[Illustration:
CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
Fifth Series
ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832
CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)
NO. 112.—VOL. III. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1886. PRICE 1½_d._]
THE INFLUENCE OF HABIT IN PLANT-LIFE.
The old maxim regarding the power of habit is usually and rightly
regarded as exhibiting a thorough application to the regulation of
animal life. Not merely in human affairs is habit allowed to be ‘a
second nature;’ but in lower life as well, the influence of use and
wont is plainly perceptible. A dog or cat equally with a human being is
under the sway of the accustomed. That which may be at first unusual,
soon becomes the normal way of life. Even, as the physiologist can
prove, in a very large part of ordinary human existence, we are the
creatures of habit quite as much as we are the children of impulse. It
is easily provable, for example, that such common acts as are involved
in reading, writing, and speaking, are merely perpetuated habits. At
first, these acquirements present difficulties to the youthful mind.
A slow educative process is demanded, and then, by repetition and
training, the lower centres of the brain acquire the power of doing
the work of higher parts and centres. We fall into the habit, in other
words, of writing and speaking, just as our muscles fall into the way
of guiding our movements. No doubt, a large part of the difficulty is
smoothed away for us by the fact that we inherit the aptitude for the
performance of these common actions. But they fall, nevertheless, into
the category of repeated and inherited habits; and equally with the
newer or fresh ideas and tasks we set ourselves, the actions of common
life may be regarded as merely illustrating the curious and useful
effect of repeated and fixed habit on our organisation.
Recent researches in the field of plant-life, however, it is
interesting to note, show that habit does not reign paramount in the
animal world alone. The plant-world, it has been well remarked, too
often presents to the ordinary observer the aspect of a sphere of dull
pulseless life, wherein activity is unrepresented, and wherein the
familiar actions of animal existence are unknown. Nothing is farther
from the truth than such an idea. The merest tyro in botany is nowadays
led to study actions in plants which are often indistinguishable
from those of animal life. Instead of the plant-world being a huge
living domain which never evinces a sign of sensation or activity, the
botanist can point to numerous cases in which not only are the signs of
sensibility as fully developed in the plant as in the animal, but in
which also many other phases of animal life are exactly imitated. We
thus know of plants which droop their leaves on the slightest touch,
and exhibit as delicate a sensitiveness as many high animals, and a
much finer degree of sensibility than most low animals. Then, again,
when, with the microscope, we inspect that inner plant-life which is
altogether hidden from the outer world, we see that the tissues of
plants exist in a state of high activity. Currents of protoplasm are
seen to run hither and thither through the plant-cells, and active
movements to pervade the whole organisation of the living organism.
Vital activity is the rule, and inertness the exception, in plant-life;
and the discovery of this fact simply serves to impress anew upon us
the danger and error of that form of argument which would assume the
non-existence of higher traits of life in plants, simply because they
are invisible to the unassisted sight.
The effects of habit on plant-life are nowhere better seen than in the
curious differences which exist between the food and feeding of certain
plants and the practices of their more familiar plant-neighbours.
The food of an ordinary green plant, as is well known, consists of
inorganic matters. Water, minerals in solution, ammonia, and carbonic
acid gas, constitute the materials from which an ordinary plant derives
its sustenance. It is curious to reflect that all the beauty of flower
and foliage merely represents so much carbonic acid gas, water, and
minerals, fashioned by the wondrous vital powers of the plant into
living tissues. Yet such is undoubtedly the case. Between the food of
animals and green plants, we perceive this great difference—namely,
that whilst the animal demands water, oxygen gas, and minerals—all
three being inorganic materials—it also requires ready-made living
matter to supply the wants of its frame. This ready-made living matter
the animal can only obtain from other animals or from plants; and as
a matter of fact, animals demand and require such materials to feed
upon. In one sense, the plant, then, exhibits higher powers than the
animal, for it is more constructive. It can build up its frame from
non-living matter entirely; whilst the animal, less constructive,
requires a proportion of already living matter in its food. What has
just been said of the food of plants applies to those which possess
green colouring-matter associated with the plant-tissues. This green
colour, so universally diffused throughout the plant kingdom, is called
_chlorophyll_ by the botanist. It exists in the cells of plants in the
form of granules, and is intimately associated with the living matter
or ‘protoplasm’ of the cells. The presence or absence of green colour
in a plant makes all the difference in the world to its habits. The
want of this chlorophyll, in fact, converts the habits of the plant
into that of the animal.
If we select a plant which possesses no green colour, we may be
prepared for some startling revelations respecting the mode of life
of such a plant. Examples of a total want of chlorophyll are seen in
the _fungi_, that large group of plants which harbours our mushrooms,
toad-stools, and like organisms as its familiar representatives. If we
inquire how the non-green fungus lives, we shall discover, firstly,
that it is like an animal in respect, firstly, of the gas on which it
feeds. The green plant, we saw to feed on carbonic acid gas; but the
fungus, like the animal, inhales oxygen. Furthermore, a still more
remarkable fact must be detailed respecting the difference between
the habit of the green plants and their non-green neighbours. When
an ordinary green plant takes in the carbonic acid gas which it has
obtained from the atmosphere—whither it has come from the lungs of
animals and elsewhere—it performs a remarkable chemical operation.
The green colour enables it, in the presence of light, to decompose
the carbonic acid gas (which consists of carbon and oxygen) into
its elements. The carbon is retained by the plant, and goes to form
the starch and other compounds manufactured by the organism. But
the oxygen, which is not required, at least in any quantity, in the
living operations of the green plant, is allowed to escape back to the
atmosphere, where it becomes useful for animal respiration. Thus, what
the animal exhales (carbonic acid), the green plant inhales; and what
the green plant exhales (oxygen), the animal inhales. We have here a
remarkable cycle of natural operations, which suggests how beautifully
the equilibrium of nature is maintained. It may be added that the want
of light converts even the green plant to somewhat animal habits. In
the dark, the decomposition of carbonic acid is suspended, chlorophyll
alone being insufficient for the analysis. Then, the green plant seems
to inhale oxygen and to emit carbonic acid, like the animal and its
non-green relative; to return, however, to its normal habit with the
returning light. At the same time, the plain difference of habit in
respect of the want of green colour in the fungi and other plants, is
in itself a remarkable fact of plant-life.
Other differences in habit may also be noted between the plants which
possess green colour and those that want it. We have already alluded
to the fact that green plants feed on inorganic or lifeless matters,
and that they build up these matters into their living tissues. On the
other hand, the habits of the fungi and non-green plants lead them to
resemble animals in that they feed upon organic materials; that is, on
matter which is derived from other plants or animals. As a matter of
fact, most fungi are found growing in places where decaying organic
matters exist. The gardener, in growing edible fungi, supplies them
with such materials in the form of manure. Again, those fungi which
cause skin-diseases in man (for example, ringworm) feed on the tissues
in which they are parasitic, and in so doing absorb organic matter.
The plants which are not green, in this way appear to prefer organic
matters, like animals. In habits, therefore, they present a striking
contrast to their green neighbours.
The habit of _parasitism_, however, which has just been alluded to
is a powerful means of inaugurating and maintaining change of life
and living in plants. A parasitic being is one which lives in or upon
some other living organism. There are degrees of parasitism, however:
some parasites are mere ‘lodgers,’ so to speak; others both board and
lodge at the expense of their host, and these latter are of course
the more typical parasites of the two. But there are even degrees and
differences to be seen in the behaviour of plant-lodgers and boarders.
For example, mistletoe is a plant of peculiar habits, in respect that
whilst its roots enter the substance of the tree-host to which it is
attached, and drink up so much of the sap that host is elaborating for
its own use, it also can make food-products for itself. For the green
leaves of mistletoe, like the leaves of other plants, take in carbonic
acid gas, and decompose it, as already described, retaining the carbon,
and setting the oxygen free. On the other hand, a parasitic fungus
will not elaborate any food-products for itself; and hence it is, if
anything, a more complete and typical ‘boarder’ even than mistletoe.
The effects of habit in plant-life are here seen in a double sense and
aspect. Not only is it through the exercise of ‘habit’ that a plant
becomes a parasite; but it is a variation in the parasitic and acquired
habit for a parasitic plant to develop its own special ways of feeding.
Habit within habit is thus seen to operate powerfully in bringing about
the existent phases of the life of plants.
Plants without green colour are, however, not the only members of
the vegetable world in which the habit of feeding like animals has
been inaugurated. Some of the most remarkable chapters in botany
have been recently written on the habits of so-called carnivorous
or insectivorous plants—that is, plants which subsist on insects in
other forms of animal life, and which lay traps designed to capture
their unwary prey. The Common Sundew (_Drosera_) of our bogs and
marshes catches flies and other insects by means of an ingenious
arrangement of sensitive tentacles which beset its leaf, aided by the
gummy secretion of the leaf itself. The Venus’ Flytrap (_Dionæa_)
captures insects by converting its leaf into a closing trap; the alarm
to close being conveyed to the sensitive parts of the plant by the
insect touching one or more of the six sensitive hairs which are seen
on the surface of the leaf. The Side-saddle plants (_Sarracenia_) of
the New World and the Pitcher plants (_Nepenthes_) of the Old World
likewise capture insects. Their leaves form receptacles, in which, as
is well known, flies and other insects are literally drowned. Within
the Sarracenia’s hollow leaf, a honey-secretion is found, together with
a limpid fluid found at the bottom of the pitcher. There seems little
doubt that flies and other insects, attracted by the honey-secretion,
pass into the pitcher, and are then suffocated by the fluid found
below. This much has been proved—namely, that the fluid has an
intoxicating effect on insects, and that, once entrapped, the insects
ultimately perish in the pitchers. It is equally notable that their
retreat is cut off by the presence of pointed hairs, which, on the
_facilis descensus_ principle, and by pointing downwards, allow the
insect easy admittance, but present an array of bayonet-points on its
attempt to escape. In the Nepenthes or Pitcher plants of the Old World,
insects are similarly captured, and are prevented from escaping by
various contrivances, such as a series of incurved hairs or hooks, or
allied apparatus.
At first sight, there seems a plain reason for classifying together
all these insect-capturing plants, especially when it is discovered
that they utilise the insects they capture for food. Botanists did
not realise till recently that the capture of insects by plants was a
strictly utilitarian and purposive act—namely, that its intent was to
feed and nourish the plant. Once awaking to this truth, much that was
formerly mysterious in the life and ways of these plants became clear.
They captured the insects and fed upon them; in these words were found
the clue to and explanation of a seeming anomaly in plant-life. These
plants might thus be supposed simply to differ from other green plants,
and to resemble the fungi in their preference for an animal dietary,
in part at least. For, with their roots in the soil, and possessing
green leaves, they appear to subsist partly upon the matters on which
ordinary green plants live, and partly upon organic matters, like
mistletoe. But a further study of these curious plants shows that the
whole facts of the case are hardly to be comprised within this somewhat
narrow compass. Habit within habit again appears as the principle which
has wrought out important differences between the various kinds of
insect-eating plants. Taking the case of the Sundew first, we discover
that this plant actually digests its insect-food. From glands with
which the leaf is provided, fluids are poured out which resemble the
gastric juice of our own stomachs in their digestive properties. The
matter of the insect-body is thus absorbed into the substance and
tissues of the plant, just as the substance of our own food passes,
through digestion, to become part and parcel of our own tissues. Of
the Venus’ Flytrap, the same remarks hold good. This plant will digest
fragments of raw beef as readily as its own insect-prey. The closed
leaf is converted into a kind of temporary stomach, within which the
imprisoned insect is killed, digested, and its tissues absorbed, to
nourish the plant. In the Pitcher plants, a similar result happens to
the insect-prey. Digestion and absorption of the nutrient parts of the
prey are the duties performed by the modified leaves.
The foregoing facts would therefore seem to present a remarkable
uniformity in the life of the plants just mentioned. Similarity of
habits would seem to reign supreme, under variations in the method of
capturing the insect-prey. Turning now to the case of the Side-saddle
plants and their allies, we discover how remarkably the habits of these
plants have come to differ. Investigation has shown that the flies,
which are apparently drowned in the pitchers of Sarracenia in a manner
exactly similar to that in which they fall victims to the artifice of
the Pitcher plants, in reality are subjected to a widely different
action. The Pitcher plant digests its flies, as we have seen; but in
the Side-saddle plants no digestion takes place. What happens in the
latter appears to consist of a simple process of decay. The insects are
allowed to putrefy and decompose amid the watery fluid which drowns
them; and in due time, the pitcher becomes filled with a fluid which
has been compared to ‘liquid manure.’ It is this decomposing solution,
then, which is duly absorbed by the Sarracenia. Rejecting this idea,
there can be no other explanation given of the use of the elaborate
fly-catching ‘pitchers.’ And, moreover, analogy would force us to
conclude that the explanation just given is correct. If fungi feed on
decomposing organic matters, why should not a Sarracenia exhibit like
habits? No reasonable reply can be given save that which sees in the
Sarracenia a curious difference of habit from the apparently similar
Pitcher plants. The latter, in other words, eat their meal fresh; the
Sarracenias, like humanity with its game, eat their meat in a ‘high’
state.
The ordinary feeding of plants may, lastly, be cited, by way of showing
how marvellously intricate must be the conditions which operate to
produce differences in habits, sometimes amounting almost to special
likings on the part of vegetable units for one kind of food, and
equally special dislikes to other foods. The farmer knowing the
preference for certain food-elements by certain plants, requires to
‘rotate’ his crops, to avoid injurious exhaustion of his soils. For
instance, buckwheat will not flourish unless potassium is supplied to
it. The chloride of potassium, and next to it the nitrate, are the
minerals preferred by this plant. Still more extraordinary is the
preference exhibited by one of the violet tribe (_Viola calaminaria_),
which will only grow in soils that contain zinc. Here, the effects of
habit are seen in a singularly clear fashion; for there seems every
reason to assume that the partiality for a by no means common element
in soils, has been an acquired, and not an original taste of the plants
which exhibit it. The botanist thus becomes aware of the existence of
a ‘taste,’ or ‘selective power’ as it is termed, in the plant-world,
influencing their food, and, as a matter of logic, affecting also their
structure, functions, and entire existence. It has been found that
the pea and bean tribe (_Leguminosæ_) specially desire lime, amongst
their requirements. Potatoes exhibit a special partiality for potash;
and turnips share this taste. Plants in which the seed assumes a high
importance, as in most of our cereals, on the other hand, demand
phosphoric acid; and certain plants, such as wheat, will withdraw
large quantities of silica or flint from the soil. Iodine is found
characteristically in seaweeds, and the element in question is obtained
from the _kelp_ produced by burning marine plants.
No better commentary on the life and habits of plants in respect
of their food-tastes can be given than in the words of an eminent
physiologist, who, speaking of the food of the corn-plant, says:
‘Without siliceous (or flinty) earth, that plant cannot acquire
sufficient strength to sustain itself erect, but forms a creeping stem,
feeble and pale; without calcareous earth (or lime), it dies even
before the appearance of the second leaf; without soda and without
potash, it never attains a greater height than between four and five
inches; without phosphorus, though growing straight and regularly
formed, it remains feeble and does not bear fruit; when iron is present
in the soil, it gives that deep green tint so familiar to us and grows
rapidly robust; without manganese, it develops in a stunted manner and
produces few flowers.’ After the revelations of chemistry concerning
the habits and tastes of plants and the bearing of proper food on
their growth, it is not to be wondered at that scientific agriculture
should be regarded as the only solution of many of the present-day
difficulties of the farmer.
IN ALL SHADES.
CHAPTER X.
For a second, nobody answered a word; this quiet declaration of an
honest self-sacrifice took them all, even Nora, so utterly by surprise.
Then Edward murmured musingly: ‘And it was for this that you gave
up the prospect of living at Cambridge, and composing symphonies in
Trinity gardens!’
The mulatto smiled a deprecating smile. ‘Oh,’ he cried timidly, ‘you
mustn’t say that. I didn’t want to make out I was going to do anything
so very grand or so very heroic. Of course, a man _must_ satisfy
himself he’s doing something to justify his existence in the world;
and much as I love music, I hardly feel as though playing the violin
were in itself a sufficient end for a man to live for. Though I must
confess I should very much like to stop in England and be a composer.
I’ve composed one or two little pieces already for the violin, that
have been played with some success at public concerts. Sarasate played
a small thing of mine last winter at a festival in Vienna. But then,
besides, my father and friends live in Trinidad, and I feel that that’s
the place where my work in life is really cut out for me.’
‘And your second great passion?’ Marian inquired. ‘You said you had a
second great passion. What is it, I wonder?—Oh, of course, I see—your
profession.’
(‘How could she be so stupid!’ Nora thought to herself. ‘What a silly
girl! I’m afraid of my life now, the wretched man’ll try to say
something pretty.’)
‘O no; not my profession,’ Dr Whitaker answered, smiling. ‘It’s a noble
profession, of course—the noblest and grandest, almost, of all the
professions—assuaging and alleviating human suffering; but one looks
upon it, for all that, rather as a duty than as a passion. Besides,
there’s one thing greater even than the alleviation of human suffering,
greater than art with all its allurements, greater than anything else
that a man can interest himself in—though I know most people don’t
think so—and that’s science—the knowledge of our relations with the
universe, and still more of the universe’s relations with its various
parts.—No, Mrs Hawthorn; my second absorbing passion, next to music,
and higher than music, is one that I’m sure ladies won’t sympathise
with—it’s only botany.’
‘Goodness gracious!’ Nora cried, surprised into speech. ‘I thought
botany was nothing but the most dreadfully hard words, all about
nothing on earth that anybody cared for!’
The mulatto looked at her open-eyed with a sort of mild astonishment.
‘What?’ he said. ‘All the glorious lilies and cactuses and palms and
orchids of our beautiful Trinidad nothing but hard words that nobody
cares for! All the slender lianas that trail and droop from the huge
buttresses of the wild cotton-trees; all the gorgeous trumpet-creepers
that drape the gnarled branches of the mountain star-apples with
their scarlet blossoms; all the huge cecropias, that rise aloft with
their silvery stems and fan-shaped leaves, towering into the air
like gigantic candelabra; all the graceful tree-ferns and feathery
bamboos and glossy-leaved magnolias and majestic bananas and luxuriant
ginger-worts and clustering arums: all the breadth and depth of
tropical foliage, with the rugged and knotted creepers, festooned in
veritable cables of vivid green, from branch to branch among the dim
mysterious forest shades—stretched in tight cordage like the rigging
yonder from mast to mast, for miles together—oh, Miss Dupuy, is that
nothing? Do you call that nothing, for a man to fix his loving regard
upon? Our own Trinidad is wonderfully rich still in such natural
glories; and it’s the hope of doing a little in my spare hours to
explore and disentomb them, like hidden treasures, that partly urges me
to go back again where manifest destiny calls me to the land I was born
in.’
The mulatto is always fluent, even when uneducated; but Dr Whitaker,
learned in all the learning of the schools, and pouring forth his
full heart enthusiastically on the subjects nearest and dearest to
him, spoke with such a ready, easy eloquence, common enough, indeed,
among south Europeans, and among Celtic Scots and Irish as well, but
rare and almost unknown in our colder and more phlegmatic Anglo-Saxon
constitutions—that Nora listened to him, quite taken aback by the flood
of his native rhetoric, and whispered to herself in her own soul:
‘Really, he talks very well after all—for a coloured person!’
‘Yes, of course, all those things are very lovely, Dr Whitaker,’
Marian put in, more for the sake of drawing him out—for he was so
interesting—than because she really wanted to disagree with him upon
the subject. ‘But then, that isn’t botany. I always thought botany was
a mere matter of stamens and petals, and all sorts of other dreadful
technicalities.’
‘Stamens and petals!’ the mulatto echoed half contemptuously—‘stamens
and petals! You might as well say art was all a matter of pigments
and perspective, or music all a matter of crotchets and quavers, as
botany all a matter of stamens and petals. Those are only the beggarly
elements: the beautiful pictures, the glorious oratorios, the lovely
flowers, are the real things to which in the end they all minister.
It’s the trees and the plants themselves that interest me, not the mere
lifeless jargon of technical phrases.’
They sat there late into the night, discussing things musical and West
Indian and otherwise, without any desire to move away or cut short
the conversation; and Dr Whitaker, his reserve now broken, talked on
to them hour after hour, doing the lion’s share of the conversation,
and delighting them with his transparent easy talk and open-hearted
simplicity. He was frankly egotistical, of course—all persons of
African blood always are; but his egotism, such as it was, took the
pleasing form of an enthusiasm about his own pet ideas and pursuits—a
love of music, a love of flowers, a love of his profession, and a
love of Trinidad. To these favourite notes he recurred fondly again
and again, vigorously defending the violin as an exponent of human
emotion against Edward’s half-insincere expression of preference for
wind instruments; going into raptures to Nora over the wonderful beauty
of their common home; and describing to Marian in vivid language the
grandeur of those marvellous tropical forests whose strange loveliness
she had never yet with her own eyes beheld.
‘Picture to yourself,’ he said, looking out vaguely beyond the ship
on to the star-lit Atlantic, ‘a great Gothic cathedral or Egyptian
temple—Ely or Karnak, wrought, not in freestone or marble, but in
living trees—with huge cylindrical columns strengthened below by
projecting buttresses, and supporting overhead, a hundred feet on high,
an unbroken canopy of interlacing foliage. Dense—so dense that only
an indistinct glimmer of the sky can be seen here and there through
the great canopy, just as you see Orion’s belt over yonder through the
fringe of clouds upon the gray horizon; and even the intense tropical
sunlight only reaches the ground at long intervals in little broken
patches of subdued paleness. Then there’s the solemn silence, weird and
gloomy, that produces in one an almost painful sense of the vast, the
primeval, the mystical, the infinite. Only the low hum of the insects
in the forest shade, the endless multitudinous whisper of the wind
among the foliage, the faint sound begotten by the tropical growth
itself, breaks the immemorial stillness in our West Indian woodland.
It’s a world in which man seems to be a noisy intruder, and where
he stands awestruck before the intense loveliness of nature, in the
immediate presence of her unceasing forces.’
He stopped a moment, not for breath, for it seemed as if he could
pour out language without an effort, in the profound enthusiasm of
youth, but to take his violin once more tenderly from its case and
hold it out, hesitating, before him. ‘Will you let me play you just
one more little piece?’ he asked apologetically. ‘It’s a piece of my
own, into which I’ve tried to put some of the feelings about these
tropical forests that I never could possibly express in words. I call
it “Souvenirs des Lianes.” Will you let me play it to you?—I shan’t be
boring you?—Thank you—thank you.’
He stood up before them in the pale light of that summer evening,
tall and erect, violin on breast and bow in hand, and began pouring
forth from his responsive instrument a slow flood of low, plaintive,
mysterious music. It was not difficult to see what had inspired his
brain and hand in that strangely weird and expressive piece. The
profound shade and gloom of the forest, the great roof of overarching
foliage, the flutter of the endless leaves before the breeze, the
confused murmur of the myriad wings and voices of the insects, nay,
even the very stillness and silence itself of which he had spoken, all
seemed to breathe forth deeply and solemnly on his quivering strings.
It was a triumph of art over its own resources. On the organ or the
flute, one would have said beforehand, such effects as these might
indeed be obtained, but surely never, never on the violin. Yet in Dr
Whitaker’s hand that scraping bow seemed capable of expressing even
what he himself had called the sense of the vast, the primeval, and
the infinite. They listened all in hushed silence, and scarcely so
much as dared to breathe while the soft pensive cadences still floated
out solemnly across the calm ocean. And when he had finished, they
sat for a few minutes in perfect silence, rendering the performer
that instinctive homage of mute applause which is so far more really
eloquent than any mere formal and conventional expression of thanks
‘for your charming playing.’
As they sat so, each musing quietly over the various emotions aroused
within them by the mulatto’s forest echoes, one of the white gentlemen
in the stern, a young English officer on his way out to join a West
Indian regiment, came up suddenly behind them, clapped his hand
familiarly on Edward’s back, and said in a loud and cheerful tone:
‘Come along, Hawthorn; we’ve had enough of this music now—thank you
very much, Dr Thingummy—let’s all go down to the saloon, I say, and
have a game of nap or a quiet rubber.’
Even Nora felt in her heart as though she had suddenly been recalled by
that untimely voice from some higher world to this vulgar, commonplace
little planet of ours, the young officer had broken in so rudely on
her silent reverie. She drew her dainty white lamb’s-wool wrapper
closer around her shoulders with a faint sigh, slipped her hand gently
through Marian’s arm, and moved away, slowly and thoughtfully, toward
the companion-ladder. As she reached the doorway, she turned round, as
if half ashamed of her own graciousness, and said in a low and genuine
voice: ‘Thank you, Dr Whitaker—thank you very much indeed. We’ve so
greatly enjoyed the treat you’ve given us.’
The mulatto bowed and said nothing; but instead of retiring to the
saloon with the others, he put his violin case quietly under his arm,
and walking alone to the stern of the vessel, leant upon the gunwale
long and mutely, looking over with all his eyes deep and far into the
silent, heaving, moonlit water. The sound of Nora’s voice thanking him
reverberated long through all the echoing chambers of his memory.
COLONIAL FARM-PUPILS.
It would be a matter of considerable interest if statistics could be
obtained showing the number of parents who at the present time find
themselves under the necessity of answering that much-debated question,
‘What shall I do with my sons?’ The comparatively narrow paths which
lead to fame and prosperity are now so densely crowded by youths of
good breeding and education, that but few parents are able to decide,
without much anxious consideration, which is the best one for their
sons to start life’s journey upon. Some parents choose the learned
professions; others select a commercial career; while not a few decide
upon a colonial life for their sons. The wisdom, or otherwise, of this
last decision we do not here propose to discuss. We accept the plain
fact that many well-bred and carefully nurtured young men annually
leave these shores as emigrants, bound for the British colonies or the
United States. The object of our remarks is to present to the fathers
of these young emigrants what the writer—who has seen much, both of
emigrants and emigration, on both sides of the Atlantic—regards as a
piece of sorely needed advice upon one point of the great question
of emigration, as it affects the sons of English gentlemen and
‘blue-blooded boys’ in general.
The average British parent is, as a rule, very ignorant of everything
connected with life and labour in the colonies. He is perhaps a fairly
successful man of business, or has risen in his profession; but in
attaining this success, he has probably been so engrossed with his own
occupations, that he has found but little opportunity of turning his
attention to matters concerning him less closely. It is not indeed
to be expected that any one man should be intimately acquainted with
many different subjects. In these days of competition, the division of
knowledge is as necessary as the division of labour; and it is the duty
of those who are practically acquainted with emigration or any other
subject to advise those who are not so well informed. This is what
we now propose to do. We desire that our remarks upon the farm-pupil
system in the British colonies be understood to apply equally to the
Western States of America, which, so far as this article is concerned,
are to all intents and purposes British colonies.
To the youth who has been brought up in a comfortable English home,
under the care of watchful parents, emigration to any of the colonies
brings a very rude and abrupt change of life. Thenceforth, parental
oversight will be no longer obtainable, and the young emigrant will
have to seek his own living among strangers in a strange land, where
evil influences are generally numerous, where the ordinary mode of
life is often very rough, and where no one need hope for success unless
he is willing and able actually to perform hard manual labour. Under
these circumstances, it naturally appears desirable to most parents
to do all that lies within their power to obtain for their sons some
training to fit them for their future life. This desire has called
into existence the system under which many moderately well-to-do young
emigrants, on first leaving England, agree to pay a premium to some
colonist who is already established on a farm of his own, in order that
they may be taught colonial farming.
The system is not in any way essentially a bad one; but it is open to
great abuses, and in too many cases leads to fraud. No detailed rules
for the guidance of the parents of young emigrants in this matter can
be laid down. The necessities vary according to the circumstances of
each particular case. But, in a general way, it may be stated that,
when the parents of a youth can afford to pay a premium for his
instruction, and have ascertained that the settler with whom they are
placing their son is in a position faithfully to exercise that amount
of oversight which they desire for him, there cannot be any very great
abuse of the system. At the same time, it must be admitted that there
is seldom any necessity why a premium should be paid. If the young
emigrant be steady and of average push and intelligence, there is
certainly little or nothing to prevent him obtaining all the experience
he requires without paying any premium. Nevertheless, a youth of weak
character, easily led away, and of indolent habits, may of course be
benefited by a certain amount of care and oversight.
Farming, as practised in the colonies and in the Western States of
America, is of the most elementary kind. A person of limited abilities
may very easily acquire a knowledge of all its details. Moreover, in
these thinly peopled countries, labourers are in great demand. It may
be safely asserted that, in those colonies and in those portions of
the west of America to which emigration is now chiefly directed, any
young man, willing and able to perform ordinary farm-work, will find
little difficulty in obtaining employment, at least during the summer
months, in spite of the large number of men who are almost always in
want of work in large cities. A perfect novice may find it necessary
to work for a time for his board and lodging merely; but after a
while, he will probably find himself in a position to demand at least
sufficient wages, in addition to his board and keep, to maintain
himself respectably. If the young emigrant follows the course thus
suggested, he may not find his path quite so smooth as that of the
young man who has paid his premium; but he will have a better chance of
obtaining practical experience of farming. He will live in his master’s
house, board at his table, and be treated very much as a member of the
family—indeed, the premiumed pupil could hardly be better off; but he
will be compelled to learn in a way which he who pays a premium can
hardly be, and he will actually be paid for gaining the experience he
requires, instead of paying for it!
The eagerness on the part of colonial farmers to obtain farm-pupils is
capable of a very simple explanation. In most cases, these men know
well enough that there is no real need for the system to be followed;
but if they can succeed in obtaining a pupil, they are hardly to be
blamed for so doing, as it is no slight advantage to themselves. In
the colonies, the harvest usually is plentiful, while the labourers
are few, and labour, consequently, is expensive. Obviously, therefore,
a pupil who will pay to work and who will not be constantly wanting
to leave, is a very great boon to any settler. It should be clearly
recognised that, in most cases, if the pupil works in such a way as
he must do if he is to obtain a useful practical knowledge of his
occupation, his labour alone will amply remunerate the farmer, even
if the latter has to find both board and lodging. Clearly, therefore,
if a substantial premium be added, the advantage to the settler is
considerable. The pupil-system often affords a good deal of amusement
to keen-sighted Americans who are in a position to see its weak points.
Not unfrequently the writer has had said to him on the other side of
the Atlantic: ‘How uncommonly stupid you English people must be to be
willing to pay to work!’ This expression not inaptly sums up the whole
case.
The abuses to which the system is open are many. In the first place,
an exorbitant sum—sometimes as much as one hundred pounds—is asked.
Considering that the pupil could in most cases obtain the necessary
experience without paying any premium, and that he actually remunerates
the settler by working for him, we consider that, under all ordinary
circumstances, ten pounds paid to the settler is ample. In the next
place, an agent of some kind is necessary to mediate between the
parents of a youth and the colonial settler; and either this agent
or the settler, or both, may be dishonest, and fail to fulfil their
contracts; indeed, the difficulty which a parent would meet with in
attempting to compel a defaulting settler to carry out his agreement,
is a great incentive to fraud. Only a short time ago it was reported
in the daily papers that a number of youths who had paid premiums to
an agent in England to be placed with farmers in California, found, on
their arrival there, that no arrangements whatever had been made for
their reception—in short, that they had been swindled. Similar cases
have been heard of before. At the same time, we do not wish to say that
there are not honest agencies.
Those who have seen most of the hap-hazard way in which emigration,
not only of the poorer, but also of the better classes, is carried on
from this country, often express amazement at the injudicious acts
which are constantly being committed by ill-advised young emigrants
and their blind though well-meaning parents. The needless paying of
premiums by parents who can ill afford to spare the money is but one
of these indiscretions. Passing over without comment the practice of
shipping ‘ne’er-do-wells’ off to the colonies in the vain hope that
they will do better there than at home, we cannot help remarking that
numbers of promising young men, who are utterly unfitted for the life
of an emigrant, are constantly being sent out, and either they, or the
country to which they are sent, subsequently get blamed for an almost
inevitable failure. Nothing, too, could be more injudicious than the
placing of capital in the hands of inexperienced young emigrants at the
outset of their career. In a large number of cases it is wholly lost;
indeed, it is a common saying in America that but few young Englishmen
commence to make headway in their new home until they have either lost
or spent all they originally brought out with them and have had to
buckle-to in sober earnest. As recommended in a late number (No. 95) of
this _Journal_, those who are intended for a colonial career should go
through a course of school-training especially intended to fit them for
it.
A GOLDEN ARGOSY.
_A NOVELETTE._