Even grouse are not common. In summer great numbers of gulls lay their eggs upon the moss. This also is one of the few places in Britain where great flocks of wild geese can be heard and seen, but only at a distance.
It is almost impossible to get near them, for the upright neck of the sentinel cannot be seen by the stalker as he wriggles towards the flock on his face, until long after the stalker himself has been plainly visible to the bird.
Of all useless stretches of barren waste, such a moss as this seems one of the worst. It would, of course, be possible to reclaim it; probably, fertile fields and rich meadows could be formed over the whole valley, but it would not pay nowadays. There is so much good land available in Canada, the United States, and Australia, that this great stretch of our native country will probably remain as useless as it was in Agricola's days.
In the Scottish Lowlands and Highlands the moorlands are almost as desolate. At a height of 1500 to 1600 feet in Southern Scotland there is nothing to be seen but the undulating lines of hills, all dark purple with heather or with the peculiar scorched reddish green of Deer's Hair and dried sedges.
Perhaps on the nearer hills small streams may have cut a whole series of intersecting ravines in the black peat. They may be six to ten feet deep, and here and there the bleached white stones which underlie them are exposed. Now and then the "kuk-kuk-kuk" of an irate cock grouse, and much too frequently the melancholy squawking of the curlew, irritates the pedestrian as he stumbles over clumps of heather, plunges in and out of the mossy holes, or circumvents impossible peat-haggs.
An Arctic Alpine Plant
This is Draba Alpina from Cape Tscheljuskin, and it is drawn the natural size. The stunted, closely set leaves show the inclement character of the climate.
It is indeed a remarkable fact that though these islands support 44,000,000 of inhabitants, including at least 1,000,000 paupers and unemployed, one-seventh of Ireland and many square miles in Scotland are still useless peat-bogs!