A MOORLAND FIRE. 



food-stuff. Honey and pollen have been 

 quoted for the bees at starvation prices. 

 We have natural selection here on a large 

 scale in actual action before our very eyes : 

 only the hardiest furze-bushes have this 

 year survived the bitter frost ; only the 

 busiest, strongest, and most enterprising 

 bumble-bees are now surviving the serious 

 loss of their accustomed provender. Even 

 heather has suffered much, which is a sur- 

 prising fact, for heather belongs to a high 

 sub-arctic type, that spreads in both its 

 familiar British forms far north into Scotland, 

 Scandinavia, and even Russia ; while gorse, 

 a shrub of much more southern and western 

 nature, is rare in the Highlands, unknown 

 in Norway or Sweden, and, in its smaller 

 form, at least, incapable of enduring the 

 severe winters of Germany to the east of the 

 Rhine. 



As a consequence of this dryness and 

 deadness of the gorse, and to some extent 

 of the heather-tops, heath fires have raged 

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