MOORLAND IDYLLS. 



and fail for lack of a drop of water. You 

 must make a deep pocket of garden mould 

 in the midst of the heath if you want them 

 to thrive ; and even then, unless you keep 

 constantly cutting down the heather and 

 gorse about them, they are overtopped and 

 outlived by the native vegetation. 



To dwellers in towns, that mere phrase, 

 " the struggle for life among plants," seems 

 a quaint exaggeration. They cannot believe 

 that creatures so rooted and so passive as 

 plants can struggle at all for anything. The 

 pitched battles of the animals they can 

 understand, because they can see the kestrel 

 swooping down upon the linnet, the weasel 

 scenting the spoor of the rabbit to his 

 burrow. But the pitched battle of the 

 plants sounds to them but a violent meta- 

 phor, a poetical trick of language, a notion 

 falsely pressed into the service of the 

 naturalist by some mistaken analogy. In 

 reality, those few of us who have fully read 

 ourselves into the confidence and intimacy 

 100 



