Best known of all, perhaps, is what we call heather. This name is used for at least four different plants in Orkney. Two of these bear that common but beautiful flower the heather-bell. One bears bells of a pale, rose-coloured, waxy appearance; the other, which is more common, has bells of a darker and often purplish red. The former is the cross-leaved heath, with its little green leaves arranged in whorls of four; the latter has its leaves in whorls of three, and is known as the fine-leaved heath. The most common kind of heather is the ling, which flowers somewhat later than the heaths. It is this plant whose spikes of tiny rose-coloured flowers make our hillsides a purple glory in the early autumn, and whose leaves and stems give them their familiar brown tint during the rest of the year. A white variety is also found, the “white heather” which is supposed to bring good luck to the finder. Another kind of heather is that which bears the small black berries so well known to every young Orcadian. This plant is not a heath at all; it is really the black crowberry. The berry is preceded by a tiny purplish flower, which probably few of the berry-gatherers have ever seen. The “rashes” or rushes are a common feature of our moors. Two kinds may be noticed, one with its flower-tuft more closely packed together than the other. These rushes were of some use in former days. The white pith was extracted and dried for winter use as wicks in the old oil-burning “crusies,” before the introduction of paraffin. There are many smaller plants of a similar type, one of which, the bog asphodel, ought to be well known; its pretty, yellow, star-like flowers, grouped on a stalk some eight inches high, often make patches of our moorlands glow with the shimmer of gold. The cotton-grass is probably more familiar. There are two kinds found in Orkney, one bearing a single tuft of white down on each stem when seeding, the other a group or cluster of tufts. This plant is not a grass, and has no connection with the cotton plant; but the name is a good one for all that, and no one can mistake the plant to which it applies. [Illustration: _Plants of the peat-moss._ 1. Common ling (_Calluna vulgaris_). 2. Cross-leaved heath (_Erica tetralix_). 3. Black crowberry (_Empetrum nigrum_). 4. Cotton grass (_Eriophorum polystachion_). 5. Grass of Parnassus (_Parnassia palustris_). 6. Bog asphodel (_Narthecium ossifragum_).]