156 August Heather 



so deep and profuse a dye as the purple heather ; 

 and no other group of blossoms covers such immense 

 landscapes in a single stretch. Yet in spite of the 

 almost tropical intensity of a hillside of purple 

 bell-heather under a noonday sun, there is a fresh- 

 ness and vigour in every detail and association of 

 its growth. The air comes blowing over heath or 

 mountains with a freedom and exhilaration which 

 is lost in enclosed landscapes ; and from the sky- 

 blue dragon-flies that flit about the heather-tufts 

 to the strong, green shoots that tip every bough 

 of the pines the moorland landscape abounds with 

 the sense of life. 



Besides the three or four rarer species which are 

 confined to Cornwall and Ireland, there are three 

 well-known species of heath or heather which are 

 found together on most moors and heaths. The 

 terms heath and heather are used almost inter- 

 changeably for all of them in popular speech. Most 

 botanists confine the name of heath to the two 

 bell-flowered species, the so-called fine-leaved heath, 

 which is the typical heather with the deep purple 

 blossom, and the cross-leaved heath, with its paler 

 bells of rose. Heather with these authorities is 

 the plant with the smaller, star-shaped blossom, 

 which is often known as ling. White heather is 

 not, as some suppose, a separate species, but a mere 

 sport of any one of these three. The paler cross- 

 leaved heath and ling seem to run to whiteness 

 a good deal more easily than the deep purple bell- 

 heather to speak again in the normal idiom ; but 

 it is not rare to find white bell-heather in a long 



