Yellow flowers--Family likeness in flavours and scents--_Mimulus
luteus_--Flowers in church decoration--Effect of
association--_Mimulus luteus_ as a British plant--A rule as to
naturalised plants wanted--A visit to Swarraton--Changes since
Gilbert White's day--"Wild musk"--Bird life on the downs--Turtle-dove
nestlings--Blue skin in doves--A boy naturalist--Birds at the
cottage--The wren's sun-bath--Wild fruits ripen--An old chalk
pit--Birds and elderberries--Past and present times compared--Calm
days--Migration of swallows--Conclusion.
The oak in the field and a flowering plant by the water were the two
best things plant life contained for me during those beautiful late
summer days by the Itchen. About the waterside flower I must write
at some length.
Of our wild flowers the yellow in colour, as a rule, attract me
least; not because the colour is not beautiful to me, but probably on
account of the numerous ungraceful, weedy-looking plants of
unpleasant scent which in late summer produce yellow flowers--tansy,
fleabane, ragwort, sow-thistle, and some of other orders, the worst
of the lot being the pepper saxifrage, an ungainly parsley in
appearance, with evil-smelling flowers. You know them by their
odours. If I were to smell at a number of strong-scented flowers
unknown to me in a dark room, or blindfolded, I should be able to
pick out the yellow ones.
They would have the yellow smell. The yellow {283} smell has an
analogue in the purple taste. It may be fancy, but it strikes me
that there is a certain family resemblance in the flavours of most
purple fruits, or their skins--the purple fruit-flavour which is so
strong in damson, sloe, black currant, blackberry, mulberry,
whortleberry, and elderberry.
All the species I have named were common in the valley, and there
were others--St. John's wort, yellow loosestrife, etc.--which,
although not ungraceful nor evil-smelling, yet failed to attract.
Nevertheless, as the days and weeks went on and brought yet another
conspicuous yellow waterside flower into bloom, which became more and
more abundant as the season advanced, while the others, one by one,
faded and failed from the earth, until, during the last half of
September, it was in its fullest splendour, I was completely won by
it, and said in my haste that it was the brightest blossom in all the
Hampshire garland, if not the loveliest wild flower in England. Nor
was it strange, all things considered, that I was so taken with its
beauty, since, besides being beautiful, it was new to me, and
therefore had the additional charm of novelty; and, finally, it was
at its best when all the conspicuous flowers that give touches of
brilliant colour here and there to the green of this greenest valley,
including most of the yellow flowers I have mentioned, were faded and
gone.
[Sidenote: Mimulus luteus]
No description of this flower, _Mimulus luteus_, known to the country
people as "wild musk," is needed here--it is well known as a garden
plant. The large foxglove-shaped flowers grow singly on {284} their
stems among the topmost leaves, and the form of stem, leaf, and
flower is a very perfect example of that kind of formal beauty in
plants which is called "decorative." This character is well shown in
the accompanying figure, reduced to little more than half the natural
size, from a spray plucked at Bransbury, on the Test. But the shape
is nothing, and is scarcely seen or noticed twenty-five to fifty
yards away, the proper distance at which to view the blossoming
plants; not indeed as a plant-student or an admirer of flowers in a
garden would view it, as the one thing to see, but merely as part of
the scene. The colour is then everything. There is no purer, no
more {285} beautiful yellow in any of our wild flowers, from the
primrose and the almost equally pale, exquisite blossom which we
improperly name "dark mullein" in our books on account of its lovely
purple eye, to the intensest pure yellow of the marsh marigold.
[Illustration: MIMULUS LUTEUS]
But although purity of colour is the chief thing, it would not of
itself serve to give so great a distinction to this plant; the charm
is in the colour and the way in which Nature has disposed it,
abundantly, in single, separate blossoms, among leaves of a green
that is rich and beautiful, and looks almost dark by contrast with
that shining, luminous hue it sets off so well.
On 17th September it was Harvest Festival Sunday at the little church
at Itchen Abbas, where I worshipped that day, and I noticed that the
decorators had dressed up the font with water-plants and flowers from
the river; reeds and reed-mace, or cat's-tail, and the yellow
mimulus. It was a mistake. Deep green, glossy foliage, and white
and brilliantly coloured flowers look well in churches; white
chrysanthemums, arums, azaleas, and other conspicuous white flowers;
and scarlet geraniums, and many other garden blooms which seen in
masses in the sunshine hurt the sense--cinerarias, calceolarias,
larkspurs, etc. The subdued light of the interior softens the
intensity, and sometimes crudity, of the strongest colours, and makes
them suitable for decoration. The effect is like that of
stained-glass windows, or of a bright embroidery on a sober ground.
The graceful, grey, flowery reeds, and the light-green {286}
reed-mace, with its brown velvet head, and the moist yellow of the
mimulus, which quickly loses its freshness, look not well in the dim,
religious light of the old village church. These should be seen
where the sunlight and wind and water are, or not seen at all.
[Sidenote: Mimulus and Camaloté]
Beautiful as the mimulus is when viewed in its natural surroundings,
by running waters amidst the greys and light and dark greens of reed
and willow, and of sedge and aquatic grasses, and water-cress, and
darkest bulrush, its attractiveness was to me greatly increased by
association. Now to say that a flower which is new to one can have
any associations may sound very strange, but it is a fact in this
case. Viewing it at a distance of, say, forty or fifty yards, as a
flower of a certain size, which might be any shape, in colour a very
pure, luminous yellow, blooming in profusion all over the rich green,
rounded masses of the plants, as one may see it in September at
Ovington, and at many other points on the Itchen, from its source to
Southampton Water, and on the Test, I am so strongly reminded of the
yellow camaloté of the South American watercourses that the memory is
almost like an illusion. It has the pure, beautiful yellow of the
river camaloté; in its size it is like that flower; it grows, too, in
the same way, singly, among rounded masses of leaves of the same
lovely rich green; and the camaloté, too, has for neighbours the
green blades of the sedges, and grey, graceful reeds, and
multitudinous bulrushes, their dark polished stems tufted with brown.
{287}
Looking at these masses of blossoming mimulus at Ovington, I am
instantly transported in thought to some waterside thousands of miles
away. The dank, fresh smell is in my nostrils; I listen delightedly
to the low, silvery, water-like gurgling note of the little kinglet
in his brilliant feathers among the rushes, and to the tremulous song
of the green marsh-grasshoppers or leaf-crickets; and with a still
greater delight do I gaze at the lovely yellow flower, the
unforgotten camaloté, which is as much to me as the wee, modest,
crimson-tipped daisy was to Robert Burns or to Chaucer; and as the
primrose, the violet, the dog-rose, the shining, yellow gorse, and
the flower o' the broom, and bramble, and hawthorn, and purple
heather are to so many inhabitants of these islands who were born and
bred amid rural scenes.
On referring to the books for information as to the history of the
mimulus as a British wild flower, I found that in some it was not
mentioned, and in others mentioned only to be dismissed with the
remark that it is an "introduced plant." But when was it introduced,
and what is its range? And whom are we to ask?
After an infinite amount of pains, seeing and writing to all those
among my acquaintances who have any knowledge of our wild plant life,
I discovered that the mimulus grows more or less abundantly in or by
streams here and there in most English counties, but is more commonly
met with south of Derbyshire; also that it extends to Scotland, {288}
and is known even in the Orkneys. Finally, a botanical friend
discovered for me that as long ago as 1846 there had been a great
discussion, in which a number of persons took part, on this very
subject of the date of the naturalisation in Britain of the mimulus,
in Edward Newman's botanical magazine, the _Phytologist_. It was
shown conclusively by a correspondent that the plant had established
itself at one point as far back as the year 1815.
[Sidenote: A British species?]
There may exist more literature on the subject if one knew where to
look for it; but we are certainly justified in feeling annoyed at the
silence of the makers of books on British wild flowers, and the
compilers of local lists and floras. And what, we should like to ask
of our masters, is a British wild flower? Does not the same rule
apply to plants as to animals--namely, that when a species, whether
"introduced" or imported by chance or by human agency, has thoroughly
established itself on our soil, and proved itself able to maintain
its existence in a state of nature, it becomes, and is, a British
species? If this rule had not been followed by zoologists, even our
beloved little rabbit would not be a native, to say nothing of our
familiar brown rat and our black-beetle: and the pheasant, and
red-legged partridge, and capercailzie, and the fallow-deer, and a
frog, and a snail, and goodness knows how many other British species,
introduced into this country by civilised man, some in recent times.
And, going farther back in time, it may be said that every species
has at some time been brought, or has brought itself, from {289}
otherwhere--every animal from the red deer and the white cattle, to
the smallest, most elusive microbe not yet discovered; and every
plant from the microscopical fungus to the British oak and the yew.
The main thing is to have a rule in such a matter, a simple, sensible
rule, like that of the zoologist, or some other; and what we should
like to know from the botanists is--Have they got a rule, and, if so,
what is it? There are many who would be glad of an answer to this
question: judging from the sale of books on British wild flowers
during the last few years, there must be several millions of persons
in this country who take an interest in the subject.
[Sidenote: A visit to Swarraton]
One bright September day, when the mimulus was in its greatest
perfection, and my new pleasure in the flower at its highest, I by
chance remembered that Gilbert White, of Selborne, in the early part
of his career, had been curate for a time at Swarraton, a small
village on the Itchen, near its source, about four miles above
Alresford. That was in 1747. To Swarraton I accordingly went, only
to find what any guide-book or any person would have told me, that
the church no longer exists. Only the old churchyard remained,
overgrown with nettles, the few tombstones that had not been carried
away so covered with ivy as to appear like green mounds. A group of
a dozen yews marked the spot where the church had formerly stood; and
there were besides some very old trees, an ancient yew and a giant
beech, and others, and just outside the ground as noble an ash tree
as I have ever seen. These three, {290} at any rate, must have been
big trees a century and a half ago, and well known to Gilbert White.
On inquiry I was told that the church had been pulled down a very
long time back--about forty years, perhaps; that it was a very old
and very pretty church, covered with ivy, and that no one knew why it
was pulled down. The probable reason was that a vast church was
being or about to be built at the neighbouring village of
Northington, big enough to hold all the inhabitants of the two
parishes together, and about a thousand persons besides. This
immense church would look well enough among the gigantic structures
of all shapes and materials in the architectural wonderland of South
Kensington. But I came not to see this building: the little ancient
village church, in which the villagers had worshipped for several
centuries, where Gilbert White did duty for a year or so, was what I
wanted, and I was bitterly disappointed. Looking away from the
weed-grown churchyard, I began to wonder what his feelings would be
could he revisit this old familiar spot. The group of yew trees
where the church had stood, and the desolate aspect of the ground
about it would disturb and puzzle his mind; but, on looking farther,
all the scene would appear as he had known it so long ago--the round,
wooded hills, the green valley, the stream, and possibly some of the
old trees, and even the old cottages. Then his eyes would begin to
detect things new and strange. First, my bicycle, leaning against
the trunk of the great ash tree, would arrest his attention; but in
{291} a few moments, before he could examine it closely and consider
for what purpose it was intended, something far more interesting and
more wonderful to him would appear in sight. Five large birds
standing quietly on the green turf beside the stream--birds never
hitherto seen. Regarding them attentively, he would see that they
were geese, and it would appear to him that they were of two species,
one white and grey in colour, with black legs, the other a rich
maroon red, with yellow legs; also that they were both beautiful and
more graceful in their carriage than any bird of their family known
to him. Before he would cease wondering at the presence at Swarraton
of these Magellanic geese, no longer strange to any living person's
eye in England, lo! a fresh wonder--beautiful yellow flowers by the
stream, unlike any flower that grew there in his day, or by any
stream in Hampshire.
But how long after White's time did that flower run wild in
Hampshire? I asked, and then thought that I might get the answer from
some old person who had spent a long life at that spot.
I went no farther than the nearest cottage to find the very one I
wanted, an ancient dame of seventy-four, who had never lived anywhere
but in that small thatched cottage at the side of the old churchyard.
She was an excessively thin old dame, and had the appearance of a
walking skeleton in a worn old cotton gown; and her head was like a
skull with a thin grey skin drawn tightly over the sharp bones of the
face, with pale-coloured living eyes in {292} the sockets. Her
scanty grey hair was gathered in a net worn tightly on her head like
a skull-cap. The old women in the villages here still keep to this
long-vanished fashion.
I asked this old woman to tell me about the yellow flowers by the
water, and she said that they had always been there. I told her she
must be mistaken; and after considering for awhile she assured me
that they grew there in abundance when she was quite young. She
distinctly remembered that before her marriage--and that was over
fifty years ago--she often went down to the stream to gather flowers,
and would come in with great handfuls of wild musk.
When she had told me this, even before she had finished speaking, I
seemed to see two persons before me--the lean old woman with her thin
colourless visage, and, coming in from the sunshine, a young woman
with rosy face, glossy brown hair and laughing blue eyes, her hands
full of brightest yellow wild musk from the stream. And the
visionary woman seemed to be alive and real, and the other
unsubstantial, a delusion of the mind, a ghost of a woman.
But was the old woman right--was the beautiful yellow mimulus, the
wild musk or water-buttercup as she called it, which our botanists
refuse to admit into their works intended for our instruction, or
give it only half a dozen dry words--was it a common wild flower on
the Hampshire rivers more than half a century ago?
{293}
[Sidenote: Bird life on the downs]
From the valley and the river with its shining yellow mimulus and
floating water-grass in the crystal current--that green hair-like
grass that one is never tired of looking at--back to the ivy-green
cottage, its ancient limes and noble solitary oaks, and, above all,
its birds; then back again to the stream--that mainly was our life.
But close by on either side of the valley were the downs, and these
too drew us with that immemorial fascination which the higher ground
has for all of us, because of the sense of freedom and power which
comes with a wide horizon. That was a fine saying of Lord Herbert of
Cherbury that a man mounted on a good horse is lifted above himself:
one experiences the feeling in a greater degree on any chalk down.
One extensive open down within easy distance was a favourite
afternoon walk. Here on the short fragrant turf an army of pewits
were to be found every day, and usually there were a few
stone-curlews with them. It is not here as in the country about
Salisbury, where the Hawking Club has its headquarters, and where
they have been "having fun with the thick-knees," as they express it
in their lingo, until there are no thick-knees left. But the chief
attraction of this down was an extensive thicket of thorn and
bramble, mixed with furze and juniper and some good-sized old trees,
where birds were abundant, many of them still breeding. Here, down
to the end of September, I found turtle-doves' nests with
newly-hatched young and incubated eggs. I always felt more than
compensated for scratches {294} and torn clothes when I found young
turtle-doves in the down, as the little creatures are then delightful
to look at. Sitting hunched up on its platform, the head with its
massive bulbous beak drawn against its arched back, the little thing
is less like a bird than a mammal in appearance--a singularly
coloured shrew, let us say. The colour is indeed strange, the whole
body, the thick, fleshy, snout-like beak included, being a deep,
intense, almost indigo blue, and the loose hair-like down on the head
and upper parts a light, bright primrose yellow.
There are surprising colours in some young birds: the cirl nestling,
as we have seen, is black and crimson--clothed in black down with
gaping crimson mouth; loveliest of all is the young snipe in down of
brown-gold, frosted with silvery white; but for quaintness and
fantastic colouring the turtle-dove nestling has no equal. In all of
our native doves, and probably in all doves everywhere, the skin is
blue and the down yellow, but the colours differ in intensity. I
tried to find a newly-hatched stock-dove to compare it with the
turtle nestling but failed, although the species is quite common and,
like the other two, breeds till October. Ring-dove nestlings were
easy to see, but in these the blue colour, though deep on the beak
and head, is quite pale on the body, fading almost to white on some
parts; and the down, too, is very pale, fading to whitish tow-colour
on the sides and back.
[Sidenote: A boy naturalist]
When seeking for a ring-dove in down I had an amusing adventure. At
a distance of some miles {295} from the Itchen, near the Test, one
day in September, I was hunting for an insect I wanted in a thick
copse by Tidbury Ring, an ancient earthwork on the summit of a chalk
hill. Hearing a boy's voice singing near, I peeped out and saw a lad
of about fifteen tending some sheep: he was walking about on his
knees, trimming the herbage with an old rusty pair of shears which he
had found! It startled him a little when I burst out of the cover so
near him, but he was ready to enter into conversation, and we had a
long hour together, sitting on the sunny down. I mentioned my desire
to find a newly-hatched ring-dove, and he at once offered to show me
one. There were two nests with young close by, in one the birds were
half-fledged, the others only came out of their shells two days
before. These we went to look for, the boy leading the way to a
point where the trees grew thickest. He climbed a yew, and from the
yew passed to a big beech tree, in which the nest was placed, but on
getting to it he cried out that the nest was forsaken and the young
dead. He threw them down to me, and he was grieved at their death as
he had known about the nest from the time it was made, and had seen
the young birds alive the day before. No doubt the parents had been
shot, and the cold night had quickly killed the little ones.
This was the most intelligent boy I have met in Hampshire; he knew
every bird and almost every insect I spoke to him about. He was,
too, a mighty hunter of little birds, and had captured stock-doves
{296} and wheatears in the rabbit burrows. But his greatest feat was
the capture of a kingfisher. He was down by the river with a
sparrow-net at a spot where the bushes grow thick and close to the
water, when he saw a kingfisher come and alight on a dead twig within
three yards of him. The bird had not seen him standing behind the
bush: it sat for a few moments on the twig, its eyes fixed on the
water, then it dropped swiftly down, and he jumped out and threw the
net over it just as it rose up with a minnow in its beak. He took it
home and put it in a cage.
I gave him a sharp lecture on the cruelty of caging kingfishers,
telling him how senseless it was to confine such a bird, and how
impossible to keep it alive in prison. It was better to kill them at
once if he wanted to destroy them. "Of course your kingfisher died,"
I said.
"No," he replied. He stood the cage on a chair, and the bird was no
sooner in it than his little sister, a child of two who was fidgeting
round, pulled the door open and out flew the kingfisher!
[Sidenote: Birds at the cottage]
Returning to the cottage, whether from the high down, the green
valley, or the silent, shady wood, it always seemed a favourite
dwelling- or nesting-place of the birds, where indeed they most
abounded. Now that bright genial weather had come after the cold and
storm to make them happy, the air was full of their chirpings and
twitterings, their various little sounds of conversation and
soliloquy, with an {297} occasional bright, loud, perfect song. It
was generally the wren, whose lyric changes not through all the
changeful year, that uttered it. It was this small brown bird, too,
that amused me most with the spectacle of his irrepressible delight
in the new warmth and sunlight. There were about a dozen wrens at
the cottage, and some of them were in the habit of using their old
undamaged nests in the ivy and woodbine as snug little dormitories.
But they cared nothing for the human inhabitants of the cottage; they
were like small birds that had built their nest in the interstices of
an eagles' eyrie, who knew nothing and cared nothing about the
eagles. Occasionally, when a wren peeped in from the clustering ivy
or hopped on to a window-sill and saw us inside, he would scold us
for being there with that sharp, angry little note of his, and then
fly away. Nor would he take a crumb from the table spread out of
doors every day for the birds that disdained not to be fed. The ivy
and creepers that covered the cottage abounded with small spiders,
caterpillars, earwigs, chrysalids, and what not; that was good enough
for him--Thank you for your kind intentions!
Looking from a window at a bed of roses a few feet away, I discovered
that the wren took as much pleasure in a dust bath as any bird. He
would come to the loose soil and select a spot where the bed sloped
towards the sun, and then wriggle about in the earth with immense
enjoyment. Dusting himself, he would look like a miniature partridge
with {298} a round body not much bigger than a walnut. After dusting
would come the luxurious sun-bath, when, with feathers raised and
minute wings spread out and beak gaping, the little thing would lie
motionless and panting; but at intervals of three or four seconds a
joyful fit of shivering would seize him, and at last, the heat
becoming too great, he would shake himself and skip away, looking
like a brown young field-vole scuttling into cover.
This bright and beautiful period came to an end on 22nd August, and
we then had unsettled weather with many sudden changes until 3rd
September--cloudy oppressive days, violent winds, thunderstorms, and
days of rain and sunshine, and morning and evening rainbows; it was a
mixture of April, midsummer, and October.
This changeful period over, there was fine settled weather; it was
the golden time of the year, and it continued till our departure on
the last day of September.
The fruit season was late this year--nearly a fortnight later than in
most years; and when the earliest, the wild arum, began to ripen, the
birds--thrushes and chaffinches were detected--fell upon and devoured
all the berries, regardless of their poisonous character almost
before their light-green had changed to vivid scarlet. Then came the
deep crimson fruit of the honeysuckle; it ripened plentifully on the
plants growing against the cottage, and the cole-tits came in bands
to feed on it. It was pretty to see these airy little acrobats
clinging to the twine-like pendent sprays hanging before an open
window or door. {299} They were like the little birds in a Japanese
picture which one has seen. Then came the elderberries, which all
fruit-loving birds feast on together. But the tits and finches and
warblers and thrushes were altogether out-numbered by the starlings
that came in numbers from the pasture-lands to take part in the great
fruit-feast.
[Sidenote: An old chalk pit]
The elder is a common tree here, but at the cottage we had, I think,
the biggest crop of fruit in the neighbourhood; and it now occurs to
me that the vast old chalk pit in which the trees grew has not yet
been described, and so far has only been once mentioned incidentally.
Yet it was a great place, but a few yards away at the side of the old
lime trees and the small protecting fence. The entrance to it and
its wide floor was on a level with the green valley, while at its
upper end it formed a steep bank forty feet high. It was doubtless a
very old pit, with sides which had the appearance of natural cliffs
and were overhung and draped with thorn-trees, masses of old ivy, and
traveller's joy. Inside it was a pretty tangled wilderness; on the
floor many tall annuals flourished--knapweed and thistle and dark
mullein and teazel, six to eight feet high. Then came some
good-sized trees--ash and oak--and thorn, bramble and elder in
masses. It was a favourite breeding-place of birds of many species;
even the red-backed shrike had nested there within forty yards of a
human habitation, and the kingfisher had safely reared his young,
unsuspected by the barbarous water-keeper. The pit, too, was a
shelter in cold {300} rough weather and a roosting-place at night.
Now the fruit was ripe, it was a banqueting-place as well, and the
native birds were joined by roving outsiders, missel-thrushes in
scores, and starlings in hundreds. The noise they produced--a tangle
of so many various semi-musical voices--sounded all day long; and
until the abundant fruit had all been devoured the chalk pit was a
gigantic green and white bowl full to overflowing with sunshine,
purple juice, and melody.
The biggest crop of this fruit, out of the old chalk pit, was in the
garden of a cottage in the village, close to the river, occupied by
an old married couple, hard workers still with spade and hoe, and
able to make a Living by selling the produce of their garden. It was
a curious place; fruit trees and bushes, herbs, vegetables, flowers,
all growing mixed up anyhow, without beds or walks or any line of
demarcation between cultivated plants and brambles and nettles on
either side and the flags and sedges at the lower end by the river.
In the midst of the plot, just visible among the greenery, stood the
small, old, low-roofed thatched cottage, where the hens were free to
go in and lay their eggs under the bed or in any dark corner they
preferred. A group of seven or eight old elder-trees grew close to
the cottage, their branches bent and hanging with the weight of the
purpling clusters.
"What are you going to do with the fruit?" I asked the old woman; and
this innocent question raised a tempest in her breast, for I had
unwittingly touched on a sore subject.
{301}
[Sidenote: Past and present times]
"Do!" she exclaimed rather fiercely, "I'm going to do nothing with
it! I've made elderberry wine years and years and years. So did my
mother; so did my grandmother; so did everybody in my time. And very
good it were, too, I tell 'e, in cold weather in winter, made hot.
It warmed your inside. But nobody wants it now, and nobody'll help
me with it. How'm I to do it--keep the birds off and all! I've been
fighting 'em years and years, and now I can't do it no longer. And
what's the good of doing it if the wine's not good enough for people
to drink? Nothing's good enough now unless you buys it in a
public-house or a shop. It wasn't so when I were a girl. We did
everything for ourselves then, and it were better, I tell 'e. We
kep' a pig then--so did everyone; and the pork and bacon it were
good, not like what we buy now. We put it mostly in brine, and let
it be for months; and when we took it out and biled it, it were red
as a cherry and white as milk, and it melted just like butter in your
mouth. That's what we ate in my time. But you can't keep a pig
now--oh dear, no! You don't have him more'n a day or two before the
sanitary man looks in. He says he were passing and felt a sort of
smell about--would you mind letting him come in just to have a sniff
round? He expects it might be a pig you've got. In my time we
didn't think a pig's smell hurt nobody. They've got their own smell,
pigs have, same as dogs and everything else. But we've got very
partickler about smells now.
"And we didn't drink no tea then. Eight shillings {302} a pound, or
maybe seven-and-six--dear, dear, how was we to buy it! We had beer
for breakfast and it did us good. It were better than all these
nasty cocoa stuffs we drink now. We didn't buy it at the
public-house--we brewed it ourselves. And we had a brick oven then,
and could put a pie in, and a loaf, and whatever we wanted, and it
were proper vittals. We baked barley bread, and black bread, and all
sorts of bread, and it did us good and made us strong. These iron
ranges and stoves we have now--what's the good o' they? You can't
bake bread in 'em. And the wheat bread you gits from the shop,
what's it good for? 'Tisn't proper vittals--it fills 'e with wind.
No, I say, I'm not going to git the fruit--let the birds have it!
Just look at the greedy things--them starlings! I've shouted, and
thrown sticks and all sorts of things, and shaken a cloth at 'em, and
it's like calling the fowls to feed. The more noise I make the more
they come. What I say is, If I can't have the fruit I wish the
blackbirds 'ud git it. People say to me, 'Oh, don't talk to me about
they blackbirds--they be the worst of all for fruit.' But I never
minded that--because--well I'll tell 'e. I mind when I were a little
thing at Old Alresford, where I were born, I used to be up at four in
the morning, in summer, listening to the blackbirds. And mother she
used to say, 'Lord, how she do love to hear a blackbird!' It's
always been the same. I's always up at four, and in summer I goes
out to hear the blackbird when it do sing so beautiful. But them
starlings that come messing {303} about, pulling the straws out of
the thatch, I've no patience with they. We didn't have so many
starlings when I were young. But things is very different now; and
what I say is, I wish they wasn't--I wish they was the same as when I
were a girl. And I wish I was a girl again."
Listening to this tirade on the degeneracy of modern times, it amused
me to recall the very different feeling on the same subject expressed
by the old Wolmer Forest woman. But the Itchen woman had more
vigour, more staying-power in her: one could see it in the fresh
colour in her round face, and the pure colour and brightness of her
eyes--brighter and bluer than in most blue-eyed girls. Altogether,
she was one of the best examples of the hard-headed, indomitable
Saxon peasants I have met with in the south of England. She was past
seventy, impeded by an old infirmity, the mother of many men and
women with big families of their own, all scattered far and wide over
the county,--all too poor themselves to help her in her old age, or
to leave their work and come such a distance to see her, excepting
when they were in difficulties, for then they would come for what she
could spare them out of her hardly-earned little hoard.
I admired her "fierce volubility"; but that sudden softening at the
end about the blackbird's beautiful voice, and that memory of her
distant childhood, and her wish, strange in these weary days, to have
her hard life to live over again, came as a surprise to me.
{304}
[Sidenote: Migration of swallows]
In days like these, so bright and peaceful, one thinks with a feeling
of wonder that many of our familiar birds are daily and nightly
slipping away, decreasing gradually in numbers, so that we scarcely
miss them. By the middle of September the fly-catchers and several
of the warblers, all but a few laggards, have left us. Even the
swallows begin to leave us before that date. On the 8th many birds
were congregated at a point on the river a little above the village,
and on the 10th a considerable migration took place. Near the end of
a fine day a big cloud came up from the north-west, and beneath it,
at a good height, the birds were seen flying down the valley in a
westerly direction. I went out and watched them for half an hour,
standing on the little wooden bridge that spans the stream. They
went by in flocks of about eighty to a couple of hundred birds, flock
succeeding flock at intervals of three or four minutes. By the time
the sun set the entire sky was covered by the black cloud, and there
was a thick gloom on the earth; it was then some eight or ten minutes
after the last flock, flying high, had passed twittering on its way
that a rush of birds came by, flying low, about on a level with my
head as I stood leaning on the handrail of the bridge. I strained my
eyes in vain to make out what they were--swallows or martins--as in
rapid succession, and in twos and threes, they came before me, seen
vaguely as dim spots, and no sooner seen than gone, shooting past my
head with amazing velocity and a rushing sound, fanning my face with
{305} the wind they created, and some of them touching me with their
wing-tips.
On the evening of 18th September a second migration was witnessed at
the same spot, flock succeeding flock until it was nearly dark. On
the following evening, at another point on the river at Ovington, I
witnessed a third and more impressive spectacle. The valley spreads
out there to a great width, and has extensive beds of reeds,
bulrushes, and other water plants, with clumps and rows of alders and
willows. It was growing dark; bats were flitting round me in
numbers, and the trees along the edge of the valley looked black
against the pale amber sky in the west, when very suddenly the air
overhead became filled with a shrill confused noise, and, looking up
through my binocular, I saw at a considerable height an immense body
of swallows travelling in a south-westerly direction. A very few
moments after catching sight of them they paused in their flight,
and, after remaining a short time at one point, looking like a great
swarm of bees, they began rushing wildly about, still keeping up
their shrill excited twittering, and coming lower and lower by
degrees; and finally, in batches of two or three hundred birds, they
rushed down like lightning into the dark reeds, shower following
shower of swallows at intervals of two or three seconds, until the
last had vanished and the night was silent again.
It was time for them to go, for though the days were warm and food
abundant, the nights were growing cold.
{306}
The early hours are silent, except for the brown owls that hoot round
the cottage from about four o'clock until dawn. Then they grow
silent, and the morning is come, cold and misty, and all the land is
hidden by a creeping white river-mist. The sun rises, and is not
seen for half an hour, then appears pale and dim, but grows brighter
and warmer by degrees; and in a little while, lo! the mist has
vanished, except for a white rag, clinging like torn lace here and
there to the valley reeds and rushes. Again, the green earth, wetted
with mist and dews, and the sky of that soft pure azure of yesterday
and of many previous days. Again the birds are vocal; the rooks rise
from the woods, an innumerable cawing multitude, their voices filling
the heavens with noise as they travel slowly away to their
feeding-grounds on the green open downs; the starlings flock to the
bushes, and the feasting and chatter and song begin that will last
until evening. The sun sets crimson and the robins sing in the night
and silence. But it is not silent long; before dark the brown owls
begin hooting, first in the woods, then fly across to the trees that
grow beside the cottage, so that we may the better enjoy their music.
At intervals, too we hear the windy sibilant screech of the white owl
across the valley. Then the wild cry of the stone-curlew is heard as
the lonely bird wings his way past, and after that late voice there
is perfect silence, with starlight or moonlight.
{307}
INDEX
_Account of English Ants_, by the Rev. W. Gould, quoted, 88, 93
Adder, life remaining in severed head of, 76; its basking-place, 80;
its consciousness of human presence, 82
"Adder-stinger," New Forest name for the dragon-fly, 121
Agarics eaten by squirrels, 106
Alarm-cries of birds, 94
Alga, an aerial, 195; still essentially a water-plant, 195
America, South, dragon-flies in, 122; the camaloté in, 286; a wasp
experience in, 129
_Anax imperator_ in the New Forest, 118
Anglers, swifts occasionally caught by, 265
Anglo-Saxon settlers, a conquering race, 228, 230
Ants, removal of dead by, 87; behaviour of, towards queen, 88;
caterpillar hunting by, 92; vast populations of, 111
Arum, berries of, eaten by birds, 298
_Asilus_, a rapacious fly, 46
Associations, sympathy with lower animals due to human, 43, 46;
memories recalled by, 107-109; value of, in matters of faith, 186;
charm due to, 286
Autumn in the New Forest, 1
Bank-vole and hornet, 9
Bankes, Mr. E. A., his observation of nightjars, 39
Barrow on the heath, the, 48-52
Beaulieu, historical associations of, 36; a heath near, 38
Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, quoted as to the fire-fly, 125
Bellamy, J. C., his _Natural History of North Devon_ referred to, 251
Bird-life, annual destruction of, 26
Birds near the Boldre, 6; their silence in late summer, 89; mixed
gatherings of, 90; alarm cries of, 94; by the Itchen, 249
Blackbird, mortality among young of, 56; an orphan, by the Itchen,
270; tamed by feeding, 272; gregarious instinct in the young, 274
Blackburn, Mrs. Hugh, her account of the young cuckoo, 14
Blackmoor, church at, 191
Boldre or Lymington river, 3; a house by the, 4; between the Exe and
the, 29, 35
Bourne, the, or Selborne stream, 171
Boy, a New Forest, 158; his ignorance of the Forest wild life, 159; a
naturalist, 295
Boys, stray, in Wolmer, 216
Bracken, possible cause of pleasure in appearance of, 63
Brockenhurst, _Croöleptus iolithus_ on gravestones at, 195
Bullfinches, 188
Bunting, four kinds of, by the Itchen, 278
Butterflies of the New Forest, 117; moths and, collectors of, 120;
English names of, 120
_Calopteryx virgo_ in the Forest, 118; colouring of, 122
Camaloté, its appearance recalled by mimulus, 286
Cats, Egyptian, story of their fascination by fire, 99
Cattle tormented by forest flies, 66
Celt, the black, Iberian origin of, 236; Huxley, a specimen of the,
240
Chaffinch, its especial dread of the weasel, 94-96; arum berries
eaten by the, 298
Chalk-pit by the Itchen, fruit harvest for birds in, 299
Churches of Hampshire villages, 184; Gilbert White's strictures on,
184; their charm, 185; wanton destruction of, 186; their harmony with
their surroundings, 187, 190
_Cicada anglica_, doubt as to his song, 135, 136
Cirl-bunting, the, at Selborne, 172; quality of its voice, 173; not
distinguished by White from the yellowhammer, 173; by the Itchen,
250; his song, 251; his plumage, 251; its late breeding, 275; its
breeding habits, 275; its warning note, 276; safeguarding of young
by, 276
_Cladothrix odorifera_, scent of fresh earth due to, 154
Cockchafer grubs sought for by starlings, 57
Cockerel and martins at Selborne, 166
Cole-tit, honeysuckle berries eaten by, 298
Contrast a source of enjoyment, 203
Coot, the, on the Itchen, 253, 254; his struggles with grebe for
water-weed, 255; his parental wisdom, 256; greediness of young
corrected by, 257
_Cordulegaster annulatus_, 118; his serpent-like colouring, 121
Courtship by stag-beetle, 71; among the green grasshoppers, 151;
among the flower-spiders, 156, 159
Craig, Mr., his observations on the nestling cuckoo, 21
Creighton, Dr., on the young cuckoo question, 14
Crickets, house and field, their music compared, 169
_Croöleptus iolithus_, beautiful tints of the, 195
Crowhurst, hollow yew tree at, 199
Cuckoo, young, its behaviour, 13; in robin's nest, 15; its rapid
growth, 15; its spasmodic efforts to eject obstacles, 16-20
Dabchick, _see_ Grebe, little
Dark people in Hampshire, 231; two types of them, 231; mutual
distrust between blonde and, 234; Iberian origin of one type 236
Dark Water, the, 38; flies on the, 67; _Calopteryx virgo_ on the, 122
"Deadman's Plack," memorial cross at, 140
Death, life-appearances after, 77; unknown to lower animals, 86
_Death of Fergus_ quoted as to the yew, 196
Degeneration, Ray Lankester on, 149
Dog, his recollection of a hidden bone, 108
Domestication, change in habits caused by, 169
Dragon-flies, lack of English names for, 118; their strange
appearance, 121; a flight of blue, settled on bracken, 123
Drayton, Michael, quoted as to the coot, 258
Drumming or bleating of snipe, 40
Drumming-trees of woodpeckers, 11-13
Dust-bath, a wren's enjoyment of a, 296
Earth, odour of, 154
Edgar, King, memorial of his murder of Athelwold, 140
Eggs, ejection of, by young cuckoo, 16-19, 22
Elaboration and degeneration, 148
Elderberries by the Itchen, 298
Emblems on old gravestones, 193
_Epeira_, grasshopper killed by, 44
Ephemeræ, destruction of, by swifts, 267
Exe, valley of the, 35
Eye colours, racial feeling with regard to, 234
Family, a more or less happy, 254, 258
Farringdon, cirl bunting at, 173; Gilbert White curate at, 197; yew
tree at, 198
Fascination, question of, 95; the weasel's method of, 96; as exerted
on mammals, 97; inquiry as to interpretation of, 101; its
disadvantage to those subject to it, 102; as exerted by diving-birds
on fishes, 262
Fear, paralysing effect of, on birds and mammals, 96-100; on fishes,
262
"Fiddlers," flies eaten by, 68
Field-crickets, sound of, 169; a colony of, near Southampton, 170
Fire, fascination of, for cats, 99; for certain Hampshire pigs, 101
Fire-fly, comparison of, with glow-worm, 124; described by Beddoes,
125
Fish, capture of, by diving-birds, 262
Fishing, instruction in, given by parent grebes, 261
Flavour, purple, of certain fruits, 283
Fleas, their adaptation in size to their host, 104
Forest fly, his tenacity, 34; cattle tormented by, 66
Fox, alarm cry of birds at sight of, 94
Fritillary, silver-washed, 117
Gauchos, singing contests among the, 146
Gentry, the, a mixed race, 222
Gipsies of the South of England, 158
Glow-worm, shining of, after death, 78; impression produced by light
of, 124; comparison of, with the fire-fly, 124; quality of its light,
125; doubts as to purpose of the light, 127
Goldfinch, the, by the Itchen, 249
"Good-for-nothing grass," 141, 147
Gould, Rev. W., his _Account of English Ants_ quoted, 88, 93
Grass, false brome, great grasshoppers in the, 141; floating, in
Hampshire rivers, 243, 293
Grasshopper, spider and, 43; black, _see Thamnotrizon_; great green,
134, 137; his music, 138; rival minstrelsy of, 142; kicking and
biting, 144; the female, 147; her character and habits, 149-152
Grave, single, under the Selborne yew, 202, 218
Gravestones, old, their beauty, 192; their sculptured emblems, 193;
nature's softening touches on, 194; under the Hurstbourne Priors yew,
201
Grebe, the little, a persecuted bird, 254; attentions to his mate,
255; his breeding difficulties, 260; his dogged perseverance, 260;
fishing taught by parents to the young, 261
Habit, tyranny of, 165
Hampshire, characteristics of the people of, 220; blonde and dark
types in, 224; blonde type a mixed race, 227; Saxon race in, 227; the
dark type, 231
Harewood Forest, colony of great green grasshoppers in, 140
Harris, Moses, his _Exposition of English Insects_ quoted, 119
Harvest mouse feeding on dock seed, 8
Hawfinch, hunger cry of young, 92
Hawking Club, extermination of stone-curlews by, 293
Hawk-moth and meadow-pipit, 116
Herodotus quoted as to behaviour of cats fascinated by fire, 99
Herons at Hollywater Clump, 210
Hollywater Clump, 209
Honeysuckle, night fragrance of, 58, 270; berries of, eaten by
cole-tit, 298
Horn-blower, the Selborne, _see_ Newland
Hornet, bank-vole and, 9; fine appearance of the, 128; a South
American, 129; his rarity, 130; in late autumn, 131
Horse-ants, struggle of, with caterpillar, 92
"Horse-stingers," 121
House-crickets, their abundance at Selborne 168
House-martins, diminished number of, at Selborne, 174
Humming-bird hawk-moth, beauty of, 113, 115
Hunger cry of young birds, parental sensibility to, 23, 91; of young
blackbird, 55; of young cirl bunting, 277
Hurstbourne Priors, yew tree in churchyard at, 201
Huxley on the non-Saxon shape of English heads, 231; quoted as to his
own parentage, 240
Iberian type in Hampshire, 235; its persistence, 236; its possible
restoration, 237; its dominant qualities, 238, 239; Huxley's mother
an example of the, 240
Influences, pre-natal, possible results of, 100; over-susceptibility
possibly due to, 102
Insect life, sound of, 65
Insect notables, 113, 123, 130, 177
Insects, honey-eating, in lime trees, 248; rapacious, caterpillars
destroyed by, 92; comparative fewness of, in Britain, 110; as viewed
by the indoor mind, 111
Instinct, possible over-elaboration of, 102, 148, 262
Ironstone in Wolmer Forest, 205
Itchen, the river, compared with the Test, 245; a fishing cottage by
the, 245, 296; water-birds on the, 252 _et seqq._; an old cottage by
the, 300
Ivy blossoms, insects feasting on, 131
Jackdaw, the, a wind lover, 211
Jay, the, a caterpillar hunter, 91; in Harewood Forest, 140
Jenner, Dr., his account of the young cuckoo, 13
Jute type of man in Hampshire, 222
Kestrels with young, 65
"Kingfisher," an old name for dragon-fly, 120
Kingfisher, capture of a, 296; nesting in chalk-pit, 298
Langland, quotation from, 52
Leaves, tint of fallen, 2
Life-principle, divisibility of, 75, 76
Lime-trees by the Itchen cottage, 246, 248; bird visitors to the, 248
Ling, beauty of, in Wolmer Forest, 204
Locust family, England their northern limit, 177
_Locusta viridissima_, see Grasshopper, the great green
Loe, Mr., his _Yew Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_ referred to,
200
Lucas, Mr. W. T., his monograph on British dragon-flies quoted, 122
Lymington river, _see_ Boldre
Lyndhurst, 154
Mallards in Wolmer, 213
Mammals, woodland tint of, 2
Martyr Worthy, a little dark girl at, 240
Mayfly, the, decrease in its numbers, 266
Meadow-pipit, its struggle with hawk-moth, 116
Memory, lower kind of, 108
Migration, gradual, of swallows, 304
_Mimulus luteus_ in Hampshire, 283; purity of its colour, 284; South
American associations with, 286; as a British plant, 287; its wide
British range, 287; at Swarraton, 291; old woman's early memories of,
292
Mitford, Miss, on the lack of beauty in Berkshire faces, 182
Mob, the Selborne, 206
Monograph on fleas wanted, 105; on man in Hampshire wanted, 222
Monographs, Huxley on the peril of, 105
Moor-hen, an inquisitive, 213; the, on the Itchen, 253; nest of, on
floating water-weeds, 254
Mosaics, cause of pleasure given by sight of, 64
Moth, death's-head, its beauty, 115; and rarity, 116
Musk mallow, the, at Selborne, 171
Names, English, lack of, for dragon-flies, 118, 120; for insects, 178
Neolithic times, Iberians in Britain during, 236, 237
Nestlings, ejection of, by cuckoo, 16-23; strange coloration of, 15,
294
New Forest, abuses of the, 29; paucity of wild life in, 31; its
future management, 33; butterflies of the, 117; hornets in the, 130
Newland, the Selborne hornblower, 206, 217; his capture and pardon,
207, 218; his grave under the yew tree, 218
Newman, Edward, colony of green grasshoppers mentioned in his
_Entomologist_, 139; his _Phytologist_ referred to as to the mimulus,
288
Nightingale, date of cessation of its song, 89
Nightjar, its care of the young, 39
Nore Hill, view from, 183
Norfolk, the churches of, compared with those of Hants, 185
Northington, immense church at, 290
Oak woods, attractiveness of, 90; distinguishing beauty of, in
autumn, 280
Oast-house, old, at Farringdon, 198
Open spaces, the love of, 38
Ovington, watching swifts at, 266; reed-bunting at, 278; mimulus
blossoming at, 286; swallows congregating at, 305
Owl, tawny, voice of, 4; a white, at Alton, 164; brown, by the
Itchen, 306
Pain, undue sensibility to, 25; indispensable to life, 26
Parsons, Mr., formerly vicar of Selborne, 218
Peasantry, racial types best found among the, 223; ancient and
modern, compared, 301
Pen Ponds in Richmond Park, a coot comedy on, 256
Pewit, his wailing complaints, 42; a dead young, 85
Pigeons, three kinds of, by the Itchen, 249; blue colour of young, 294
Pigmentation, variation in intensity of, 233
Pigs, certain, insane attraction of fire for, 101
Pike, its attempt to seize a swallow, 36
Pixie mounds, 47, 48
_Polyergus rufescens_, over-specialisation of, 149
_Polygonum persicaria_, coot feeding on, 256
Pond-skaters, flies eaten by, 68
Priors Dean, small church at, 188
Privett, large new church at, 190
Queen ant, deferential treatment of, 88
Rabbit, paralysing effect of stoat's presence on, 97, 100
Races, successive absorption of, in England, 236
Rain, swifts and swallows not affected by, 268
Redshank, breeding of, 41
Reed-bunting, song of, 278
Ring-dove, young of, 294
Robin, cuckoo's egg in nest of, 15; ejection of eggs and young of, by
young cuckoo, 16-23; an ejected nestling, 22; parental insensibility,
23
Rose, cult of the, 58
Sand-martins, late migration of, 269; a dead one, 269
Saxon type, the, in Hampshire, 227, 303; occasional reversion to the,
228; comparison of, with Iberian, 239
Scent, unpleasing, of yellow flowers, 282
Seebohm on stories of the young cuckoo, 14
Selborne, idle visitors to, 161; a second visit to, 163; bird
incidents observed at, 164; a third visit, 167; temperature of, 168;
house-crickets at, 168; musk mallow in churchyard, 171; cirl bunting
at, 172; its enervating air, 181; beauty of the common, 182; yew tree
in churchyard, 198, 199; the "mob" at, 206
Shepherd near Winchester, his wages, 227; a Saxon, on the downs, 229
Shrews, young, 10; dead, abundance of fleas on, 105
Shrike, red-backed, 299
Silchester, mosaics at, 64
Snake-skin, apparent continued vitality of, 77
Snipe, breeding habits of, 40, 41; in Wolmer, 215; beauty of young,
294
Sounds, pleasure in, affected by conventions, 169
South Hayling, curious yew tree at, 200
Spider killing grasshopper, 44; a flower-haunting, 155
Squirrel, visit from a, 10; a dead, 103; fatal fall of, 104; fleas
on, 104, 105; his irritable temper, 106; his memory of hidden food,
107
Stag-beetle, "stags and does," 69; in search of a mate, 71; striking
a scent, 72; unconscious comedy of the, 74; life remaining in severed
head, 75
Starling, note of, 3; his search for cockchafer grubs, 57; his untidy
habits, 210; his varied language, 210; increase in his numbers, 303
Stoat, rabbit's helplessness when chased by, 97
Stonechat, his note of trouble, 41
Stone-curlews, extermination of, by Hawking Club, 293
Stridulation of grasshoppers, 134; of crickets, 169
Swallow and pike on the Exe, 36
Swarraton, White formerly curate of, 289; church at, pulled down,
289; changes in, since White's day, 290; old woman's recollections of
mimulus at, 292
Swifts, the, at Selborne, 172, 174; evening gatherings of, 175; on
the Itchen, 264; destruction of May flies by, 267
Swinton, A. H., quoted as to _Cicada anglica_, 135
Teal, Wolmer a breeding-place of, 212; his lively disposition, 214,
215
_Thamnotrizon cinereus_ at Selborne, 177; his habits, 178; voice and
disposition, 179
_Thomisus citreus_, its habits, 155; its wooing antics, 156
Thrush, young, 55; arum berries eaten by, 298
Tidbury Ring, 295
Tit, long-tailed, nest of, 7
Traherne, Thomas, quoted, 38
Trees, age of, 199
Turtle-doves in Wolmer, 212; appearance of young, 294
Varieties, racial, in Southern English people, 220
Vegetation by Hampshire streams, 242, 243, 247
Villages, characteristic Hampshire, along the rivers, 243
Viper, _see_ Adder
Vole hunted by weasel, 97
Voles, field and bank, 8
Wagtail, a pied, at Selborne, 165
Wallace, Dr. A. R., as to the cuckoo controversy, 13
Warning note of cirl bunting, 276, 277
Water-birds on the Itchen, 252, 258
Water-keeper on the Itchen, destruction of grebes' nests by, 254; on
the Test, his opinion as to dragon-flies, 119
Water-rail on the Itchen, 259
Watson, William, on "world-strangeness," 47
Weasel, the, his place in nature, 7; dreaded by small birds, 94; his
fascination-dance, 95; his pursuit of field-vole, 97
Wheatham Hill, wide view from, 184
White admiral, 117
White, Gilbert, his strictures on Hampshire churches, 184; his
connection with Farringdon, 197; Farringdon yew not mentioned by,
199; vain attempts after reminiscences of, 206; his description of
Wolmer Forest, 210; his curacy at Swarraton, 289
Whitethroat attacked by lesser whitethroat, 61
Whitethroat, lesser, song of, 60, 138
Wild musk at Selborne, 171
Willughby, his suggestion as to colour, 37
Wine, elderberry, a forgotten vintage, 301
Wolmer Forest, first impression of, 203; colour of streams in, 205;
Holly-water Clump in, 209; White's description of, 210; its bird
population, 211
Woman, a young, of Hampshire type, 232; an old, her recollection of
wild musk, 292; an old, a praiser of past times,300
Wood owl, carrying power of voice of, 4
Woodpeckers, green, drumming by, 9; in Hollywater Clump, 210; great
spotted, 12; small spotted, 12
Wren, its continued use of old nest, 297; its sun-bath, 297
Wren, golden-crested, nest of, 6
Yellow flowers, want of attraction in, 282; the smell of, 282
Yellowhammer not distinguished by White from the cirl bunting, 173
Yew tree, at Priors Dean, 190; its association with the dead, 196;
called the "Hampshire weed," 197; at Farringdon, 197, 199; at
Selborne, 198, 218; slow growth of, 199; growth of new bark in, 199;
at Crowhurst, 199; at Hurstbourne Priors, 201; possible injury to
roots of, from grave-digging, 201
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