230 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



come out in a perfect blaze of deep crimson such as no 

 other English foliage can ever equal. It is not often, 

 however, that they grow together over large enough 

 spaces, unmixed with other weeds, to form the one main 

 element in the coloration of a considerable tract : and 

 what makes Bedmoor at this moment so beautiful and 

 interesting is jnst the fact that the inundated levels 

 where the glasswort and the sea-blrte love to crawl 

 among the soft ooze are here so large and continuous, 

 stretching long arms in and out among the rank brown 

 grasses and fluffy aster-heads that form the herbage of 

 the intervening drier belts. A sluice at the mouth of 

 the tidal backwater shuts off the sea from these naturally 

 flooded branches of the little channel ; so that the suc- 

 culent weeds have it all their own way upon the con- 

 genial mud, where they creep and bask in crimson 

 luxuriance without fear of competition from the drier 

 plants of the surrounding meadow. 



Taken in its minutest details, the vegetation of Bed- 

 moor is quaint and interesting to the highest degree. 

 Only a pair of skinny horses eat down the taller herb- 

 age ; while a few lean, lank pigs of dolorous aspect grub 

 hopelessly for tubers along the edge of the slimy ooze. 

 The red weeds themselves are some of the strangest 

 among our native English plants succulent, cactus- 

 looking seaside denizens, which collect quantities of 

 alkaline material from the saturated soil in whose mud 

 they grow, and which used formerly therefore to be 

 burnt for barilla, in the days when England was more 

 dependent upon home produce for feeding her indus- 

 tries than she is now. That is how one of them got its 

 popular name of glasswort. As they grow together on 



