Country Life
BY IAN NIALL THERE is a time when it is legal to burn the heath—it varies in different parts of the country, or used to, I think—and there is a time when it must not be deliberately set on fire. The cause of a heath fire is not easily detected and there are always mysterious tramps and bits of broken bottle that produce flames and palls of smoke. Last week I saw a scrub patch on fire on a hillside and won- dered who had set it alight. The wind was just right. The smoke streamed uphill and the flames ran behind, reminding me of a similar fire which I saw last year. I had pulled up to watch, and the farmer was leaning over the drystone wall, waiting for the fire-engine. 'Hikers,' he said. 'Mind you, I'm not sorry. I was going to burn it off in the spring.' The fire brigade arrived a few minutes later. They had attended eight or nine fires on rough land in the space of a week, I was told. They had no time to look round for the culprits, but I had a feeling that the farmer, who had been contentedly smoking until they came in sight, had decided that the best time to burn a thing is when it is dry and crackling in summer's heat. 'This happened to be one of the only really dry days in a wet summer.
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