22 FROSTED HEATHER 



running in autumn and winter, there would be a dis- 

 tinct risk of the calamities indicated respectively in 

 the English and Scots proverbs. There is only one 

 hardy plant known to me which never fails to bear 

 flowers, and lovely ones, on every day in the year. 

 It is one of the borage family, the same to which we 

 owe our forget-me-nots, and goes by the name of the 

 blue gromwell (Lithospermum prostratum). In its 

 native southern Europe it flowers but once a year, 

 under the influence of spring moisture; but in our 

 dripping climate it is always growing, and having the 

 almost unique constitution to enable it to dispense 

 with rest, its dark evergreen sprays are always studded 

 with charming stars of deep azure. It is a low shrub, 

 of the stature of common heather, but more spreading, 

 and relishes a slightly elevated mound set with lumps 

 of stone to sprawl over. 



VIII 



Mr. Percy Grimshaw, in an interesting communication 

 Frosted to a recent number of Annals of Scottish 

 Heather Natural History, has thrown a new light on 

 what is too well known to the owners of moors as 

 ' frosted heather.' This phenomenon, with which some 

 observers have connected visitations of grouse disease, 

 does not owe its origin, it appears, to frost, but is the 

 result of the ravages of a small beetle (Lochmcea sutur- 

 alis) which time to time increases to prodigious 

 swarms. This insect only measures five millimetres in 

 length (about one-fifth of an inch), and attacks the 



