404 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



dampness, indeed, under slabs of rock, the Cystopterisfragilis and 

 the gleaming white flowers of the familiar wood sorrel are seen, 

 and always inseparable; and on the lower edges of the hill, where 

 the little streams soak out, we found the butterwort in abundance, 

 its parchment-like leaves with their curled edges shining out star- 

 like in the still wintry grass. But on the mountain-top, where other 

 and stranger plants grow among the dark bog-pools, there was as 

 yet no sign of summer life. Only the diminutive Luzula spicata 

 did what it could to make colour, with its golden anthers gleaming 

 from brown flowers amidst the waste of heather, which had as yet 

 put out no spring shoots. We only saw one butterfly, a Pieris napi, 

 and that seemed half asleep, perhaps wholly disappointed in a 

 world too wet for its fresh wings. The only links with the spring, 

 the almost summer indeed, of the valley were the numbers of 

 Common Heath moths which were fluttering among the heather, 

 undismayed by the showery day. 



We had to cross two wild heather-clad hills before we reached 

 the Ring-Ouzels' haunt, but when we reached it we owned that 

 they were birds of taste. At the head of their dingle two hills 

 join, and there a waterfall runs down, its course marked among 

 the rocks by brightest green of soft, cushiony moss, by tufts o* 

 Nephrodium dilatatum. The scene was desolate wildness, bounded 

 on the west by the steep rocks and the waterfall, on the north 

 and south by the two bare mountain sides, while on the east 

 stretched the at first narrow valley, with its brawling stream. 

 The mountains were patterned over by great stones, by larger 

 slabs of fallen rock, by patches of heather, black, tragic, in colour 

 as if burnt, and showing yet no tinge of spring green, by patches 

 of bilberry covered by pinky green leaves and a few pink flowers, 

 but which in the distance and in the mass seem only a dull sullen 

 yellow. Only one tree broke the straight sky-line of the solemn 

 mountains, a rowan tree growing high up amid the rocks, and as 

 yet destitute of leaves. 



It was a land of waters. I tried, as I sat and waited for the 

 coy Ring-Ouzels, to think of " the silence which is among the 

 hills," but the thought did not do. The air was full of the noise 

 of the water-pipes : water leaping down the head of the dingle, 

 water murmuring on down the valley, water springing out of the 

 mountain sides and sliding over the grass in narrow streams 



