62 
NATURE NpJES ^ 
the abundance of cotton grass with its silvery tassels warns us 
that this is no dry upland moor we are crossing. Keeping, 
however, to those tussocks of wiry red-brown grass we may 
safely pause to study this patch of black peat set with little 
separate plants of the white beak-rush, and the hairy crimson 
rosettes of the murderous sun-dews. (The three British species 
are all found he^e.) Oh one of^ their slender flower-stems a 
minute white blossbrhlis fully expandeld; a sight which, curiously 
enough, many a botanist has sought in vain. On rougher ground, 
thrpugh grey red-capped lichen struggles the wild rosemary or 
AndrMiedh, with its pink waxen bells and narrow rolled back 
leaves. Those orange brown seed-vessels have succeeded the 
yellow flowers of the bog asphodel, not that of the Elysian fields, 
which must, surely be the one {Asphoddus fisttdosns) growing 
round the old Greek temples at Paestum, as if some magic touch 
had set a tuft of rushes flowering, each green spike with opening 
stars of white daintily striped blossom, Now let us cross this 
bit of softer bog With its patches of 'pale green, fided-primrose 
or crimson-stained sphagnum, the last recalling a dim nursery 
legend that this hue shows where the wicked Claver’se once shot 
some hapless Covenanter. Over the richly varied tints of this 
bog-moss meander the thread-like stems and tiny round leaves 
of thfe cranberry, with its many coloured berries, cream specked 
with, red, pink and deep claret, and to vary our feast we may 
on drier ground look for the fruit of the crowberry, set like small 
black peas among its shining heath-like leaves. Hut what live 
creatures possess these delightful solitudes ? Over that dark 
pool flit great red and blue dragon flies, from the heather comes 
“ the murmur of innumerable bees, ’’ the owner of that reptilian- 
looking head watching us from the bank wriggles forth, not the 
possible adder, but a small brown lizard, locally called a man- 
keeper. Basking on yon sunny spot an old cock-grouse is 
discoursing to his brown wives in vigorous bird Gaelic ; his 
theme, it may be, the intrusion of those low birds, the gulls and 
the sheldrakes, who have set up a nesting ground on this special 
domain of the snipe and the moor-fowl. The ulflquitous rabbit 
has no great relish for bog-land fare, and during this harvest 
season the partridges and pheasants are happy among the corn- 
stooks, but to-day we are graced by a rarer sight, for yonder by 
those birch trees two roebucks are fighting, and so engaged in 
hustling and chasing one another that they take no heed at first 
of our presence. Now they have winded us, and pretty, graceful 
creatures, go flying with long bounds over the heather. 
On that isolated clump of firs far out on the moss there is a 
small heronry, the birds having vainly attempted to settle nearer 
the house, but having been driven off by the rooks. The 
s(juirrels that chase each other over the old Spanish chestnuts 
in the home park, occasionally stray into the wood, but under the 
Scotch firs, the small, hanl cones seem untoucherl, while those 
of the spruce elsewhere are. stripped of the scales, frbm behitMJ 
