← catalogue

Nature Near London

by Richard Jefferies · English · Gutenberg #18629 · 385,848 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Nature Near London
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Nature Near London

Author: Richard Jefferies


        
Release date: June 19, 2006 [eBook #18629]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18629

Credits: Produced by Malcolm Farmer and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NATURE NEAR LONDON ***




Produced by Malcolm Farmer and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net







                         NATURE NEAR LONDON

                                BY

                         RICHARD JEFFERIES


                             AUTHOR OF
            "THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS," "THE OPEN AIR," ETC.


                         [Illustration]


                        FINE-PAPER EDITION



                             LONDON

                         CHATTO & WINDUS
                              1905




                Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
                    At the Ballantyne Press





PREFACE


It is usually supposed to be necessary to go far into the country to
find wild birds and animals in sufficient numbers to be pleasantly
studied. Such was certainly my own impression till circumstances led me,
for the convenience of access to London, to reside for awhile about
twelve miles from town. There my preconceived views on the subject were
quite overthrown by the presence of as much bird-life as I had been
accustomed to in distant fields and woods.

First, as the spring began, came crowds of chiffchaffs and willow-wrens,
filling the furze with ceaseless flutterings. Presently a nightingale
sang in a hawthorn bush only just on the other side of the road. One
morning, on looking out of window, there was a hen pheasant in the furze
almost underneath. Rabbits often came out into the spaces of sward
between the bushes.

The furze itself became a broad surface of gold, beautiful to look down
upon, with islands of tenderest birch green interspersed, and willows in
which the sedge-reedling chattered. They used to say in the country that
cuckoos were getting scarce, but here the notes of the cuckoo echoed all
day long, and the birds often flew over the house. Doves cooed,
blackbirds whistled, thrushes sang, jays called, wood-pigeons uttered
the old familiar notes in the little copse hard by. Even a heron went
over now and then, and in the evening from the window I could hear
partridges calling each other to roost.

Along the roads and lanes the quantity and variety of life in the hedges
was really astonishing. Magpies, jays, woodpeckers--both green and
pied--kestrels hovering overhead, sparrow-hawks darting over gateways,
hares by the clover, weasels on the mounds, stoats at the edge of the
corn. I missed but two birds, the corncrake and the grasshopper lark,
and found these another season. Two squirrels one day ran along the
palings and up into a guelder-rose tree in the garden. As for the
finches and sparrows their number was past calculation. There was
material for many years' observation, and finding myself so unexpectedly
in the midst of these things, I was led to make the following sketches,
which were published in _The Standard_, and are now reprinted by
permission.

The question may be asked: Why have you not indicated in every case the
precise locality where you were so pleased? Why not mention the exact
hedge, the particular meadow? Because no two persons look at the same
thing with the same eyes. To me this spot may be attractive, to you
another; a third thinks yonder gnarled oak the most artistic. Nor could
I guarantee that every one should see the same things under the same
conditions of season, time, or weather. How could I arrange for you next
autumn to see the sprays of the horse-chestnut, scarlet from frost,
reflected in the dark water of the brook? There might not be any frost
till all the leaves had dropped. How could I contrive that the cuckoos
should circle round the copse, the sunlight glint upon the stream, the
warm sweet wind come breathing over the young corn just when I should
wish you to feel it? Every one must find their own locality. I find a
favourite wild-flower here, and the spot is dear to me; you find yours
yonder. Neither painter nor writer can show the spectator their
originals. It would be very easy, too, to pass any of these places and
see nothing, or but little. Birds are wayward, wild creatures uncertain.
The tree crowded with wood-pigeons one minute is empty the next. To
traverse the paths day by day, and week by week; to keep an eye ever on
the fields from year's end to year's end, is the one only method of
knowing what really is in or comes to them. That the sitting gambler
sweeps the board is true of these matters. The richest locality may be
apparently devoid of interest just at the juncture of a chance visit.

Though my preconceived ideas were overthrown by the presence of so much
that was beautiful and interesting close to London, yet in course of
time I came to understand what was at first a dim sense of something
wanting. In the shadiest lane, in the still pinewoods, on the hills of
purple heath, after brief contemplation there arose a restlessness, a
feeling that it was essential to be moving. In no grassy mead was there
a nook where I could stretch myself in slumberous ease and watch the
swallows ever wheeling, wheeling in the sky. This was the unseen
influence of mighty London. The strong life of the vast city magnetised
me, and I felt it under the calm oaks. The something wanting in the
fields was the absolute quiet, peace, and rest which dwells in the
meadows and under the trees and on the hilltops in the country. Under
its power the mind gradually yields itself to the green earth, the wind
among the trees, the song of birds, and comes to have an understanding
with them all. For this it is still necessary to seek the far-away
glades and hollow coombes, or to sit alone beside the sea. That such a
sense of quiet might not be lacking, I have added a chapter or so on
those lovely downs that overlook the south coast.
                                                     R. J.




CONTENTS


                                       PAGE

Woodlands                                1

Footpaths                               12

Flocks of Birds                         24

Nightingale Road                        35

A Brook                                 48

A London Trout                          59

A Barn                                  70

Wheatfields                             80

The Crows                               90

Heathlands                             101

The River                              111

Nutty Autumn                           124

Round a London Copse                   133

Magpie Fields                          147

Herbs                                  162

Trees About Town                       172

To Brighton                            181

The Southdown Shepherd                 193

The Breeze on Beachy Head              204





NATURE NEAR LONDON

WOODLANDS


The tiny white petals of the barren strawberry open under the April
sunshine which, as yet unchecked by crowded foliage above, can reach the
moist banks under the trees. It is then that the first stroll of the
year should be taken in Claygate Lane. The slender runners of the
strawberries trail over the mounds among the moss, some of the flowers
but just above the black and brown leaves of last year which fill the
shallow ditch. These will presently be hidden under the grass which is
pushing up long blades, and bending over like a plume.

Crimson stalks and leaves of herb Robert stretch across the little
cavities of the mound; lower, and rising almost from the water of the
ditch, the wild parsnip spreads its broad fan. Slanting among the
underwood, against which it leans, the dry white "gix" (cow-parsnip) of
last year has rotted from its root, and is only upheld by branches.

Yellowish green cup-like leaves are forming upon the brown and drooping
heads of the spurge, which, sheltered by the bushes, has endured the
winter's frosts. The lads pull them off, and break the stems, to watch
the white "milk" well up, the whole plant being full of acrid juice.
Whorls of woodruff and grass-like leaves of stitchwort are rising; the
latter holds but feebly to the earth, and even in snatching the flower
the roots sometimes give way and the plant is lifted with it.

Upon either hand the mounds are so broad that they in places resemble
covers rather than hedges, thickly grown with bramble and briar, hazel
and hawthorn, above which the straight trunks of young oaks and Spanish
chestnuts stand in crowded but careless ranks. The leaves which dropped
in the preceding autumn from these trees still lie on the ground under
the bushes, dry and brittle, and the blackbirds searching about among
them cause as much rustling as if some animal were routing about.

As the month progresses these wide mounds become completely green,
hawthorn and bramble, briar and hazel put forth their leaves, and the
eye can no longer see into the recesses. But above, the oaks and edible
chestnuts are still dark and leafless, almost black by contrast with the
vivid green beneath them. Upon their bare boughs the birds are easily
seen, but the moment they descend among the bushes are difficult to
find. Chaffinches call and challenge continually--these trees are their
favourite resort--and yellowhammers flit along the underwood.

Behind the broad hedge are the ploughed fields they love, alternating
with meadows down whose hedges again a stream of birds is always flowing
to the lane. Bright as are the colours of the yellowhammer, when he
alights among the brown clods of the ploughed field he is barely
visible, for brown conceals like vapour. A white butterfly comes
fluttering along the lane, and as it passes under a tree a chaffinch
swoops down and snaps at it, but rises again without doing apparent
injury, for the butterfly continues its flight.

From an oak overhead comes the sweet slender voice of a linnet, the
sunshine falling on his rosy breast. The gateways show the thickness of
the hedge, as an embrasure shows the thickness of a wall. One gives
entrance to an arable field which has been recently rolled, and along
the gentle rise of a "land" a cock-pheasant walks, so near that the ring
about his neck is visible. Presently, becoming conscious that he is
observed, he goes down into a furrow, and is then hidden.

The next gateway, equally deep-set between the bushes, opens on a
pasture, where the docks of last year still cumber the ground, and
bunches of rough grass and rushes are scattered here and there. A
partridge separated from his mate is calling across the field, and comes
running over the short sward as his companion answers. With his neck
held high and upright, stretched to see around, he looks larger than
would be supposed, as he runs swiftly, threading his way through the
tufts, the docks, and the rushes. But suddenly noticing that the gateway
is not clear, he crouches, and is concealed by the grass.

Some distance farther there is a stile, sitting upon which the view
ranges over two adjacent meadows. They are bounded by a copse of ash
stoles and young oak trees, and the lesser of the meads is full of rush
bunches and dotted with green ant-hills. Among these, just beyond
gunshot, two rabbits are feeding; pausing and nibbling till they have
eaten the tenderest blades, and then leisurely hopping a yard or so to
another spot. Later on in the summer this little meadow which divides
the lane from the copse is alive with rabbits.

Along the hedge the brake fern has then grown, in the corner by the
copse there is a beautiful mass of it, and several detached bunches away
from the hedge among the ant-hills. From out of the fern, which is a
favourite retreat with them, rabbits are continually coming, feeding
awhile, darting after each other, and back again to cover. To-day there
are but three, and they do not venture far from their buries.

Watching these, a green woodpecker cries in the copse, and immediately
afterwards flies across the mead, and away to another plantation.
Occasionally the spotted woodpecker may be seen here, a little bird
which, in the height of summer, is lost among the foliage, but in spring
and winter can be observed tapping at the branches of the trees.

I think I have seen more spotted woodpeckers near London than in far
distant and nominally wilder districts. This lane, for some two miles,
is lined on each side with trees, and, besides this particular copse,
there are several others close by; indeed, stretching across the country
to another road, there is a succession of copses, with meadows between.
Birds which love trees are naturally seen flitting to and fro in the
lane; the trees are at present young, but as they grow older and decay
they will be still more resorted to.

Jays screech in the trees of the lane almost all the year round, though
more frequently in spring and autumn, but I rarely walked here without
seeing or hearing one. Beyond the stile, the lane descends into a
hollow, and is bordered by a small furze common, where, under shelter of
the hollow brambles and beneath the golden bloom of the furze, the pale
anemones flower.

When the June roses open their petals on the briars, and the scent of
new-mown hay is wafted over the hedge from the meadows, the lane seems
to wind through a continuous wood. The oaks and chestnuts, though too
young to form a complete arch, cross their green branches, and cast a
delicious shadow. For it is in the shadow that we enjoy the summer,
looking forth from the gateway upon the mowing grass where the glowing
sun pours down his fiercest beams.

Tall bennets and red sorrel rise above the grass, white ox-eye daisies
chequer it below; the distant hedge quivers as the air, set in motion by
the intense heat, runs along. The sweet murmuring coo of the turtle dove
comes from the copse, and the rich notes of the blackbird from the oak
into which he has mounted to deliver them.

Slight movements in the hawthorn, or in the depths of the tall hedge
grasses, movements too quick for the glance to catch their cause, are
where some tiny bird is passing from spray to spray. It may be a
white-throat creeping among the nettles after his wont, or a wren. The
spot where he was but a second since may be traced by the trembling of
the leaves, but the keenest attention may fail to detect where he is
now. That slight motion in the hedge, however, conveys an impression of
something living everywhere within.

There are birds in the oaks overhead whose voice is audible though they
are themselves unseen. From out of the mowing grass, finches rise and
fly to the hedge; from the hedge again others fly out, and, descending
into the grass, are concealed as in a forest. A thrush travelling along
the hedgerow just outside goes by the gateway within a yard. Bees come
upon the light wind, gliding with it, but with their bodies aslant
across the line of current. Butterflies flutter over the mowing grass,
hardly clearing the bennets. Many-coloured insects creep up the sorrel
stems and take wing from the summit.

Everything gives forth a sound of life. The twittering of swallows from
above, the song of greenfinches in the trees, the rustle of hawthorn
sprays moving under the weight of tiny creatures, the buzz upon the
breeze; the very flutter of the butterflies' wings, noiseless as it is,
and the wavy movement of the heated air across the field cause a sense
of motion and of music.

The leaves are enlarging, and the sap rising, and the hard trunks of the
trees swelling with its flow; the grass blades pushing upwards; the
seeds completing their shape; the tinted petals uncurling. Dreamily
listening, leaning on the gate, all these are audible to the inner
senses, while the ear follows the midsummer hum, now sinking, now
sonorously increasing over the oaks. An effulgence fills the southern
boughs, which the eye cannot sustain, but which it knows is there.

The sun at its meridian pours forth his light, forgetting, in all the
inspiration of his strength and glory, that without an altar-screen of
green his love must scorch. Joy in life; joy in life. The ears listen,
and want more: the eyes are gratified with gazing, and desire yet
further; the nostrils are filled with the sweet odours of flower and
sap. The touch, too, has its pleasures, dallying with leaf and flower.
Can you not almost grasp the odour-laden air and hold it in the hollow
of the hand?

Leaving the spot at last, and turning again into the lane, the shadows
dance upon the white dust under the feet, irregularly circular spots of
light surrounded with umbra shift with the shifting branches. By the
wayside lie rings of dandelion stalks carelessly cast down by the child
who made them, and tufts of delicate grasses gathered for their beauty
but now sprinkled with dust. Wisps of hay hang from the lower boughs of
the oaks where they brushed against the passing load.

After a time, when the corn is ripening, the herb betony flowers on the
mounds under the oaks. Following the lane down the hill and across the
small furze common at the bottom, the marks of traffic fade away, the
dust ceases, and is succeeded by sward. The hedgerows on either side are
here higher than ever, and are thickly fringed with bramble bushes,
which sometimes encroach on the waggon ruts in the middle, and are
covered with flowers, and red, and green, and ripe blackberries
together.

Green rushes line the way, and green dragon flies dart above them.
Thistledown is pouting forth from the swollen tops of thistles crowded
with seed. In a gateway the turf has been worn away by waggon wheels and
the hoofs of cart horses, and the dry heat has pulverised the crumbling
ruts. Three hen pheasants and a covey of partridges that have been
dusting themselves here move away without much haste at the approach of
footsteps--the pheasants into the thickets, and the partridges through
the gateway. The shallow holes in which they were sitting can be traced
on the dust, and there are a few small feathers lying about.

A barley field is within the gate; the mowers have just begun to cut it
on the opposite side. Next to it is a wheat field; the wheat has been
cut and stands in shocks. From the stubble by the nearest shock two
turtle doves rise, alarmed, and swiftly fly towards a wood which bounds
the field. This wood, indeed, upon looking again, clearly bounds not
this field only, but the second and the third, and so far as the eye can
see over the low hedges of the corn, the trees continue. The green lane
as it enters the wood, becomes wilder and rougher at every step,
widening, too, considerably.

In the centre the wheels of timber carriages, heavily laden with trunks
of trees which were dragged through by straining teams in the rainy days
of spring, have left vast ruts, showing that they must have sunk to the
axle in the soft clay. These then filled with water, and on the water
duck-weed grew, and aquatic grasses at the sides. Summer heats have
evaporated the water, leaving the weeds and grasses prone upon the still
moist earth.

Rushes have sprung up and mark the line of the ruts, and willow stoles,
bramble bushes, and thorns growing at the side, make, as it were, a
third hedge in the middle of the lane. The best path is by the wood
itself, but even there occasional leaps are necessary over pools of dark
water full of vegetation. These alternate with places where the ground,
being higher, yawns with wide cracks crumbling at the edge, the heat
causing the clay to split and open. In winter it must be an impassable
quagmire; now it is dry and arid.

Rising out of this low-lying spot the lane again becomes green and
pleasant, and is crossed by another. At the meeting of these four ways
some boughs hang over a green bank where I have often rested. In front
the lane is barred by a gate, but beyond the gate it still continues its
straight course into the wood. To the left the track, crossing at right
angles, also proceeds into the wood, but it is so overhung with trees
and blocked by bushes that its course after the first hundred yards or
so cannot be traced.

To the right the track--a little wider and clearer of bushes--extends
through wood, and as it is straight and rises up a gentle slope, the eye
can travel along it half a mile. There is nothing but wood around. This
track to the right appears the most used, and has some ruts in the
centre. The sward each side is concealed by endless thistles, on the
point of sending forth clouds of thistledown, and to which presently the
goldfinches will be attracted.

Occasionally a movement among the thistles betrays the presence of a
rabbit; only occasionally, for though the banks are drilled with buries,
the lane is too hot for them at midday. Particles of rabbits' fur lie on
the ground, and their runs are visible in every direction. But there are
no birds. A solitary robin, indeed, perches on an ash branch opposite,
and regards me thoughtfully. It is impossible to go anywhere in the open
air without a robin; they are the very spies of the wood. But there are
no thrushes, no blackbirds, finches, nor even sparrows.

In August it is true most birds cease to sing, but sitting thus
partially hidden and quiet, if there were any about something would be
heard of them. There would be a rustling, a thrush would fly across the
lane, a blackbird would appear by the gateway yonder in the shadow which
he loves, a finch would settle in the oaks. None of these incidents
occur; none of the lesser signs of life in the foliage, the tremulous
spray, the tap of a bill cleaned by striking first one side and then the
other against a bough, the rustle of a wing--nothing.

There are woods, woods, woods; but no birds. Yonder a drive goes
straight into the ashpoles, it is green above and green below, but a
long watch will reveal nothing living. The dry mounds must be full of
rabbits, there must be pheasants somewhere; but nothing visible. Once
only a whistling sound in the air directs the glance upwards, it is a
wood-pigeon flying at full speed. There are no bees, for there are no
flowers. There are no butterflies. The black flies are not numerous, and
rarely require a fanning from the ash spray carried to drive them off.

Two large dragon-flies rush up and down, and cross the lane, and rising
suddenly almost to the tops of the oaks swoop down again in bold
sweeping curves. The broad, deep ditch between the lane and the mound of
the wood is dry, but there are no short rustling sounds of mice.

The only sound is the continuous singing of the grasshoppers, and the
peculiar snapping noise they make as they spring, leaping along the
sward. The fierce sun of the ripe wheat pours down a fiery glow scarcely
to be borne except under the boughs; the hazel leaves already have lost
their green, the tips of the rushes are shrivelling, the grass becoming
brown; it is a scorched and parched desert of wood.

The finches have gone forth in troops to the stubble where the wheat has
been cut, and where they can revel on the seeds of the weeds now ripe.
Thrushes and blackbirds have gone to the streams, to splash and bathe,
and to the mown meadows, where in the short aftermath they can find
their food. There they will look out on the shady side of the hedge as
the sun declines, six or eight perhaps of them along the same hedge, but
all in the shadow, where the dew forms first as the evening falls, where
the grass feels cool and moist, while still on the sunny side it is warm
and dry.

The bees are busy on the heaths and along the hilltops, where there are
still flowers and honey, and the butterflies are with them. So the woods
are silent, still, and deserted, save by a stray rabbit among the
thistles, and the grasshoppers ceaselessly leaping in the grass.

Returning presently to the gateway just outside the wood, where upon
first coming the pheasants and partridges were dusting themselves, a
waggon is now passing among the corn and is being laden with the
sheaves. But afar off, across the broad field and under the wood, it
seems somehow only a part of the silence and the solitude. The men with
it move about the stubble, calmly toiling; the horses, having drawn it a
little way, become motionless, reposing as they stand, every line of
their large limbs expressing delight in physical ease and idleness.

Perhaps the heat has made the men silent, for scarcely a word is spoken;
if it were, in the stillness it must be heard, though they are at some
distance. The wheels, well greased for the heavy harvest work, do not
creak. Save an occasional monosyllable, as the horses are ordered on, or
to stop, and a faint rustling of straw, there is no sound. It may be the
flood of brilliant light, or the mirage of the heat, but in some way the
waggon and its rising load, the men and the horses, have an unreality of
appearance.

The yellow wheat and stubble, the dull yellow of the waggon, toned down
by years of weather, the green woods near at hand, darkening in the
distance and slowly changing to blue, the cloudless sky, the
heat-suffused atmosphere, in which things seem to float rather than to
grow or stand, the shadowless field, all are there, and yet are not
there, but far away and vision-like. The waggon, at last laden, travels
away, and seems rather to disappear of itself than to be hidden by the
trees. It is an effort to awake and move from the spot.




FOOTPATHS


"Always get over a stile," is the one rule that should ever be borne in
mind by those who wish to see the land as it really is--that is to say,
never omit to explore a footpath, for never was there a footpath yet
which did not pass something of interest.

In the meadows, everything comes pressing lovingly up to the path. The
small-leaved clover can scarce be driven back by frequent footsteps from
endeavouring to cover the bare earth of the centre. Tall buttercups,
round whose stalks the cattle have carefully grazed, stand in ranks;
strong ox-eye daisies, with broad white disks and torn leaves, form with
the grass the tricolour of the pasture--white, green, and gold.

When the path enters the mowing grass, ripe for the scythe, the
simplicity of these cardinal hues is lost in the multitude of shades and
the addition of other colours. The surface of mowing grass is indeed
made up of so many tints that at the first glance it is confusing; and
hence, perhaps, it is that hardly ever has an artist succeeded in
getting the effect upon canvas. Of the million blades of grass no two
are of the same shade.

Pluck a handful and spread them out side by side and this is at once
evident. Nor is any single blade the same shade all the way up. There
may be a faint yellow towards the root, a full green about the middle,
at the tip perhaps the hot sun has scorched it, and there is a trace of
brown. The older grass, which comes up earliest, is distinctly different
in tint from that which has but just reached its greatest height, and in
which the sap has not yet stood still.

Under all there is the new grass, short, sweet, and verdant, springing
up fresh between the old, and giving a tone to the rest as you look down
into the bunches. Some blades are nearly grey, some the palest green,
and among them others, torn from the roots perhaps by rooks searching
for grubs, are quite white. The very track of a rook through the grass
leaves a different shade each side, as the blades are bent or trampled
down.

The stalks of the bennets vary, some green, some yellowish, some brown,
some approaching whiteness, according to age and the condition of the
sap. Their tops, too, are never the same, whether the pollen clings to
the surface or whether it has gone. Here the green is almost lost in
red, or quite; here the grass has a soft, velvety look; yonder it is
hard and wiry, and again graceful and drooping. Here there are bunches
so rankly verdant that no flower is visible and no other tint but dark
green; here it is thin and short, and the flowers, and almost the turf
itself, can be seen; then there is an array of bennets (stalks which
bear the grass-seed) with scarcely any grass proper.

Every variety of grass--and they are many--has its own colour, and every
blade of every variety has its individual variations of that colour. The
rain falls, and there is a darker tint at large upon the field, fresh
but darker; the sun shines and at first the hue is lighter, but
presently if the heat last a brown comes. The wind blows, and
immediately as the waves of grass roll across the meadow a paler tint
follows it.

A clouded sky dulls the herbage, a cloudless heaven brightens it, so
that the grass almost reflects the firmament like water. At sunset the
rosy rays bring out every tint of red or purple. At noonday, watch as
alternate shadow and sunshine come one after the other as the clouds are
wafted over. By moonlight perhaps the white ox-eyed daisies show the
most. But never will you find the mowing grass in the same field looking
twice alike.

Come again the day after to-morrow only, and there is a change; some of
the grass is riper, some is thicker, with further blades which have
pushed up, some browner. Cold northern winds cause it to wear a dry,
withered aspect; under warm showers it visibly opens itself; in a
hurricane it tosses itself wildly to and fro; it laughs under the
sunshine.

There are thick bunches by the footpath, which hang over and brush the
feet. While approaching there seems nothing there except grass, but in
the act of passing, and thus looking straight down into them, there are
blue eyes at the bottom gazing up. These specks of blue sky hidden in
the grass tempt the hand to gather them, but then you cannot gather the
whole field.

Behind the bunches where the grass is thinner are the heads of purple
clover; pluck one of these, and while meditating draw forth petal after
petal and imbibe the honey with the lips till nothing remains but the
green framework, like stolen jewellery from which the gems have been
taken. Torn pink ragged robins through whose petals a comb seems to have
been remorselessly dragged, blue scabious, red knapweeds, yellow
rattles, yellow vetchings by the hedge, white flowering parsley, white
campions, yellow tormentil, golden buttercups, white cuckoo-flowers,
dandelions, yarrow, and so on, all carelessly sown broadcast without
order or method, just as negligently as they are named here, first
remembered, first mentioned, and many forgotten.

Highest and coarsest of texture, the red-tipped sorrel--a crumbling
red--so thick and plentiful that at sunset the whole mead becomes
reddened. If these were in any way set in order or design, howsoever
entangled, the eye might, as it were, get at them for reproduction. But
just where there should be flowers there are none, whilst in odd places
where there are none required there are plenty.

In hollows, out of sight till stumbled on, is a mass of colour; on the
higher foreground only a dull brownish green. Walk all round the meadow,
and still no vantage point can be found where the herbage groups itself,
whence a scheme of colour is perceivable. There is no "artistic"
arrangement anywhere.

So, too, with the colours--of the shades of green something has already
been said--and here are bright blues and bright greens, yellows and
pinks, positive discords and absolute antagonisms of tint side by side,
yet without jarring the eye. Green all round, the trees and hedges; blue
overhead, the sky; purple and gold westward, where the sun sinks. No
part of this grass can be represented by a blur or broad streak of
colour, for it is not made up of broad streaks. It is composed of
innumerable items of grass blade and flower, each in itself coloured and
different from its neighbour. Not one of these must be slurred over if
you wish to get the same effect.

Then there are drifting specks of colour which cannot be fixed.
Butterflies, white, parti-coloured, brown, and spotted, and light blue
flutter along beside the footpath; two white ones wheel about each
other, rising higher at every turn till they are lost and no more to be
distinguished against a shining white cloud. Large dark humble bees roam
slowly, and honey bees with more decided flight. Glistening beetles,
green and gold, run across the bare earth of the path, coming from one
crack in the dry ground and disappearing in the (to them) mighty chasm
of another.

Tiny green "hoppers"--odd creatures shaped something like the fancy
frogs of children's story-books--alight upon it after a spring, and
pausing a second, with another toss themselves as high as the highest
bennet (veritable elm-trees by comparison), to fall anywhere out of
sight in the grass. Reddish ants hurry over. Time is money; and their
business brooks no delay.

Bee-like flies of many stripes and parti-coloured robes face you,
suspended in the air with wings vibrating so swiftly as to be unseen;
then suddenly jerk themselves a few yards to recommence hovering. A
greenfinch rises with a yellow gleam and a sweet note from the grass,
and is off with something for his brood, or a starling, solitary now,
for his mate is in the nest, startled from his questing, goes straight
away.

Dark starlings, greenfinch, gilded fly, glistening beetle, blue
butterfly, humble bee with scarf about his thick waist, add their moving
dots of colour to the surface. There is no design, no balance, nothing
like a pattern perfect on the right-hand side, and exactly equal on the
left-hand. Even trees which have some semblance of balance in form are
not really so, and as you walk round them so their outline changes.

Now the path approaches a stile set deep in thorns and brambles, and
hardly to be gained for curved hooks and prickles. But on the briars
June roses bloom, arches of flowers over nettles, burdock, and rushes in
the ditch beneath. Sweet roses--buds yet unrolled, white and conical;
roses half open and pink tinted; roses widespread, the petals curling
backwards on the hedge, abandoning their beauty to the sun. In the
pasture over the stile a roan cow feeds unmoved, calmly content,
gathering the grass with rough tongue. It is not only what you actually
see along the path, but what you remember to have seen, that gives it
its beauty.

From hence the path skirts the hedge enclosing a copse, part of which
had been cut in the winter, so that a few weeks since in spring the
bluebells could be seen, instead of being concealed by the ash branches
and the woodbine. Among them grew one with white bells, like a lily,
solitary in the midst of the azure throng. A "drive," or green lane
passing between the ash-stoles, went into the copse, with tufts of
tussocky grass on either side and rush bunches, till farther away the
overhanging branches, where the poles were uncut, hid its course.

Already the grass has hidden the ruts left by the timber carriages--the
last came by on May-day with ribbons of orange, red, and blue on the
horses' heads for honour of the day. Another, which went past in the
wintry weeks of the early year, was drawn by a team wearing the ancient
harness with bells under high hoods, or belfries, bells well attuned,
too, and not far inferior to those rung by handbell men. The beat of the
three horses' hoofs sounds like the drum that marks time to the chime
upon their backs. Seldom, even in the far away country, can that
pleasant chime be heard.

But now the timber is all gone, the ruts are hidden, and the tall spruce
firs, whose graceful branches were then almost yellow with young needles
on the tip, are now clothed in fresh green. On the bank there is a
flower which is often gathered for the forget-me-not, and is not unlike
it at the first glance; but if the two be placed side by side, this, the
scorpion grass, is but a pale imitation of the true plant; its petals
vary in colour and are often dull, and it has not the yellow central
spot. Yet it is not unfrequently sold in pots in the shops as
forget-me-not. It flowers on the bank, high above the water of the
ditch.

The true forget-me-not can hardly be seen in passing, so much does it
nestle under flags and behind sedges, and it is not easy to gather
because it flowers on the very verge of the running stream. The shore is
bordered with matted vegetation, aquatic grass, and flags and weeds, and
outside these, where its leaves are washed and purified by the clear
stream, its blue petals open. Be cautious, therefore, in reaching for
the forget-me-not, lest the bank be treacherous.

It was near this copse that in early spring I stayed to gather some
white sweet violets, for the true wild violet is very nearly white. I
stood close to a hedger and ditcher, who, standing on a board, was
cleaning out the mud that the water might run freely. He went on with
his work, taking not the least notice of an idler, but intent upon his
labour, as a good and true man should be. But when I spoke to him he
answered me in clear, well-chosen language, well pronounced, "in good
set terms."

No slurring of consonants and broadening of vowels, no involved and
backward construction depending on the listener's previous knowledge for
comprehension, no half sentences indicating rather than explaining, but
correct sentences. With his shoes almost covered by the muddy water, his
hands black and grimy, his brown face splashed with mud, leaning on his
shovel he stood and talked from the deep ditch, not much more than head
and shoulders visible above it. It seemed a voice from the very earth,
speaking of education, change, and possibilities.

The copse is now filling up with undergrowth; the brambles are
spreading, the briars extending, masses of nettles, and thistles like
saplings in size and height, crowding the spaces between the ash-stoles.
By the banks great cow-parsnips or "gix" have opened their broad heads
of white flowers; teazles have lifted themselves into view, every
opening is occupied. There is a scent of elder flowers, the meadow-sweet
is pushing up, and will soon be out, and an odour of new-mown hay floats
on the breeze.

From the oak green caterpillars slide down threads of their own making
to the bushes below, but they are running terrible risk. For a pair of
white-throats or "nettle-creepers" are on the watch, and seize the green
creeping things crossways in their beaks. Then they perch on a branch
three or four yards only from where I stand, silent and motionless, and
glance first at me and next at a bush of bramble which projects out to
the edge of the footpath. So long as my eyes are turned aside, or half
closed, the bird perches on the branch, gaining confidence every moment.
The instant I open my eyes, or move them, or glance towards him, without
either movement of head, hand, or foot, he is off to the oak.

His tiny eyes are intent on mine; the moment he catches my glance he
retires. But in half a minute affection brings him back, still with the
caterpillar in his beak, to the same branch. Whilst I have patience to
look the other way there he stays, but again a glance sends him away.
This is repeated four or five times, till, finally, convinced that I
mean no harm and yet timorous and fearful of betrayal even in the act,
he dives down into the bramble bush.

After a brief interval he reappears on the other side of it, having
travelled through and left his prey with his brood in the nest there.
Assured by his success his mate follows now, and once having done it,
they continue to bring caterpillars, apparently as fast as they can pass
between the trees and the bush. They always enter the bush, which is
scarcely two yards from me, on one side, pass through in the same
direction, and emerge on the other side, having thus regular places of
entrance and exit.

As I stand watching these birds a flock of rooks goes over, they have
left the nesting trees, and fly together again. Perhaps this custom of
nesting together in adjacent trees and using the same one year after
year is not so free from cares and jealousies as the solitary plan of
the little white-throats here. Last March I was standing near a rookery,
noting the contention and quarrelling, the downright tyranny, and
brigandage which is carried on there. The very sound of the cawing,
sharp and angry, conveys the impression of hate and envy.

Two rooks in succession flew to a nest the owners of which were absent,
and deliberately picked a great part of it to pieces, taking the twigs
for their own use. Unless the rook, therefore, be ever in his castle his
labour is torn down, and, as with men in the fierce struggle for wealth,
the meanest advantages are seized on. So strong is the rook's bill that
he tears living twigs of some size with it from the bough. The
white-throats were without such envy and contention.

From hence the footpath, leaving the copse, descends into a hollow, with
a streamlet flowing through a little meadow, barely an acre, with a
pollard oak in the centre, the rising ground on two sides shutting out
all but the sky, and on the third another wood. Such a dreamy hollow
might be painted for a glade in the Forest of Arden, and there on the
sward and leaning against the ancient oak one might read the play
through without being disturbed by a single passer-by. A few steps
farther and the stile opens on a road.

There the teams travel with rows of brazen spangles down their necks,
some with a wheatsheaf for design, some with a swan. The road itself, if
you follow it, dips into a valley where the horses must splash through
the water of a brook spread out some fifteen or twenty yards wide; for,
after the primitive Surrey fashion, there is no bridge for waggons. A
narrow wooden structure bears foot-passengers; you cannot but linger
half across and look down into its clear stream. Up the current where it
issues from the fields and falls over a slight obstacle the sunlight
plays and glances.

A great hawthorn bush grows on the bank; in spring, white with May; in
autumn, red with haws or peggles. To the shallow shore of the brook,
where it washes the flints and moistens the dust, the house-martins come
for mortar. A constant succession of birds arrive all day long to drink
at the clear stream, often alighting on the fragments of chalk and flint
which stand in the water, and are to them as rocks.

Another footpath leads from the road across the meadows to where the
brook is spanned by the strangest bridge, built of brick, with one arch,
but only just wide enough for a single person to walk, and with parapets
only four or five inches high. It is thrown aslant the stream, and not
straight across it, and has a long brick approach. It is not unlike--on
a small scale--the bridges seen in views of Eastern travel. Another path
leads to a hamlet, consisting of a church, a farmhouse, and three or
four cottages--a veritable hamlet in every sense of the word.

In a village a few miles distant, as you walk between cherry and pear
orchards, you pass a little shop--the sweets, and twine, and trifles are
such as may be seen in similar windows a hundred miles distant. There is
the very wooden measure for nuts, which has been used time out of mind,
in the distant country. Out again into the road as the sun sinks, and
westwards the wind lifts a cloud of dust, which is lit up and made rosy
by the rays passing through it. For such is the beauty of the sunlight
that it can impart a glory even to dust.

Once more, never go by a stile (that does not look private) without
getting over it and following the path. But they all end in one place.
After rambling across furze and heath, or through dark fir woods; after
lingering in the meadows among the buttercups, or by the copses where
the pheasants crow; after gathering June roses, or, in later days,
staining the lips with blackberries or cracking nuts, by-and-by the path
brings you in sight of a railway station. And the railway station,
through some process of mind, presently compels you to go up on the
platform, and after a little puffing and revolution of wheels you emerge
at Charing Cross, or London Bridge, or Waterloo, or Ludgate Hill, and,
with the freshness of the meadows still clinging to your coat, mingle
with the crowd.

The inevitable end of every footpath round about London is London. All
paths go thither.

If it were far away in the distant country you might sit down in the
shadow upon the hay and fall asleep, or dream awake hour after hour.
There would be no inclination to move. But if you sat down on the sward
under the ancient pollard oak in the little mead with the brook, and the
wood of which I spoke just now as like a glade in the enchanted Forest
of Arden, this would not be possible. It is the proximity of the immense
City which induces a mental, a nerve-restlessness. As you sit and would
dream a something plucks at the mind with constant reminder; you cannot
dream for long, you must up and away, and, turn in which direction you
please, ultimately it will lead you to London.

There is a fascination in it; there is a magnetism stronger than that of
the rock which drew the nails from Sindbad's ship. You are like a bird
let out with a string tied to the foot to flutter a little way and
return again. It is not business, for you may have none, in the ordinary
sense; it is not "society," it is not pleasure. It is the presence of
man in his myriads. There is something in the heart which cannot be
satisfied away from it.

It is a curious thing that your next-door neighbour may be a stranger,
but there are no strangers in a vast crowd. They all seem to have some
relationship, or rather, perhaps, they do not rouse the sense of reserve
which a single unknown person might. Still, the impulse is not to be
analysed; these are mere notes acknowledging its power. The hills and
vales, and meads and woods are like the ocean upon which Sindbad sailed;
but coming too near the loadstone of London, the ship wends thither,
whether or no.

At least it is so with me, and I often go to London without any object
whatever, but just because I must, and, arriving there, wander
whithersoever the hurrying throng carries me.




FLOCKS OF BIRDS


A certain road leading outwards from a suburb, enters at once among
fields. It soon passes a thick hedge dividing a meadow from a cornfield,
in which hedge is a spot where some bluebells may be found in spring.
Wild flowers are best seen when in masses, a few scattered along a bank
much concealed by grass and foliage are lost, except indeed, upon those
who love them for their own sake.

This meadow in June, for instance, when the buttercups are high, is one
broad expanse of burnished gold. The most careless passer-by can hardly
fail to cast a glance over acres of rich yellow. The furze, again,
especially after a shower has refreshed its tint, must be seen by all.
Where broom grows thickly, lifting its colour well into view, or where
the bird's-foot lotus in full summer overruns the thin grass of some
upland pasture, the eye cannot choose but acknowledge it. So, too, with
charlock, and with hill sides purple with heath, or where the woodlands
are azure with bluebells for a hundred yards together. Learning from
this, those who would transplant wild flowers to their garden should
arrange to have as many as possible of the same species close together.

The bluebells in this hedge are unseen, except by the rabbits. The
latter have a large burrow, and until the grass is too tall, or after it
is cut or grazed, can be watched from the highway. In this hedge the
first nightingale of the year sings, beginning some two or three days
before the bird which comes to the bushes in the gorse, which will
presently be mentioned.

It is, or rather was, a favourite meadow with the partridges; one summer
there was, I think, a nest in or near it, for I saw the birds there
daily. But the next year they were absent. One afternoon a brace of
partridges came over the hedge within a few inches of my head; they had
been flushed and frightened at some distance, and came with the wind at
a tremendous pace. It is a habit with partridges to fly low, but just
skimming the tops of the hedges, and certainly, had they been three
inches lower, they must have taken my hat off. The knowledge that
partridges were often about there, made me always glance into this field
on passing it, long after the nesting season was over.

In October, as I looked as usual, a hawk flew between the elms, and out
into the centre of the meadow, with a large object in his talons. He
alighted in the middle, so as to be as far as possible from either
hedge, and no doubt prepared to enjoy his quarry, when something
startled him, and he rose again. Then, as I got a better view, I saw it
was a rat he was carrying. The long body of the animal was distinctly
visible, and the tail depending, the hawk had it by the shoulders or
head. Flying without the least apparent effort, the bird cleared the
elms, and I lost sight of him beyond them. Now, the kestrel is but a
small bird, and taking into consideration the size of the bird, and the
weight of a rat, it seems as great a feat in proportion as for an eagle
to snatch up a lamb.

Some distance up the road, and in the corner of an arable field, there
was a wheat rick which was threshed and most of the straw carted away.
But there still remained the litter, and among it probably a quantity
of stray corn. There was always a flock of sparrows on this litter--a
flock that might often be counted by the hundred. As I came near the
spot one day a sparrow-hawk, whose approach I had not observed, and
which had therefore been flying low, suddenly came over the hedge just
by the loose straw.

With shrill cries the sparrows instantly rushed for the hedge, not two
yards distant; but the hawk, dashing through the crowd of them as they
rose, carried away a victim. It was done in the tenth of a second. He
came, singled his bird, and was gone like the wind, before the whirr of
wings had ceased on the hawthorn where the flock cowered.

Another time, but in a different direction, I saw a hawk descend and
either enter, or appear to enter, a short much-cropped hedge, but twenty
yards distant. I ran to the spot; the hawk of course made off, but there
was nothing in the bush save a hedge sparrow, which had probably
attracted him, but which he had not succeeded in getting.

Kestrels are almost common; I have constantly seen them while strolling
along the road, generally two together, and once three. In the latter
part of the summer and autumn they seem to be most numerous, hovering
over the recently reaped fields. Certainly there is no scarcity of hawks
here. Upon one occasion, on Surbiton Hill, I saw a large bird of the
same kind, but not sufficiently near to identify. From the gliding
flight, the long forked tail, and large size I supposed it to be a kite.
The same bird was going about next day, but still farther off. I cannot
say that it was a kite, for unless it is a usual haunt, it is not in my
opinion wise to positively identify a bird seen for so short a time.

The thick hedge mentioned is a favourite resort of blackbirds, and on a
warm May morning, after a shower--they are extremely fond of a
shower--half-a-dozen may be heard at once whistling in the elms. They
use the elms here because there are not many oaks; the oak is the
blackbird's favourite song-tree. There was one one day whistling with
all his might on the lower branch of an elm, at the very roadside, and
just above him a wood-pigeon was perched. A pair of turtle-doves built
in the same hedge one spring, and while resting on the gate by the
roadside their "coo-coo" mingled with the song of the nightingale and
thrush, the blackbird's whistle, the chiff-chaff's "chip-chip," the
willow-wren's pleading voice, and the rustle of green corn as the wind
came rushing (as it always does to a gateway).

Goldfinches come by occasionally, not often, but still they do come. The
rarest bird seems to be the bullfinch. I have only seen bullfinches
three or four times in three seasons, and then only a pair. Now, this is
worthy a note, as illustrating what I have often ventured to say about
the habitat of birds being so often local, for if judged by observation
here the bullfinch would be said to be a scarce bird by London. But it
has been stated upon the best authority that only a few miles distant,
and still nearer town, they are common.

The road now becomes bordered by elms on either side, forming an
irregular avenue. Almost every elm in spring has its chaffinch loudly
challenging. The birdcatchers are aware that it is a frequented resort,
and on Sunday mornings four or five of them used to be seen in the
course of a mile, each with a call bird in a partly darkened cage, a
stuffed dummy, and limed twigs. In the cornfields on either hand
wood-pigeons are numerous in spring and autumn. Up to April they come
in flocks, feeding on the newly sown grain when they can get at it, and
varying it with ivy berries, from the ivy growing up the elms. By
degrees the flocks break up as the nesting begins in earnest.

Some pair and build much earlier than others; in fact, the first egg
recorded is very little to be depended on as an indication. Particular
pairs (of many kinds of birds) may have nests, and yet the species as a
species may be still flying in large packs. The flocks which settle in
these fields number from one to two hundred. Rooks, wood-pigeons, and
tame white pigeons often feed amicably mixed up together; the white tame
birds are conspicuous at a long distance before the crops have risen, or
after the stubble is ploughed.

I should think that the corn farmers of Surrey lose more grain from the
birds than the agriculturists whose tenancies are a hundred miles from
London. In the comparatively wild or open districts to which I had been
accustomed before I made these observations I cannot recollect ever
seeing such vast numbers of birds. There were places, of course, where
they were numerous, and there were several kinds more represented than
is the case here, and some that are scarcely represented at all. I have
seen flocks of wood-pigeons immensely larger than any here; but then it
was only occasionally. They came, passed over, and were gone. Here the
flocks, though not very numerous, seem always to be about.

Sparrows crowd every hedge and field, their numbers are incredible;
chaffinches are not to be counted; of greenfinches there must be
thousands. From the railway even you can see them. I caught glimpses of
a ploughed field recently sown one spring from the window of a railway
carriage, every little clod of which seemed alive with small birds,
principally sparrows, chaffinches, and greenfinches. There must have
been thousands in that field alone. In autumn the numbers are even
greater, or rather more apparent.

One autumn some correspondence appeared lamenting the scarcity of small
birds (and again in the spring the same cry was raised); people said
that they had walked along the roads or footpaths and there were none in
the hedges. They were quite correct--the birds were not in the hedges,
they were in the corn and stubble. After the nesting is well over and
the wheat is ripe the birds leave the hedges and go out into the
wheatfields; at the same time the sparrows quit the house-tops and
gardens and do the same. At the very time this complaint was raised, the
stubbles in Surrey, as I can vouch, were crowded with small birds.

If you walked across the stubble flocks of hundreds rose out of your
way; if you leant on a gate and watched a few minutes you could see
small flocks in every quarter of the field rising and settling again.
These movements indicated a larger number in the stubble there, for
where a great flock is feeding some few every now and then fly up
restlessly. Earlier than that in the summer there was not a wheatfield
where you could not find numerous wheatears picked as clean as if
threshed where they stood. In some places, the wheat was quite thinned.

Later in the year there seems a movement of small birds from the lower
to the higher lands. One December day I remember particularly visiting
the neighbourhood of Ewell, where the lands begin to rise up towards the
Downs. Certainly, I have seldom seen such vast numbers of small birds.
Up from the stubble flew sparrows, chaffinches, greenfinches,
yellow-hammers, in such flocks that the low-cropped hedge was covered
with them. A second correspondence appeared in the spring upon the same
subject, and again the scarcity of small birds was deplored.

So far as the neighbourhood of London was concerned, this was the exact
reverse of the truth.

Small birds swarmed, as I have already stated, in every ploughed field.
All the birdcatchers in London with traps and nets and limed twigs could
never make the slightest appreciable difference to such flocks. I have
always expressed my detestation of the birdcatcher; but it is founded on
other grounds, and not from any fear of the diminution of numbers only.
Where the birdcatcher does inflict irretrievable injury is in this
way--a bird, say a nightingale, say a goldfinch, has had a nest for
years in the corner of a garden, or an apple-tree in an orchard. The
birdcatcher presently decoys one or other of these, and thenceforward
the spot is deserted. The song is heard no more; the nest never again
rebuilt.

The first spring I resided in Surrey I was fairly astonished and
delighted at the bird life which proclaimed itself everywhere. The
bevies of chiffchaffs and willow wrens which came to the thickets in the
furze, the chorus of thrushes and blackbirds, the chaffinches in the
elms, the greenfinches in the hedges, wood-pigeons and turtle-doves in
the copses, tree-pipits about the oaks in the cornfields; every bush,
every tree, almost every clod, for the larks were so many, seemed to
have its songster. As for nightingales, I never knew so many in the most
secluded country.

There are more round about London than in all the woodlands I used to
ramble through. When people go into the country they really leave the
birds behind them. It was the same, I found, after longer observation,
with birds perhaps less widely known as with those universally
recognised--such, for instance, as shrikes. The winter when the cry was
raised that there were no birds, that the blackbirds and thrushes had
left the lawns and must be dead, and how wicked it would be to take a
nest next year, I had not the least, difficulty in finding plenty of
them.

They had simply gone to the water meadows, the brooks, and moist places
generally. Every locality where running water kept the ground moist and
permitted of movement among the creeping things which form these birds'
food, was naturally resorted to. Thrushes and blackbirds, although they
do not pack--that is, regularly fly in flocks--undoubtedly migrate when
pressed by weather.

They are well known to arrive on the east coast from Norway in numbers
as the cold increases. I see no reason why we may not suppose that in
very severe and continued frost the thrushes and blackbirds round London
fly westwards towards the milder side of the island. It seems to me that
when, some years since, I used to stroll round the water meadows in a
western county for snipes in frosty weather, the hedges were full of
thrushes and blackbirds--quite full of them.

Now, though there were thrushes and blackbirds about the brooks by
London last winter, there were few in the hedges generally. Had they,
then, flown westwards? It is my belief that they had. They had left the
hard-bound ground about London for the softer and moister lands farther
west. They had crossed the rain-line. When frost prevents access to food
in the east, thrushes and blackbirds move westwards, just as the
fieldfares and redwings do.

That the fieldfares and redwings do so I can say with confidence,
because, as they move in large flocks, there is no difficulty in tracing
the direction in which they are going. They all went west when the
severe weather began. On the southern side of London, at least in the
districts I am best acquainted with, there was hardly a fieldfare or
redwing to be seen for weeks and even months. Towards spring they came
back, flying east for Norway. As thrushes and blackbirds move singly,
and not with concerted action, their motions cannot be determined with
such precision, but all the facts are in favour of the belief that they
also went west.

That they were killed by the frost and snow I utterly refuse to credit.
Some few, no doubt, were--I saw some greatly enfeebled by
starvation--but not the mass. If so many had been destroyed their bodies
must have been seen when there was no foliage to hide them, and no
insects to quickly play the scavenger as in summer. Some were killed by
cats; a few perhaps by rats, for in sharp winters they go down into the
ditches, and I saw a dead redwing, torn and disfigured, at the mouth of
a drain during the snow, where it might have been fastened on by a rat.
But it is quite improbable that thousands died as was supposed.

Thrushes and blackbirds are not like rooks. Rooks are so bound by
tradition and habit that they very rarely quit the locality where they
were reared. Their whole lives are spent in the neighbourhood of the
nest, trees, and the woods where they sleep. They may travel miles
during the day, but they always come back to roost. These are the birds
that suffer the most during long frosts and snows. Unable to break the
chain that binds them to one spot, they die rather than desert it. A
miserable time, indeed, they had of it that winter, but I never heard
that any one proposed feeding the rooks, the very birds that wanted it
most.

Swallows, again, were declared by many to be fewer. It is not at all
unlikely that they were fewer. The wet season was unfavourable to them;
still a good deal of the supposed absence of swallows may be through the
observer not looking for them in the right place. If not wheeling in the
sky, look for them over the water, the river, or great ponds; if not
there, look along the moist fields or shady woodland meadows. They vary
their haunts with the state of the atmosphere, which causes insects to
be more numerous in one place at one time, and presently in another.

A very wet season is more fatal than the sharpest frost; it acts by
practically reducing the births, leaving the ordinary death-rate to
continue. Consequently, as the old birds die, there are none (or fewer)
to supply their places. Once more let me express the opinion that there
are as many small birds round London as in the country, and no measure
is needed to protect the species at large. Protection, if needed, is
required for the individual. Sweep the roads and lanes clear of the
birdcatchers, but do not prevent a boy from taking a nest in the open
fields or commons. If it were made illegal to sell full-grown birds,
half the evil would be stopped at once if the law were enforced. The
question is full of difficulties. To prevent or attempt to prevent the
owner of a garden from shooting the bullfinches or blackbirds and so on
that steal his fruit, or destroy his buds, is absurd. It is equally
absurd to fine--what twaddle!--a lad for taking a bird's egg. The only
point upon which I am fully clear is that the birdcatcher who takes
birds on land not his own or in his occupation, on public property, as
roads, wastes, commons, and so forth, ought to be rigidly put down. But
as for the small birds as a mass, I am convinced that they will never
cease out of the land.

It is not easy to progress far along this road, because every bird
suggests so many reflections and recollections. Upon approaching the
rising ground at Ewell green plovers or peewits become plentiful in the
cornfields. In spring and early summer the flocks break up to some
extent, and the scattered parties conduct their nesting operations in
the pastures or on the downs. In autumn they collect together again, and
flocks of fifty or more are commonly seen. Now and then a much larger
flock comes down into the plain, wheeling to and fro, and presently
descending upon an arable field, where they cover the ground.




NIGHTINGALE ROAD


The wayside is open to all, and that which it affords may be enjoyed
without fee; therefore it is that I return to it so often. It is a fact
that common hedgerows often yield more of general interest than the
innermost recesses of carefully guarded preserves, which by day are
frequently still, silent, and denuded of everything, even of game; nor
can flowers flourish in such thick shade, nor where fir-needles cover
the ground.

By the same wayside of which I have already spoken there is a birch
copse, through which runs a road open to foot passengers, but not to
wheel traffic, and also a second footpath. From these a little
observation will show that almost all the life and interest of the copse
is at, or near, the edge, and can be readily seen without trespassing a
single yard. Sometimes, when it is quiet in the evening and the main
highway is comparatively deserted, a hare comes stealing down the track
through the copse, and after lingering there awhile crosses the highway
into the stubble on the other side.

In one of these fields, just opposite the copse, a covey of partridges
had their rendezvous, and I watched them from the road, evening after
evening, issue one by one, calling as they appeared from a breadth of
mangolds. Their sleeping-place seemed to be about a hundred yards from
the wayside. Another arable field just opposite is bounded by the road
with iron wire or railing, instead of a hedge, and the low mound in
which the stakes are fixed swarmed one summer with ant-hills full of
eggs, and a slight rustle in the corn as I approached told where the
parent bird had just led her chicks from the feast to shelter.

Passing into the copse by the road, which is metalled but weed-grown
from lack of use, the grasshoppers sing from the sward at the sides, but
the birds are silent as the summer ends. Pink striped bells of
convolvulus flower over the flints and gravel, the stones nearly hidden
by their runners and leaves; yellow toadflax or eggs and bacon grew here
till a weeding took place, since which it has not reappeared, but in its
place viper's bugloss sprang up, a plant which was not previously to be
found there. Hawkweeds, some wild vetches, white yarrow, thistles, and
burdocks conceal the flints yet further, so that the track has the
appearance of a green drive.

The slender birch and ash poles are hung with woodbine and wild hops,
both growing in profusion. A cream-coloured wall of woodbine in flower
extends in one spot, in another festoons of hops hang gracefully, and so
thick as to hide everything beyond them. There is scarce a stole without
its woodbine or hops; many of the poles, though larger than the arm, are
scored with spiral grooves left by the bines. Under these bushes of
woodbine the nightingales when they first arrive in spring are fond of
searching for food, and dart on a grub with a low satisfied "kurr."

The place is so favourite a resort with these birds that it might well
be called Nightingale Copse. Four or five may be heard singing at once
on a warm May morning, and at least two may often be seen as well as
heard at the same time. They sometimes sing from the trees, as well as
from the bushes; one was singing one morning on an elm branch which
projected over the road, and under which the van drivers jogged
indifferently along. Sometimes they sing from the dark foliage of the
Scotch firs.

As the summer wanes they haunt the hawthorn hedge by the roadside,
leaving the interior of the copse, and may often be seen on the dry and
dusty sward. When chiffchaff and willow-wren first come they remain in
the treetops, but in the summer descend into the lower bushes, and, like
the nightingales, come out upon the sward by the wayside. Nightingale
Copse is also a great favourite with cuckoos. There are a few oaks in
it, and in the meadows in the rear many detached hawthorn bushes, and
two or three small groups of trees, chestnuts, lime, and elm. From the
hawthorns to the elms, and from the elms to the oaks, the cuckoos
continually circulate, calling as they fly.

One morning in May, while resting on a rail in the copse, I heard four
calling close by, the furthest not a hundred yards distant, and as they
continually changed their positions flying round there was always one in
sight. They circled round, singing; the instant one ceased another took
it up, a perfect madrigal. In the evening, at eight o'clock, I found
them there again, still singing. The same detached groups of trees are
much frequented by wood-pigeons, especially towards autumn.

Rooks prefer to perch on the highest branches, wood-pigeons more in the
body of the tree, and when the boughs are bare of leaves a flock of the
latter may be recognised in this way as far as the eye can see, and when
the difference of colour is rendered imperceptible by distance. The
wood-pigeon when perched has a rounded appearance; the rook a longer and
sharper outline.

By one corner of the copse there is an oak, hollow within, but still
green and flourishing. The hollow is black and charred; some mischievous
boys must have lighted a fire inside it, just as the ploughboys do in
the far away country. A little pond in the meadow close by is so
overhung by another oak, and so surrounded with bramble and hawthorn,
that the water lies in perpetual shade. It is just the spot where, if
rabbits were about, one might be found sitting out on the bank under the
brambles. This overhanging oak was broken by the famous October snow,
1880, further splintered by the gales of the next year, and its trunk is
now split from top to bottom as if with wedges.

These meadows in spring are full of cowslips, and in one part the
meadow-orchis flourishes. The method of making cowslip balls is
universally known to children, from the most remote hamlet to the very
verge of London, and the little children who dance along the green sward
by the road here, if they chance to touch a nettle, at once search for a
dock leaf to lay on it and assuage the smart. Country children, and
indeed older folk, call the foliage of the knotted figwort cutfinger
leaves, as they are believed to assist the cure of a cut or sore.

Raspberry suckers shoot up in one part of the copse; the fruit is
doubtless eaten by the birds. Troops of them come here, travelling along
the great hedge by the wayside, and all seem to prefer the outside trees
and bushes to the interior of the copse. This great hedge is as wide as
a country double mound, though it has but one ditch; the thick hawthorn,
blackthorn, elder, and bramble--the oaks, elms, ashes, and firs form, in
fact, almost a cover of themselves.

In the early spring, when the east wind rushes with bitter energy across
the plains, this immense hedge, as far as it extends, shelters the
wayfarer, the road being on the southern side, so that he can enjoy such
gleams of sunshine as appear. In summer the place is, of course for the
same reason, extremely warm, unless the breeze chances to come up strong
from the west, when it sweeps over the open cornfields fresh and sweet.
Stoats and weasels are common on the mound, or crossing the road to the
corn; they seem more numerous in autumn, and I fear leveret and
partridge are thinned by them.

Mice abound; in spring they are sometimes up in the blackthorn bushes,
perhaps for the young buds. In summer they may often be heard rushing
along the furrows across the wayside sward, scarce concealed by the wiry
grass. Flowers are very local in habit; the spurge, for instance, which
is common in a road parallel to this, is not to be seen, and not very
much cow-parsnip, or "gix," one of the most freely-growing hedge plants,
which almost chokes the mounds near by. Willowherbs, however, fill every
place in the ditch here where they can find room between the bushes, and
the arum is equally common, but the lesser celandine absent.

Towards evening, as the clover and vetches closed their leaves under the
dew, giving the fields a different aspect and another green, I used
occasionally to watch from here a pair of herons, sailing over in their
calm serene way. Their flight was in the direction of the Thames, and
they then passed evening after evening, but the following summer they
did not come. One evening, later on in autumn, two birds appeared
descending across the cornfields towards a secluded hollow where there
was water, and, although at a considerable distance, from their manner
of flight I could have no doubt they were teal.

The spotted leaves of the arum appeared in the ditches in this locality
very nearly simultaneously with the first whistling of the blackbirds in
February; last spring the chiffchaff sang soon after the flowering of
the lesser celandine (not in this hedge, but near by), and the first
swift was noticed within a day or two of the opening of the May bloom.
Although not exactly, yet in a measure, the movements of plant and bird
life correspond.

In a closely cropped hedge opposite this great mound (cropped because
enclosing a cornfield) there grows a solitary shrub of the wayfaring
tree. Though well known elsewhere, there is not, so far as I am aware,
another bush of it for miles, and I should not have noticed this had not
this part of the highway been so pleasant a place to stroll to and fro
in almost all the year. The twigs of the wayfaring tree are covered with
a mealy substance which comes off on the fingers when touched. A stray
shrub or plant like this sometimes seems of more interest than a whole
group.

For instance, most of the cottage gardens have foxgloves in them, but I
had not observed any wild, till one afternoon near some woods I found a
tall and beautiful foxglove, richer in colour than the garden specimens,
and with bells more thickly crowded, lifting its spike of purple above
the low cropped hawthorn. In districts where the soil is favourable to
the foxglove it would not have been noticed, but here, alone and
unexpected, it was welcomed. The bees in spring come to the broad
wayside sward by the great mound to the bright dandelions; presently to
the white clover, and later to the heaths.

There are about sixty wild flowers which grow freely along this road,
namely, yellow agrimony, amphibious persicaria, arum, avens, bindweed,
bird's foot lotus, bittersweet, blackberry, black and white bryony,
brooklime, burdock, buttercups, wild camomile, wild carrot, celandine
(the great and lesser), cinquefoil, cleavers, corn buttercup, corn mint,
corn sowthistle, and spurrey, cowslip, cow-parsnip, wild parsley, daisy,
dandelion, dead nettle, and white dog rose, and trailing rose, violets
(the sweet and the scentless), figwort, veronica, ground ivy, willowherb
(two sorts), herb Robert, honeysuckle, lady's smock, purple loosestrife,
mallow, meadow-orchis, meadow-sweet, yarrow, moon daisy, St. John's
wort, pimpernel, water plantain, poppy, rattles, scabious, self-heal,
silverweed, sowthistle, stitchwort, teazles, tormentil, vetches, and
yellow vetch.

To these may be added an occasional bacon and eggs, a few harebells
(plenty on higher ground), the yellow iris, by the adjoining brook, and
flowering shrubs and trees, as dogwood, gorse, privet, blackthorn,
hawthorn, horse chestnut, besides wild hops, the horsetails on the
mounds, and such plants as grow everywhere, as chickweed, groundsel, and
so forth. A solitary shrub of mugwort grows at some distance, but in the
same district, and in one hedgerow the wild guelder rose flourishes.
Anemones and primroses are not found along or near this road, nor
woodruff. At the first glance a list like this reads as if flowers
abounded, but the reverse is the impression to those who frequent the
place.

It is really a very short list, and as of course all of these do not
appear at once there really is rather a scarcity of wild flowers, so far
at least as variety goes. Just in the spring there is a burst of colour,
and again in the autumn; but for the rest, if we set aside the roses in
June, there seems quite an absence of flowers during the summer. The
wayside is green, the ditches are green, the mounds green; if you enter
and stroll round the meadows, they are green too, or white in places
with umbelliferous plants, principally parsley and cow-parsnip. But
these become monotonous. Therefore, I am constrained to describe it as a
district somewhat lacking flowers, meaning, of course, in point of
variety.

Compared with the hedges and fields of Wiltshire, Gloucestershire,
Berkshire, and similar south-western localities, it seems flowerless. On
the other hand, southern London can boast stretches of heath, which,
when in full bloom, rival Scotch hillsides. These remarks are written
entirely from a non-scientific point of view. Professional botanists may
produce lists of thrice the length, and prove that all the flowers of
England are to be found near London. But it will not alter the fact that
to the ordinary eye the roads and lanes just south of London are in the
middle of the summer comparatively bare of colour. They should be
visited in spring and autumn.

Nor do the meadows seem to produce so many varieties of grass as farther
to the south-west. But beetles of every kind and size, from the great
stag beetle, helplessly floundering through the evening air and clinging
to your coat, down to the green, bronze, and gilded species that hasten
across the path, appear extremely numerous. Warm, dry sands, light
soils, and furze and heath are probably favourable to them.

From this roadside I have seldom heard the corncrake, and never once the
grasshopper lark. These two birds are so characteristic of the meadows
in southwestern counties that a summer evening seems silent to me
without the "crake, crake!" of the one and the singular sibilous rattle
of the other. But they come to other places not far distant from the
road, and one summer a grasshopper-lark could be heard in some meadows
where I had not heard it the two preceding seasons. On the mounds field
crickets cry persistently.

At the end of the hedge which is near a brook, a sedge-reedling takes up
his residence in the spring. The sedge-reedlings here begin to call very
early; the first date I have down is the 16th of April, which is, I
think, some weeks before they begin in other localities. In one ditch
beside the road (not in this particular hedge) there grows a fine bunch
of reeds. Though watery, on account of the artificial drains from the
arable fields, the spot is on much higher ground than the brook, and it
is a little singular that while reeds flourish in this place they are
not to be found by the brook.

The elms of the neighbourhood, wherever they can be utilised as posts,
are unmercifully wired, wires twisted round, holes bored and the ends of
wire driven in or staples inserted, and the same with the young oaks.
Many trees are much disfigured from this cause, the bark is worn off on
many; and others, which have recovered, have bulging rings, where it
swelled up over the iron. The heads of large nails and staples are
easily discovered where the wire has disappeared, sometimes three or
four, one above the other, in the same tree. A fine avenue of elms which
shades part of a suburb appears to be dying by degrees--the too common
fate of elms in such places.

How many beautiful trees have thus perished near London?--witness the
large elms that once stood in Jews' Walk, at Sydenham. Barking the
trunks for sheer wanton mischief is undoubtedly the cause in some cases,
and it has been suggested that quicksilver has occasionally been
inserted in gimlet holes. The mercury is supposed to work up the
channels of the sap, and to prevent its flow.

But may not the ordinary conditions of suburban improvement often
account for the decay of such trees without occult causes? Sewers carry
away the water that used to moisten the roots, and being at some depth,
they not only take the surface water of a storm before it has had time
to penetrate, but drain the lower stratum completely. Then, gas-pipes
frequently leak, so much so that the soil for yards is saturated and
emits a smell of gas. Roots passing through such a soil can scarcely be
healthy, and very probably, in making excavations for laying pipes the
roots are cut through. The young trees that have been planted in some
places are, I notice, often bored by grubs to an extraordinary extent,
and will never make sound timber.

One July day, while walking on this road, I happened to look over a
gateway and saw that a large and prominent mansion on the summit of some
elevated ground had apparently disappeared. The day was very clear and
bright, sunny and hot, and there was no natural vapour. But on the light
north-east wind there came slowly towards me a bluish-yellow mist, the
edge of which was clearly defined, and which blotted out distant objects
and blurred those nearer at hand. The appearance of the open arable
field over which I was looking changed as it approached.

In front of the wall of mist the sunshine lit the field up brightly,
behind the ground was dull, and yet not in shadow. It came so slowly
that its movement could be easily watched. When it went over me there
was a perceptible coolness and a faint smell of damp smoke, and
immediately the road, which had been white under the sunshine, took a
dim, yellowish hue. The sun was not shut out nor even obscured, but the
rays had to pass through a thicker medium. This haze was not thick
enough to be called fog, nor was it the summer haze that in the country
adds to the beauty of distant hills and woods.

It was clearly the atmosphere--not the fog--but simply the atmosphere of
London brought out over the fields by a change in the wind, and
prevented from diffusing itself by conditions of which nothing seems
known. For at ordinary times the atmosphere of London diffuses itself in
aerial space and is lost, but on this hot July day it came bodily and
undiluted out into the cornfields. From its appearance I should say it
would travel many miles in the same condition. In November fog seems
seasonable: in hot and dry July this phenomenon was striking.

Along the road flocks of sheep continue to travel, some weary enough,
and these, gravitating to the rear of the flock by reason of infirmity,
lie down in the dust to rest, while their companions feed on the wayside
sward. But the shepherds are careful of them, and do not hasten.
Shepherds here often carry the pastoral crook. In districts far from the
metropolis you may wander about for days, and with sheep all round you,
never see a shepherd with a crook; but near town the pastoral staff is
common.

These flocks appear to be on their way to the southern down farms, and,
as I said before, the shepherds are tender over their sheep and careful
not to press them. I regret that I cannot say the same about the
bullocks, droves of which continually go by, often black cattle, and
occasionally even the little Highland animals. The appearance of some of
these droves is quite sufficient to indicate the treatment they have
undergone. Staring eyes, heads continually turned from side to side,
starting at everything, sometimes bare places on the shoulders, all tell
the same tale of blows and brutal treatment.

Suburban streets which a minute before were crowded with ladies and
children (most gentlemen are in town at midday) are suddenly vacated
when the word passes that cattle are coming. People rush everywhere,
into gardens, shops, back lanes, anywhere, as if the ringing scabbards
of charging cavalry were heard, or the peculiar thumping rattle of
rifles as they come to the "present" before a storm of bullets. It is no
wonder that townsfolk exhibit a fear of cattle which makes their friends
laugh when they visit the country after such experiences as these. This
should be put down with a firm hand.

By the roadside here the hay tyers, who cut up the hayricks into
trusses, use balances--a trifling matter, but sufficient to mark a
difference, for in the west such men use a steelyard slung on a prong,
the handle of the prong on the shoulder and the points stuck in the
rick, with which to weigh the trusses. Wooden cottages, wooden barns,
wooden mills are also characteristic.

Mouchers come along the road at all times and seasons, gathering
sacksful of dandelions in spring, digging up fern roots and cowslip mars
for sale, cutting briars for standard roses, gathering water-cresses and
mushrooms, and in the winter cutting rushes.

There is a rook with white feathers in the wing which belongs to an
adjacent rookery, and I have observed a blackbird also streaked with
white. One January day, when the snow was on the ground and the frost
was sharp, when the pale sun seemed to shine brightest round the rim of
the disk, as if there were a band of stronger light there, I saw a white
animal under a heap of poles by the wayside, near the great hedge I have
mentioned. It immediately concealed itself, but, thinking that it was a
ferret gone astray, I waited, and presently the head and neck were
cautiously protruded.

I made the usual call with the lips, but the creature instantly returned
to cover. I waited again, hiding this time, and after an interval the
creature moved and hastened away from the poles, where it was, in a
measure, exposed, to the more secure shelter of some bushes. Then I saw
that it was of a clear white, while so-called white ferrets are usually
a dingy yellow, and the white tail was tipped with black. From these
circumstances, and from the timidity and anxious desire to escape
observation, I could only conclude that it was a white stoat.

Stoats, as remarked previously, are numerous in these hedges, and it was
quite possible for a white one to be among them. The white stoat may be
said to exactly resemble the ermine. The interest of the circumstance
arises not from its rarity, but from its occurring so near the
metropolis.




A BROOK


Some low wooden rails guarding the approach to a bridge over a brook one
day induced me to rest under an aspen, with my back against the tree.
Some horse-chestnuts, beeches, and alders grew there, fringing the end
of a long plantation of willow stoles which extended in the rear
following the stream. In front, southwards, there were open meadows and
cornfields, over which shadow and sunshine glided in succession as the
sweet westerly wind carried the white clouds before it.

The brimming brook, as it wound towards me through the meads, seemed to
tremble on the verge of overflowing, as the crown of wine in a glass
rises yet does not spill. Level with the green grass, the water gleamed
as though polished where it flowed smoothly, crossed with the dark
shadows of willows which leaned over it. By the bridge, where the breeze
rushed through the arches, a ripple flashed back the golden rays. The
surface by the shore slipped towards a side hatch and passed over in a
liquid curve, clear and unvarying, as if of solid crystal, till
shattered on the stones, where the air caught up and played with the
sound of the bubbles as they broke.

Beyond the green slope of corn, a thin, soft vapour hung on the distant
woods, and hid the hills. The pale young leaves of the aspen rustled
faintly, not yet with their full sound; the sprays of the
horse-chestnut, drooping with the late frosts, could not yet keep out
the sunshine with their broad green. A white spot on the footpath yonder
was where the bloom had fallen from a blackthorn bush.

The note of the tree-pipit came from over the corn--there were some
detached oaks away in the midst of the field, and the birds were
doubtless flying continually up and down between the wheat and the
branches. A willow-wren sang plaintively in the plantation behind, and
once a cuckoo called at a distance. How beautiful is the sunshine! The
very dust of the road at my feet seemed to glow with whiteness, to be
lit up by it, and to become another thing. This spot henceforward was a
place of pilgrimage.

Looking that morning over the parapet of the bridge, down stream, there
was a dead branch at the mouth of the arch, it had caught and got fixed
while it floated along. A quantity of aquatic weeds coming down the
stream had drifted against the branch and remained entangled in it.
Fresh weeds were still coming and adding to the mass, which had
attracted a water-rat.

Perched on the branch the little brown creature bent forward over the
surface, and with its two forepaws drew towards it the slender thread of
a weed, exactly as with hands. Holding the thread in the paws, it
nibbled it, eating the sweet and tender portion, feeding without fear
though but a few feet away, and precisely beneath me.

In a minute the surface of the current was disturbed by larger ripples.
There had been a ripple caused by the draught through the arch, but this
was now increased. Directly afterwards a moorhen swam out, and began to
search among the edge of the tangled weeds. So long as I was perfectly
still the bird took no heed, but at a slight movement instantly
scuttled back under the arch. The water-rat, less timorous, paused,
looked round, and returned to feeding.

Crossing to the other side of the bridge, up stream, and looking over,
the current had scooped away the sand of the bottom by the central pier,
exposing the brickwork to some depth--the same undermining process that
goes on by the piers of bridges over great rivers. Nearer the shore the
sand has silted up, leaving it shallow, where water-parsnip and other
weeds joined, as it were, the verge of the grass and the stream. The
sunshine reflected from the ripples on this, the southern side,
continually ran with a swift, trembling motion up the arch.

Penetrating the clear water, the light revealed the tiniest stone at the
bottom: but there was no fish, no water-rat, or moorhen on this side.
Neither on that nor many succeeding mornings could anything be seen
there; the tail of the arch was evidently the favourite spot. Carefully
looking over that side again, the moorhen who had been out rushed back;
the water-rat was gone. Were there any fish? In the shadow the water was
difficult to see through, and the brown scum of spring that lined the
bottom rendered everything uncertain.

By gazing steadily at a stone my eyes presently became accustomed to the
peculiar light, the pupils adjusted themselves to it, and the brown
tints became more distinctly defined. Then sweeping by degrees from a
stone to another, and from thence to a rotting stick embedded in the
sand, I searched the bottom inch by inch. If you look, as it were at
large--at everything at once--you see nothing. If you take some object
as a fixed point, gaze all around it, and then move to another, nothing
can escape.

Even the deepest, darkest water (not, of course, muddy) yields after a
while to the eye. Half close the eyelids, and while gazing into it let
your intelligence rather wait upon the corners of the eye than on the
glance you cast straight forward. For some reason when thus gazing the
edge of the eye becomes exceedingly sensitive, and you are conscious of
slight motions or of a thickness--not a defined object, but a thickness
which indicates an object--which is otherwise quite invisible.

The slow feeling sway of a fish's tail, the edges of which curl over and
grasp the water, may in this manner be identified without being
positively seen, and the dark outline of its body known to exist against
the equally dark water or bank. Shift, too, your position according to
the fall of the light, just as in looking at a painting. From one point
of view the canvas shows little but the presence of paint and blurred
colour, from another at the side the picture stands out.

Sometimes the water can be seen into best from above, sometimes by lying
on the sward, now by standing back a little way, or crossing to the
opposite shore. A spot where the sunshine sparkles with dazzling gleam
is perhaps perfectly inpenetrable till you get the other side of the
ripple, when the same rays that just now baffled the glance light up the
bottom as if thrown from a mirror for the purpose. I convinced myself
that there was nothing here, nothing visible at present--not so much as
a stickleback.

Yet the stream ran clear and sweet, and deep in places. It was too broad
for leaping over. Down the current sedges grew thickly at a curve: up
the stream the young flags were rising; it had an inhabited look, if
such a term may be used, and moorhens and water-rats were about but no
fish. A wide furrow came along the meadow and joined the stream from
the side. Into this furrow, at flood time, the stream overflowed farther
up, and irrigated the level sward.

At present it was dry, its course, traced by the yellowish and white hue
of the grasses in it only recently under water, contrasting with the
brilliant green of the sweet turf around. There was a marsh marigold in
it, with stems a quarter of an inch thick; and in the grass on the
verge, but just beyond where the flood reached, grew the lilac-tinted
cuckoo flowers, or cardamine.

The side hatch supplied a pond, which was only divided from the brook by
a strip of sward not more than twenty yards across. The surface of the
pond was dotted with patches of scum that had risen from the bottom.
Part at least of it was shallow, for a dead branch blown from an elm
projected above the water, and to it came a sedge-reedling for a moment.
The sedge-reedling is so fond of sedges, and reeds, and thick
undergrowth, that though you hear it perpetually within a few yards it
is not easy to see one. On this bare branch the bird was well displayed,
and the streak by the eye was visible; but he stayed there for a second
or two only, and then back again to the sedges and willows.

There were fish I felt sure as I left the spot and returned along the
dusty road, but where were they?

On the sward by the wayside, among the nettles and under the bushes, and
on the mound the dark green arum leaves grew everywhere, sometimes in
bunches close together. These bunches varied--in one place the leaves
were all spotted with black irregular blotches; in another the leaves
were without such markings. When the root leaves of the arum first push
up they are closely rolled together in a pointed spike.

This, rising among the dead and matted leaves of the autumn,
occasionally passes through holes in them. As the spike grows it lifts
the dead leaves with it, which hold it like a ring and prevent it from
unfolding. The force of growth is not sufficiently strong to burst the
bond asunder till the green leaves have attained considerable size.

A little earlier in the year the chattering of magpies would have been
heard while looking for the signs of spring, but they were now occupied
with their nests. There are several within a short distance, easily
distinguished in winter, but somewhat hidden now by the young leaves.
Just before they settled down to housekeeping there was a great
chattering and fluttering and excitement, as they chased each other from
elm to elm.

Four or five were then often in the same field, some in the trees, some
on the ground, their white and black showing distinctly on the level
brown earth recently harrowed or rolled. On such a surface birds are
visible at a distance; but when the blades of the corn begin to reach
any height such as alight are concealed. In many districts of the
country that might be called wild and lonely, the magpie is almost
extinct. Once now and then a pair may be observed, and those who know
their haunts can, of course, find them, but to a visitor passing
through, there seems none. But here, so near the metropolis, the magpies
are common, and during an hour's walk their cry is almost sure to be
heard. They have, however, their favourite locality, where they are much
more frequently seen.

Coming to my seat under the aspen by the bridge week after week, the
burdocks by the wayside gradually spread their leaves, and the
procession of the flowers went on. The dandelion, the lesser celandine,
the marsh marigold, the coltsfoot, all yellow, had already led the van,
closely accompanied by the purple ground-ivy, the red dead-nettle, and
the daisy; this last a late comer in the neighbourhood. The blackthorn,
the horse-chestnut, and the hawthorn came, and the meadows were golden
with the buttercups.

Once only had I noticed any indication of fish in the brook; it was on a
warm Saturday afternoon, when there was a labourer a long way up the
stream, stooping in a peculiar manner near the edge of the water with a
stick in his hand. He was, I felt sure, trying to wire a spawning jack,
but did not succeed. Many weeks had passed, and now there came (as the
close time for coarse fish expired) a concourse of anglers to the almost
stagnant pond fed by the side hatch.

Well-dressed lads with elegant and finished tackle rode up on their
bicycles, with their rods slung at their backs. Hoisting the bicycles
over the gate into the meadow, they left them leaning against the elms,
fitted their rods and fished in the pond. Poorer boys, with long wands
cut from the hedge and ruder lines, trudged up on foot, sat down on the
sward and watched their corks by the hour together. Grown men of the
artisan class, covered with the dust of many miles' tramping, came with
their luncheons in a handkerchief, and set about their sport with a
quiet earnestness which argued long if desultory practice.

In fine weather there were often a dozen youths and four or five men
standing, sitting, or kneeling on the turf along the shore of the pond,
all intent on their floats, and very nearly silent. People driving along
the highway stopped their traps, and carts, and vans a minute or two to
watch them: passengers on foot leaned over the gate, or sat down and
waited expectantly.

Sometimes one of the more venturesome anglers would tuck up his trousers
and walk into the shallow water, so as to be able to cast his bait under
the opposite bank, where it was deep. Then an ancient and much battered
punt was discovered aground in a field at some distance, and dragged to
the pond. One end of the punt had quite rotted away, but by standing at
the other, so as to depress it there and lift the open end above the
surface, two, or even three, could make a shift to fish from it.

The silent and motionless eagerness with which these anglers dwelt upon
their floats, grave as herons, could not have been exceeded. There they
were day after day, always patient and always hopeful. Occasionally a
small catch--a mere "bait "--was handed round for inspection; and once a
cunning fisherman, acquainted with all the secrets of his craft,
succeeded in drawing forth three perch, perhaps a quarter of a pound
each, and one slender eel. These made quite a show, and were greatly
admired; but I never saw the same man there again. He was satisfied.

As I sat on the white rail under the aspen, and inhaled the scent of the
beans flowering hard by, there was a question which suggested itself to
me, and the answer to which I never could supply. The crowd about the
pond all stood with their backs to the beautiful flowing brook. They had
before them the muddy banks of the stagnant pool, on whose surface
patches of scum floated.

Behind them was the delicious stream, clear and limpid, bordered with
sedge and willow and flags, and overhung with branches. The strip of
sward between the two waters was certainly not more than twenty yards;
there was no division hedge, or railing, and evidently no preservation,
for the mouchers came and washed their water-cress which they had
gathered in the ditches by the side hatch, and no one interfered with
them.

There was no keeper or water bailiff, not even a notice board.
Policemen, on foot and mounted, passed several times daily, and, like
everybody else, paused to see the sport, but said not a word. Clearly,
there was nothing whatever to prevent any of those present from angling
in the stream; yet they one and all, without exception, fished in the
pond. This seemed to me a very remarkable fact.

After a while I noticed another circumstance; nobody ever even looked
into the stream or under the arches of the bridge. No one spared a
moment from his float amid the scum of the pond, just to stroll twenty
paces and glance at the swift current. It appeared from this that the
pond had a reputation for fish, and the brook had not. Everybody who had
angled in the pond recommended his friends to go and do likewise. There
were fish in the pond.

So every fresh comer went and angled there, and accepted the fact that
there were fish. Thus the pond obtained a traditionary reputation, which
circulated from lip to lip round about. I need not enlarge on the
analogy that exists in this respect between the pond and various other
things.

By implication it was evidently as much understood and accepted on the
other hand that there was nothing in the stream. Thus I reasoned it out,
sitting under the aspen, and yet somehow the general opinion did not
satisfy me. There must be something in so sweet a stream. The sedges by
the shore, the flags in the shallow, slowly swaying from side to side
with the current, the sedge-reedlings calling, the moorhens and
water-rats, all gave an air of habitation.

One morning, looking very gently over the parapet of the bridge (down
stream) into the shadowy depth beneath, just as my eyes began to see the
bottom, something like a short thick dark stick drifted out from the
arch, somewhat sideways. Instead of proceeding with the current, it had
hardly cleared the arch when it took a position parallel to the flowing
water and brought up. It was thickest at the end that faced the stream;
at the other there was a slight motion as if caused by the current
against a flexible membrane, as it sways a flag. Gazing down intently
into the shadow the colour of the sides of the fish appeared at first
not exactly uniform, and presently these indistinct differences resolved
themselves into spots. It was a trout, perhaps a pound and a half in
weight.

His position was at the side of the arch, out of the rush of the
current, and almost behind the pier, but where he could see anything
that came floating along under the culvert. Immediately above him but
not over was the mass of weeds tangled in the dead branch. Thus in the
shadow of the bridge and in the darkness under the weeds he might easily
have escaped notice. He was, too, extremely wary. The slightest motion
was enough to send him instantly under the arch; his cover was but a
foot distant, and a trout shoots twelve inches in a fraction of time.

The summer advanced, the hay was carted, and the wheat ripened. Already
here and there the reapers had cut portions of the more forward corn. As
I sat from time to time under the aspen, within hearing of the murmuring
water, the thought did rise occasionally that it was a pity to leave
the trout there till some one blundered into the knowledge of his
existence.

There were ways and means by which he could be withdrawn without any
noise or publicity. But, then, what would be the pleasure of securing
him, the fleeting pleasure of an hour, compared to the delight of seeing
him almost day by day? I watched him for many weeks, taking great
precautions that no one should observe how continually I looked over
into the water there. Sometimes after a glance I stood with my back to
the wall as if regarding an object on the other side. If any one was
following me, or appeared likely to peer over the parapet, I carelessly
struck the top of the wall with my stick in such a manner that it should
project, an action sufficient to send the fish under the arch. Or I
raised my hat as if heated, and swung it so that it should alarm him.

If the coast was clear when I had looked at him still I never left
without sending him under the arch in order to increase his alertness.
It was a relief to know that so many persons who went by wore tall hats,
a safeguard against their seeing anything, for if they approached the
shadow of the tall hat reached out beyond the shadow of the parapet, and
was enough to alarm him before they could look over. So the summer
passed, and, though never free from apprehensions, to my great pleasure
without discovery.




A LONDON TROUT


The sword-flags are rusting at their edges, and their sharp points are
turned. On the matted and entangled sedges lie the scattered leaves
which every rush of the October wind hurries from the boughs. Some fall
on the water and float slowly with the current, brown and yellow spots
on the dark surface. The grey willows bend to the breeze; soon the osier
beds will look reddish as the wands are stripped by the gusts. Alone the
thick polled alders remain green, and in their shadow the brook is still
darker. Through a poplar's thin branches the wind sounds as in the
rigging of a ship; for the rest, it is silence.

The thrushes have not forgotten the frost of the morning, and will not
sing at noon; the summer visitors have flown and the moorhens feed
quietly. The plantation by the brook is silent, for the sedges, though
they have drooped and become entangled, are not dry and sapless yet to
rustle loudly. They will rustle dry enough next spring, when the
sedge-birds come. A long withey-bed borders the brook and is more
resorted to by sedge-reedlings, or sedge-birds, as they are variously
called, than any place I know, even in the remotest country.

Generally it has been difficult to see them, because the withey is in
leaf when they come, and the leaves and sheaves of innumerable rods hide
them, while the ground beneath is covered by a thick growth of sedges
and flags, to which the birds descend. It happened once, however, that
the withey stoles had been polled, and in the spring the boughs were
short and small. At the same time, the easterly winds checked the
sedges, so that they were hardly half their height, and the flags were
thin, and not much taller, when the sedge-birds came, so that they for
once found but little cover, and could be seen to advantage.

There could not have been less than fifteen in the plantation, two
frequented some bushes beside a pond near by, some stayed in scattered
willows farther down the stream. They sang so much they scarcely seemed
to have time to feed. While approaching one that was singing by gently
walking on the sward by the roadside, or where thick dust deadened the
footsteps, suddenly another would commence in the low thorn hedge on a
branch, so near that it could be touched with a walking-stick. Yet
though so near the bird was not wholly visible--he was partly concealed
behind a fork of the bough. This is a habit of the sedge-birds. Not in
the least timid, they chatter at your elbow, and yet always partially
hidden.

If in the withey, they choose a spot where the rods cross or bunch
together. If in the sedges, though so close it seems as if you could
reach forward and catch him, he is behind the stalks. To place some
obstruction between themselves and any one passing is their custom: but
that spring, as the foliage was so thin, it only needed a little
dexterity in peering to get a view. The sedge-bird perches aside, on a
sloping willow rod, and, slightly raising his head, chatters, turning
his bill from side to side. He is a very tiny bird, and his little eye
looks out from under a yellowish streak. His song at first sounds
nothing but chatter.

After listening a while the ear finds a scale in it--an arrangement and
composition--so that, though still a chatter, it is a tasteful one. At
intervals he intersperses a chirp, exactly the same as that of the
sparrow, a chirp with a tang in it. Strike a piece of metal, and besides
the noise of the blow, there is a second note, or tang. The sparrow's
chirp has such a note sometimes, and the sedge-bird brings it in--tang,
tang, tang. This sound has given him his country name of brook-sparrow,
and it rather spoils his song. Often the moment he has concluded he
starts for another willow stole, and as he flies begins to chatter when
halfway across, and finishes on a fresh branch.

But long before this another bird has commenced to sing in a bush
adjacent; a third takes it up in the thorn hedge; a fourth in the bushes
across the pond; and from farther down the stream comes a faint and
distant chatter. Ceaselessly the competing gossip goes on the entire day
and most of the night; indeed, sometimes all night through. On a warm
spring morning, when the sunshine pours upon the willows, and even the
white dust of the road is brighter, bringing out the shadows in clear
definition, their lively notes and quick motions make a pleasant
commentary on the low sound of the stream rolling round the curve.

A moorhen's call comes from the hatch. Broad yellow petals of
marsh-marigold stand up high among the sedges rising from the
greyish-green ground, which is covered with a film of sun-dried aquatic
grass left dry by the retiring waters. Here and there are lilac-tinted
cuckoo-flowers, drawn up on taller stalks than those that grow in the
meadows. The black flowers of the sedges are powdered with yellow
pollen; and dark green sword-flags are beginning to spread their fans.
But just across the road, on the topmost twigs of birch poles, swallows
twitter in the tenderest tones to their loves. From the oaks in the
meadows on that side titlarks mount above the highest bough and then
descend, sing, sing, singing, to the grass.

A jay calls in a circular copse in the midst of the meadow; solitary
rooks go over to their nests in the elms on the hill; cuckoos call, now
this way and now that, as they travel round. While leaning on the grey
and lichen-hung rails by the brook, the current glides by, and it is the
motion of the water and its low murmur which renders the place so idle;
the sunbeams brood, the air is still but full of song. Let us, too, stay
and watch the petals fall one by one from a wild apple and float down on
the stream.

But now in autumn the haws are red on the thorn, the swallows are few as
they were in the earliest spring; the sedge-birds have flown, and the
redwings will soon be here. The sharp points of the sword-flags are
turned, their edges rusty, the forget-me-nots are gone. October's winds
are too searching for us to linger beside the brook, but still it is
pleasant to pass by and remember the summer days. For the year is never
gone by; in a moment we can recall the sunshine we enjoyed in May, the
roses we gathered in June, the first wheatear we plucked as the green
corn filled. Other events go by and are forgotten, and even the details
of our own lives, so immensely important to us at the moment, in time
fade from the memory till the date we fancied we should never forget has
to be sought in a diary. But the year is always with us; the months are
familiar always; they have never gone by.

So with the red haws around and the rustling leaves it is easy to recall
the flowers. The withey plantation here is full of flowers in summer;
yellow iris flowers in June when midsummer comes, for the iris loves a
thunder-shower. The flowering flag spreads like a fan from the root,
the edges overlap near the ground, and the leaves are broad as
sword-blades, indeed the plant is one of the largest that grows wild. It
is quite different from the common flag with three grooves--bayonet
shape--which appears in every brook. The yellow iris is much more local,
and in many country streams may be sought for in vain, so that so fine a
display as may be seen here seemed almost a discovery to me.

They were finest in the year of rain, 1879, that terrible year which is
fresh in the memory of all who have any interest in out-of-door matters.
At midsummer the plantation was aglow with iris bloom. The large yellow
petals were everywhere high above the sedge; in one place a dozen, then
two or three, then one by itself, then another bunch. The marsh was a
foot deep in water, which could only be seen by parting the stalks of
the sedges, for it was quite hidden under them. Sedges and flags grew so
thick that everything was concealed except the yellow bloom above.

One bunch grew on a bank raised a few inches above the flood which the
swollen brook had poured in, and there I walked among them; the leaves
came nearly up to the shoulder, the golden flowers on the stalks stood
equally high. It was a thicket of iris. Never before had they risen to
such a height; it was like the vegetation of tropical swamps, so much
was everything drawn up by the continual moisture. Who could have
supposed that such a downpour as occurred that summer would have had the
effect it had upon flowers? Most would have imagined that the excessive
rain would have destroyed them; yet never was there such floral beauty
as that year. Meadow-orchis, buttercups, the yellow iris, all the spring
flowers came forth in extraordinary profusion. The hay was spoiled, the
farmers ruined, but their fields were one broad expanse of flower.

As that spring was one of the wettest, so that of the year in present
view was one of the driest, and hence the plantation between the lane
and the brook was accessible, the sedges and flags short, and the
sedge-birds visible. There is a beech in the plantation standing so near
the verge of the stream that its boughs droop over. It has a number of
twigs around the stem--as a rule the beech-bole is clear of boughs, but
some which are of rather stunted growth are fringed with them. The
leaves on the longer boughs above fall off and voyage down the brook,
but those on the lesser twigs beneath, and only a little way from the
ground, remain on, and rustle, dry and brown, all through the winter.

Under the shelter of these leaves, and close to the trunk, there grew a
plant of flag--the tops of the flags almost reached to the leaves--and
all the winter through, despite the frosts for which it was remarkable,
despite the snow and the bitter winds which followed, this plant
remained green and fresh. From this beech in the morning a shadow
stretches to a bridge across the brook, and in that shadow my trout used
to lie. The bank under the drooping boughs forms a tiny cliff a foot
high, covered with moss, and here I once observed shrew mice diving and
racing about. But only once, though I frequently passed the spot; it is
curious that I did not see them afterwards.

Just below the shadow of the beech there is a sandy, oozy shore, where
the footprints of moorhens are often traceable. Many of the trees of the
plantation stand in water after heavy rain; their leaves drop into it in
autumn, and, being away from the influence of the current, stay and
soak, and lie several layers thick. Their edges overlap, red, brown,
and pale yellow, with the clear water above and shadows athwart it, and
dry white grass at the verge. A horse-chestnut drops its fruit in the
dusty road; high above its leaves are tinted with scarlet.

It was at the tail of one of the arches of the bridge over the brook
that my favourite trout used to lie. Sometimes the shadow of the beech
came as far as his haunts, that was early in the morning, and for the
rest of the day the bridge itself cast a shadow. The other parapet faces
the south, and looking down from it the bottom of the brook is generally
visible, because the light is so strong. At the bottom a green plant may
be seen waving to and fro in summer as the current sways it. It is not a
weed or flag, but a plant with pale green leaves, and looks as if it had
come there by some chance; this is the water-parsnip.

By the shore on this, the sunny side of the bridge, a few forget-me-nots
grow in their season, water crow's-foot flowers, flags lie along the
surface and slowly swing from side to side like a boat at anchor. The
breeze brings a ripple, and the sunlight sparkles on it; the light
reflected dances up the piers of the bridge. Those that pass along the
road are naturally drawn to this bright parapet where the brook winds
brimming full through green meadows. You can see right to the bottom;
you can see where the rush of the water has scooped out a deeper channel
under the arches, but look as long as you like there are no fish.

The trout I watched so long, and with such pleasure, was always on the
other side, at the tail of the arch, waiting for whatever might come
through to him. There in perpetual shadow he lay in wait, a little at
the side of the arch, scarcely ever varying his position except to dart
a yard up under the bridge to seize anything he fancied, and drifting
out again to bring up at his anchorage. If people looked over the
parapet that side they did not see him; they could not see the bottom
there for the shadow, or if the summer noonday cast a strong beam even
then it seemed to cover the surface of the water with a film of light
which could not be seen through. There are some aspects from which even
a picture hung on the wall close at hand cannot be seen. So no one saw
the trout; if any one more curious leant over the parapet he was gone in
a moment under the arch.

Folk fished in the pond about the verge of which the sedge-birds
chattered, and but a few yards distant; but they never looked under the
arch on the northern and shadowy side, where the water flowed beside the
beech. For three seasons this continued. For three summers I had the
pleasure to see the trout day after day whenever I walked that way, and
all that time, with fishermen close at hand, he escaped notice, though
the place was not preserved. It is wonderful to think how difficult it
is to see anything under one's very eyes, and thousands of people walked
actually and physically right over the fish.

However, one morning in the third summer, I found a fisherman standing
in the road and fishing over the parapet in the shadowy water. But he
was fishing at the wrong arch, and only with paste for roach. While the
man stood there fishing, along came two navvies; naturally enough they
went quietly up to see what the fisherman was doing, and one instantly
uttered an exclamation. He had seen the trout. The man who was fishing
with paste had stood so still and patient that the trout, re-assured,
had come out, and the navvy--trust a navvy to see anything of the
kind--caught sight of him.

The navvy knew how to see through water. He told the fisherman, and
there was a stir of excitement, a changing of hooks and bait. I could
not stay to see the result, but went on, fearing the worst. But he did
not succeed; next day the wary trout was there still, and the next, and
the next. Either this particular fisherman was not able to come again,
or was discouraged; at any rate, he did not try again. The fish escaped,
doubtless more wary than ever.

In the spring of the next year the trout was still there, and up to the
summer I used to go and glance at him. This was the fourth season, and
still he was there; I took friends to look at this wonderful fish, which
defied all the loafers and poachers, and above all, surrounded himself
not only with the shadow of the bridge, but threw a mental shadow over
the minds of passers-by, so that they never thought of the possibility
of such a thing as trout. But one morning something happened. The brook
was dammed up on the sunny side of the bridge, and the water let off by
a side-hatch, that some accursed main or pipe or other horror might be
laid across the bed of the stream somewhere far down.

Above the bridge there was a brimming broad brook, below it the flags
lay on the mud, the weeds drooped, and the channel was dry. It was dry
up to the beech tree. There, under the drooping boughs of the beech, was
a small pool of muddy water, perhaps two yards long, and very narrow--a
stagnant muddy pool, not more than three or four inches deep. In this I
saw the trout. In the shallow water, his back came up to the surface
(for his fins must have touched the mud sometimes)--once it came above
the surface, and his spots showed as plain as if you had held him in
your hand. He was swimming round to try and find out the reason of this
sudden stinting of room.

Twice he heaved himself somewhat on his side over a dead branch that was
at the bottom, and exhibited all his beauty to the air and sunshine.
Then he went away into another part of the shallow and was hidden by the
muddy water. Now under the arch of the bridge, his favourite arch, close
by there was a deep pool, for, as already mentioned, the scour of the
current scooped away the sand and made a hole there. When the stream was
shut off by the dam above this hole remained partly full. Between this
pool and the shallow under the beech there was sufficient connection for
the fish to move into it.

My only hope was that he would do so, and as some showers fell,
temporarily increasing the depth of the narrow canal between the two
pools, there seemed every reason to believe that he had got to that
under the arch. If now only that accursed pipe or main, or whatever
repair it was, could only be finished quickly, even now the trout might
escape! Every day my anxiety increased, for the intelligence would soon
get about that the brook was dammed up, and any pools left in it would
be sure to attract attention.

Sunday came, and directly the bells had done ringing four men attacked
the pool under the arch. They took off shoes and stockings and waded in,
two at each end of the arch. Stuck in the mud close by was an eel-spear.
They churned up the mud, wading in, and thickened and darkened it as
they groped under. No one could watch these barbarians longer.

Is it possible that he could have escaped? He was a wonderful fish, wary
and quick. Is it just possible that they may not even have known that a
trout was there at all; but have merely hoped for perch, or tench, or
eels? The pool was deep and the fish quick--they did not bale it, might
he have escaped? Might they even, if they did find him, have mercifully
taken him and placed him alive in some other water nearer their homes?
Is it possible that he may have almost miraculously made his way down
the stream into other pools?

There was very heavy rain one night, which might have given him such a
chance. These "mights," and "ifs," and "is it possible" even now keep
alive some little hope that some day I may yet see him again. But that
was in the early summer. It is now winter, and the beech has brown
spots. Among the limes the sedges are matted and entangled, the
sword-flags rusty; the rooks are at the acorns, and the plough is at
work in the stubble. I have never seen him since. I never failed to
glance over the parapet into the shadowy water. Somehow it seemed to
look colder, darker, less pleasant than it used to do. The spot was
empty, and the shrill winds whistled through the poplars.




A BARN


A broad red roof of tile is a conspicuous object on the same road which
winds and turns in true crooked country fashion, with hedgerows, trees,
and fields on both sides, and scarcely a dwelling visible. It is not,
indeed, so crooked as a lane in Gloucestershire, which I verily believe
passes the same tree thrice, but the curves are frequent enough to vary
the view pleasantly.

Approaching from either direction, on turning a certain corner a great
red roof rises high above the hedges, and the line of its ridge is seen
every way through the trees. With this old barn, as with so much of the
architecture of former times, the roof is the most important part. The
gables, for instance, of Elizabethan houses occupy the eye far more than
the walls; and so, too, with the antique halls that still exist. The
roof of this old barn is itself the building; the roof and the doors,
for the sweeping slope of the tiles comes down within reach of the hand,
while the great doors extend half-way to the ridge.

By the low black wooden walls a little chaff has been spilt, and has
blown out and mingles with the dust of the road. Loose straws lie across
the footpath, trodden flat by passing feet; straws have wandered across
the road and lodged on the mound, and others have roamed still farther
round the corner. Between the gatepost and the wall that encloses the
rickyard more straws are jammed, and yet more are borne up by the
nettles beneath it.

Mosses have grown over the old red brick wall, both on the top and
following the lines of the mortar, and bunches of wall grasses flourish
along the top. The wheat, and barley, and hay carted home to the
rickyard contain the seeds of innumerable plants, many of which,
dropping to the ground, come up next year. The trodden earth round where
the ricks stood seems favourable to their early appearance; the first
poppy blooms here, though its colour is paler than those which come
afterwards in the fields.

In spring most of the ricks are gone, threshed and sold, but there
remains the vast pile of straw--always straw--and the three-cornered
stump of a hay-rick which displays bands of different hues, one above
the other, like the strata of a geological map. Some of the hay was put
up damp, some in good condition, and some had been browned by bad
weather before being carted.

About the straw-rick, and over the chaff that everywhere strews the
earth, numerous fowls search, and by the gateway Chanticleer proudly
stands, tall and upright, the king of the rickyard still, as he and his
ancestors have been these hundreds of years. Under the granary, which is
built on stone staddles, to exclude the mice, some turkeys are huddled
together calling occasionally for a "halter," and beyond them the green,
glossy neck of a drake glistens in the sunshine.

When the corn is high, and sometimes before it is well up, the doors of
the barn are daily open, and shock-headed children peer over the hatch.
There are others within playing and tumbling on a heap of straw--always
straw--which is their bed at night. The sacks which form their
counterpane are rolled aside, and they have half the barn for their
nursery. If it is wet, at least one great girl and the mother will be
there too, gravely sewing, and sitting where they can see all that goes
along the road.

A hundred yards away, in a corner of an arable field, the very windiest
and most draughty that could be chosen, where the hedge is cut down so
that it can barely be called a hedge, and where the elms draw the wind,
the men of the family crowd over a smoky fire. In the wind and rain the
fire could not burn at all had they not by means of a stick propped up a
hurdle to windward, and thus sheltered it. As it is there seems no
flame, only white embers and a flow of smoke, into which the men from
time to time cast the dead wood they have gathered. Here the pot is
boiled and the cooking accomplished at a safe distance from the litter
and straw of the rickyard.

These people are Irish, who come year after year to the same barn for
the hoeing and the harvest, travelling from the distant West to gather
agricultural wages on the verge of the metropolis.

In fine summer weather, beside the usual business traffic, there goes
past this windy bare corner a constant stream of pleasure-seekers,
heavily laden four-in-hands, tandems, dog-carts, equestrians, and open
carriages, filled with well-dressed ladies. They represent the abundant
gold of trade and commerce. In their careless luxury they do not
notice--how should they?--the smoky fire in the barren corner, or the
shock-headed children staring at the equipages over the hatch at the
barn.

Within a mile there is a similar fire, which by day is not noticeable,
because the spot is under a hedge two meadows back from the road. At
night it shows brightly, and even as late as eleven o'clock dusky
figures may be seen about it, as if the family slept in the open air. A
third fire is kept up in the same neighbourhood, but in a different
direction, in a meadow bordering on a lonely lane. There is a thatched
shed behind the hedge, which is the sleeping-place--the fire burns some
forty yards away. Still another shines at night in an open arable field,
where is a barn.

One day I observed a farmer's courtyard completely filled with groups of
men, women, and children, who had come travelling round to do the
harvesting. They had with them a small cart or van--not of the kind
which the show folk use as movable dwellings, but for the purpose of
carrying their pots, pans, and the like. The greater number carry their
burdens on their backs, trudging afoot.

A gang of ten or twelve once gathered round me to inquire the direction
of some spot they desired to reach. A powerful-looking woman, with
reaping-hook in her hand and cooking implements over her shoulder, was
the speaker. The rest did not appear to know a word of English, and her
pronunciation was so peculiar that it was impossible to understand what
she meant except by her gestures. I suppose she wanted to find a farm,
the name of which I could not get at, and then perceiving she was not
understood her broad face flushed red and she poured out a flood of
Irish in her excitement. The others chimed in, and the din redoubled. At
last I caught the name of a town and was thus able to point the way.

About harvest time it is common to meet an Irish labourer dressed in the
national costume: a tall, upright fellow with a long-tailed coat,
breeches, and worsted stockings. He walks as upright as if drilled, with
a quick easy gait and springy step, quite distinct from the Saxon stump.
When the corn is cut these bivouac fires go out, and the camp
disappears, but the white ashes remain, and next season the smoke will
rise again.

The barn here with its broad red roof, and the rickyard with the stone
staddles, and the litter of chaff and straw, is the central rendezvous
all the year of the resident labourers. Day by day, and at all hours,
there is sure to be some of them about the place. The stamp of the land
is on them. They border on the city, but are as distinctly agricultural
and as immediately recognisable as in the heart of the country. This
sturdy carter, as he comes round the corner of the straw-rick, cannot be
mistaken.

He is short and thickly set, a man of some fifty years, but hard and
firm of make. His face is broad and red, his shiny fat cheeks almost as
prominent as his stumpy nose, likewise red and shiny. A fringe of
reddish whiskers surrounds his chin like a cropped hedge. The eyes are
small and set deeply, a habit of half-closing the lids when walking in
the teeth of the wind and rain has caused them to appear still smaller.
The wrinkles at the corners and the bushy eyebrows are more visible and
pronounced than the eyes themselves, which are mere bright grey points
twinkling with complacent good humour.

These red cheeks want but the least motion to break into a smile; the
action of opening the lips to speak is sufficient to give that
expression. The fur cap he wears allows the round shape of his head to
be seen, and the thick neck which is the colour of a brick. He trudges
deliberately round the straw-rick: there is something in the style of
the man which exactly corresponds to the barn, and the straw, and the
stone staddles, and the waggons. Could we look back three hundred years,
just such a man would be seen in the midst of the same surroundings,
deliberately trudging round the straw-ricks of Elizabethan days, calm
and complacent though the Armada be at hand. There are the ricks just
the same, here is the barn, and the horses are in good case; the wheat
is coming on well. Armies may march, but these are the same.

When his waggon creaks along the road towards the town his eldest lad
walks proudly by the leader's head, and two younger boys ride in the
vehicle. They pass under the great elms; now the sunshine and now the
shadow falls upon them; the horses move with measured step and without
haste, and both horses and human folks are content in themselves.

As you sit in summer on the beach and gaze afar over the blue waters
scarcely flecked with foam, how slowly the distant ship moves along the
horizon. It is almost, but not quite, still. You go to lunch and return,
and the vessel is still there; what patience the man at the wheel must
have. So, now, resting here on the stile, see the plough yonder,
travelling as it were with all sails set.

Three shapely horses in line draw the share. The traces are taut, the
swing-tree like a yard braced square, the helmsman at the tiller bears
hard upon the stilts. But does it move? The leading horse, seen distinct
against the sky, lifts a hoof and places it down again, stepping in the
last furrow made. But then there is a perceptible pause before the next
hoof rises, and yet again a perceptible delay in the pull of the
muscles. The stooping ploughman walking in the new furrow, with one foot
often on the level and the other in the hollow, sways a little with the
lurch of his implement, but barely drifts ahead.

While watched they scarcely move; but now look away for a time and on
returning the plough itself and the lower limbs of the ploughman and
the horses are out of sight. They have gone over a slope, and are "hull
down"; a few minutes more, and they disappear behind the ridge. Look
away again and read or dream, as you would on the beach, and then, see,
the head and shoulders of the leading horse are up, and by-and-by the
plough rises, as they come back on the opposite tack. Thus the long
hours slowly pass.

Intent day after day upon the earth beneath his feet or upon the tree in
the hedge yonder, by which, as by a lighthouse, he strikes out a
straight furrow, his mind absorbs the spirit of the land. When the
plough pauses, as he takes out his bread and cheese in the corner of the
field for luncheon, he looks over the low cropped hedge and sees far off
the glitter of the sunshine on the glass roof of the Crystal Palace. The
light plays and dances on it, flickering as on rippling water. But,
though hard by, he is not of London. The horses go on again, and his
gaze is bent down upon the furrow.

A mile or so up the road there is a place where it widens, and broad
strips of sward run parallel on both sides. Beside the path, but just
off it, so as to be no obstruction, an aged man stands watching his
sheep. He has stood there so long that at last the restless sheep dog
has settled down on the grass. He wears a white smock-frock, and leans
heavily on his long staff, which he holds with both hands, propping his
chest upon it. His face is set in a frame of white--white hair, white
whiskers, short white beard. It is much wrinkled with years; but still
has a hale and hearty hue.

The sheep are only on their way from one part of the farm to another,
perhaps half a mile; but they have already been an hour, and will
probably occupy another in getting there. Some are feeding steadily;
some are in a gateway, doing nothing, like their pastor; if they were
on the loneliest slope of the Downs he and they could not be more
unconcerned. Carriages go past, and neither the sheep nor the shepherd
turn to look.

Suddenly there comes a hollow booming sound--a roar, mellowed and
subdued by distance, with a peculiar beat upon the ear, as if a wave
struck the nerve and rebounded and struck again in an infinitesimal
fraction of time--such a sound as can only bellow from the mouth of
cannon. Another and another. The big guns at Woolwich are at work. The
shepherd takes no heed--neither he nor his sheep.

His ears must acknowledge the sound, but his mind pays no attention. He
knows of nothing but his sheep. You may brush by him along the footpath
and it is doubtful if he sees you. But stay and speak about the sheep,
and instantly he looks you in the face and answers with interest.

Round the corner of the straw-rick by the red-roofed barn there comes
another man, this time with smoke-blackened face, and bringing with him
an odour of cotton waste and oil. He is the driver of a steam ploughing
engine, whose broad wheels in summer leave their impression in the deep
white dust of the roads, and in moist weather sink into the soil at the
gateways and leave their mark as perfect as in wax. But though familiar
with valves, and tubes, and gauges, spending his hours polishing brass
and steel, and sometimes busy with spanner and hammer, his talk, too, is
of the fields.

He looks at the clouds, and hopes it will continue fine enough to work.
Like many others of the men who are employed on the farms about town he
came originally from a little village a hundred miles away, in the heart
of the country. The stamp of the land is on him, too.

Besides the Irish, who pass in gangs and generally have a settled
destination, many agricultural folk drift along the roads and lanes
searching for work. They are sometimes alone, or in couples, or they are
a man and his wife, and carry hoes. You can tell them as far as you can
see them, for they stop and look over every gateway to note how the crop
is progressing, and whether any labour is required.

On Saturday afternoons, among the crowd of customers at the shops in the
towns, under the very shadow of the almost palatial villas of wealthy
"City" men, there may be seen women whose dress and talk at once mark
them out as agricultural. They have come in on foot from distant farms
for a supply of goods, and will return heavily laden. No town-bred
woman, however poor, would dress so plainly as these cottage matrons.
Their daughters who go with them have caught the finery of the town, and
they do not mean to stay in the cottage.

There is a bleak arable field, on somewhat elevated ground, not very far
from the same old barn. In the corner of this field for the last two or
three years a great pit of roots has been made: that is, the roots are
piled together and covered with straw and earth. When this mound is
opened in the early spring a stout, elderly woman takes her seat beside
it, billhook in hand, and there she sits the day through trimming the
roots one by one, and casting those that she has prepared aside ready to
be carted away to the cattle.

A hurdle or two propped up with stakes, and against which some of the
straw from a mound has been thrown, keeps off some of the wind. But the
easterly breezes sweeping over the bare upland must rush round and over
that slight bulwark with force but little broken. Holding the root in
the left hand, she turns it round and slashes off the projections with
quick blows, which seem to only just miss her fingers, laughing and
talking the while with two children who have brought her some
refreshment, and who roll and tumble and play about her. The scene might
be bodily removed and set down a hundred miles away, in the midst of a
western county, and would there be perfectly at one with the
surroundings.

Here, as she sits and chops, the east wind brings the boom of trains
continually rolling over an iron bridge to and from the metropolis. She
was there two successive seasons to my knowledge; she, too, had the
stamp of the land upon her.

The broad sward where the white-haired shepherd so often stands watching
his sheep feeding along to this field, is decked in summer with many
flowers. By the hedge the agrimony frequently lifts its long stem,
surrounded with small yellow petals. One day towards autumn I noticed a
man looking along a hedge, and found that he was gathering this plant.
He had a small armful of the straggling stalks, from which the flowers
were then fading. The herb had once a medicinal reputation, and, curious
to know if it was still remembered, I asked him the name of the herb and
what it was for. He replied that it was agrimony. "We makes tea of it,
and it is good for the flesh," or, as he pronounced it, "fleysh."




WHEATFIELDS


The cornfields immediately without London on the southern side are among
the first to be reaped. Regular as if clipped to a certain height, the
level wheat shows the slope of the ground, corresponding to it, so that
the glance travels swiftly and unchecked across the fields. They scarce
seemed divided, for the yellow ears on either side rise as high as the
cropped hedge between.

Red spots, like larger poppies, now appear above and now dive down again
beneath the golden surface. These are the red caps worn by some of the
reapers; some of the girls, too, have a red scarf across the shoulder or
round the waist. By instinctive sympathy the heat of summer requires the
contrast of brilliant hues, of scarlet and gold, of poppy and wheat.

A girl, as she rises from her stooping position, turns a face, brown, as
if stained with walnut juice, towards me, the plain gold ring in her
brown ear gleams, so, too, the rings on her finger, nearly black from
the sun, but her dark eyes scarcely pause a second on a stranger. She is
too busy, her tanned fingers are at work again gathering up the cut
wheat. This is no gentle labour, but "hard hand-play," like that in the
battle of the olden time sung by the Saxon poet.

The ceaseless stroke of the reaping-hook falls on the ranks of the corn:
the corn yields, but only inch by inch. If the burning sun, or thirst,
or weariness forces the reaper to rest, the fight too stays, the ranks
do not retreat, and victory is only won by countless blows. The boom of
a bridge as a train rolls over the iron girders resounds, and the brazen
dome on the locomotive is visible for a moment as it passes across the
valley. But no one heeds it--the train goes on its way to the great
city, the reapers abide by their labour. Men and women, lads and girls,
some mere children, judged by their stature, are plunged as it were in
the wheat.

The few that wear bright colours are seen: the many who do not are
unnoticed. Perhaps the dusky girl here with the red scarf may have some
strain of the gipsy, some far-off reminiscence of the sunlit East which
caused her to wind it about her. The sheaf grows under her fingers, it
is bound about with a girdle of twisted stalks, in which mingle the
green bine of convolvulus and the pink-streaked bells that must fade.

Heat comes down from above; heat comes up from beneath, from the dry,
white earth, from the rows of stubble, as if emitted by the endless
tubes of cut stalks pointing upwards. Wheat is a plant of the sun: it
loves the heat, and heat crackles in the rustle of the straw. The
pimpernels above which the hook passed are wide open: the larger white
convolvulus trumpets droop languidly on the low hedge: the distant hills
are dim with the vapour of heat; the very clouds which stay motionless
in the sky reflect a yet more brilliant light from their white edges. Is
there no shadow?

There is no tree in the field, and the low hedge can shelter nothing;
but bordering the next, on rather higher ground, is an ash copse, with
some few spruce firs. Resting on a rail in the shadow of these firs, a
light air now and again draws along beside the nut-tree bushes of the
hedge, the cooler atmosphere of the shadow, perhaps causes it. Faint as
it is, it sways the heavy laden brome grass, but is not strong enough to
lift a ball of thistledown from the bennets among which it is entangled.

How swiftly the much-desired summer comes upon us! Even with the reapers
at work before one it is difficult to realise that it has not only come,
but will soon be passing away. Sweet summer is but just long enough for
the happy loves of the larks. It seems but yesterday, it is really more
than five months since, that, leaning against the gate there, I watched
a lark and his affianced on the ground among the grey stubble of last
year still standing.

His crest was high and his form upright, he ran a little way and then
sang, went on again and sang again to his love, moving parallel with
him. Then passing from the old dead stubble to fresh-turned furrows,
still they went side by side, now down in the valley between the clods,
now mounting the ridges, but always together, always with song and joy,
till I lost them across the brown earth. But even then from time to time
came the sweet voice, full of hope in coming summer.

The day declined, and from the clear, cold sky of March the moon looked
down, gleaming on the smooth planed furrow which the plough had passed.
Scarce had she faded in the dawn ere the lark sang again, high in the
morning sky. The evenings became dark; still he rose above the shadows
and the dusky earth, and his song fell from the bosom of the night. With
full untiring choir the joyous host heralded the birth of the corn; the
slender forceless seed-leaves which came gently up till they had risen
above the proud crests of the lovers.

Time advanced and the bare mounds about the field, carefully cleaned by
the husbandman, were covered again with wild herbs and plants, like a
fringe to a garment of pure green. Parsley and "gix," and clogweed, and
sauce-alone, whose white flowers smell of garlic if crushed in the
fingers, came up along the hedge; by the gateway from the bare trodden
earth appeared the shepherd's purse; small must be the coin to go in its
seed capsule, and therefore it was so called with grim and truthful
humour, for the shepherd, hard as is his work, facing wind and weather,
carries home but little money.

Yellow charlock shot up faster and shone bright above the corn; the oaks
showered down their green flowers like moss upon the ground; the
tree-pipits sang on the branches and descending to the wheat. The rusty
chain-harrow, lying inside the gate, all tangled together, was concealed
with grasses. Yonder the magpies fluttered over the beans among which
they are always searching in spring; blackbirds, too, are fond of a
beanfield.

Time advanced again, and afar on the slope bright yellow mustard
flowered, a hill of yellow behind the elms. The luxuriant purple of
trifolium, acres of rich colour, glowed in the sunlight. There was a
scent of flowering beans, the vetches were in flower, and the peas which
clung together for support--the stalk of the pea goes through the leaf
as a painter thrusts his thumb through his palette. Under the edge of
the footpath through the wheat a wild pansy blooms.

Standing in the gateway beneath the shelter of the elms as the clouds
come over, it is pleasant to hear the cool refreshing rain come softly
down; the green wheat drinks it as it falls, so that hardly a drop
reaches the ground, and to-morrow it will be as dry as ever.
Wood-pigeons call from the hedges, and blackbirds whistle in the trees;
the sweet delicious rain refreshes them as it does the corn.

Thunder mutters in the distance, and the electric atmosphere rapidly
draws the wheat up higher. A few days' sunshine and the first wheatear
appears. Very likely there are others near, but standing with their hood
of green leaf towards you, and therefore hidden. As the wheat comes into
ear it is garlanded about with hedges in full flower.

It is midsummer, and midsummer, like a bride, is decked in white. On the
high-reaching briars white June roses; white flowers on the lowly
brambles; broad white umbels of elder in the corner, and white cornels
blooming under the elm; honeysuckle hanging creamy white coronals round
the ash boughs; white meadow-sweet flowering on the shore of the ditch;
white clover, too, beside the gateway. As spring is azure and purple, so
midsummer is white, and autumn golden. Thus the coming out of the wheat
into ear is marked and welcomed with the purest colour.

But these, though the most prominent along the hedge, are not the only
flowers; the prevalent white is embroidered with other hues. The brown
feathers of a few reeds growing where the furrows empty the showers into
the ditch, wave above the corn. Among the leaves of mallow its mauve
petals are sheltered from the sun. On slender stalks the yellow
vetchling blooms, reaching ambitiously as tall as the lowest of the
brambles. Bird's-foot lotus, with red claws, is overtopped by the
grasses.

The elm has a fresh green--it has put forth its second or midsummer
shoot; the young leaves of the aspen are white, and the tree as the wind
touches it seems to turn grey. The furrows run to the ditch under the
reeds, the ditch declines to a little streamlet which winds all hidden
by willowherb and rush and flag, a mere trickle of water under
brooklime, away at the feet of the corn. In the shadow, deep down
beneath the crumbling bank which is only held up by the roots of the
grasses, is a forget-me-not with a tiny circlet of yellow in the centre
of its petals.

The coming of the ears of wheat forms an era and a date, a fixed point
in the story of the summer. It is then that, soon after dawn, the clear
sky assumes the delicate and yet luscious purple which seems to shine
through the usual atmosphere, as if its former blue became translucent
and an inner and ethereal light of colour was shown. As the sun rises
higher the brilliance of his rays overpowers it, and even at midsummer
it is but rarely seen.

The morning sky is often, too, charged with saffron, or the blue is
clear, but pale, and the sunrise might be watched for many mornings
without the appearance of this exquisite hue. Once seen, it will ever be
remembered. Upon the Downs in early autumn, as the vapours clear away,
the same colour occasionally gleams from the narrow openings of blue
sky. But at midsummer, above the opening wheatears, the heaven from the
east to the zenith is flushed with it.

At noonday, as the light breeze comes over, the wheat rustles the more
because the stalks are stiffening and swing from side to side from the
root instead of yielding up the stem. Stay now at every gateway and lean
over while the midsummer hum sounds above. It is a peculiar sound, not
like the querulous buzz of the honey, nor the drone of the humble bee,
but a sharp ringing resonance like that of a tuning-fork. Sometimes, in
the far-away country where it is often much louder, the folk think it
has a threatening note.

Here the barley has taken a different tint now the beard is out; here
the oats are straggling forth from their sheath; here a pungent odour of
mustard in flower comes on the air; there a poppy faints with broad
petals flung back and drooping, unable to uphold its gorgeous robes.
The flower of the field pea, here again, would make a model for a lady's
hat; so would a butterfly with closed wings on the verge of a leaf; so
would the broom blossom, or the pink flower of the restharrow. This
hairy caterpillar, creeping along the hawthorn, which if touched,
immediately coils itself in a ring, very recently was thought a charm in
distant country places for some diseases of childhood, if hung about the
neck. Hedge mustard, yellow and ragged and dusty, stands by the gateway.

In the evening, as the dew gathers on the grass, which feels cooler to
the hand some time before an actual deposit, the clover and vetches
close their leaves--the signal the hares have been waiting for to
venture from the sides of the fields where they have been cautiously
roaming, and take bolder strolls across the open and along the lanes.
The aspens rustle louder in the stillness of the evening; their leaves
not only sway to and fro, but semi-rotate upon the stalks, which causes
their scintillating appearance. The stars presently shine from the pale
blue sky, and the wheat shimmers dimly white beneath them.

So time advances till to-day, watching the reapers from the shadow of
the copse, it seems as if within that golden expanse there must be
something hidden, could you but rush in quickly and seize it--some
treasure of the sunshine; and there _is_ a treasure, the treasure of
life stored in those little grains, the slow product of the sun. But it
cannot be grasped in an impatient moment--it must be gathered with
labour. I have threshed out in my hand three ears of the ripe wheat: how
many foot-pounds of human energy do these few light grains represent?

The roof of the Crystal Palace yonder gleams and sparkles this
afternoon as if it really were crystal under the bright rays. But it was
concealed by mist when the ploughs in the months gone by were guided in
these furrows by men, hard of feature and of hand, stooping to their
toil. The piercing east wind scattered the dust in clouds, looking at a
distance like small rain across the field, when grey-coated men, grey
too of beard, followed the red drill to and fro.

How many times the horses stayed in this sheltered corner while the
ploughmen and their lads ate their crusts! How many times the farmer and
the bailiff, with hands behind their backs, considering, walked along
the hedge taking counsel of the earth if they had done right! How many
times hard gold and silver was paid over at the farmer's door for labour
while yet the plant was green; how many considering cups of ale were
emptied in planning out the future harvest!

Now it is come, and still more labour--look at the reapers yonder--and
after that more time and more labour before the sacks go to the market.
Hard toil and hard fare: the bread which the reapers have brought with
them for their luncheon is hard and dry, the heat has dried it like a
chip. In the corner of the field the women have gathered some sticks and
lit a fire--the flame is scarce seen in the sunlight, and the sticks
seem eaten away as they burn by some invisible power. They are boiling a
kettle, and their bread, too, which they will soak in the tea, is dry
and chip-like. Aside, on the ground by the hedge, is a handkerchief tied
at the corners, with a few mushrooms in it.

The scented clover field--the white campions dot it here and
there--yields a rich, nectareous food for ten thousand bees, whose hum
comes together with its odour on the air. But these men and women and
children ceaselessly toiling know no such sweets; their food is as hard
as their labour. How many foot-pounds, then, of human energy do these
grains in my hand represent? Do they not in their little compass contain
the potentialities, the past and the future, of human life itself?

Another train booms across the iron bridge in the hollow. In a few hours
now the carriages will be crowded with men hastening home from their
toil in the City. The narrow streak of sunshine which day by day falls
for a little while upon the office floor, yellowed by the dingy pane, is
all, perhaps, to remind them of the sun and sky, of the forces of
nature; and that little is unnoticed. The pressure of business is so
severe in these later days that in the hurry and excitement it is not
wonderful many should forget that the world is not comprised in the
court of a City thoroughfare.

Rapt and absorbed in discount and dollars, in bills and merchandise, the
over-strung mind deems itself all--the body is forgotten, the physical
body, which is subject to growth and change, just as the plants and the
very grass of the field. But there is a subtle connection between the
physical man and the great nature which comes pressing up so closely to
the metropolis. He still depends in the nineteenth century, as in the
dim ages before the Pyramids, upon this tiny yellow grain here, rubbed
out from the ear of wheat. The clever mechanism of the locomotive which
bears him to and fro, week after week and month after month, from home
to office and from office home, has not rendered him in the least degree
independent of this.

But it is no wonder that these things are forgotten in the daily
struggle of London. And if the merchant spares an abstracted glance from
the morning or evening newspaper out upon the fields from the carriage
window, the furrows of the field can have but little meaning. Each
looks to him exactly alike. To the farmers and the labourer such and
such a furrow marks an acre and has its bearing, but to the passing
glance it is not so. The work in the field is so slow; the passenger by
rail sees, as it seems to him, nothing going on; the corn may sow itself
almost for all that is noteworthy in apparent labour.

Thus it happens that, although the cornfields and the meadows come so
closely up to the offices and warehouses of mighty London, there is a
line and mark in the minds of men between them; the man of merchandise
does not see what the man of the fields sees, though both may pass the
same acres every morning. It is inevitable that it should be so. It is
easy in London to forget that it is midsummer, till, going some day into
Covent Garden Market, you see baskets of the cornflower, or blue-bottle
as it is called in the country, ticketed "Corinne," and offered for
sale. The lovely azure of the flower recalls the scene where it was
first gathered long since at the edge of the wheat.

By the copse here now the teazles lift their spiny heads high in the
hedge, the young nuts are browning, the wild mints flowering on the
shores of the ditch, and the reapers are cutting ceaselessly at the ripe
corn. The larks have brought their loves to a happy conclusion. Besides
them the wheat in its day has sheltered many other creatures--both
animals and birds.

Hares raced about it in the spring, and even in the May sunshine might
be seen rambling over the slopes. As it grew higher it hid the leverets
and the partridge chicks. Toll has been taken by rook, and sparrow, and
pigeon. Enemies, too, have assailed it; the daring couch invaded it, the
bindweed climbed up the stalk, the storm rushed along and beat it down.
Yet it triumphed, and to-day the full sheaves lean against each other.




THE CROWS


On one side of the road immediately after quitting the suburb there is a
small cover of furze. The spines are now somewhat browned by the summer
heats, and the fern which grows about every bush trembles on the balance
of colour between green and yellow. Soon, too, the tall wiry grass will
take a warm brown tint, which gradually pales as the autumn passes into
winter, and finally bleaches to greyish white.

Looking into the furze from the footpath, there are purple traces here
and there at the edge of the fern where the heath-bells hang. On a furze
branch, which projects above the rest, a furze chat perches, with yellow
blossom above and beneath him. Rushes mark the margin of small pools and
marshy spots, so overhung with brambles and birch branches, and so
closely surrounded by gorse, that they would not otherwise be noticed.

But the thick growth of rushes intimates that water is near, and upon
parting the bushes a little may be seen, all that has escaped
evaporation in the shade. From one of these marshy spots I once--and
once only--observed a snipe rise, and after wheeling round return and
settle by another. As the wiry grass becomes paler with the fall of the
year, the rushes, on the contrary, from green become faintly yellow, and
presently brownish. Grey grass and brown rushes, dark furze, and fern,
almost copper in hue from frost, when lit up by a gleam of winter
sunshine form a pleasant breadth of warm colour in the midst of bare
fields.

After continuous showers in spring, lizards are often found in the
adjacent gardens, their dark backs as they crawl over the patches being
almost exactly the tint of the moist earth. If touched, the tail is
immediately coiled, the body stiffens, and the creature appears dead.
They are popularly supposed to come from the furze, which is also
believed to shelter adders.

There is, indeed, scarcely a cover in Surrey and Kent which is not said
to have its adders; the gardeners employed at villas close to the
metropolis occasionally raise an alarm, and profess to have seen a viper
in the shrubberies, or the ivy, or under an old piece of bast. Since so
few can distinguish at a glance between the common snake and the adder
it is as well not to press too closely upon any reptile that may chance
to be heard rustling in the grass, and to strike tussocks with the
walking-stick before sitting down to rest, for the adder is only
dangerous when unexpectedly encountered.

In the roadside ditch by the furze the figwort grows, easily known by
its coarse square stem; and the woody bines, if so they may be called,
or stalks of bitter-sweet, remain all the winter standing in the
hawthorn hedge. The first frosts, on the other hand, shrivel the bines
of white bryony, which part and hang separated, and in the spring a
fresh bine pushes up with greyish green leaves and tendrils feeling for
support. It is often observed that the tendrils of this bryony coil both
ways, with and against the sun.

But it must be remembered in looking for this that it is the same
tendril which should be examined, and not two different ones. It will
then be seen that the tendril, after forming a spiral one way, lengthens
out like a tiny green wax taper, and afterwards turns the other.
Sometimes it resumes the original turn before reaching a branch to cling
to, and may thus be said to have revolved in three directions. The dusty
celandine grows under the bushes; and its light green leaves seem to
retain the white dust from the road. Ground ivy creeps everywhere over
the banks, and covers the barest spot. In April its flowers, though much
concealed by leaves, dot the sides of the ditches with colour, like the
purple tint that lurks in the amethyst.

A small black patch marks the site of one of those gorse fires which are
so common in Surrey. This was extinguished before it could spread beyond
a few bushes. The crooked stems remain black as charcoal, too much burnt
to recover, and in the centre a young birch scorched by the flames
stands leafless. This barren birch, bare of foliage and apparently
unattractive, is the favourite resort of yellow-hammers. Perching on a
branch towards evening a yellow-hammer will often sit and sing by the
hour together, as if preferring to be clear of leafy sprays.

The somewhat dingy hue of many trees as the summer begins to wane is
caused not only by the fading of the green, but by the appearance of
spots upon the leaves, as may be seen on those birches which grow among
the furze. But in spring and early summer their fresh light green
contrasts with masses of bright yellow gorse bloom. Just before
then--just as the first leaves are opening--the chiffchaffs come.

The first spring I had any knowledge of this spot was mild, and had been
preceded by mild seasons. The chiffchaffs arrived all at once, as it
seemed, in a bevy, and took possession of every birch about the furze,
calling incessantly with might and main. The willow-wrens were nearly
as numerous. All the gorse seemed full of them for a few days. Then by
degrees they gradually spread abroad, and dispersed among the hedges.

But in the following springs nothing of the kind occurred. Chiffchaff
and willow-wren came as usual, but they did not arrive in a crowd at
once. This may have been owing to the flight going elsewhere, or
possibly the flock were diminished by failure to rear the young broods
in so drenching a season as 1879, which would explain the difference
observed next spring. There was no scarcity, but there was a lack of the
bustle and excitement and flood of song that accompanied their advent
two years before.

Upon a piece of waste land at the corner of the furze a very large
cinder and dust heap was made by carting refuse there from the
neighbouring suburb. During the sharp and continued frosts of the winter
this dust-heap was the resort of almost every species of bird--sparrows,
starlings, greenfinches, and rooks searching for any stray morsels of
food. Some birdcatchers soon noticed this concourse, and spread their
nets among the adjacent rushes, but fortunately with little success.

I say fortunately, not because I fear the extinction of small birds, but
because of the miserable fate that awaits the captive. Far better for
the frightened little creature to have its neck at once twisted and to
die than to languish in cages hardly large enough for it to turn in
behind the dirty panes of the windows in the Seven Dials.

The happy greenfinch--I use the term of forethought, for the greenfinch
seems one of the very happiest of birds in the hedges--accustomed during
all its brief existence to wander in company with friends from bush to
bush, and tree to tree, must literally pine its heart out. Or it may be
streaked with bright paint and passed on some unwary person for a Java
sparrow or a "blood-heart."

The little boy who dares to take a bird's nest is occasionally fined and
severely reproved. The ruffian-like crew who go forth into the pastures
and lanes about London, snaring and netting full-grown birds by the
score, are permitted to ply their trade unchecked. I mean to say that
there is no comparison between the two things. An egg has not yet
advanced to consciousness or feeling: the old birds, if their nest is
taken, frequently build another. The lad has to hunt for the nest, to
climb for it or push through thorns, and may be pricked by brambles and
stung by nettles. In a degree there is something to him approaching to
sport in nesting.

But these birdcatchers simply stand by the ditch with their hands in
their pockets sucking a stale pipe. They would rather lounge there in
the bitterest north-east wind that ever blew than do a single hour's
honest work. Blackguard is written in their faces. The poacher needs
some courage, at least; he knows a penalty awaits detection. These
fellows have no idea of sport, no courage, and no skill, for their
tricks are simplicity itself, nor have they the pretence of utility, for
they do not catch birds for the good of the farmers or the market
gardeners, but merely that they may booze without working for the means.

Pity it is that any one can be found to purchase the product of their
brutality. No one would do so could they but realise the difference to
the captive upon which they are lavishing their mistaken love, between
the cage, the alternately hot and cold room (as the fire goes out at
night), the close atmosphere and fumes that lurk near the ceiling, and
the open air and freedom to which it was born.

The rooks only came to the dust-heap in hard weather, and ceased to
visit it so soon as the ground relaxed and the ploughs began to move.
But a couple of crows looked over the refuse once during the day for
months till men came to sift the cinders. These crows are permanent
residents. Their rendezvous is a copse, only separate from the furze by
the highway.

They are always somewhere near, now in the ploughed fields, now in the
furze, and during the severe frost of last winter in the road itself, so
sharply driven by hunger as to rise very unwillingly on the approach of
passengers. A meadow opposite the copse is one of their favourite
resorts. There are anthills, rushes, and other indications of not too
rich a soil in this meadow, and in places the prickly restharrow grows
among the grass, bearing its pink flower in summer. Perhaps the coarse
grass and poor soil are productive of grubs and insects, for not only
the crows, but the rooks, continually visit it.

One spring, hearing a loud chattering in the copse, and recognising the
alarm notes of the missel-thrush, I cautiously crept up the hedge, and
presently found three crows up in a birch tree, just above where the
thrushes were calling. The third crow--probably a descendant of the
other two--had joined in a raid upon the missel-thrushes' brood. Both
defenders and assailants were in a high state of excitement; the
thrushes screeching, and the crows in a row one above the other on a
branch, moving up and down it in a restless manner. I fear they had
succeeded in their purpose, for no trace of the young birds was visible.

The nest of the missel-thrush is so frequently singled out for attack by
crows that it would seem the young birds must possess a peculiar and
attractive flavour; or is it because they are large? There are more
crows round London than in a whole county, where the absence of
manufactures and the rural quiet would seem favourable to bird life.
The reason, of course, is that in the country the crows frequenting
woods are shot and kept down as much as possible by gamekeepers.

In the immediate environs of London keepers are not about, and even a
little farther away the land is held by many small owners, and game
preservation is not thought of. The numerous pieces of waste ground, "to
let on building lease," the excavated ground, where rubbish can be
thrown, the refuse and ash heaps--these are the haunts of the London
crow. Suburban railway stations are often haunted by crows, which perch
on the telegraph wires close to the back windows of the houses that abut
upon the metals. There they sit, grave and undisturbed by the noisy
engines which pass beneath them.

In the shrubberies around villa gardens, or in the hedges of the small
paddocks attached, thrushes and other birds sometimes build their nests.
The children of the household watch the progress of the nest, and note
the appearance of the eggs with delight. Their friends of larger growth
visit the spot occasionally, and orders are given that the birds shall
be protected, the gardeners become gamekeepers, and the lawn or
shrubbery is guarded like a preserve. Everything goes well till the
young birds are almost ready to quit the nest, when one morning they are
missing.

The theft is, perhaps, attributed to the boys of the neighbourhood, but
unjustly, unless plain traces of entry are visible. It is either cats or
crows. The cats cannot be kept out, not even by a dog, for they watch
till his attention is otherwise engaged. Food is not so much the object
as the pleasure of destruction, for cats will kill and yet not eat their
victim. The crow may not have been seen in the garden, and it may be
said that he could not have known of the nest without looking round the
place. But the crow is a keen observer, and has not the least necessity
to search for the nest.

He merely keeps a watch on the motions of the old birds of the place,
and knows at once by their flight being so continually directed to one
spot that there their treasure lies. He and his companion may come very
early in the morning--summer mornings are bright as noonday long before
the earliest gardener is abroad--or they may come in the dusk of the
evening. Crows are not so particular in retiring regularly to roost as
the rook.

The furze and copse frequented by the pair which I found attacking the
missel-thrushes are situate at the edge of extensive arable fields. In
these, though not overlooked by the gamekeepers, there is a good deal of
game which is preserved by the tenants of the farm. After the bitter
winter and wet summer of 1879, there was a complaint, too well founded,
that the partridges were diminished in numbers. But the crows were not.
There were as many of them as ever. When there were many partridges the
loss of a few eggs or chicks was not so important. But when there are
but few, every egg or chick destroyed retards the re-stocking of the
fields.

The existence of so many crows all round London is, in short, a constant
check upon the game. The belt of land immediately outside the houses,
and lying between them and the plantations which are preserved, is the
crow's reserve, where he hunts in security. He is so safe that he has
almost lost all dread of man, and his motions can be observed without
trouble. The ash-heap at the corner of the furze, besides the crows,
became the resort of rats, whose holes were so thick in the bank as to
form quite a bury. After the rats came the weasels.

When the rats were most numerous, before the ash-heap was sifted, there
was a weasel there nearly every day, slipping in and out of their holes.
In the depth of the country an observer might walk some considerable
distance and wait about for hours without seeing a weasel; but here by
the side of a busy suburban road there were plenty. Professional
ratcatchers ferreted the bank once or twice, and filled their iron
cages. With these the dogs kept by dog-fanciers in the adjacent suburb
were practised in destroying vermin at so much a rat. Though ferreted
and hunted down by the weasels the rats were not rooted out, but
remained till the ash-heap was sifted and no fresh refuse deposited.

In one place among the gorse, the willows, birches, and thorn bushes
make a thick covert, which is adjacent to several of the hidden pools
previously mentioned. Here a brook-sparrow or sedge-reedling takes up
his quarters in the spring, and chatters on, day and night, through the
summer. Visitors to the opera and playgoers returning in the first hours
of the morning from Covent Garden or Drury Lane can scarcely fail to
hear him if they pause but one moment to listen to the nightingale.

The latter sings in one bush and the sedge-reedling in another close
together. The moment the nightingale ceases the sedge-reedling lifts his
voice, which is a very penetrating one, and in the silence of the night
may be heard some distance. This bird is credited with imitating the
notes of several others, and has been called the English mocking-bird,
but I strongly doubt the imitation. Nor, indeed, could I ever trace the
supposed resemblance of its song to that of other birds.

It is a song of a particularly monotonous character. It is
distinguishable immediately, and if the bird happens to nest near a
house, is often disliked on account of the loud iteration. Perhaps those
who first gave it the name of the mocking-bird were not well acquainted
with the notes of the birds which they fancied it to mock. To mistake it
for the nightingale, some of whose tones it is said to imitate, would be
like confounding the clash of cymbals with the soft sound of a flute.

Linnets come to the furze, and occasionally magpies, but these latter
only in winter. Then, too, golden-crested wrens may be seen searching in
the furze bushes, and creeping round and about the thorns and brambles.
There is a roadside pond close to the furze, the delight of horses and
cattle driven along the dusty way in summer. Along the shelving sandy
shore the wagtails run, both the pied and the yellow, but few birds come
here to wash; for that purpose they prefer a running stream if it be
accessible.

Upon the willow trees which border it, a reed-sparrow or blackheaded
bunting may often be observed. One bright March morning, as I came up
the road, just as the surface of the pond became visible it presented a
scene of dazzling beauty. At that distance only the tops of the ripples
were seen, reflecting the light at a very low angle. The result was that
the eye saw nothing of the water or the wavelet, but caught only the
brilliant glow. Instead of a succession of sparkles there seemed to be a
golden liquid floating on the surface as oil floats--a golden liquid two
or three inches thick, which flowed before the wind.

Besides this surface of molten gold there was a sheen and flicker above
it, as if a spray or vapour, carried along, or the crests of the
wavelets blown over, was also of gold. But the metal conveys no idea of
the glowing, lustrous light which filled the hollow by the dusty road.
It was visible from one spot only, a few steps altering the angle
lessened the glory, and as the pond itself came into view there was
nothing but a ripple on water somewhat thick with suspended sand. Thus
things change their appearance as they are looked at in different ways.

A patch of water crowsfoot grows on the farthest side of the pond, and
in early summer sends up lovely white flowers.




HEATHLANDS


Sandown has become one of the most familiar places near the metropolis,
but the fir woods at the back of it are perhaps scarcely known to exist
by many who visit the fashionable knoll. Though near at hand, they are
shut off by the village of Esher; but a mile or two westwards, down the
Portsmouth highway, there is a cart road on the left hand which enters
at once into the woods.

The fine white sand of the soil is only covered by a thin coating of
earth formed from the falling leaves and decayed branches, so thin that
it may sometimes be rubbed away by the foot or even the fingers. Grass
and moss grow sparingly in the track, but wherever wheels or footsteps
have passed at all frequently the sand is exposed in white streaks under
the shadowy firs. In grass small objects often escape observation, but
on such a bare surface everything becomes visible. Coming to one of
these places on a summer day, I saw a stream of insects crossing and
recrossing, from the fern upon one side to the fern upon the other.

They were ants, but of a very much larger species than the little
red-and-black "emmets" which exist in the meadows. These horse ants were
not much less than half an inch in length, with a round spot at each
end like beads, or the black top of long pins. The length of their legs
enabled them to move much quicker, and they raced to and fro over the
path with great rapidity. The space covered by the stream was a foot or
more broad, all of which was crowded and darkened by them, and as there
was no cessation in the flow of this multitude, their numbers must have
been immense.

Standing a short way back, so as not to interfere with their
proceedings, I saw two of these insects seize hold of a twig, one at
each end. The twig, which was dead and dry, and had dropped from a fir,
was not quite so long as a match, but rather thicker. They lifted this
stick with ease, and carried it along, exactly as labourers carry a
plank. A few short blades of grass being in the way they ran up against
them, but stepped aside, and so got by. A cart which had passed a long
while since had forced down the sand by the weight of its load, leaving
a ridge about three inches high, the side being perpendicular.

Till they came to this cliff the two ants moved parallel, but here one
of them went first, and climbed up the bank with its end of the stick,
after which the second followed and brought up the other. An inch or two
farther, on the level ground, the second ant left hold and went away,
and the first laboured on with the twig and dragged it unaided across
the rest of the path. Though many other ants stayed and looked at the
twig a moment, none of them now offered assistance, as if the chief
obstacle had been surmounted.

Several other ants passed, each carrying the slender needles which fall
from firs, and which seemed nothing in their powerful grasp. These
burdens of wood all went in one direction, to the right of the path.

I took a step there, but stayed to watch two more ants, who had got a
long scarlet fly between them, one holding it by the head and the other
by the tail. They were hurrying their prey over the dead leaves and
decayed sticks which strewed the ground, and dragging it mercilessly
through moss and grass. I put the tip of my stick on the victim, but
instead of abandoning it they tugged and pulled desperately, as if they
would have torn it to pieces rather than have yielded. So soon as I
released it away they went through the fragments of branches, rushing
the quicker for the delay.

A little farther there was a spot where the ground for a yard or two was
covered with small dead brown leaves, last year's, apparently of birch,
for some young birch saplings grew close by. One of these leaves
suddenly rose up and began to move of itself, as it seemed; an ant had
seized it, and holding it by the edge travelled on, so that as the
insect was partly hidden under it, the leaf appeared to move alone, now
over sticks and now under them. It reminded me of the sight which seemed
so wonderful to the early navigators when they came to a country where,
as they first thought, the leaves were alive and walked about.

The ant with the leaf went towards a large heap of rubbish under the
sapling birches. While watching the innumerable multitude of these
insects, whose road here crossed these dead dry leaves, I became
conscious of a rustling sound, which at first I attributed to the wind,
but seeing that the fern was still, and that the green leaves of a
Spanish chestnut opposite did not move, I began to realise that this
creeping, rustling noise, distinctly audible, was not caused by any
wind, but by the thousands upon thousands of insects passing over the
dead leaves and among the grass. Stooping down to listen better, there
could be no doubt of it: it was the tramp of this immense army.

The majority still moved in one direction, and I found it led to the
heap of rubbish over which they swarmed. This heap was exactly what
might have been swept together by half-a-dozen men using long gardeners'
brooms, and industriously clearing the ground under the firs of the
fragments which had fallen from them. It appeared to be entirely
composed of small twigs, fir-needles, dead leaves, and similar things.
The highest part rose about level with my chest--say, between four and
five feet--the heap was irregularly circular, and not less than three or
four yards across, with sides gradually sloping. In the midst stood the
sapling birches, their stumps buried in it, the rubbish having been
piled up around them.

This heap was, in fact, the enormous nest or hill of a colony of horse
ants. The whole of it had been gathered together, leaf by leaf, and twig
by twig, just as I had seen the two insects carrying the little stick,
and the third the brown leaf above itself. It really seemed some way
round the outer circumference of the nest, and while walking round it
was necessary to keep brushing off the ants which dropped on the
shoulder from the branches of the birches. For they were everywhere;
every inch of ground, every bough was covered with them. Even standing
near it was needful to kick the feet continually against the black stump
of a fir which had been felled to jar them off, and this again brought
still more, attracted by the vibration of the ground.

The highest part of the mound was in the shape of a dome, a dome
whitened by layers of fir-needles, which was apparently the most recent
part and the centre of this year's operations. The mass of the heap,
though closely compacted, was fibrous, and a stick could be easily
thrust into it, exposing the eggs. No sooner was such an opening made,
and the stick withdrawn from the gap, than the ants swarmed into it,
falling headlong over upon each other, and filling the bottom with their
struggling bodies. Upon leaving the spot, to follow the footpath, I
stamped my feet to shake down any stray insects, and then took off my
coat and gave it a thorough shaking.

Immense ant-hills are often depicted in the illustrations to tropical
travels, but this great pile, which certainly contained more than a
cartload, was within a few miles of Hyde Park Corner. From nests like
this large quantities of eggs are obtained for feeding the partridges
hatched from the eggs collected by mowers and purchased by keepers. Part
of the nest being laid bare with any tool, the eggs are hastily taken
out in masses and thrown into a sack. Some think that ant's eggs,
although so favourite a food, are not always the most advantageous.
Birds which have been fed freely on these eggs become fastidious, and do
not care for much else, so that if the supply fails they fall off in
condition. If there are sufficient eggs to last the season, then a few
every day produce the best effect; if not they had better not have a
feast followed by a fast.

The sense of having a roof overhead is felt in walking through a forest
of firs like this, because the branches are all at the top of the
trunks. The stems rise to the same height, and then the dark foliage
spreading forms a roof. As they are not very near together the eye can
see some distance between them, and as there is hardly any underwood or
bushes--nothing higher than the fern--there is a space open and unfilled
between the ground and the roof so far above.

A vast hollow extends on every side, nor is it broken by the flitting of
birds or the rush of animals among the fern. The sudden note of a
wood-pigeon, hoarse and deep, calling from a fir-top, sounds still
louder and ruder in the spacious echoing vault beneath, so loud as at
first to resemble the baying of a hound. The call ceases, and another of
these watch-dogs of the woods takes it up afar off.

There is an opening in the monotonous firs by some rising ground, and
the sunshine falls on young Spanish chestnuts and underwood, through
which is a little-used footpath. If firs are planted in wildernesses
with the view of ultimately covering the barren soil with fertile earth,
formed by the decay of vegetable matter, it is, perhaps, open to
discussion as to whether the best tree has been chosen. Under firs the
ground is generally dry, too dry for decay; the resinous emanations
rather tend to preserve anything that falls there.

No underwood or plants and little grass grows under them; these,
therefore, which make soil quickest, are prevented from improving the
earth. The needles of firs lie for months without decay; they are, too,
very slender, and there are few branches to fall. Beneath any other
trees (such as the edible chestnut and birch, which seem to grow here),
there are the autumn leaves to decay, the twigs and branches which fall
off, while grasses and plants flourish, and brambles and underwood grow
freely. The earth remains moist, and all these soon cause an increase of
the fertility; so that, unless fir-tree timber is very valuable, and I
never heard that it was, I would rather plant a waste with any other
tree or brushwood, provided, of course, it would grow.

It is a pleasure to explore this little dell by the side of the rising
ground, creeping under green boughs which brush the shoulders, after the
empty space of the firs. Within there is a pond, where lank horsetails
grow thickly, rising from the water. Returning to the rising ground I
pursue the path, still under the shadow of the firs. There is no end to
them--the vast monotony has no visible limit. The brake fern--it is
early in July--has not yet reached its full height, but what that will
be is shown by these thick stems which rise smooth and straight, fully
three feet to the first frond.

A woodpecker calls, and the gleam of his green and gold is visible for a
moment as he hastens away--the first bird, except the wood-pigeons, seen
for an hour, yet there are miles of firs around. After a time the ground
rises again, the tall firs cease, but are succeeded by younger firs.
These are more pleasant because they do not exclude the sky. The
sunshine lights the path, and the summer blue extends above. The fern,
too, ceases, and the white sand is now concealed by heath, with here and
there a dash of colour. Furze chats call, and flit to and fro; the hum
of bees is heard once more--there was not one under the vacant shadow;
and swallows pass overhead.

At last emerging from the firs the open slope is covered with heath
only, but heath growing so thickly that even the narrow footpaths are
hidden by the overhanging bushes of it. Some small bushes of furze here
and there are dead and dry, but every prickly point appears perfect;
when struck with the walking-stick the bush crumbles to pieces. Beneath
and amid the heath what seems a species of lichen grows so profusely as
to give a grey undertone. In places it supplants the heath, the ground
is concealed by lichen only, which crunches under the foot like
hoar-frost. Each piece is branched not unlike a stag's antlers; gather
a handful and it crumbles to pieces in the fingers, dry and brittle.

A quarry for sand has been dug down some eight or ten feet, so that
standing in it nothing else is visible. This steep scarp shows the
strata, yellow sand streaked with thin brown layers; at the top it is
fringed with heath in full flower, bunches of purple bloom overhanging
the edge, and behind this the azure of the sky.

Here, where the ground slopes gradually, it is entirely covered with the
purple bells; a sheen and gleam of purple light plays upon it. A
fragrance of sweet honey floats up from the flowers where grey hive-bees
are busy. Ascending still higher and crossing the summit, the ground
almost suddenly falls away in a steep descent, and the entire hillside,
seen at a glance, is covered with heath, and heath alone. A bunch at the
very edge offers a purple cushion fit for a king; resting here a
delicious summer breeze, passing over miles and miles of fields and
woods yonder, comes straight from the distant hills. Along those hills
the lines of darker green are woods; there are woods to the south, and
west, and east, heath around, and in the rear the gaze travels over the
tops of the endless firs. But southwards is sweetest; below, beyond the
verge of the heath, the corn begins, and waves in the wind. It is the
breeze that makes the summer day so lovely.

The eggs of the nighthawk are sometimes found at this season near by.
They are laid on the ground, on the barest spots, where there is no
herbage. At dusk, the nighthawk wheels with a soft yet quick flight over
the ferns and about the trees. Along the hedges bounding the heath
butcher-birds watch for their prey--sometimes on the furze, sometimes on
a branch of ash. Wood-sage grows plentifully on the banks by the roads;
it is a plant somewhat resembling a lowly nettle; the leaves have a
hop-like scent, and so bitter and strong is the odour that immediately
after smelling them the mouth for a moment feels dry with a sense of
thirst.

The angle of a field by the woods on the eastern side of the heath, the
entire corner, is blue in July with viper's bugloss. The stalks rise
some two feet, and are covered with minute brown dots; they are rough,
and the lower part prickly. Blue flowers in pairs, with pink stamens and
pink buds, bloom thickly round the top, and as each plant has several
stalks, it is very conspicuous where the grass is short.

There are hundreds of these flowers in this corner, and along the edge
of the wood; a quarter of an acre is blue with them. So indifferent are
people to such things that men working in the same field, and who had
pulled up the plant and described its root as like that of a dock, did
not know its name. Yet they admired it. "It is an innocent-looking
flower," they said, that is, pleasant to look at.

By the roadside I thought I saw something red under the long grass of
the mound, and, parting the blades, found half-a-dozen wild
strawberries. They were larger than usual, and just ripe. The wild
strawberry is a little more acid than the cultivated, and has more
flavour than would be supposed from its small size.

Descending to the lower ground again, the brake fills every space
between the trees; it is so thick and tall that the cows which wander
about, grazing at their will, each wear a bell slung round the neck,
that their position may be discovered by sound. Otherwise it would be
difficult to find them in the fern or among the firs. There are many
swampy places here, which should be avoided by those who dislike snakes.
The common harmless snakes are numerous in this part, and they always
keep near water. They often glide into a mole's "angle," or hole, if
found in the open.

Adders are known to exist in the woods round about, but are never, or
very seldom, seen upon the heath itself. In the woods of the
neighbourhood they are not uncommon, and are sometimes killed for the
sake of the oil. The belief in the virtue of adder's fat, or oil, is
still firm; among other uses it is considered the best thing for
deafness, not, of course, resulting from organic defect. For deafness,
the oil should be applied by pouring a small quantity into the ear,
exactly in the same manner as in the play the poison is poured into the
ear of the sleeping king. Cures are declared to be effected by this oil
at the present day.

It is procured by skinning the adder, taking the fat, and boiling it;
the result is a clear oil, which never thickens in the coldest weather.
One of these reptiles on being killed and cut open was found to contain
the body of a full-grown toad. The old belief that the young of the
viper enters its mouth for refuge still lingers. The existence of adders
in the woods here seems so undoubted that strangers should be a little
careful if they leave the track. Viper's bugloss, which grows so freely
by the heath, was so called because anciently it was thought to yield an
antidote to the adder's venom.




THE RIVER


There is a slight but perceptible colour in the atmosphere of summer. It
is not visible close at hand, nor always where the light falls
strongest, and if looked at too long it sometimes fades away. But over
gorse and heath, in the warm hollows of wheatfield, and round about the
rising ground there is something more than air alone. It is not mist,
nor the hazy vapour of autumn, nor the blue tints that come over the
distant hills and woods.

As there is a bloom upon the peach and grape, so this is the bloom of
summer. The air is ripe and rich, full of the emanations, the perfume,
from corn and flower and leafy tree. In strictness the term will not, of
course, be accurate, yet by what other word can this appearance in the
atmosphere be described but as a bloom? Upon a still and sunlit summer
afternoon it may be seen over the osier-covered islets in the Thames
immediately above Teddington Lock.

It hovers over the level cornfields that stretch towards Richmond, and
along the ridge of the wooded hills that bound them. The bank by the
towing-path is steep and shadowless, being bare of trees or hedge; but
the grass is pleasant to rest on, and heat is always more supportable
near flowing water. In places the friable earth has crumbled away, and
there, where the soil and the stones are exposed, the stonecrop
flourishes. A narrow footpath on the summit, raised high above the
water, skirts the corn, and is overhung with grass heavily laden by its
own seed.

Sometimes in early June the bright trifolium, drooping with its weight
of flower, brushes against the passer-by--acre after acre of purple.
Occasionally the odour of beans in blossom floats out over the river.
Again, above the green wheat the larks rise, singing as they soar; or
later on the butterflies wander over the yellow ears. Or, as the law of
rotation dictates, the barley whitens under the sun. Still, whether in
the dry day, or under the dewy moonlight, the plain stretching from the
water to the hills is never without perfume, colour, or song.

There stood, one summer not long since, in the corner of a barley field
close to the Lock, within a stone's throw, perfect shrubs of mallow,
rising to the shoulder, thick as a walking-stick, and hung with flower.
Poppies filled every interstice between the barley stalks, their scarlet
petals turned back in very languor of exuberant colour, as the awns,
drooping over, caressed them. Poppies, again, in the same fields formed
a scarlet ground from which the golden wheat sprang up, and among it
here and there shone the large blue rays of wild succory.

The paths across the corn having no hedges, the wayfarer really walks
among the wheat, and can pluck with either hand. The ears rise above the
heads of children, who shout with joy as they rush along as though to
the arms of their mother.

Beneath the towing-path, at the root of the willow bushes, which the
tow-ropes, so often drawn over them, have kept low, the water-docks lift
their thick stems and giant leaves. Bunches of rough-leaved comfrey grow
down to the water's edge--indeed, the coarse stems sometimes bear signs
of having been partially under water when a freshet followed a storm.
The flowers are not so perfectly bell-shaped as those of some plants,
but are rather tubular. They appear in April, though then green, and may
be found all the summer months. Where the comfrey grows thickly the
white bells give some colour to the green of the bank, and would give
more were they not so often overshadowed by the leaves.

Water betony, or persicaria, lifts its pink spikes everywhere, tiny
florets close together round the stem at the top; the leaves are
willow-shaped, and there is scarcely a hollow or break in the bank where
the earth has fallen which is not clothed with them. A mile or two up
the river the tansy is plentiful, bearing golden buttons, which, like
every fragment of the feathery foliage, if pressed in the fingers,
impart to them a peculiar scent. There, too, the yellow loosestrife
pushes up its tall slender stalks to the top of the low willow-bushes,
that the bright yellow flowers may emerge from the shadow.

The river itself, the broad stream, ample and full, exhibits all its
glory in this reach; from One Tree to the Lock it is nearly straight,
and the river itself is everything. Between wooded hills, or where
divided by numerous islets, or where trees and hedges enclose the view,
the stream is but part of the scene. Here it is all. The long raised
bank without a hedge or fence, with the cornfields on its level, simply
guides the eye to the water. Those who are afloat upon it insensibly
yield to the influence of the open expanse.

The boat whose varnished sides but now slipped so gently that the
cutwater did not even raise a wavelet, and every black rivet-head was
visible as a line of dots, begins to forge ahead. The oars are dipped
farther back, and as the blade feels the water holding it in the hollow,
the lissom wood bends to its work. Before the cutwater a wave rises,
and, repulsed, rushes outwards. At each stroke, as the weight swings
towards the prow, there is just the least faint depression at its stem
as the boat travels. Whirlpool after whirlpool glides from the oars,
revolving to the rear with a threefold motion, round and round,
backwards and outwards. The crew impart their own life to their boat;
the animate and inanimate become as one, the boat is no longer wooden
but alive.

If there be a breeze a fleet of white sails comes round the
willow-hidden bend. But the Thames yachtsmen have no slight difficulties
to contend with. The capricious wind is nowhere so thoroughly capricious
as on the upper river. Along one mile there may be a spanking breeze,
the very next is calm, or with a fitful puff coming over a high hedge,
which flutters his pennant, but does not so much as shake the sail. Even
in the same mile the wind may take the water on one side, and scarcely
move a leaf on the other. But the current is always there, and the
vessel is certain to drift.

When at last a good opportunity is obtained, just as the boat heels
over, and the rushing bubbles at the prow resound, she must be put
about, and the napping foresail almost brushes the osiers. If she does
not come round--if the movement has been put off a moment too long--the
keel grates, and she is aground immediately. It is nothing but tacking,
tacking, tacking--a kind of stitching the stream.

Nor can one always choose the best day for the purpose; the exigencies
of business, perhaps, will not permit, and when free, the wind, which
has been scattering tiles and chimney-pots and snapping telegraph wires
in the City all the week, drops on the Saturday to nothing. He must
possess invincible patience, and at the same time be always ready to
advance his vessel even a foot, and his judgment must never fail him at
the critical time.

But the few brief hours when the circumstances are favourable compensate
for delays and monotonous calms; the vessel, built on well-judged lines,
answers her helm and responds to his will with instant obedience, and
that sense of command is perhaps the great charm of sailing. There are
others who find a pleasure in the ya

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/18629