lobster-pots, and eel-traps are a form of crop of which not nearly as much
is made in the Thames Valley as their profitable return warrants. Properly
managed they nearly always pay well, and, in addition, they are very
ornamental, and for the whole of the summer, autumn, and winter are one of
the very best forms of covert for game. They are commonly seen near
rivers, especially in parts where the ground is flooded in winter. But
osiers may be grown anywhere on good ground, and are a rapid and paying
crop, giving very little trouble, though they need some attention even on
the banks of tidal rivers. It is estimated that in the whole of Great
Britain there are only between 7,000 and 8,000 acres of osier beds, but
these average three tons of rods per acre, and the value of the crop when
harvested is often at least L15 per acre gross return. As fruit
cultivation is immensely increasing in England, there is a corresponding
increase in the demand for baskets to put the fruit in. This is the main
reason why osiers, unlike most farm crops, keep up their price. Immense
quantities are now imported from Belgium, France, and Germany because our
own crop is not nearly sufficient.[1] They do not require a wet soil or to
be near water: all that the willow roots need is that the land shall be
good and not too dry or sandy. Stagnant, boggy ground does not suit them
at all, though they will grow well in light loam. Many species of osier
are of most brilliant colouring in winter and early spring. In some the
rods are golden yellow; in others the bark is almost scarlet with a bright
polish, and the osier bed forms a brilliant object from December to
February, just before the rods are cut. The kind of willow grown varies
from the slender, tough withes used in making small baskets and eel-traps,
to the large, fast-growing rods suited for making crates for heavy goods.
The planter must find out for which kind there is the readiest market in
the neighbourhood, and then get his land ready. It needs thorough clearing
and trenching to the depth of from twenty to thirty inches. The young
osiers should then be put in. These should be taken from a nursery in
which they have been "schooled" for one year, as in that case they will
produce a crop fit to cut one year earlier than if the cuttings have been
put at once in the new osier-bed. The cuttings when transferred to the bed
should be put in twelve inches apart in the rows, and these rows made at
two feet distance from each other. They will need hoeing to keep the
ground clear, which will cost Ll to L2 per acre for the first two years,
and this should be done before the middle of June. When the osiers are
well started they grow so densely that they kill out the weeds themselves.
The rate of growth even on ordinary field-land is astonishing; they will
add eighteen inches in a week. February and March are the months for
planting, and March also sees the osier harvest when the time comes to cut
them. In the fens the harvesting of the rods begins earlier, but this
depends usually on the season, the object being to cut them before the sap
begins to rise. Osiers particularly invite the attention of those who are
desirous of planting coverts for game. They are a paying crop, and a quick
crop, giving cover sooner and of better quality than almost any other form
of underwood, and are also very ornamental. It is true that they are cut
yearly, but this is not till the shooting season is over. Meantime there
is no covert which pheasants like so much as osier-beds, especially if
they are near water.
On Chiswick Eyot, which is entirely planted with osiers, there are
standing at the time of writing six stacks of bundles set upright. Each
stack contains about fifty bundles of the finest rods, nine feet high.
Thus the eyot yields at least three hundred bundles. This osier-bed is cut
quite early in the year, usually in January, and by February all the fresh
rods are planted. Before being peeled the osiers are stood upright in
water for a month, and some begin to bud again. This is to make the sap
run up, I presume, by which means the bark comes off more readily. I
believe that the Chiswick osiers, being of the largest size, are used for
making crates, and that they are cut early because there is no need to
peel them.
Water-cress growing is an increasing business in the Thames Valley, where
the head of every little brook or river in the chalk is used for this
purpose. This is good both for business in general and for the fish, for
water-cress causes the accumulation of a vast quantity of fish food in
various forms.
The artificial culture of water-cress is comparatively modern, and a
remarkably pretty side-industry of the country.
Formerly, the cress gatherer was usually a gipsy, or "vagrom man," who
wandered up to the springs and by the head waters of brooks at dawn, and
took his cresses as the mushroom-gatherer takes mushrooms--by dint of
early rising and trespass.
[Illustration: PEELING OSIERS. _From a photograph by Taunt & Co_.]
The places where water-cress grows naturally are usually singularly
attractive. The plant grows best where springs actually bubble from the
ground, either where the waters break out on the lower sides of the chalk
downs, or in some limestone-begotten stream where springs rise, sometimes
for a distance of one or two miles, bubbling and swelling in the very bed
of the brook. There, among dead reeds and flags, the pale green cresses
appear very early in the spring, for the water is always warmer which
rises from the bosom of the earth. Trout and wild duck haunt the same
spots, and one often sees, stuck on a board in the stream, a notice
warning off the poor water-cress gatherer, who was supposed to poach the
fish.
The happy-go-lucky cress gathering is now a thing of the past, and there
are few rural industries more skilfully and profitably conducted. I knew a
farmer who, having lost all his capital on a large farm on the downs, took
as a last resource to growing the humble "creases" by the springs below.
He has now made money once more, and been able to take and cultivate
another farm nearly as large as that he worked before, while the area of
his water-cress beds still grows.
Wherever a chalk stream, however small, breaks out of the hills, it is
usual to let it to a water-cress grower. He widens the channels, and year
by year every square foot of the upper waters is planted with cress. Each
year, too, new and larger beds are added below, and the cresses creep down
the stream. When they encroach on good spawning ground this is very bad
for trout; but the beds are pretty enough, forming successive flats, on
different levels, of vivid green.
The scene on the Water-cress Farm shows the complete metamorphosis
undergone by what was once a swift running brook when once the new culture
is taken in hand. When left to Nature, the little chalk stream might truly
have said, in the words of the poem--
"I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses,
I linger by my shingly bars,
I loiter round my cresses."
Now all the brambles and shingle are gone, and the stream is condemned to
"loiter round its cresses," and to do nothing else. The water must not be
more than six inches deep, and it must not flow too fast. To secure these
conditions little dams, some made of earth and some of boards, are built
from side to side of the brook. The water thus appears to descend in a
series of steps, each communicating with the next by earthen pipes,
through which the water spouts. When a fresh bed of cresses is to be
planted, which is done usually towards the end of summer, a sluice is
opened, and only an inch or so of water left. On this cuttings from the
cress are strewn, which soon take root, and make a bed fit for gathering
by next spring.
From February to April the cresses are at their best. Their flavour is
good, their leaves crisp, and they come at a time when no outdoor salad
can be grown. As the beds are set close to the fresh springs, they are
seldom frozen. Hence, in very hard weather all the birds flock to the
cress-beds, where they find running water and a certain quantity of food.
If the beds do freeze, the cress is destroyed, and the loss is very
serious.
Gathering cresses is a very pleasant job in summer, but in early spring
one of the most cheerless occupations conceivable short of gathering
Iceland moss. The men wear waterproof boots, reaching up the thighs, and
thick stockings inside these. But the water is icy cold. The cress plants
are then not tall, as they are later, but short and bushy. They need
careful picking, too, in order not to injure the second crop. Then the
cold and dripping cresses have to be trimmed, tied into bundles, and
packed. When "dressed" they are laid in strong, flat hampers, called
"flats," the lids of which are squeezed down tight on to them. The edges
are then cut neatly with a sharp knife, and the baskets placed in running
water, until the carts are ready to drive them to the station. Not London
only but the great towns of the North consume the cress grown in the South
of England. A great part of that grown in the springs which break out
under the Berkshire Downs goes to Manchester.
One basket holds about two hundred large bunches. From each of these a
dozen of the small bunches retailed at a penny each can be made; and every
square rod of the cress-bed yields two baskets at a cutting.
In one of the East London suburbs, near to the reservoirs of a water
company, it has been found worth while to create an artificial spring, by
making an arrangement with the waterworks for a constant supply. This
flows from a stand-pipe and irrigates the cress-beds, which produce good
cresses, though not of such fine flavour as those grown in natural spring
water and upon a chalk soil.
[1] Fishermen in the Isle of Wight send all the way to the Midlands to get
the little scarlet withes required for making lobster-pots.
FOG AND DEW PONDS
The cycle of dry seasons seems to be indefinitely prolonged. During the
period, now lasting since 1893, in which we have had practically no wet
summers, and many very hot ones, a very curious phenomenon has been
remarked upon the high and dry chalk downs. The dew ponds, so called
because they are believed to be fed by dew and vapours, and not by rain,
have kept their water, while the deeper ponds in the valleys have often
failed. The shepherds on the downs are careful observers of these ponds,
because if they run dry they have to take their sheep to a distance or
draw water for them from very deep wells. They maintain that there are on
the downs some dew ponds which have never been known to run dry. Others
which do run dry do so because the bottom is injured by driving sheep into
them and so perforating the bed when the water is shallow, and not from
the failure of the invisible means of supply. There seem to be two sources
whence these ponds draw water, the dew and the fogs. Summer fogs are very
common at night on the high downs, though people who go to bed and get up
at normal hours do not know of them. These fogs are so wet that a man
riding up on to the hills at 4 a.m. may find his clothes wringing wet, and
every tree dripping water, just as during the first week of last November
in London many trees distilled pools of water from the fog, as if it had
been pouring with rain. Such was the case on July 4th, 1901. The fogs will
draw up the hollows towards the ponds, and hang densely round them. Fog
and dew may or may not come together; but generally there is a heavy dew
deposit on the grass when a fog lies on the hills. After such fogs, though
rain may not have fallen for a month, and there is no water channel or
spring near the dew pond, the water in it rises prodigiously. Every
shepherd knows this, but the actual measurements of this contribution of
the vapour-laden air have not often been taken. Yet the subject is an
interesting one, and of real importance to all dwellers on high hills,
especially those which, like the South Downs, are near the sea, and
attract great masses of fog and vapour-laden cloud, but contain few
springs on the high rolls of the hills.
The following are some notes of the rise in a dew pond caused by winter
fogs on the Berkshire Downs. They were recorded by the Rev. J.G. Cornish
at Lockinge, in Berkshire, and taken at his suggestion by a shepherd[1] in
a simple and ingenious way. Whenever he thought that a heavy dew or fog
was to be expected (and the shepherds are rarely wrong as weather
prophets) he notched a stick, and drove it into the pond overnight, so
that the notch was level with the surface. Next morning he pulled it up,
marked how high the water had risen above the notch, and nicked it again
for measurement. On January 18th, after a night of fog, the water rose
1-1/2 in.; on the next day, after another fog, 2 in.; and on January 24th,
1 in. Five nights of winter fog gave a total rise of 8 ins.--a vast weight
of water even in a pond of moderate area. Five days of heavy spring dew in
April and May, with no fog, gave a total rise in the same pond of 3-1/2
ins., the dews, though one was very heavy, giving less water than the
fogs, one of which even in May caused the water to rise 1-1/2 ins.[2] The
shepherds say that it is always well to have one or two trees hanging over
the pond, for that these distil the water from the fog. This is certainly
the case. The drops may be heard raining on to the surface in heavy mists.
During the first October mists of 1891 the pavement under certain trees
was as wet as if it had been raining, while elsewhere the dust lay like
powder. The water was still dripping from these trees at 7 a.m. Under the
plane-trees the fallen leaves were as wet from distilled moisture as if
they had been dipped in water; yet the ground beyond the spread of the
tree was dry. The writer tried a simple experiment in this distilling
power of trees. At sundown, two vessels were placed, one under a small
cherry-tree in full leaf, the other on some stone flags. Heavy dew was
falling and condensing on all vegetation, and on some other objects, with
the curious capriciousness which the dewfall seems to show. The leaves of
some trees were already wet. In the morning the vessel under the tree, and
that in the open, both held a considerable quantity of water, that on the
stone caught from dew and condensation, that under the tree mainly from
what had dripped from the leaves, which clearly intercepted the direct
fall of dew. But the vessel under the tree held just twice as much water
as that in the open, the surplus being almost entirely derived from drops
precipitated from the leaves. Mr. Sanderson, the manager of the
elephant-catching establishment of the Indian Government, noted that in
heavy dews in the jungle the water condensed by the leaves could be heard
falling like a heavy shower of rain.
Gilbert White, who noticed everything, and lived near a chalk hill, makes
some shrewd conjectures, both about the dew ponds and the part which trees
play in distilling water from fog, though he does not form the practical
conclusion, which we think is a safe one, that the most fog-distilling
trees should be discovered and planted to help to supply the water in
these air-tapping reservoirs. "To a thinking mind," he writes, "few
phenomena are more strange than the state of little ponds on the summits
of the chalk hills, many of which are never dry in the most trying
droughts of summer. On _chalk_ hills, I say, because in many rocky
and gravelly soils springs usually break out pretty high on the sides of
elevated grounds and mountains; but no persons acquainted with chalky
districts will allow that they ever saw springs in such a soil but in
valleys and bottoms, since the waters of so pervious a stratum as chalk
all lie on one dead level, as well-diggers have assured me again and
again. Now we have many such little round ponds in this district, and one
in particular on our sheep-down, three hundred feet above my house, and
containing perhaps not more than two or three hundred hogsheads of water;
yet it is never known to fail, though it affords drink for three or four
hundred sheep, and for at least twenty head of large cattle beside. This
pond, it is true, is overhung with two moderate beeches, that doubtless at
times afford it much supply. But then we have others as small, which,
without the aid of trees, and in spite of evaporation from sun and wind
and perpetual consumption by cattle, yet constantly contain a moderate
share of water, without overflowing in the winter, as they would do if
supplied by springs. By my Journal of May, 1775, it appears that 'the
small and even the considerable ponds in the vales are now dried up, but
the small ponds on the very tops of the hills are but little affected.'
Can this difference be accounted for by evaporation alone, which is
certainly more prevalent in the bottoms? Or, rather, have not these
elevated pools _some unnoticed recruits, which in the night time
counterbalance the waste of the day?_" These unnoticed recruits, though
it is now certain that they come in the form of those swimming vapours
from which little moisture seems to fall, are enlisted by means still not
certainly known. The common explanation was that the cool surface of the
water condensed the dew, just as the surface of a glass of iced water
condenses moisture. The ponds are always made artificially in the first
instance, and puddled with clay and chalk.
In the notes to a recent edition of "White's Selborne," edited by
Professor L.C. Miall, F.R.S., and Mr. W. Warde Fowler, a considerable
amount of information on dew ponds is appended to the passage quoted
above, but the source of supply still remains obscure. The best dew ponds
seem to be on the Sussex Downs, where far more fog and cooling cloud
accumulates than on the more inland chalk ranges, because of the nearness
of the sea. Near Inkpen Beacon, in Hampshire, there is a dew pond at a
height of nine hundred feet, which is never dry, though it waters a large
flock of sheep.[3] Dew ponds are often found where there are no other
sources of supply, such as the wash coming from a road. Probably if the
site for one had to be selected, it should be where the mists gather most
thickly and the heaviest dews are shed, local knowledge only possessed by
a few shepherds. I have driven up _through_ rain on to the top of the
downs, and found there that no rain was falling, but mists lying in the
hollows like smoke. Mr. Clement Reid, F.R.S., has added to the "Selborne"
notes his own experiences of the best sites for dew ponds. They should, he
thinks, be sheltered on the south-west by an overhanging tree. In those he
is acquainted with the tree is often only a stunted, ivy-covered thorn or
oak, or a bush of holly, or else the southern bank is high enough to give
shadow. "When one of these ponds is examined in the middle of a hot
summer's day," he adds, "it would appear that the few inches of water in
it could only last a week. But in early morning, or towards evening, or
whenever a sea-mist drifts in, there is a continuous drip from the smooth
leaves of the overhanging tree. There appears also to be a considerable
amount of condensation on the surface of the water itself, though the
roads may be quite dry and dusty. In fact, whenever there is dew on the
grass the pond is receiving moisture."
Though this is evidently the case, no one has explained how it comes about
that the pond surface receives so very much more moisture than the grass.
The heaviest dew or fog would not deposit an inch, or even two inches, of
water over an area of grass equal to that of the pond. None of the current
theories of dew deposits quite explain this very interesting question. Two
lines of inquiry seem to be suggested, which might be pursued side by
side. These are the quantities distilled or condensed on the ponds, and
the means by which it is done; and secondly, the kind of tree which, in
Gilbert White's phrase, forms the best "alembic" for distilling water from
fog at all times of the year. It seems certain that the tree is an
important piece of machinery in aid of such ponds, though many remain well
supplied without one.
[1] Thomas Elliot, who for some twenty years was shepherd and general
manager for one of my father's tenants at Childrey.
[2] Full details of the cost and method of making dew ponds, as well as
other information about them, are contained in the prize essay of the late
Rev. J. Clutterbuck, Rector of Long Wittenham, in the Journal of the Royal
Agricultural Society. Vol. I., Sec.S. Part 2.
[3] In the Isle of Wight, on Brightstone Downs, about 400 feet above the
sea, is a dew pond with a _concrete_ bottom, which has never run dry
for thirty years.
POISONOUS PLANTS
A friend informs me that he has found a quantity of woad growing on the
Chilterns above the Thame, enough to stain blue a whole tribe of ancient
Britons, and also that on a wall by the roadside between Reading and
Pangbourne he discovered several plants of the deadly nightshade, or
"dwale." This word is said to be derived from Old French _deuil_,
mourning; but its present form looks very English. The only cases of plant
poisoning now common among grown-up people are those caused by mistaking
fungi for mushrooms, or by making rash experiments in cooking the former,
of which Gerard quaintly says: "Beware of licking honey among the thorns,
lest the sweetness of the one do not countervail the sharpness and
pricking of the other." But with such a list of toxic plants as our flora
can show there is always danger from certain species whose properties are
quite unknown to ordinary mortals. Are they equally unknown to the
herbalists and that mysterious trade-union of country-women and collectors
of herbs by the roadside who deal with them? Probably the trade in poisons
not used for serious purposes, but for what used in some parts of England
to be called "giving a dose," a punishment for unfaithful, unkind, or
drunken husbands, still exists as it did some forty years ago. The
collectors of medicinal plants cut from the roadside and rubbish heaps,
plants whose "operations" for good are quite well known, and have been
handed down by tradition for centuries, cannot be absolutely ignorant of
the other side of the picture, the toxic properties which other plants, or
sometimes even the same plants, contain. Foxglove, for instance, from
which _digitalis_ used as a medicine is extracted, is a good example
of these kill-or-cure plants. Every portion of the plant is poisonous,
leaves, flowers, stalks, and berries. It affects the heart, and though
useful in cases in which the pulsations are abnormal, its symptoms when
taken by persons in ordinary health are those of heart failure. Thus
foxglove is not only a dangerous but a "subtle" poison.
Among other plants which may cause serious mischief, but are seldom
suspected, are such harmless-looking flowers as the meadowsweet,
herb-paris, the common fool's-parsley, found growing in quantities in the
gardens of unlet houses and neglected ground which has been in
cultivation, mezereon, columbine, and laburnum. Meadowsweet has the
following set against its name: "A few years since two young men went from
London to one of the Southern counties on a holiday excursion, on the last
day of which they gathered two very large sheafs of meadowsweet to bring
home with them. These they placed in their bedroom at the village inn
where they had to put up. In the course of the night they were taken
violently ill, and the doctor who was called in stated that they were
suffering from the poisonous prussic-acid fumes of the meadowsweet
flowers, which he said almost overpowered him when he came into the room.
The flowers were at once removed, and the young men, treated with suitable
restoratives, were by next morning sufficiently recovered to undertake the
journey home." [1] Without knowing what the young men had had for supper,
it seems perhaps rather hasty to blame the meadowsweet. But the other
flowers mentioned above have a bad record. To take them in order.
Herb-paris, which grows in woods and shady places, with four even-sized
leaves in a star at the top of the stem, all growing out opposite each
other, bears a large, green solitary flower, and a bluish-black berry
later. All parts of the plant are poisonous, the berries especially.
Fool's-parsley, an unpleasantly smelling, very common plant, which leaves
its odour on the hand if the seeds are squeezed or drawn through it, is
said to cause numbers of deaths by being mistaken for common parsley and
cooked. In the case of poisoning by this plant, it is recommended that
milk should be given, the body sponged with vinegar, and mustard poultices
put on the sufferer's legs. It is reckoned that one plant produced six
thousand and eighty seeds--an unpleasant degree of fecundity for a
poisonous weed. Columbine, which is a wild plant with blue or white
flowers, as well as a domesticated one, has a toxic principle like that of
the monkshood, more especially in the seeds; and the pretty red berries of
the mezereon are responsible for the deaths or illness of children nearly
every autumn. They are like cherries, and easily picked from the low
bushes on which they grow. A dozen are said to be enough to cause death,
though this must probably depend on the state of the eater's health. The
laburnum, with its golden rain, is potentially a kind of upas tree. The
writer has only known of two deaths of children caused by eating the beans
in the green pods, but it is said to be a frequent cause of death every
year on the Continent, where, possibly, children are less naturally
careful about poisonous plants than those in England, to whom risks of
this kind are usually and properly made part of the "black list" of the
nursery-book of "Don'ts." The seeds will even poison poultry, if they pick
them up after they have dropped from the pod. Laburnum is of comparatively
recent introduction into Britain, or it would probably earlier have been
accorded a place among the severely poisonous plants, dreaded by all.