A SUMMER STROLL. 



the valley ; a lost old-world farm, in a dell 

 of the moors, with a market-garden. You 

 poor Londoners, when you go to buy straw- 

 berries, go to buy them prosaically at a 

 commercial fruiterer's in a noisy street ; but 

 we moorlanders go with our basket in our 

 hands to some lonely grange across the 

 heather-clad upland. The first part of our 

 walk lay high over the ridge, where the 

 heath was burnt in the Jubilee year by the 

 great fire ; you can still plainly mark the 

 point up to which the flames made a clear 

 sweep of the heather, and the point where 

 they left off, held in check by the beaters. 

 For heather is really a forest-tree of some 

 fifty years' growth ; and the waste where the 

 fire raged is still covered to this day with 

 a shorter crop of young seedling gorse and 

 ling and whortleberry, while the older vege- 

 tation unburnt beyond rises tall and bush- 

 like. The blasted part, too, shows by far 

 the finest and deepest purple of any ; not 

 because the flowers are really bigger or 

 ill 



