THE WEEDS OF BEDMOOR. 229 



tidal ditches, with occasional flat expansions of fathom- 

 less muddy ooze. It is not a beautiful place, truly, in its 

 main features ; and yet it revels in a wealth of colour 

 that a painter dare hardly imitate, and a profusion of 

 minute detail that even a Dutch painter could never 

 dream of reproducing on his toilsome canvas. 



I spoke just now of Bedmoor as red ; and the 

 epithet is really the only one that will exactly fit it at 

 the present moment. It is not purple, like a side of 

 Braemar covered thickly with a great sheet of flowering 

 Scotch heather ; nor yet pink, like a bit of the Lizard 

 promontory, clothed from end to end with the flesh- 

 coloured panicles of the Cornish heath ; nor is it pale 

 mauve, like a patch of some midland common richly 

 overspread with our ordinary little English ling : it is 

 simply red and nothing else, crimson with the brilliant 

 hue of the Virginia creeper in Magdalen cloisters when 

 the frost first catches its dying foliage in the opening 

 days of October term. Not that the whole expanse is 

 red alike all over : the crimson bits spread here and 

 there in great patches between taller herbage of mingled 

 green and grey. At first sight, even those who know 

 and love the marshy lands would hardly guess what it 

 is that gives these exquisite passages of warm colour 

 to the quiet vegetation of Bedmoor : but when one 

 descends upon the low-lying land itself, the crimson 

 patches reveal themselves as semi-tidal mud-flats over- 

 grown by two common little seaside weeds, glasswort 

 and sea-blite. Even in their green summer dress they 

 are curious and interesting plants ; but when the 

 autumn hues begin to tinge them in great masses, as 

 on these muddy reaches among the salt marsh, they 



