MOORLAND IDYLLS. 



How proudly they raise their tall spikes 

 of pale bloom, true sultanas of the 

 moorland ! how daintily they woo the big 

 burly bumble bees ! how gracefully they 

 bend their nodding heads before the bold 

 south-west that careers across the country ! 

 They seem to me always such great regal 

 flowers, yet simple with the simplicity of the 

 untrodden upland. 



Take a spike and look at it close ; or, 

 better still, grub it up by the roots with 

 the point of your umbrella, and examine 

 it all through from its foundation upward. 

 It springs from two tubers, not unlike a 

 pair of new potatoes to look at, but deeply 

 divided below into finger-like processes. 

 Those divisions it was that gave the plant 

 its quaint old English title of " dead men's 

 fingers " for, indeed, there is something 

 clammy and corpse-like about the feel of 

 the tubers ; while that " coarser name " 

 to which Shakespeare alludes in passing, 

 is due to their general shape, and is still 

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