Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/136

 were habited in long, double-breasted coats, made from frieze or homespun, and of a dark brown, grey, or other quiet shade; a light drugget waistcoat, red shag or plush breeches, and black stockings. There is no necessity to trace the costumes of our ancestors further than the point here reached, as their varieties present few phases of special interest, and probably the most striking are already sufficiently familiar to our readers. A sure, though somewhat unsteady, decline was shortly inaugurated in the sumptuous and elaborate dresses of the people, which continued its course of reform until the more economical and unostentatious dress of modern days had usurped the place of the showy habiliments of the eighteenth century.

or district of the Fylde may be briefly described as broad and flat, for although in many places it is raised in gentle undulations, no hill of any altitude is to be seen upon its surface. The fertility of its soil has long been acknowledged, and a visit to its fruitful fields during the warm months of summer would disclose numbers of rich acres yellow with the ripening grain, while potatoe and bean-fields, meadow and pasture-lands, orchards and fruit gardens, are scattered over the wide area. Our design in the present instance is not, however, to enlarge upon these cultivated features, but to notice some of the more striking natural peculiarities, and to arrange in a classified list sundry of the rarer wild plants growing in the neighbourhood, enumerating also the different birds and sea-fowl, which are either natives or frequenters of the locality.

The features most calculated by their singularity to attract the attention of the stranger on surveying this division of the county are the moss-lands, the sand-hills, the mere at Marton, and the stunted appearance and inclination from the sea of those trees situated anywhere in the vicinity of the coast.

The great moss of the Fylde lies in the township of Marton, and extends six miles from north to south, and about one mile from east to west. On examining the structure of this moss, below the coarse herbage covering its surface, is discovered a substance called peat, brown and distinctly fibrous at its upper part, but becoming more and more compact as we descend, until at the bottom is presented a firm, dark-coloured, or even black mass, betraying less evidence, in some cases barely perceptible, of