THE SOIL AND THE COUNTRYSIDE
In this chapter we want to put together much of what we have learned
about the different kinds of soil, so that as we go about the country
we may know what to look for on a clay soil, a sandy soil, and so on.
We have seen that clay holds water and is very wet and sticky in
winter, while in summer it becomes hard and dry, and is liable to crack
badly. "It greets a' winter and girns a' summer," as one of Dr John
Brown's characters said of his soil. Clay soils are therefore hard to
dig and expensive to cultivate: the farmer calls them heavy and usually
prefers to put them into grass because once the grass is up it lasts as
long as it is wanted and never needs to be resown. But in the days
when we grew our own wheat, before we imported it from the United
States and other countries, this clay land was widely cultivated for
wheat and beans. So long as wheat was 60/- to 100/- a quarter it was a
very profitable crop, but, when some forty years ago it fell to 40/-
and then lower still, the land either went out of cultivation like the
"derelict" farms of Essex, or it was changed to grass land and used for
cattle grazing. Great was the distress that followed; some districts
indeed were years in recovering. But new methods came in: the land
near London was used for dairy {101} farming, and elsewhere it was
improved for grazing, and the clay districts, although completely
changed, are now more prosperous again. Many of the fields still show
the ridges or "lands" in which, when they grew wheat, they were laid up
to let the water run away, and many of them keep their old names, but
these are the only relics of the old days. The land is not, and never
was, very valuable. The roads are wide, and on either side have wide
waste strips cut up roughly by horse tracks, cart ruts and ant hills.
Bracken, gorse, rushes, thistles and brambles grow there, and you may
find many fine blackberries in September. The coarse Aira grass is
found with its leaves as rough as files. The villages are often built
round greens which serve as the village playground, where the boys and
young men now play cricket and football, and their forefathers
practised archery, played quoits and other games. On a few village
greens the Maypole can still be seen, whilst the stocks in which
offenders were placed are also left in some places.
The hedges are often high and straggling, and there are numerous woods
and plantations containing much oak. Some of the woods are very
ancient and probably form part of the primeval forests that once
largely covered England. Epping Forest in Essex, the Forest of Blean
and the King's Wood in Kent, have probably never been cultivated land.
In the days when ships were made of oak these woods and hedges were
very valuable, but now they are of little use as sources of timber.
Instead they are valued for quite another reason: they afford shelter
for foxes and for game birds. The clay districts are and always have
been famous for fox hunting; the Pytchley, Quorn, Belvoir, {102} and
other celebrated packs have their homes in the broad, clay, grassy
vales of the Midlands. The vale of Blackmoor and other clay regions
are equally famous. The plantations and hedgerows are fine places for
primroses and foxgloves, while in the pastures, and especially the poor
pastures, are found the ox-eyed daisy and quaking grass, that make such
fine nosegays, as well as that sure sign of poverty, the yellow rattle.
But many of these poor pastures have been improved by draining, liming,
and the use of suitable manures. Although the roads are better than
they were (see p. 30) they are still often bad and lie wet for weeks
together in winter, especially where the hedges are high. Numerous
brick and tile yards may be found and iron ore is not uncommon; in some
places it is worked now, in others it is no longer worked and nothing
remains of the lost industry save only a few names of fields, of ponds,
or of cottages.
[Illustration: Fig. 47. Highly cultivated sand in Kent. Gooseberries
are growing in the foreground, vegetables behind, and hops in
background]
A sandy soil is in so many ways the opposite of a clay soil that we
shall expect to find corresponding differences in the look of the
country. A sandy soil does not hold water: it may get water up from
the subsoil to supply the plant (see p. 66), or, if it happens to lie
in a basin of clay, it may even be very wet: otherwise it is likely to
be too dry for ordinary plants. We may therefore look out for two
sorts of sand country, the one cultivated because there is enough water
for the crops, and the other not cultivated because the water is
lacking. These can readily be found.
We will study the cultivated sands first. As sand is not good plant
food (p. 43) these soils want a lot of manure, and so are not good for
ordinary farmers. But they are very easy to cultivate--for which
reason they {104} are called light soils--and can be dug at any time;
seeds can be sown early, and early crops can be got. Consequently
these soils are very useful for men doing special work like fattening
winter and spring sheep, or producing special crops like fruit or
potatoes, and for market gardeners who grow all sorts of vegetables,
carrots, parsnips, potatoes, peas, and so on. Fig. 47 is a view of a
highly cultivated sandy region in Kent showing gooseberries in the
foreground, vegetables behind, and a hop garden behind that again.
[Illustration: Fig. 48. A Surrey heath]
The uncultivated sands are sometimes not really so very different, and
some of them, perhaps many of them, might be improved or reclaimed and
made to grow these special crops if it were worth while. But they
always require special treatment and therefore they have been left
alone. In days of old our ancestors disliked them very much;
"villanous, rascally heaths" Cobbett always called them. There were
practically no villages and few cottages, because the land was too
barren to produce enough food; the few dwellers on the heath, or the
"heathen," were so ignorant and benighted that the name came to stand
generally for all such people and has remained in our language long
after its original meaning was lost. As there were so few inhabitants
the heaths used to be great places for robbers, highwaymen, and
evil-doers generally; Gad's Hill on the Watling St. between Rochester
and Gravesend, Finchley Common, Hounslow Heath and others equally
dreaded by travellers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were
barren sandy tracts. But in our time we no longer need to dread them;
we can enjoy the infinite charm of the breezy, open country with its
brown vegetation, the pink blossom of the bell-shaped heath and the
lilac blossom of the {106} heather, the splashes of yellow from the
ragwort or the gorse and the dark pine and larch plantations. In the
spring the young shoots of bracken lend a beautiful light green colour
to the scene, while in the autumn the faded growth covers it all with a
rich brown. People now like to live amid such surroundings, and so
these heaths, that have been untouched for so long and are part of the
original primeval England as it was in the days of the Britons, are
becoming dotted with red bricked and red tiled villas, and are fast
losing their ancient character. The heaths are not everywhere dry;
there are numerous clay basins where the sand lies wet, where peat
forms (see p. 37), and where marsh plants like the bog asphodel,
sundew, or cotton grass can be found. In walking over a heath you soon
learn to find these wet places by the colour of the grass and the
absence of heather. In some places there is a good deal of wood,
especially pines, larches, and silver birches: all these are very
common on the Surrey sands, willows also grow in the damp places. Fig.
48 shows a Surrey heath--Blackheath--with heather, gorse and bracken;
with pine-woods in the distance and everywhere some bare patches of
sand. Much of the New Forest is on the sand, as also is Bournemouth,
famous for its fine pine woods. Fig. 49 is a view of such woods on
Wimbledon common. But elsewhere there is no wood: the peasants burn
the turf, and so you find their cottages have huge fireplaces: instead
of fences round their gardens or round the plantations there are walls
made of turf. Such are the Dorchester heaths so finely described by
Hardy in _The Return of the Native_ and other novels. Other sands,
however, are covered with grass and not with heather, and many of these
have a special value {108} for golf links, especially some of the dry,
invigorating sands by the seaside. The famous links at St Andrews, and
at Littlestone, are examples.
[Illustration: Fig. 49. Woodland and heather on light sandy soil,
Wimbledon Common]
In between the fertile and the barren sands come a number that are
cultivated without being very good. They are much like the others,
carrying a vegetation that is usually of the narrow leaved type (p.
72), and not very dense. On the road sides you see broom, heather,
heath, harebells, along with gorse and bracken with milkwort nestling
underneath: crested dog's tail and sheep's fescue are common grasses,
while spurrey, knotwood, corn marigold, are a few of the numerous weeds
in the arable fields. Gardens are easily dug, but it is best to put
into them only those plants that, like the native vegetation, can
withstand drought: vegetable gardens must be well manured and well
limed. Fig. 50 shows some of this kind of country in Surrey, the
barley field is surrounded by wood and very poor grass on the higher
slopes.
[Illustration: Fig. 50. Poor sandy soil in Surrey, partly cultivated
but mainly wood and waste]
It is easy to travel in a sand country because the roads dry very
quickly after rain, although they may be dusty in summer. Sometimes
the lanes are sunk rather deeply in the soft sand, forming very pretty
banks on either side.
Loams, as we have seen (p. 2), lie in between sands and clays: they are
neither very wet nor very dry: not too heavy nor yet too light: they
are very well suited to our ordinary farm crops, and they form by far
the best soils for general farming; wheat, oats, barley, sheep, cattle,
milk, fruit and vegetables can all be produced: indeed the farmer on a
good loam is in the fortunate position of being able to produce almost
anything he finds most profitable. In a loam district that does not
{110} lie too high the land is generally all taken up, even the roads
are narrow and there are few commons. The hedges are straight and cut
short, the farm houses and buildings are well kept, and there is a
general air of prosperity all round. Good elms grow and almost any
tree that is planted will succeed. Loams shade off on one side into
sand; the very fertile sands already described might quite truly be
called sandy loams. On the other side they shade off into clays; the
heavy loams used to be splendid wheat soils, but are now, like clays,
often of little value. But they form pleasant, undulating country,
nicely wooded, and dotted over with thatched cottages; the fields are
less wet and the roads are rather better than on the clays. When
properly managed they make excellent grass land.
Chalky soils stand out quite sharply from all others: their white
colour, their lime kilns now often disused, their noble beech trees,
and, above all, the great variety of flowering plants enable the
traveller at once to know that he is on the chalk. Many plants like
chalk and these may be found in abundance, but some, such as foxgloves,
heather, broom or rhododendrons cannot tolerate it at all, and so they
will not grow.
Chalk, like sand, is dry, and the roads can be traversed very soon
after rain. They are not very good, however; often they are only
mended with flints, which occur in the chalk and are therefore easily
obtainable, and the sharp fragments play sad havoc with bicycle tyres.
The bye roads and lanes are often narrow, winding, and worn deep
especially at the foot of the hills, so that the banks get a fair
amount of moisture and carry a dense vegetation. Among the profusion
of flowers you can find scabious, the bedstraws, vetches, ragwort,
{111} figwort, and many a plant rare in other places, like the wild
orchids; while the cornfields are often yellow with charlock. In the
hedgerows are hazels, guelder roses, maples, dogwood, all intwined with
long trails of bryony and traveller's joy. In the autumn the
traveller's joy produces the long, hairy tufts that have earned for it
the name of old man's beard, while the guelder roses bear clusters of
red berries. The great variety of flowers attracts a corresponding
variety of butterflies, moths and other insects; there are also numbers
of birds and rabbits--indeed a chalk country teems with life in spite
of the bare look of the Downs. The roads running at the foot of the
chalk Downs and connecting the villages, and farmhouses built there for
the good water supply, are particularly rich in plants because they
sometimes cut into the chalk and sometimes into the neighbouring clay,
sand or rock. Now and then a spring bursts out and a little stream
takes its rise: if you follow it you will generally find watercress
cultivated somewhere.
Besides the beech trees you also find ash, sycamore, maples, and, in
the church yards, some venerable yews. Usually the chalk districts
were inhabited very early: they are dry and healthy, the land can be
cultivated and the heights command extensive views over the country, so
that approaching enemies could easily be seen. On the chalk downs and
plains are found many remains of tribes that lived there in the remote
ages of the past, whose very names are now lost. Strange weapons and
ornaments are sometimes dug up in the camps where they lived and
worked; the barrows can be seen in which they were buried, and the
temples in which they worshipped; Stonehenge itself, the best known of
all these, lies on the chalk. {112} Several of the camps still keep
the name the ancient Britons gave them--the _Mai-dun_, the encampment
on the hill, changed in the course of years to Maiden, as in Maiden
Hill, near Dorchester, in Dorset, Maiden Bower, near Dunstable, and so
on. Some of their roads are still in use to this day, the Icknield Way
(the way of the Iceni, a Belgic tribe), the Pilgrim's Way of the
southern counties and others.
Even the present villages go back to very ancient times, and the
churches are often seven or eight hundred years old.
In places the land is too steep or too elevated to be cultivated, and
so it is left as pasture for the sheep or "sheep walk"; where
cultivation is possible the fields are large and without hedges, like
those shown in Fig. 51; during autumn, winter and spring there are many
sheep about, penned or "folded" on the arable land, eating the crops of
swedes, turnips, rape, vetches or mustard grown for them, or grazing on
the aftermath of sainfoin or grass and clover. So important are sheep
in chalk districts that the whole scheme of farming is often based on
their requirements, but corn is also a valuable crop, and, especially
in dry districts, barley, so that chalk soils are often spoken of as
"sheep and barley" soils. Although the pastures are very healthy there
is not generally much food or "keep" for the animals during the summer
because of the dryness.
[Illustration: Fig. 51. Open chalk cultivated country, Isle of Thanet]
The black soil of the fen districts and elsewhere is widely different
from any of the preceding. It contains, as its colour shows, a large
quantity of combustible material (Chap. V.), which has a great power of
holding water. These fens are therefore very wet; until they were
drained they were desolate wastes: you may {114} read in Kingsley's
_Hereward the Wake_ what they used to be like in old days, and even as
late as 1662 Dugdale writes that here "no element is good. The air
cloudy, gross and full of rotten harrs[1]; water putrid and muddy, yea,
full of loathsome vermin; the earth spongy and boggy; and the fire
noisome by the stink of smoking hassocks[2]." But during the Stuart
period wide ditches or drains were dug, into which the water could flow
and be pumped into rivers. This reclamation has been continued to the
present time, and the black soils as well as the others in the Fen
districts can be made very productive.
We have seen that a change in the soil produces a change in the plants
that grow on it. The flora (i.e. the collection of plants) of a clay
soil is quite different from that of a sandy soil, and both are
different from that of a chalk or of a fen soil. In like manner
draining a meadow or manuring it alters its flora: some of the plants
disappear and new ones come in. Even an operation like mowing a lawn,
if carried on sufficiently regularly, causes a change. In all these
cases the plants favoured by the new conditions are enabled to grow
rather better than those that are less favoured; thus in the regularly
mown lawn the short growing grasses have an advantage over those like
brome that grow taller, and so crowd them out. When land is drained
those plants that like a great quantity of water no longer do quite so
well as before, while those that cannot put up with much water now have
a better chance. In the natural state there is a great deal of
competition among {115} plants, and only those survive that are adapted
to their surroundings. You should remember this on your rambles and
when you see a plant growing wild you should think of it as one that
has succeeded in the competition and try to find out why it has been
enabled to do so.
[1] Harr is an old word meaning sea-fog.
[2] Hassock is the name given to coarse grass which forms part of the
turf burnt in the cottages.
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