228 COLIN CLOUT ^S CALENDAR. 



XXXVIII. 

 THE WEEDS OF BEDMOOR. 



OUT on the red moor here the sea-breeze blows wet and 

 misty, and the brine may almost be tasted in the fine 

 spray that floats around us, covering the low straggling 

 vegetation of the salt marsh with a thin film of incrust- 

 ing crystals. For there are moors and moors in Eng- 

 land ; and this particular Bedmoor by no means fulfils 

 the prior expectations that might be formed of it from 

 its high-sounding name. To our early English ancestors, 

 in fact, a moor meant almost any tract of wild or un- 

 enclosed ground ill fitted by nature for human habita- 

 tion or tillage. It was as indefinite and as expansive in 

 sense as the Australian word ' bush,' or the Norman 

 equivalent ' forest.' So in Yorkshire a moor means a 

 high stretch of undulating heath-covered rock ; whereas 

 in Somerset it means a low flat level of former marsh- 

 land, reclaimed and drained by means of numerous 

 * rhines ' as local farmers still call them, with fond 

 clinging to an old Celtic common name, which has else- 

 where grown into the specific Teutonic title of the most 

 German among European rivers. Bedmoor belongs 

 rather to the latter type : a little triangular patch of 

 Dorset coast swamp, cut off from the sea by a narrow 

 belt of coarse shingle, and intersected by numerous 



