of the delicate cross- that the strong green of the firs, and 

 leaved heath, which is a greater lover here and there the violent ochre of a 

 of moisture than either the purple scarped sandpit or winding roadway, 

 heather or the ling, and often fringes combine to intensify with the strongest 

 the border of the bog, beneath the edge possible contrast. In certain of the 

 of the broad purple stain, with a broken southern pine-woods a sheet of purple 

 border of its purer and tenderer dye. no less brilliant and unbroken, but 

 It is never found in such wide, unbroken clearer and more roseate in tone, is 

 sweeps of colour as are often formed drawn across the sunny clearings in 

 by the two commoner species, the so- July by the flowering of the tall rose- 

 called " fine-leaved heath " and the bay willow-herb. This is as high and 

 ling ; but where it grows in single stately a flower as the heathers and 

 clumps, with its delicate, wax-like other blossoms of the open moor are 

 bells and sparer whorls of greyish and close and clinging ; and from the 

 downy leaves, it has a refinement and greater scarceness of its prodigal dis- 

 delicacy of beauty beside which the play, its massed, level thicket strikes 

 two other species seem coarse and in- upon the eye with an even greater 

 sistent in growth. It is this note of sense of amazement, as the flood of 

 insistency, indeed, which is the very brightness breaks slowly, like the dawn 

 life of the strong purple heather spread upon the sea, through the darkness of 

 in its sheets of Tyrian bloom ; under the columned wood, 

 the faint blue of the sky and the gold Within the pine woods of this region 

 of the July sun its full blaze strikes there is an absence of the usual English 

 upon the senses like the clash of martial wealth of small-bird life which adds 

 music. The fierce July spring-tide of a double solemnity of silence to the 

 the heath-country knows but little of universal songlessness of those July 

 half-tones of colour, or gradations and August days when the heath- 



