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[Illustration: FOX FLUSHING PHEASANTS. _From a drawing by Lancelot
Speed._]
THE NATURALIST ON THE THAMES
BY
C.J. CORNISH, F.Z.S.
PREFACE
Having spent the greater part of my outdoor life in the Thames Valley, in
the enjoyment of the varied interests of its natural history and sport, I
have for many years hoped to publish the observations contained in the
following chapters. They have been written at different intervals of time,
but always with a view to publication in the form of a commentary on the
natural history and character of the valley as a whole, from the upper
waters to the mouth. For permission to use those which have been
previously printed I have to thank the editors and proprietors of the
_Spectator_, _Country Life_, and the _Badminton Magazine_.
C.J. CORNISH.
ORFORD HOUSE,
CHISWICK MALL.
CONTENTS
THE THAMES AT SINODUN HILL
THE FILLING OF THE THAMES
THE SHELLS OF THE THAMES
THE ANTIQUITY OF RIVER PLANTS
INSECTS OF THE THAMES
"THE CHAVENDER OR CHUB"
THE WORLD'S FIRST BUTTERFLIES
BUTTERFLY SLEEP
CRAYFISH AND TROUT
FOUNTAINS AND SPRINGS
BIRD MIGRATION DOWN THE THAMES
WITTENHAM WOOD
SPORT AT WITTENHAM
SPORT AT WITTENHAM (_continued_)
A FEBRUARY FOX HUNT
EWELME--A HISTORICAL RELIC
EEL-TRAPS
SHEEP, PLAIN AND COLOURED
SOME RESULTS OF WILD-BIRD PROTECTION
OSIERS AND WATER-CRESS
FOG AND DEW PONDS
POISONOUS PLANTS
ANCIENT THAMES MILLS
THE BIRDS THAT STAY
ANCIENT HEDGES
THE ENGLISH MOCKING BIRD
FLOWERS OF THE GRASS FIELDS
RIVERSIDE GARDENING
COTTAGES AND CAMPING OUT
NETTING STAGS IN RICHMOND PARK
RICHMOND OLD DEER PARK
FISH IN THE LONDON RIVER
CHISWICK EYOT
CHISWICK FISHERMEN
BIRDS ON THAMES RESERVOIRS
THE CARRION CROW
LONDON'S BURIED ELEPHANTS
SWANS, BLACK AND WHITE
CANVEY ISLAND
THE LONDON THAMES AS A WATERWAY
THE THAMES AS A NATIONAL TRUST
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A FOX FLUSHING PHEASANTS
WILD DUCK
A FULL THAMES
SHELLS OF THE THAMES
A FLOWERY BANK
BURR REED AND FLOWERING RUSH
A MONSTER CHUB
BUTTERFLIES AT REST
A TROUT
OTTERS
A WATERHEN ON HER NEST
A DABCHICK
A BADGER
FOX AND CUB
EWELME POOL
A NIGHTJAR AND YOUNG ONE
A REED-BUNTING
PEELING OSIERS
BOTLEY MILL
EEL BUCKS
ORCHIS
WATER VIOLET AND WILD IRIS
A NETTED STAG
BREAM AND ROACH
A GRAMPUS AT CHISWICK
SMELTS
THE LOBSTER SMACK INN, CANVEY ISLAND
THE STEPPING-STONES AT BENFLEET
HAULING THE NETS FOR WHITEBAIT
FISHING BOATS AT LEIGH
THE NATURALIST ON THE THAMES
THE THAMES AT SINODUN HILL
Fresh water is almost the oldest thing on earth. While the rocks have been
melted, the sea growing salter, and the birds and beasts perfecting
themselves or degenerating, the fresh water has been always the same,
without change or shadow of turning. So we find in it creatures which are
inconceivably old, still living, which, if they did not belong to other
worlds than ours, date from a time when the world was other than it is
now; and the fresh-water plants, equally prehistoric, on which these
creatures feed. Protected by this constant element the geographical range
of these animals and plants is as remarkable as their high antiquity.
There are in lake Tanganyika or the rivers of Japan exactly the same kinds
of shells as in the Thames, and the sedges and reeds of the Isis are found
from Cricklade to Kamschatka and beyond Bering Sea to the upper waters of
the Mackenzie and the Mississippi. The Thames, our longest fresh-water
river, and its containing valley form the largest natural feature in this
country. They are an organic whole, in which the river and its tributaries
support a vast and separate life of animals and plants, and modify that of
the hills and valleys by their course. Civil law has recognised the Thames
system as a separate area, and given to it a special government, that of
the Conservators, whose control now extends from the Nore to the remotest
springs in the hamlets in its watershed; and natural law did so long
before, when the valley became one of the migration routes of certain
southward-flying birds. Its course is of such remote antiquity that there
are those who hold that its bed may twice have been sunk beneath the sea,
and twice risen again above the face of the waters.[1] It has ever been a
masterful stream holding its own against the inner forces of the earth;
for where the chalk hills rose, silently, invisibly, in the long line from
the vale of White Horse to the Chilterns the river seems to have worn them
down as they rose at the crossing point at Pangbourne, and kept them
under, so that there was no barring of the Thames, and no subsequent
splitting of the barrier with gorges, cliffs, and falls. Its clear waters
pass from the oolite of the Cotswolds, by the blue lias and its fossils,
the sandstone rock at Clifton Hampden, the gravels of Wittenham, the great
chalk range of the downs, the greensand, the Reading Beds, to the
geological pie of the London Basin, and the beds of drifts and brick earth
in which lie bedded the frames and fragments of its prehistoric beasts. In
and beside its valley are great woods, parks, downs, springs, ancient
mills and fortresses, palaces and villages, and such homes of prehistoric
man as Sinodun Hill and the hut remains at Northfield. It has 151 miles of
fresh water and 77 of tideway, and is almost the only river in England in
which there are islands, the famous eyots, the lowest and largest of which
at Chiswick touches the London boundary.
After leaving Oxford the writer has lived for many years opposite this
typical and almost unspoilt reach of the London river, and for a
considerable time shot over the estate on the upper Thames of which
Sinodun Hill is the hub and centre. This fine outlier of the chalk, with
its twin mount Harp Hill, dominates not only the whole of the Thames
valley at its feet, but the two cross vales of the Thame and the Ock. On
the bank opposite the Thame joins the Isis, and from thence flows on the
THAMES. Weeks and months spent there at all seasons of the year gave even
better opportunities for becoming acquainted with the life of the Upper
Thames, than the London river did of learning what the tidal stream really
is and may become. Fish, fowl and foxes, rare Thames flowers and shy
Thames chub, butterflies, eel-traps, fountains and springs, river shells
and water insects, are all parts of the "natural commodities" of the
district. There is no better and more representative part of the river
than this. Close by is Nuneham, one of the finest of Thames-side parks,
and behind that the remains of wild Oxfordshire show in Thame Lane and
Clifton Heath. How many centuries look down from the stronghold on Sinodun
Hill, reckoning centuries by human occupation, no one knows or will know.
There stands the fortress of some forgotten race, and below it the double
rampart of a Roman camp, running from Thame to Isis. Beyond is Dorchester,
the abbey of the oldest see in Wessex, and the Abbey Mill. The feet of the
hills are clothed by Wittenham Wood, and above the wood stretches the
weir, and round to the west, on another great loop of the river, is Long
Wittenham and its lovely backwater. Even in winter, when the snow is
falling like bags of flour, and the river is chinking with ice, there is
plenty to see and learn, or in the floods, when the water roars through
the lifted hatches and the rush of the river throbs across the misty
flats, and the weeds and sedges smell rank as the stream stews them in its
mash-tub in the pool below the weir.
[1] Phillips, "Geology of Oxford and of the Valley of the Thames."
THE FILLING OF THE THAMES
In the late autumn of 1893, one of the driest years ever known, I went to
the weir pool above the wood, and found the shepherd fishing. The river
was lower than had ever been known or seen, and on the hills round the
"dowsers" had been called in with their divining rods to find the vanished
waters.
"Thee've got no water in 'ee, and if 'ee don't fill'ee avore New Year,
'ee'll be no more good for a stree-um"! Thus briefly, to Father Thames,
the shepherd of Sinodun Hill. He had pitched his float into the pool below
the weir--the pool which lies in the broad, flat fields, with scarce a
house in sight but the lockman's cottage--and for the first time on a
Saturday's fishing he saw his bait go clear to the bottom instead of being
lost to view instantly in the boiling water of the weir-pool. He could
even see the broken piles and masses of concrete which the river in its
days of strength had torn up and scattered on the bottom, and among them
the shoals of fat river fish eyeing his worm as critically as his master
would a sample of most inferior oats. Yet the pool was beautiful to look
upon. Where the water had sunk the rushes had grown taller than ever, and
covered the little sandbanks left by the ebbing river with a forest of
green and of red gold, where the frost had laid its finger on them. In the
back eddies and shallows the dying lily leaves covered the surface with
scales of red and copper, and all along the banks teazles and frogbits,
and brown and green reeds, and sedges of bronze and russet, made a screen,
through which the black and white moorhens popped in and out, while the
water-rats, now almost losing the aquatic habit, and becoming pedestrian,
sat peeling rushes with their teeth, and eyeing the shepherd on the weir.
Even the birds seemed to have voted that the river was never going to fill
again, for a colony of sandpipers, instead of continuing their migration
to the coast, had taken up their quarters on the little spits of mud and
shingle now fringing the weir-pool, and were flitting from point to point,
and making believe it was a bit of Pagham Harbour or Porchester Creek. On
every sunny morning monster spiders ran out from the holes and angles of
the weir-frame, and spun webs across and across the straddling iron legs
below the footbridge, right down to the lowered surface of the water,
which had so sunk that each spider had at least four feet more of web than
he could have reckoned upon before and waxed fat on the produce of the
added superficies of enmeshed and immolated flies. So things went on
almost till New Year's Eve. The flats of the Upper Thames, where the
floods get out up the ditches and tributaries, and the wild duck gather on
the shallow "splashes" and are stalked with the stalking-horse as of old,
were as dry as Richmond Park, and sounded hollow to the foot, instead of
wheezing like a sponge. The herons could not find a meal on a hundred
acres of meadow, which even a frog found too dry for him, and the little
brooks and land-springs which came down through them to the big river were
as low as in June, as clear as a Hampshire chalk stream, and as full of
the submerged life of plants. Instead of dying with the dying year at the
inrush of cold water brought by autumn rains, all the cresses, and
tresses, and stars, and tangles, and laced sprays of the miniature growth
of the springs and running brooks were as bright as malachite, though
embedded in a double line of dead white shivering sedge. And thus the
shortest day went by, and still the fields lay dry, and the river shrank,
and the fish were off the feed; and though murky vapours hung over the
river and the flats and shut out the sun, the long-expected rains fell not
until the last week's end of the year. Then at last signs and tokens began
by which the knowing ones prophesied that there was something the matter
with the weather. The sheep fed as if they were not to have another bite
for a week, and bleated without ceasing, strange birds flew across the sky
in hurrying flocks, and in all the country houses and farmers' halls the
old-fashioned barometers, with their dials almost as big as our eight-day
clocks and pointers as long as a knitting-needle, began to fall, or rather
to go backwards, further than was ever recorded. And whereas it is, and
always has been, a fact well known to the owners of these barometers that
if they are tapped violently in the centre of their mahogany stomachs the
needle will jerk a little in the direction of recovery, and is thereby
believed to exercise a controlling influence in the direction of better
weather, the more the barometers were tapped and thumped the more the
needle edged backwards, till in some cases it went down till it pointed to
the ivory star at the very bottom of the dial, and then struck work and
stuck there.
[Illustration: WILD DUCK. _From a photograph by Charles Reid._]
[Illustration: A FULL THAMES. _From a photograph by Taunt & Co._]
That night the storm began. To connoisseurs in weather in the
meteorological sense it was a joy and an ensample, for it was a perfect
cyclonic storm, exactly the right shape, with all its little dotted lines
of "isobars" running in ovals one inside another. From another point of
view it was the storm of an hour spread over two days, so that there was
plenty of time to see and remember the normal ways of cyclones, which may
be briefly described as first a flush of heat whether in summer or winter,
then a furious wind, then hurrying clouds and much rain, with changes of
wind, then more clouds and more rain, then a "clearing shower" with most
rain, then a furling and brailing-up of the rain clouds, splashes of blue
in the sky, with nets of scud crossing them, sudden gleams of sun, sudden
cold, and perhaps a hail shower, and then piercing cold and sunlight. All
which things happened, but took a long time about it. The storm began in
the night, and howled through the dark. The rain came with the morning;
but it was the "clearing shower," which lasted ten hours, which caused the
filling of the Thames. The wind still blew in furious gusts, but the rain
was almost too heavy to be moved. The sky was one dark, sombre cloud, and
from this the rain poured in slanting lines like pencils of water. But
across this blanket of cloud came darker, lower, and wetter clouds, even
more surcharged with water, from which the deluge poured till the earth
was white like glass with the spraying drops. Out in the fields it was
impossible to see through the rain; but as the end of the column of cloud
began to break and widen the water could be seen in the act of passing
from the land to the river. On the fallows and under the fences all the
surface earth was beaten down or swept away. All seeds which had sunk
naturally below the surface were laid bare. Hundreds of sprouting horse
chestnuts, of sprouting acorns beneath the trees, thousands of grains of
fallen wheat and barley, of beans, and other seeds of the farm were
uncovered as if by a spade.
Down every furrow, drain, watercourse, ditch, runnel, and watercut, the
turbid waters were hurrying, all with one common flow, all with increasing
speed, to the Thames. The sound of waters filled the air, dropping,
poppling, splashing, trickling, dripping from leaves to earth, falling
from bank to rills below, gurgling under gate-paths, lapping against the
tree-trunks and little ridge piles in the brooks, and at last sweeping
with a hushed content into the bosom of Thames. And the river himself was
good for something more than a "stree-um." He was bank-full and sweeping
on, taking to himself on this side and on that the tributes of his
children, from which the waters poured so fast that they came in almost
clear, and the mingled waters in the river were scarcely clouded in their
flow. The lock-men rose by night and looked at the climbing flood, and
wakened their wives and children, and raised in haste hatch after hatch of
the weirs, and threw open locks and gates. Windsor Weir broke, but the
wires flashed the news on, and the river's course was open, and after the
greatest rain-storm and the lowest barometer known for thirty years, the
Thames was not in flood, but only brimful; and once more a "river of
waters."
THE SHELLS OF THE THAMES
Of the thousands who boat on the Thames during the summer few know or
notice the beauty of the river shells. They are among the most delicate
objects of natural ornament and design in this country. Exquisite pattern,
graceful shapes, and in some cases lovely tints of colour adorn them.
Nature has for once relaxed in their favour her rigid rules, by which she
turns out things of this kind not only alike in shape, but with identical
colour and ornament. Among humming-birds, for instance, each bird is like
the other, literally to a feather. The lustre on each ruby throat or
amethyst wing shines in the same light with the same prismatic divisions.
But even in the London river, if you go and seek among the pebbles above
Hammersmith Bridge when the river is low, you may find a score of
_neretina_ shells not one of which is coloured like the rest or
ornamented with exactly the same pattern, yet each is fit to bejewel the
coronet of some Titania of the waters. A number of these tiny shells,
gathered from below the bridge, lie before the writer, set on black satin
to display the hues. They look at a little distance like a series of mixed
Venetian beads, but of more elegant form. From whichever side they are
seen, the curves are the perfection of flowing line. The colouring and
ornament of each is a marvel and delight. Some are black, with white spots
arranged in lines following the curves, and with the top of the blunt
spiral white. These "black-and-white marble" patterns are followed by a
whole series in which purple takes the place of black, and the spots are
modified into scales. Then comes a row of rose-coloured shells, some with
white lance-heads, or scales, others with alternate bands of white scales
and white dots. Some are polished, others dull, some rosy pink, others
almost crimson. Some are marked with cream and purple like the juice of
black currants with cream in it. In some the scale pattern changes to a
chequer, some are white with purple zig-zags. And lastly come a whole
series in pale olive, and olive and cream, in which the general colour is
that of a blackcap's egg, and the pattern made by alternate spots of olive
and bands of cream. If these little gems of beauty come out of the London
river, what may we not expect in the upper waters of the silver Thames?[1]
A search in the right places in its course will show. But these
_neretinae_ are everywhere up to the source of the river, for they
feed on all kinds of decaying substances. If the pearl is the result of a
disease or injury, the beauty of the _neretina_ is a product or
transformation from foul things to fair ones.
As the Thames is itself the product and union of all its vassal streams,
an "incarnation" of all the rest, so in its bed it holds all the shells
collected from all its tributaries. Different tribes of shells live in
different waters. Some love the "full-fed river winding slow," some the
swift and crystal chalk-stream. Some only flourish just over the spots
where the springs come bubbling up from the inner cisterns of earth, and
breathe, as it were, the freshness of these untainted waters; others love
the rich, fat mud, others the sides of wearings and piles, others the
river-jungles where the course is choked with weeds. But come what may, or
flourish where they please, the empty shells are in time rolled down from
trout-stream and chalk-stream, fountain and rill, mill-pool and ditch,
cress-bed and water-cut, from the springs of the Cotswolds, the Chilterns,
the downs, from the valleys of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey,
Gloucester, Oxford, and Essex, into the Thames. Once there the river makes
shell collections on its own account, sorting them out from everything
else except a bed of fine sand and gravel, in which they lie like birds'
eggs in bran in a boy's cabinet, ready for who will to pick them up or
sift them out of it. These shell collections are made in the time of
winter floods, though how they are made or why the shells should all
remain together, while sticks, stones, and other rubbish are carried away,
it is impossible to say. They are laid on smooth points of land round
which the waters flow in shallow ripples. Across the river it is always
deep, swift, and dark, though the sandbanks come in places near the
surface, and in the shallows grow water-crowfoot, with waving green hair
under water, and white stems above it. The clean and shining sand shelves
down to the water's edge, and continues below the surface. Here are living
shells, or shells with living fish in them. In the bright water lie
hundreds of the shells of the fresh-water mussels, the bearers of pearls
sometimes, and always lined with that of which pearls are made, the
lustrous nacre. The mealy masses of dry sand beyond the river's lip are
stuffed with these mussel shells. They lie all ways up, endways, sideways,
on their faces, on their backs. The pearl lining shines through the sand,
and the mussels gleam like silver spoons under the water. They crack and
crunch beneath your feet as you step across to search the mass for the
smaller and rarer shells. Many of those in the water contain living
mussels, yellow-looking fat molluscs, greatly beloved of otters, who eat
them as sauce with the chub or bream they catch, and leave the broken
shells of the one by the half-picked bones of the other. There was a
popular song which had for chorus the question, "Did you ever see an
oyster walk upstairs?" These mussels _walk_, and are said to be
"tolerably active" by a great authority on their habits. They have one
foot, on which they travel in search of feeding ground, and leave a
visible track across the mud. There are three or four kinds, two of which
sometimes hold small pearls, while a third is the pearl-bearer proper.
_Unio pictorum_ is the scientific name of one, because the shells
were once the cups in which the old Dutch painters kept their colours, and
are still used to hold ground gold and silver for illuminating. The
pearl-bearing mussel is longer than the other kinds, flatter and darker,
and the lining of mother-of-pearl is equal to half the total thickness of
the shell.[2]
[Illustration: SHELLS OF THE THAMES. _From a photograph by E. Seeley_]
Though not so striking from their size and pearly lustre, there are many
shells on the Thames sandbanks not less interesting and in large numbers.
Among these are multitudes of tiny fresh-water cockle shells of all sizes,
from that of a grain of mustard seed to the size of a walnut, flat, curled
shells like small ammonites, fresh-water snail shells of all sizes, river
limpets, _neretinae_, and other and rounder bivalve shells allied to
the cockles. The so-called "snails" are really quite different from each
other, some, the _paludinas_, being large, thick-striped shells,
while the _limnaeas_ are thin, more delicately made, some with fine,
pointed spiral tops, and others in which the top seems to have been
absorbed in the lower stories. There are eight varieties of these
_limnaeas_ alone, and six more elegant shells of much the same
appearance, but of a different race.
The minute elegance of many of these shells is very striking. Tiny
_physas_ and _succineas_, no larger than shot, live among big
_paludinas_ as large as a garden snail, while all sizes of the larger
varieties are found, from microscopic atoms to the perfect adult. Being
water shells, and not such common objects as land shells, these have no
popular names. The river limpets are called _ancylus fluviatilis_.
Some are no larger than a yew berry, and are shaped like a Phrygian cap;
but they "stick" with proper limpet-like tenacity. On the stems of
water-lilies, on piles, on weeds and roots in any shallow streams, but
always on the under side of the leaves, are the limpets of the Thames. The
small ammonite-like shells are called _planorbis_, and like most of
the others, belong also to the upper tertiary fossils. They feed on the
decaying leaves of the iris and other water plants, and from the number of
divisions on the shell are believed to live for sometimes twenty years. Of
the many varieties, one, the largest, the horn-coloured _planorbis_,
emits a purple dye. Two centuries ago Lister made several experiments in
the hope that he might succeed in fixing this dye, as the Tyrians did that
of the murex, but in vain. There are eleven varieties of this creature
alone. It is easier to find the shells than to discover the living
creature in the river. For many the deep, full river is not a suitable
home; they only come there as the water does, from the tributary streams.
Far up in some rill in the chalk, from the bed of which the water bubbles
up and keeps the stones and gravel bright, whole beds of little
pea-cockles may be found, lying in masses side by side, like seeds sown in
the water-garden of a nymph.
[1] I have a series of _neretina_ shells from the Philippines, much
larger in size and brown in colour, in which many of the same kinds of
ornament occur.
[2] A fresh-water mussel shell from North America in my possession is
coloured green, and so marked and crimped as to resemble exactly a patch
of water-weed, such as grows on stones and piles.
THE ANTIQUITY OF RIVER PLANTS
In the still gossamer weather of late October, when the webs lie sheeted
on the flat green meadows and spools of the air-spiders' silk float over
the waters, the birds and fish and insects and flowers of the best of
England's rivers show themselves for the last time in that golden autumn
sun, and make their bow to the audience before retiring for the year. All
the living things become for a few brief hours happy and careless,
drinking to the full the last drops of the mere joy of life before the
advent of winter and rough weather. The bank flowers still show blossom
among the seed-heads, and though the thick round rushes have turned to
russet, the forget-me-not is still in flower; and though the water-lilies
have all gone to the bottom again, and the swallows no longer skim over
the surface, the river seems as rich in life as ever; and the birds and
fish, unfrightened by the boat traffic, are tamer and more visible.
[Illustration: A FLOWERY BANK NEAR COOKHAM. _From a photograph by E.
Seeley_.]
The things in the waters and growing out of the waters are very, very old.
The mountains have been burnt with fire; lava grown solid has turned to
earth again and grows vines; chalk was once sea-shells; but the clouds and
the rivers have altered not their substance. Also, so far as this planet
goes, many of the water plants are world-encircling, growing just as they
do here in the rivers of Siberia, in China, in Canada, and almost up to
the Arctic Circle. The creatures which lived on these prehistoric plants
live on them now, and in exactly the same parts of the stream. The same
shells lie next the banks in the shallows as lie next the bank of the
prehistoric river of two million years ago whose bed is cut through at
Hordwell Cliffs on the Solent. The same shells lie next them in the deeper
water, and the sedges and rushes are as "prehistoric" as any plant can
well be. In the clay at Hordwell, which was once the mud of the river, lie
sedges, pressed and dried as if in the leaves of a book, almost exactly
similar in colour, which is kept, and in shape, which is uninjured, to
those which fringe the banks of the Thames to-day. These fresh-water
plants show their hoary antiquity by the fashion of their generation. Most
of them are mono-cotyledonous--with a single seed-lobe, like those of the
early world. There is nothing quite as old among the Thames fishes as the
mud fishes, the lineal descendants of the earliest of their race. But the
same water creatures were feeding on the same plants perhaps when the
Thames first flowed as a river.
[Illustration: BURR REED AND FLOWERING RUSH. _From photographs by E.
Seeley._]
The sedge fringe in the shallows, the "haunt of coot and tern" elsewhere,
and of hosts of moorhens and dabchicks on the now protected river, is
mainly composed of the giant rush, smooth and round, which the water-rats
cut down and peel to eat the pith. These great rushes, sometimes ten feet
high, _die_ every year like the sickliest flowers, and break and are
washed away. Few people have ever tried to reckon the number of kinds of
sedges and reeds by the river, and it would be difficult to do so. There
are forty-six kinds of sedge (_carex_), or if the _Scirpus_ tribe be
added, sixty-one, found in our islands. They are not all water plants, for
the sand-sedge with its creeping roots grows on the sandhills, and some of
the rarest are found on mountain-tops. But the river sedges and grasses,
with long creeping roots of the same kind, have played a great part in the
making of flat meadows and in the reclamation of marshes, stopping the
water-borne mud as the sand-sedge stops the blowing sand. They have done
much in this way on the Upper Thames, though not on the lower reaches of
the river. The "sweet sedge," so called--the smell is rather sickly to
most tastes--is now found on the Thames near Dorchester, and between
Kingston and Teddington among other places, though it was once thought
only to flourish on the Norfolk and Fen rivers. It is not a sedge at all,
but related to the common arum, and its flower, like the top joints of the
little finger, represents the "lords and ladies" of the hedges. So the
burr reed, among the prettiest of all the upright plants growing out of
the water, is not a reed, but a reed mace. Its bright green stems and
leaves, and spiky balls, are found in every suitable river from Berkshire
to the Amur, and in North America almost to the Arctic Circle. In the same
way the yellow water villarsia, which though formerly only common near
Oxford, has greatly increased on the Thames until its yellow stars are
found as low as the Cardinal's Well at Hampton Court, extends across the
rivers of Europe and Asia as far as China. The cosmopolitan ways of these
water plants are easily explained. They live almost outside competition.
They have not to take their chance with every new comer, for ninety-nine
out of a hundred stranger seeds are quietly drowned in the embosoming
stream. The water itself keeps its temperature steadily, and only changes
slowly and in no great degree, and then, when the plants are in their
winter sleep the stream may well say that "men may come and men may go,
but I go on for ever." The same is very largely true of the things which
live in the brook.
Many of the flowers are not quite what their names imply. The true lilies
are among the oldest of plants. But "water-lilies" are not lilies. They
have been placed in order between the barberry and the poppy, because the
seed-head of a water-lily is like the poppy fruit. The villarsia, which
looks like a water-lily, is not related at all, while the buck-bean is not
a bean, but akin to the gentians. Water-violet might be more properly
called water-primrose, for it is closely related to the primrose, though
its colour is certainly violet, and not pale yellow. By this time all the
bladderworts have disappeared under water. In June in a pool near the
inflow of the Thames at Day's Lock, opposite Dorchester, the fine leafless
yellow spikes of flower were standing out of the water like orchids, while
the bladders with their trapdoors were employed in catching and devouring
small tadpoles. There is something quietly horrible about these
carnivorous plants. Their bladders are far too small to take one in whole,
but catch the unhappy infant tadpoles by their tails and hold them till
they die from exhaustion.
The bank flora of the Thames is nearly all the same from Oxford to Hampton
Court, made up of some score of very fine and striking flowers that grow
from foot to crest on the wall of light marl that forms the bank.
Constantly refreshed by the adjacent water, they flower and seed, seed and
flower, and are haunted by bees and butterflies till the November frosts.
The most decorative of all are the spikes of purple loose-strife. In
autumn when most of the flowers are dead the tip of the leaf at the heads
of the spikes turns as crimson as a flower. The other red flowers are the
valerian, in masses of squashed strawberry, and the fig-wort, tall,
square-stemmed, and set with small carmine knots of flower. In autumn
these become brown seed crockets, and are most decorative. The fourth tall
flower is the flea-bane, and the fifth the great willow-herb. The lesser
plants are the small willow-herbs, whose late blossoms are almost carmine,
the water-mints, with mauve-grey flowers, and the comfrey, both purple and
white. The dewberry, a blue-coloured more luscious bramble fruit, and tiny
wild roses, grow on the marl-face also. At its foot are the two most
beautiful flowers, though not the most effective, the small yellow
snapdragon, or toad-flax, and the forget-me-not. This blue of the
forget-me-nots is as peculiar as it is beautiful. It is not a common blue
by any means, any more than the azure of the chalk-blue butterflies is
common among other insects. Colour is a very constant feature in certain
groups of flowers. One of these includes the forget-me-nots, the borage,
the alkanet, and the viper's bugloss, which keep up this blue as a family
heirloom. Others of the tribe, like the comfrey, have it not, but those
which possess it keep it pure.
The willows at this time are ready to shed their leaves at the slightest
touch of frost. Yet these leaves are covered with the warts made by the
saw-flies to deposit their eggs in. The male saw-fly of this species and
some others is scarcely ever seen, though the female is so common. The
creature _stings_ the leaf, dropping into the wound a portion of
formic acid, and then lays its egg. The stung leaf swells, and makes the
protecting gall. It is difficult to say when "fly," in the fisherman's use
of the term as the adult insect food of fish, may not appear on the water.
Moths are out on snowy nights, as every collector knows, and on any mild
winter day flies and gnats are seen by streams. In the warm, sunny days of
late September, numbers of some species of ephemerae were seen on the
sedges and willows, with black bodies and gauzy wings, which the dace and
bleak were swallowing eagerly, in quite summer fashion. The water is now
unusually clear, and as the fish come to sun themselves in the shallows
every shoal can be seen.
Among the typical Thames-valley flowers, all of which would be the better
for protection, are the very rare soldier orchis (_Orchis Militaris_)
and the monkey orchis (_Orchis Simia_), the water-snowflake, the
_hottonia_, or water-violet, the water-villarsia, more elegant even
than the water-lilies, the flowering rush, with a crown of bright
rose-pink flowers. The two orchids named are very interesting plants. Of
the monkey orchis Mr. Claridge Druce says in his "Flora of Oxfordshire"
that it has become exceedingly scarce, not so much from the depredations
of collectors, but from the fondness of rabbits for it and the changes
brought about by agriculture. The soldier orchis is very rare indeed; both
are only found in a few woods in the Thames valley, and possibly in Kent.
The bladderworts fade instantly, and are not much interfered with, and
though the fritillaries are picked for market, the roots are not dug up
because that would injure the meadow turf in which they grow, and business
objections would be raised.
INSECTS OF THE THAMES
Except among the select few, generally either enthusiastic boys or London
mechanics of an inquiring mind, who keep fresh-water aquariums and
replenish them from ponds and brooks at "weekends," few persons outside
the fancy either see or know much of the water insects,[1] or are aware,
when floating on a summer day under the willows in a Thames backwater, of
the near presence of thousands of aquatic creatures, swift, carnivorous,
and pursuing, or feeding greedily on the plants in the water garden that
floats below the boat, or weaving nests, tending eggs, or undergoing the
most astonishing transitions of form and activity, on or below the
surface. Many of them are perhaps better equipped for encountering all the
chances of existence than any other creatures. They can swim, dive, and
run below water, live on dry land, or fly in the air, and many are so
hardy as to be almost proof against any degree of cold. The great
carnivorous water-beetle, the dytiscus, after catching and eating other
creatures all day, with two-minute intervals to come up, poke the tips of
its wings out of the water and jam some air against its spiracles, before
descending once more to its subaqueous hunting-grounds, will rise by night
from the surface of the Thames, lift again those horny wing-cases, unfold
a broad and beautiful pair of gauzy wings, and whirl off on a visit of
love and adventure to some distant pond, on to which it descends like a
bullet from the air above. When people are sitting in a greenhouse at
night with no lamp lighted, talking or smoking, they sometimes hear a
smash as if a pebble had been dropped on the glass from above. It is a
dytiscus beetle, whose compound eyes have mistaken the shine of the glass
in the moonlight for the gleam of a pond. At night some of the whirligig
beetles, the shiny, bean-like creatures seen whirling in incessant circles
in corners by the bank, make a quite audible and almost musical sound upon
the water. The activity of many of the water insects is astonishing.
Besides keeping in almost incessant motion, those which spend most of
their time below water have generally to come up constantly to breathe.
Such are the water-bugs, water-scorpions and stick insects, which, though
slender as rushes, and with limbs like hairs, can catch and kill the fry
of the smaller fishes. Most of these are like divers, who have to provide
themselves with air to breathe, and work at double speed in addition.
If a group of whirligig beetles is disturbed, the whole party will dive
like dabchicks, rising to the surface again when they feel the need for
breathing-air again. The diving-bell spiders, which do not often frequent
the main Thames stream, though they are commonly found in the ditches near
it, gather air to use just as a soldier might draw water and dispose it
about his person in water-bottles. They do this in two ways, one of which
is characteristic of many of the creatures which live both in and out of
the water as the spider does. The tail of the spider is covered with
black, velvety hair. Putting its tail out of the water, it collects much
air in the interstices of the velvet. It then descends, when all this air,
drawn down beneath the surface, collects into a single bubble, covering
its tail and breathing holes like a coat of quicksilver. This supply the
spider uses up when at work below, until it dwindles to a single speck,
when it once more ascends and collects a fresh store. The writer has seen
one of these spiders spin so many webs across the stems of water plants in
a limited space that not only the small water-shrimps and larvae, but even
a young fish were entangled. The other and more artistic means of
gathering air employed by the spider is to catch a bubble on the surface
and swim down below with it. The bubble is then let go into a bell woven
under some plant, into which many other bubbles have been drawn. In this
diving-bell the eggs are laid and the young hatched, under the constant
watch of the old spider. Few people care to take the trouble to gaze for
any time into a shallow, still piece of water, in which the bottom is
plainly discernible, and a crop of water-weeds makes a wall on either side
of some central "well." If they do find some such pond near the Thames
banks or a shallow backwater, they may see after a few minutes much that
is new and suggestive of strange activities. Everything will be quiet and
motionless at first, for water beasts are very suspicious of movement
above them, and all sham dead, or lie quite still, and are strangely
invisible. On the other hand, they have none of the power of remaining
motionless for half-an-hour like land animals. Soon what look like sticks,
but are caddis larva, begin to creep on the bottom. Then more brown
objects, larvae of dragon-flies and water-beetles, detach themselves from
the stems of the plants and cruise up and down seeking what they may
devour. Other creatures feeding and swimming among or beneath the plants
crawl out on to the upper surface, and the water-beetles come up to
breathe, or to play upon the surface. One of the largest of these is a
very fine _black_ beetle, a vegetable-feeding creature. It is most
interesting to see two of them--they generally live in pairs--browsing on
one of the fern-like plants of the Thames. This plant has leaves like fern
blades, each having in turn its own small spikelets. The big beetles work
along the leaf like a cow in a cabbage yard, biting off, chewing, and
swallowing each in succession, and leaving the stem perfectly bare.
Sometimes it looks as if the two beetles were eating for a match, like the
beef-eating contests held in country public-houses, in which the winner
once boasted that he won easily "afore he came to vinegar."
The number of carnivorous creatures found in the water seems out of all
proportion to the usual order of Nature. But this is perhaps because the
minute, almost invisible creatures, or entomostraca, of which the rivers
and ponds are full, and which are the main food of the smaller water
carnivora, live mainly on decaying vegetable substance, which is
practically converted and condensed into microscopical animals before
these become in turn the food of others. It is as if all trees and grass
on land were first eaten by locusts or white ants, and the locusts and
white ants were then eaten by semi-carnivorous cows and sheep, which were
in turn eaten by true carnivora. The water-weeds, both when living and
decaying, are eaten by the entomostraca, the entomostraca are eaten by the
larvae of insects, the perfect insects are eaten by the fish, and the fish
are eaten by men, otters, and birds. Thus we eat the products of the water
plants at four removes in a fish; while we eat that of the grass or
turnips only in a secondary form in beef or mutton.
The water-shrimp is a very common crustacean in the small Thames
tributaries, and valuable as fish food. It has a very rare subterranean
cousin known as the _well shrimp_. A lady in the Isle of Wight, who in a
moment of energy went to the pump to get some water to put flowers in,
actually pumped up one of these subterranean shrimps into a glass bowl.
The well was eighty feet deep. The shrimp was absolutely white, and
probably blind.
Flesh-eating insects are fairly common on land; wasps will actually raid a
butcher's shop, and carry off little red bits of meat, besides killing and
eating flies, spiders, and larvae. Dragon-flies are the hawks of the
insect world, and slay and devour wholesale, when in the air as well as
when they are larvae on the water, though few persons actually witness
their attacks on other creatures, owing to the swiftness of their flight.
Some centipedes will attack other creatures with the ferocity of a
bulldog. An encounter between one of the smaller centipedes and a worm is
like a fight between a ferret and a snake, so frantic is the writhing of
the worm, so determined the hold which the hard and shiny centipede
maintains with its hooked jaws. But the ferocity and destroying appetite
of some of the water creatures would be appalling were it not for their
small size. The desire of killing and devouring appears in the most
unexpected quarters, among creatures which no one would suspect of such
intentions. Of two kinds of water snail found in the Thames, and among the
commonest molluscs, one is a vegetable feeder. It is found living on water
plants, the snails being of all sizes, from that of a mustard seed to a
walnut. The other will feed not only on dead animal substances, but on
living creatures, and is equipped with sharp teeth, which work like a saw.
One of these kept in an aquarium fastened on to and slowly devoured a
small frog confined in the same vessel. The large dytiscus beetle is the
great enemy of small fish. If the salmon is ever restored to the Thames
these creatures will be among the worst enemies of the fry, though in
swift rivers they are not plentiful. Frank Buckland states that in
Hollymount Pond they killed two thousand young salmon. One of these was
put into a bowl with a dytiscus beetle, which, "pouncing upon him like a
hawk upon an unsuspecting lark, drove its scythe-like horny jaws right
into the back of the poor little fish. The little salmon, a plucky fellow,
fought hard for his life, and swam round and round, up and down, hither
and thither, trying to escape from this terrible murderer; but it was no
use, he could not free himself from his grip; and while the poor little
wretch was giving the last few flutterings of his tail, the water-beetle
proceeded coolly to peck out his left eye, and to devour it at once." The
larva not only of the carnivorous dytiscus but also of the
vegetable-feeding water-beetle are ferocious and carnivorous, and deadly
enemies of young fish and ova.
[1] In mentioning some of the Thames _insecta_ I have also noticed some of
the _mollusca_ and _crustacea_. It is a pity these have not some common
names. One cannot write easily of "pulmonate gasteropods."
"THE CHAVENDER OR CHUB"
"Now when you've caught your chavender,
(Your chavender or chub)
You hie you to your pavender,
(Your pavender or pub),
And there you lie in lavender,
(Sweet lavender or lub)."
_Mr. Punch._
I went into the Plough Inn at Long Wittenham in mid-November to arrange
about sending some game to London. The landlord, after inquiring about our
shooting luck, went out and came back into the parlour, saying, "Now, sir,
will you look at my sport?" He carried on a tray two large chub weighing
about 2-1/2 lbs. each, which he had caught in the river just behind the
house. Their colour, olive and silver, scarlet, and grey, was simply
splendid. Laid on the table with one or two hares and cock pheasants and a
few brace of partridges they made a fine sporting group in still life--a
regular Thames Valley yield of fish and fowl. The landlord is a quiet
enthusiast in this Thames fishing. It is a pleasure to watch him at work,
whether being rowed down on a hot summer day by one of his men, and
casting a long line under the willows for chub, or hauling out big perch
or barbel. All his tackle is exquisitely kept, as well kept as the
yeoman's arrows and bow in the Canterbury Tales. His baits are arranged on
the hook as neatly as a good cook sends up a boned quail. He gets all his
worms from Nottingham. I notice that among anglers the man who gets his
worms from Nottingham is as much a connoisseur as the man who imported his
own wine used to be among dinner-givers.