X VII August Heather 



THE blooming of the heather in August brings a 

 new spring to the hills and moors when summer 

 in the lowlands is growing heavy. Whether it 

 lies high or low, on Perthshire mountains or Hamp- 

 shire commons, a heather landscape shares com- 

 paratively little in the general awakening of 

 vegetation in the early year. It is true that young 

 birch leaves in April or early May are full of the 

 lightness of spring; and the exotic larch, which 

 has now become so familiar in many moorland 

 landscapes, has an even tenderer green. But 

 straggling bushes of holly, alder, and mountain ash 

 do little to tinge the heath and moor with vernal 

 freshness ; while the woods of Scotch fir are as late 

 in awakening to springtime as the heather. When 

 lanes and deciduous copses are gay with primroses 

 and bluebells, and the dandelion flames in green 

 meadows, landscapes of heath and pine show little 

 more life and colour than under the rainy skies of 

 December. But when the copses are tarnished by 

 the suns of later summer, and the flowers of the 

 hay-crop have long fallen, the moors and heaths 

 break out into a concentrated splendour of vegeta- 

 tion which combines the luxuriance of summer with 

 the freshness of spring. None of the great sheets 

 of blossom which mark the midsummer months have 



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