96 BIRD HAUNTS AND NATURE MEMORIES 



patch of heather had vanished, and almost the last covey 

 of grouse rose from a field of cabbages. Commerce 

 extends its rapacious arms, populations grow, massing 

 in already congested areas, and nature, unhappy nature, 

 suffers. Eight years before this date Manchester had 

 purchased the moor, cleared the ling and heather, dug up 

 the peat and moss litter, and changed everything. Fussy 

 little locomotives dragged trains of trucks laden with moss 

 litter over the quaking ground, and brought in return 

 loads of refuse from the city; nature's rubbish, converted 

 by natural change into useful fuel, was replaced by the 

 discarded refuse of a teeming population, in its turn to 

 suffer chemical change and become fertilising matter. 

 Gangs of toilers cut and stacked the peats, others tipped 

 in the apparently defiling filth; it was not a pleasant 

 sight. Smoke, grime, and worse had replaced the bright 

 bloom of heather and the sweet smell of fresh cut turf. 

 Already crops were appearing on the marked-out fields, 

 but the Moss was a moss no longer; it was an utterly 

 lost-looking tip, a rubbish heap. Curlew, snipe, twite, 

 viper, emperor, andromeda, and sundew had vanished; 

 docks, nettles, ragwort, and weeds were springing every- 

 where. The larks and pipits remained, but the sparrow 

 had appeared and the corn bunting found a spot worth 

 colonising. 



1904 



From north to south and east to west railway lines ran 

 straight across fields whose borders were drainage ditches 

 white with crowfoot; sleepers, well bedded, had replaced 

 the rough planks which had served well enough when the 

 foundations were so uncertain that a truck or locomotive 

 might any time sink into the boggy soil. 



Alongside the metals were broad and level roads, lead- 

 ing to the few farms that had already been built. 



