and on a fixed principle, not as an amusement for irresponsible persons
or children. I know a flower-lover who, in a district where that
beautiful St. John's-wort, the tutsan, was dwindling through
depredations, or through some unexplained malady, carefully restored
the balance in a score or so of suitable spots; and surely such action
was much to be commended. But it is not desired that everyone should be
planting tutsan everywhere; nor is there any danger of such a fashion
arising, for there is much less tendency to plant than to pluck, to
create than to destroy; and for that reason it would be folly to
reintroduce any rare plant like the lady's slipper, where the collector
would quickly reap what the enthusiast had sown.
Such was the objection, it seems to me, to a proposal made some years
ago by Edward Carpenter and others, that the diminishing numbers of the
rarer butterflies should be reinforced by breeding. One would not
willingly repeat the comedy of the angling craze, which solemnly stocks
rivers with fish in order to pull them out again for pastime.
Nor, because _some_ planting of wildflowers may be unobjectionable, does
it follow that all such enterprises are deserving of praise. A recent
announcement that the Llanberis side of Snowdon, a locality rich in
British mountain flowers, was being sown by Kew experts with the seeds
of a number of "Alpines" from Switzerland, was likely to be more
agreeable to rock-gardeners than to mountain-lovers, who have a regard
for the distinctive character of Snowdon itself, and of its native
flora. A country which has allowed its finest mountain to be exploited
for commercial purposes, as Snowdon has been, is perhaps hardly in a
position to protest against a Welsh hillside being planted with alien
Swiss flowers, and even with Chinese rhododendrons; but nevertheless
such schemes are thoroughly incongruous and barbaric. What sort of
mountains do we desire to have? A piece of nature, or a nursery-garden?
A Snowdon, or a Snowdon-cum-Kew?
Be it understood, then, that the sowing of tares is by no means
recommended as a practice: all that is here urged is that a sweeping
condemnation of it is not warranted by the facts, inasmuch as
circumstances, not dogma, must in each case decide whether it be
blameworthy, or harmless, or beneficial. And apart from common sense,
there is one natural safeguard which will prevent any undue growth of
wildflowers, viz. the remarkable fastidiousness of the choicer plants in
regard to soil and conditions: they will flourish where it suits them to
flourish, not elsewhere. Certain auxiliaries, too, Nature has in the
rabbits, water-voles, and other wild animals that are herbivorous in
their tastes; for it is very interesting to observe how quickly the
appearance of a strange plant will attract the attention of such
gourmands.
I was once the owner of a sloping meadow in which there were some
springs; and thinking it would be pleasant to have a water-garden I had
a small pond made, into which I introduced some aquatic plants, and
among them, most accommodating of all, the water-violet, which grew
lustily and sent up a number of its graceful stalks with whorls of pink
blossoms. But just at that time a water-vole took up his residence
there, and developing a remarkable fondness for a new savour in his
salads, quickly made havoc of my _Hottonia palustris_. The neighbours
assured me I must trap him; but to treat a fellow-vegetarian in that way
was out of the question, especially as his confidence in me was so great
that he would sit nibbling my favourite aquatic, which seemed also to be
_his_ favourite, while I stood within a few yards. It was clear that if
the cult of the water-violet involved the killing of the water-vole it
had got to be abandoned.
In this way, among others, does Nature protect herself against an
excessive interference on man's part with the distribution of
wildflowers.
XIV
DALES OF DERBYSHIRE
Deeper and narrower grew the dell;
It seemed some mountain, rent and riven,
A channel for the stream had given,
So high the cliffs of limestone gray
Hung beetling o'er the torrent's way.
SCOTT.
THE limestone Dales of Derbyshire are narrow and deep, and their
streams, when visible (for they often lurk underground), are swift,
strong, and of crystal clearness. The sides of the glens are in some
places precipitous with bluffs and pinnacles of grey rock; in others,
ridged and streaked with terraces of alternate crag and turf; above the
cliffs there is often a tableland of bleak pastures divided by stone
walls, as dreary a scene as could be imagined, when contrasted with the
picturesque dales below.
The flowers of these limestone valleys immediately recall those of the
chalk: the marjoram, the basil, the great knapweed, the traveller's-joy,
the rock-rose, the musk-thistle--these and many other familiar friends
make us seem, at first sight, to be back in Sussex or Surrey. But in
reality we are a hundred and fifty miles nearer to the arctic zone, and
that difference is clearly reflected in the flora; for when we look
around, a number of new plants make their appearance, of which a dozen
or more are very rare, or quite unknown, in the south. I once lived for
several years on the hills above Chesterfield, a good way to the east of
this limestone country; and to visit the nearest of the Dales there was
a walk of seven miles, to and fro, across the intervening high moors
that form the southern buttress of the Pennines. Stoney Middleton is far
from being one of the pleasantest of Peakland villages; but such was the
interest of its flora that the fourteen-mile trudge, and more, was often
undertaken during the summer months.
After traversing the great heathery moors devoted to the cult of the
grouse, and descending from the rocky rampart of gritstone known as
Curbar Edge, one crosses the valley of the Derwent; and here a pause may
be made to notice a patch of sweet Cicely, one of the loveliest of the
umbelliferous tribe. It is a charming sight, as it stands up tall in the
sunshine, with its soft feathery cream-white masses of foliage and its
fernlike leaflets; too fair and fragile, it would seem, for human hands,
for it droops very soon if cut. Every part of it--stalk, leaves,
flowers, and fruit--has the same aromatic fragrance (its local name is
"anise"), and so gracious is it to sight, scent, and touch, that one
longs to bathe one's senses in its luxuriance.
Middleton Dale, naturally beautiful, but sadly deformed by lime-kilns,
is famous for a cliff known as the Lover's Leap, from which an enamoured
maiden is said to have thrown herself down. Had it been the love of
flowers, rather than of man, that tempted her to that dizzy verge, there
would have been no cause for surprise; for there are many alluring
plants on the ledges of the scarp, including a brilliant show of wild
wallflowers. In May and June there may be found along the northern side
of the dale the yellow petals of the spring cinquefoil (_potentilla
verna_), a gem of a flower, which, in Mr. Reginald Farrer's words,
"clings to the white cliff-face, and from far off you see a splash of
gold on the greyness." A month later the equally attractive Nottingham
catch-fly (_silene nutans_) will be abundant on the rocks; a plant of
nocturnal habits which expands its petals and becomes fragrant in the
evening, but "nods," as its Latin name avows, in the daytime, when it
wears a sleepy and somewhat dissipated look, like a wassailer--a white
campion that has been "on spree." By night its beauty is beyond cavil.
On the lower slopes is a colony of a still stranger-looking flower, the
woolly-headed thistle, whose involucre is so bulky, and its scales so
densely wrapped in white down, that it has an almost grotesque
appearance, as of a thistle with "swelled head." It is, however, a very
handsome plant; and when growing in vast numbers, as I have seen it in
one of its special haunts, near Wychwood Forest, in Oxfordshire, it
makes a glorious spectacle.
Of the three species of saxifrages--the rue-leaved, the meadow, and the
mossy--that thrive along the bottom of the dale, the two former are
southern as well as northern flowers; but the presence of the mossy
saxifrage is a sign that we are in a mountainous region, and as such it
is always welcome. With these grows the graceful vernal sandwort,
another flower of the hills, and so often the companion of saxifrages
that it is naturally associated with them in the mind.
But Middleton Dale, the nearest to my starting-point, and therefore the
most frequently visited by me, is much surpassed in floral wealth by the
long valley of the Wye, which in its course from Buxton to Bakewell
bears the names successively of Wye Dale, Chee Dale, Miller's Dale, and
Monsal Dale. In one or another of these four glens nearly all the rarer
limestone flowers have their station. You may find, for instance, three
very local crucifers: the two whitlow-grasses, _draba incana_ and _draba
muralis_, remarkable only as being scarce in other parts of the kingdom;
and the really beautiful little _Hutchinsia_, with its tiny white
blossoms and finely cut pinnate leaves. Jacob's-ladder, a handsome blue
flower, very uncommon in a wild state, is also native on the bluffs and
slopes in Chee Dale and elsewhere: in fact a stroll along almost any of
the limestone escarpments will bring new treasures to sight.
But the flower which I best love is one which grows by the
streamside--in Wye Dale it is in profusion--the modest water-avens,
often strangely undervalued by writers who describe it as "dingy." Thus
in Delamer's _The Flower Garden_ it is stated that this avens "is more
remarkable for having been one of the favourites, the whims, the
caprices of the great Linnaeus, than for anything else: it is hard to say
what, in a British meadow-weed, could so take the fancy of the Master."
Was ever such blindness of eye, such hardness of heart? And the wiseacre
goes on to say that "it is impossible to account, logically, for
attachments and sympathies."
Logic, truly, would be out of place in such a connection; but it is not
difficult to understand Linnaeus's feelings towards the water-avens.
There is a rare beauty in the droop of its bell-like head, and in its
soft and subdued tints--the deep rufous brown of the long sepals,
through which peep the silky petals in hues that range from creamy white
to vinous red, and all steeped in a quiet radiance as of some old
stained glass. I must own to thinking it the most tenderly beautiful of
all English wildflowers. The hybrid between the water-avens and the
common avens is occasionally found by the Wye: one which I saw in
Miller's Dale had green sepals and petals of pale yellow.
The Alpine penny-cress (_thlaspi alpestre_), a crucifer native on
limestone rocks, may be seen on the High Tor at Matlock, where it grows
with the vernal sandwort on debris at the mouth of caves; a graceful
little plant with white flowers and a smooth unbranched stem so closely
clasped by the narrow leaves as to give it the look of a perfoliate.
One other limestone district shall be mentioned; the hills round
Castleton. Cave Dale, approached by a narrow gorge close to the village,
is well worth the flower-lover's attention; for bleak and bare as it is,
its slippery sides harbour some interesting plants, such as the mountain
rue (_thalictrum minus_), and the scurvy-grass (_cochlearia alpina_),
both in considerable quantity. In the Winnatts, too, the steep ravine
which overhangs the road from Castleton to Chapel-en-le-Frith, one may
find Jacob's-ladder and other rarities on the rocks; and the gorgeous
mountain pansy (_viola lutea_) is not far distant on the upland heaths
and pastures.
The list is far from being exhausted; but enough has been said to show
that there is no lack of entertainment among these limestone dales. To
enter one of them, after crossing the moorland from the dreary coal
district of east Derbyshire, is like stepping from penury to plenty,
from wilderness to paradise: there is a change of colouring that
instantly attracts the eye. Even in early spring the little shining
crane's-bill decks the walls and lower rocks with its rose-petaled
flowers; and at midsummer the more showy stonecrop flings a veritable
cloth of gold over the crags and lawns. Few localities present so many
charming flowers in so limited a space.
And now let us turn from the limestone valleys to those of the millstone
grit.
The controversy as to which part of Derbyshire best deserves the name of
"The Peak" has always seemed a vain one, not merely because there is no
peak in the county at all, but because no connoisseur can doubt for a
moment that the district which alone has the true characteristics of a
mountain is the great triangular plateau of gritstone known as
Kinderscout. Less beautiful than the limestone dales, with their
beetling crags and wealth of flowers, the wilder region surrounding "the
Scout" has the advantage of being a real bit of mountain scenery, topped
as it is with black "tors" and "towers" that rise out of the heather,
and flanked with rocky "edges" from which its steep "cloughs" descend
into the valleys below.
Unfortunately, this great rocky tableland has of late years become
almost a _terra incognita_ to the nature-lover, as a result of the
agreement which was made, after prolonged controversy, between the Peak
District Society and the grouse-shooting landlords, inasmuch as, while
permitting the traveller to skirt the shoulders of the hill, it excluded
him wholly from its summit.
With the exception of the heather, the bilberry, and a few kindred
species, the plants of the gritstone hills are sparse; but there is
one, the cloudberry--so-called, according to Gerarde's rather
magniloquent description, because "it groweth naturally upon the tops of
high mountains ... where the clouds are lower than the tops of the same
all winter long"--which well repays a pilgrimage. It is a prostrate and
spineless bramble (_rubus chamaemorus_), highly valued in northern
countries for its rich orange-coloured fruit. It grows thickly on the
ground, making a dark-green patch in marked contrast to the coarse
herbage; and towards the end of June one may see a profusion of the
large white blossoms and a few early formed berries at the same time.
There is a good-sized plot of it near the summit of the pass that
crosses the shoulder of Kinderscout from Edale Head.
But of the plants that grow on the Scout itself I am unable to speak;
for my only visit to it--not reckoning an unsuccessful attempt when I
was turned back by a keeper--took place in the depth of a very snowy
winter. It was on the afternoon of a frosty January day, when the sun
was already low, that in the company of my friend Bertram Lloyd, and
armed with a passport, in the form of a letter of permission, given us
by the courtesy of one of the owners of the shooting, I climbed from
Edale, through the region of right-of-way into that of flagrant
trespass. We felt an unusual sense of legality, as we passed a
weather-beaten notice-board, with a half-obliterated threat that
trespassers would be "--cuted," whether executed, electrocuted, or
prosecuted was left to the imagination of the offender; and I think the
strangeness of his position was rather embarrassing to my companion, who
is such a confirmed trespasser that he feels as if something must be
amiss unless there is a gamekeeper to be reckoned with--like the
mountain ram, in Thompson-Seton's story, who was so accustomed to be
hunted that he became moody and restless when his pursuer was not in
sight.
But, at the time of our visit, no passport was demanded; for the
keepers, like the grouse themselves, appeared to have deserted the
heights for the valleys. Indeed, hardly any life at all was to be seen,
with the exception of a grey mountain hare, couched upon a stack of
rock, who regarded us with a mild and curious eye as we passed some two
hundred feet above him, and seemed to be satisfied that we were
harmless. Nor was this lack of life surprising, for a more desolate
scene could hardly be imagined--a great snow-clad "moss," intersected by
deep ruts, which, being choked with snow, had somewhat of the appearance
of crevasses, and punctuated here and there with the black masonry of
the tors. From the highest point that we reached, marked in the ordnance
map as 2,088 feet, there was a wonderful sunset view, though the
Manchester district that lies to the west of the Scout was hidden in
lurid fog. It is said that Snowdon, a hundred miles distant, has been
seen from this point. It was certainly not visible upon the occasion to
which I refer.
It is impossible to visit this high mountain plateau, lying as it does
at about an equal distance from Manchester and Sheffield, without
feeling that what is now a private grouse-moor must, before many years
have passed, become a nationalized park or "reservation"--a playground
for the dwellers in the great Midland cities, and a sanctuary for wild
animals and plants.
The time will assuredly come when the sport of the few will have to give
way to the health and recreation of the many.
XV
NO THOROUGHFARE!
Trespassers will be prosecuted.
THE subject of trespassing mentioned in the preceding chapter, has a
very close and personal interest for the adventurous flower-lover; for
of all incentives to ignore the familiar notice-board with its hackneyed
words of warning, none perhaps is more potent than the possibility that
some rare and long-sought wildflower is to be found on the forbidden
land. The appeal is one that no explorer can resist. If "stout Cortez"
himself, when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific, had seen that
ocean labelled as "strictly private and preserved," could he have
desisted from his quest?
There is moreover a good deal to be said in extenuation of trespassing
as a summer recreation; and if landlords go on at their present rate, in
closing footpaths and excluding the public from green fields and
hedgerows, trespassing will perhaps establish itself as one of our
recognized national diversions. Hitherto, it must be confessed, it has
remained to some extent in disrepute; doubtless, through its being so
largely indulged in by poachers and other evil-doers, who have given a
bad name to a practice which in itself is innocent and blameless enough.
Most people, especially landlords and gamekeepers, have a fixed belief
that a trespasser's purpose must be a lawless and mischievous one. Why
so? Is it not possible that some trespassers may have other objects than
to steal pheasants' eggs or snare rabbits? If huntsmen when following
the hounds are permitted, not only to trespass, but to damage crops and
fences, why should the naturalist be molested when harmlessly following
his own inclinations in choice of a country ramble. Is the pursuit of
the fox a surer proof of honest intentions than the pursuit of natural
history? It appears that some landowners think so. "Trespassers will be
prosecuted," say the notices that everywhere stare us in the face.
Was there ever such a lying legend? Trespassers will _not_ be
prosecuted, for the sufficient reason that in English law trespassing is
not an offence. Of course, if any injury be done to property, the owner
can sue for damages, but a harmless trespasser can only be requested to
depart, though, if he be ill-advised enough to refuse to go, he may be
forcibly ejected. We see, therefore, that the threatened "prosecution"
of trespassers is in reality merely a _brutum fulmen_ launched by
landlords at a too credulous public, a pious fraud which has been far
more efficacious than such kindred notices as "Beware the dog," or
"Beware the bull," though these, too, have done good service in their
time. Trespassers will not be prosecuted, provided that they do no sort
of damage, and that if their presence is objected to they politely
retire. With these slight precautions and limitations, a trespasser may
go where he will, and enjoy the study of Nature in her most secluded and
"strictly private" recesses. He thus himself becomes, in one sense, a
lord of the soil; but his domain is far more extensive and unencumbered
than that of any actual landlord. He enjoys all that is best in park,
woodland, or mountain; and if he is "warned off" one estate he can
afford to smile at the prohibition, since many other regions are open to
him, and he can confidently look forward to a visit to fresh woods and
pastures new on the morrow.
In the course of these rambles the trespasser will probably, like
Ulysses, have some curious experiences of men and of notice-boards. It
is very instructive to observe the various types of the landlord class,
and their different methods of treating the intruder whom they meet on
their fields. There is the indignant landlord, who can scarcely conceal
his wrath at the astounding audacity of one who is deliberately crossing
his land without having come "on business." There is the despairing
landlord, who has been so broken by previous invasions that he is now
content with a shrug of the shoulders and a remark that the place is
"quite private, you know." There is the courteous landlord, who
politely assumes that you have lost your way, and naively offers to
conduct you to the high-road by the shortest cut; and there is the
mildly ironical, who, as in a case which I remember on a Surrey
hillside, remarks as he passes you: "There goes my heather."
I have heard it said that one can sometimes divine the character of a
landlord from the wording of his notice-boards, and I believe from my
own experiences that there is truth in the idea. Certainly the
notice-board is the landlord's favourite method of defending the privacy
of his estate, and for obvious reasons; for not only is it the least
troublesome and expensive way of conveying the desired warning to
would-be trespassers, but the salutary fiction regarding the
"prosecution" of offenders is thus publicly and permanently impressed on
the agricultural mind. There is not such entire uniformity in the
wording of notice-boards as might be supposed. Of course by far the
commonest form is the well-known "No thoroughfare. Trespassers will be
prosecuted as the law directs," in which the unconscious irony contained
in the last four words has always struck me as especially delightful. To
this is often added the words "and all dogs shot," in which the
experienced trespasser will detect signs of a certain roughness and
inhumanity of temperament on the part of the owner. More original forms
of expression are by no means uncommon. Sometimes the warning is
emphasized by the bold statement, indicating the possession by the
landlord of humorous or imaginative faculties, that "the police have
orders to watch." Sometimes, but more rarely, the personal element is
boldly introduced, as in the assertion, which might formerly be seen on
a notice-board in one of the most beautiful valleys of the Lake
District, "This is my land. Trespassers, etc." In some cases the wording
has evidently been left to the care of subordinates, and hence result
some curiosities of literary composition. "Private. Beware of dogs," is
an instance of this kind, in which the ambiguity of the allusion to
dogs, whether those of the landlord or the trespasser, seems almost
oracular. In these and other ways a certain zest is lent to the
excursions or rather the _in_cursions, of the trespasser, which lifts
them above the level of ordinary walking exercise.
In the case of wealthy landowners, the duty of warning off the
trespasser devolves on gamekeepers, who, being less emotional than their
employers, are a far less interesting study. Stolid and furry, and
apparently endowed with only the animal instincts of the victims whom
they delight in tracking and trapping, they are by far the least
intelligent people whom the trespasser encounters; they are, in fact, no
better than breathing and walking notice-boards, with the disadvantage
that they cannot be so absolutely disregarded. It is unwise to argue
with them; for reason is at a discount in such encounters and there is
the possibility, in some districts, of their having recourse to
personal violence, in the knowledge that if the matter should come
before local magistrates the keeper's word would be honoured in
preference to that of the trespasser. There is a sanctity in the word
"Preserve."