The imm HATOBAIIST: 



A Monthly Magazine of Natural History 



Part 46. SEPTEMBEE, 1883. Vol. 4. 



HEATHER. 



By J. P. SouTTER, Bishop Auckland. 



" And this gay ling with all its purple 

 flowers, 



A man at leisure might admire for hours ; 

 And then how fine this herbage! Man 

 may say 



A heath is barren ; nothing is so gay." 



AND who that has lived within 

 sight or scent of a heath-clad 

 hill, and roamed over its breezy ex- 

 panse; or even for an all too brief 

 holiday has lolled in luxurious ease on 

 a heathery slope, listening to the mur- 

 mur of the multitudinous bees and 

 insects, as they sip the nectar from its 

 odoriferous flowers during a sultry 

 summer's day ; but will agree with the 

 poet that nothing in nature is gayer, 

 more inspiriting and health-restoring 

 than a highland moor 



" Where the blaeberries grow% 'mong 

 the bonnie blooming heather." 



Judged either by the number of indi- 

 vidual specimens, the area that it 

 covers, or the wide range of its distri- 

 bution, the heather can justly claim 

 to be the commonest plant in the 

 British Isles. There is scarcely, if at 



all, a county in England where it is 

 not to be found, and, of course, in 

 Scotland it is the characteristic plant, 

 covering as it does large tracts to the 

 exclusion of everything else. The 

 rhyming proverb, referring to the south 

 of Scotland — 



" If heather bells were corn of the best, 

 Then Buccleuch would have a noble grist," 



would be equally applicable to the 

 majority of the large landowners in 

 that country. Not only is the heather 

 so extensively gregarious as to mo- 

 noplise huge districts, but it is so ex- 

 cessively exclusive as to allow nothing 

 else to grow along with it. One may 

 wander over miles of moorland, and ex- 

 cepting a few humble mosses and Hchens, 

 see nothing in the way of flowering 

 plants but two or three coarse grasses 

 and sedges. Haply if there are 

 occasional stagnant peaty pools, they 

 will be conspicuous at a distance from 

 the graceful nodding plumes of the 

 cotton sedge, the "hare*s tails'' or 

 "canna" of the Scottish peasantry. 

 The long pure white hairs which invest 

 the ovaries are so cotton-like in ap- 

 pearance that surprise is often expres- 



