162 August Heather 



developed device. They are rather less conspicuous 

 plants than the butterwort, with a loose spike, 

 three or four inches high, of small white blossoms, 

 and pads of reddish hairy leaves, round in one 

 species and oval in another. The red hairs are 

 tipped with a drop of sticky fluid similar to that 

 which coats the leaves of the butterwort. Insects 

 are caught by it in the same way ; and the sundew, 

 like the butterwort, then pours out more of the 

 glue, and also a digestive fluid. But it improves 

 upon the butterwort's methods. The sticky fluid 

 itself becomes acid and dissolvent when it is excited 

 into a freer flow ; and the rows of hairs begin to 

 close in upon the victim in a few minutes after it 

 is caught, and not after several hours, like the edges 

 of the butterwort leaf. 



Other less sinister plants are no less characteristic 

 of the bogs and mires among the heather. Where 

 the heat-dance begins to hover as the sun grows 

 higher, the August wind bears out across the 

 purple billows the bay-like fragrance of the bog- 

 myrtle, or sweet-gale, covering the swamp with its 

 shrubby growth. The scent of the bog-myrtle in 

 the sunshine, like the fluttering white tufts of the 

 cotton grass, is one of the deepest associations of 

 free and solitary landscapes ; yet both plants have 

 long survived in the trampled plains of Aldershot. 

 There, too, grows the yellow bog asphodel, with its 

 spike of stars, the little marsh pennywort of the 

 moorland rivulets, and the bogbean, with its lace- 

 like blossoms of pink. While some moorland 

 flowers, like the white grass of Parnassus, appear 



