PEAT 199 



fashioned a wonder from the palest pink, glittering 

 fabric that ever left her hand. Here are homes of 

 sweetness for small living things, whose little lives 

 are a day of joy spent in wandering through the 

 mazes of each petal to the golden heart of every 

 flower. After menyanthes has gathered up her love- 

 liness and the marsh -orchis has also departed, you 

 shall find the orange and scarlet of asphodel glimmer- 

 ing here with the inconspicuous filmy atom of the 

 butterwort's pale flower that hangs like a fly above 

 its flat star of sticky, grey leaves ; the lesser skull-cap 

 is near also, while the ivy-leaved campanula and marsh- 

 pimpernel twine their blue and pink bells together, 

 and the bog-heather hangs out pearly clusters. Above 

 her ruby foliage, all glittering with gems of moisture 

 on each red hair, the round-leaved sun-dew lifts a 

 stem and hangs thereon white, drooping blossoms that 

 open stealthily in hot noontides and quickly close 

 again ; while hard by the water-loving St. John's wort 

 shines out of silvery-green foliage, and thistles lift 

 heads of purple to break the flat planes of the rush. 



Man's work lies in the centre of this scene, and 

 he toils here, and spreads his fuel, and thinks of the 

 burning, when fire shall draw the heart out of the 

 peat, while this ancient factory of its creation amid 

 the tors is under howling storm or deep in snow. 

 First the moor-man cuts off the skin of heath and 

 rush and grass with his knife — generally an old scythe 

 — and then employs the iron to hew each peat-cake in 

 regular shape from the mass. 



