They must be thirty feet high, are immensely thick, and are clipped so as
to present the smooth, velvety appearance peculiar to the finest yew and
box hedges. The colour and texture of these walls of ancient vegetation,
contrasting with the vivid green lawns at their feet, are astonishingly
beautiful. One of the peculiar charms of such hedges is that where yew of
a different kind or age, or a bush of box, forms part of the mass, it
shows like an inlay of a different material, and the same effect is given
merely by the trick that some yews have of growing their leaves or shoots
at a different angle from that favoured by others. These surfaces give the
variety of tint which is shown in such fabrics as "shot" or "watered"
silk. Here there is a splash of blue from the box, or of invisible dull
green, or of golden sheen, from different classes of yew. Box hedges of
great size are less common than those of yew, and less durable, for the
box is easily rent from the stem when old. But these two, the yew and the
box, are the "precious" hedges, the silver and gold, of the garden-maker.
Next, representing the copper and brass, are the hedges of beech and
holly. Both are commonly planted and carefully tended as borders and
shelters to the less important parts of gardens; as screens also to block
out the humdrum but necessary portions of the curtilage, such as the
forcing-pits for early plants, minor offices, timber yards, and the like;
and to shelter vegetable gardens (for which the Dutch use screens of dried
reeds). Holly makes the best and most impenetrable of all hedges when
clipped, but it is not beautiful for that reason. Clipped holly grows no
berries; it accumulates dust and dirt, and has a dull, lifeless look.
Beech, on the other hand, should be in greater esteem than it is. If
clipped when the sap is rising it puts on leaves which last all the
winter. From top to bottom the wall of russet shines warm and bright. Its
leaves are harmless in decay, for they contain an antiseptic oil, and no
leaves of spring are more tenderly green or in more ceaseless motion at
the lightest breeze. Privet makes the last and least esteemed of these
"one-tree" hedges. Yet it is the most tractable of all hedge material, and
was almost invariably used to form the intricate "mazes," once a favourite
toy of the layers-out of stately gardens.
Keeping these hedges in good repair and properly clipped and trimmed is
one of the minor difficulties of the country. In large gardens there are
always one or two professional gardeners who understand the topiary art.
But it often happens that a quite modest garden possesses a splendid hedge
of yew or box, the pride of the place, which needs attention once or twice
every year. These hedges have frequently been clipped by the same man,
some old resident in the village, for thirty or forty years. Clipping that
hedge is part of his regular extra earnings to which he looks forward, and
a source of credit and renown to him in his circle. He knows every weak
place, what parts need humouring, what stems are crowding others between
the furry screen of leaves, and where the wind got in and did mischief in
the last January gale. When in the course of Nature the old hedge-trimmer
dies, there is no one to take his place. The men do not learn these
outside accomplishments as they once did, and the art is likely to be
lost, just as ornamental thatching and the making of the more decorative
kinds of oak paling are in danger of disappearing.
Mending, or still worse remaking, field-hedges is a difficult, expensive,
and withal a very highly skilled form of labour. The workers have for
generations been very humble men, who have scarcely been honoured for
their excellent handiwork as they deserved. They appear in art only in
John Leech's pictures of hunting in Leicestershire, in his endless jokes
on "mending the gaps" towards the close of the hunting season. In February
and March the scenes shown in Leech's pictures are reproduced on most of
the Thames valley farms in Berkshire and Oxfordshire. The men wear in
front an apron of sacking, torn and plucked by thorns. The hands are
gloved in leather mits with no fingers; in them the hedger holds his
light, sharp billhook, shaped much like the knife of the forest tribes of
Southern India. When a whole fence has to be relaid the art of "hedge
carpentry" is exhibited in its perfection. Few people not brought up to
the business, which is only one minor branch of the many-sided handiness
of a good field labourer, the kind of man whom every one now wants and
whom few can find, would have the courage to attempt it. A ditch full of
brambles, often with water at the bottom, has to be cleared. Then the man
descends into the ditch, and strips the bank of brambles and briars. That
is only the preliminary. When he has piled all the brambles in heaps at
regular intervals along the brow of the ditch, he walks thoughtfully from
end to end of the fence, and considers the main problem, or lets the idea
sink into his mind, for he never talks, and probably never frames for
himself any form of words or conscious plan. In front, with the bases of
the stems bare where the bank is trimmed and slashed, stands the overgrown
hedge which he is to cut, bend over, relay, and transform, to make another
ten or twelve years of growth till it reaches the unmanageable size of
that which stands before him. Most of it is great bushes of blackthorn,
hard as oak, with thorns like two-inch nails, and sharper. These bushes,
grow up in thick rods and stocks, spiny and intractable, from the bank to
a height of perhaps twelve feet. The rest of the fence-stuff is
whitethorn, nearly as ill to deal with as the blackthorn, and perhaps a
few clumps of ash and wild rose. Slashing, hewing, tearing down, and
bending in, he works steadily down the hedge day by day. All the time he
is using his judgment at every stroke. Some he hews out at the base and
flings behind him on the field. Much he cuts off at what will be the level
of the hedge. But all the most vigorous stems of blackthorn and whitethorn
he half cuts through and then bends over, twisting the heads to the next
stocks or uprights, or, where there are no stocks, driving in stout stakes
cut from the discarded blackthorns. When finished the newly mended hedge
consists of uprights, mostly rooted in their native bank, and fascine-like
bundles--the heads of these uprights, which are bent and bound
horizontally to the other uprights or stakes. This is the universal "stake
and bond" hedge of the shires, impenetrable to cattle, unbreakable, and
imperishable, because the half-cut bonds, the stakes, and the small stuff
all shoot again, and in a few years make the famous "bullfinch" with stake
and bond below, and a tall mass of interlacing thorns and small stuff
above.
During the last era of prosperous farming there was a mania for destroying
hedges and cutting down the timber. If ever prosperity returns it will
smile on a better-informed class of occupier and owner. It is now seen
that the hedges were of the greatest value to shelter cattle, sheep, and
horses, and benefited to some extent even the sown crops, especially at
the blossoming time. As cattle are now the farmer's main reliance, it will
be long before he grubs up or destroys the welcome shelter given by the
hedges from sun, rain, and storm.
THE ENGLISH MOCKING BIRD
One winter an unusual number of peewits visited the flats near Wittenham
and Burcote, and remained there for several months. One or two starlings
which haunted the house in which we stayed, and slept in their old holes
in the thatch, picked up all the various peewits' calls and notes, and
used to amuse themselves by repeating these in the apple-trees on sunny
mornings. The note was so exact a reproduction that I often looked up to
see where the plover was before I made out that it was only the starling's
mimicry.
A correspondent of the _Newcastle Journal_, writing from Yeare, near
Wooler, in Northumberland, recently described the performances of a wild
starling which has settled near his house. It is such an excellent mimic
of other birds' notes that no one can help noticing its performances. A
record has been kept of the variety entertainments provided by the bird.
Besides its own calls, whistles, and song, it reproduces the song of the
blackbird and thrush absolutely correctly, and mimics with equal nicety
the calls of the curlew, the corncrake, and the jackdaw.
It is appropriate that this eulogy of the starling should appear in a
Newcastle paper, for Bewick when residing there always regretted the
absence of these birds from the town, and hoped that they might in time
become numerous, as in the South and West. Starlings are such intelligent,
interesting, and really remarkable birds that if they were rare they would
be among the most prized of pets. Their open-air vocal performances are
quite as remarkable as their latest admirer says. They are the British
mocking-birds, able, when and if they choose, to reproduce almost any form
of song. They do this partly, no doubt, because their throats are
adaptable, but more from temperament and a kind of objective mind not very
common in birds. Like parrots, starlings are given to spending a good deal
of every fine morning in contemplating other people, including other
birds, and then in thinking them over, or talking them over to themselves.
Any one who is sitting or working quietly near a room where a parrot is in
its cage alone can fairly follow the train of thought in the parrot's
mind. It is evidently recalling episodes or things which form part of its
daily mental experiences. It begins by barking like the dog, then
remembers the dog's mistress, and tells it to be quiet, as she does. Then
it hears the housemaid, and imitates a window-sash being let down, or some
phrase it has picked up in the servants' quarters. If it has been lately
struck with some new animal noise or unusual sound, it will be heard
practising that. Starlings do exactly the same thing. When the sun begins
to be hot on any fine day, summer or winter, the cock bird goes up usually
alone, to a sunny branch, gable, or chimney, and there indulges in a
pleasant reverie, talking aloud all the time. Its own modes of utterance
are three. One is a melodious whistle, rather low and soft; another is a
curious chattering, into which it introduces as many "clicks" as a Zulu
talking his native language; and the third is a short snatch of song,
either its own, or one which has become a national anthem or morning hymn
common to all starlings, though it may originally have been a "selection"
from other birds' notes. Then, or amongst the rest of the ordinary notes,
the starling inserts or practises its accomplishments. Not all starlings
do this, and only a few attain great eminence in that line. Obviously it
is only personal feeling that induces them to do it, and they get no
encouragement from other starlings, though when kept in cages, as they
very seldom are now, and rewarded and taught, they might develop the most
striking talents. It should be added that, like all good bird-mimics, they
are ventriloquists. They can reproduce perfectly the sound of another
bird's note, not as that bird utters it, but as it is heard, faint and
low, softened by distance. They can also sing over bars of bird-songs in a
low tone perfectly correctly, and repeat them in a high one.
To give a rather striking example. Last spring the writer was in the
Valley of the Eden, opposite Eden-hall. The vale is a wide one, and on the
north-east side are high fells, Cross Fell among others. On these the
curlews breed, and occasionally fly right over the valley at a great
height to the hills above Edenhall, uttering their long, musical call.
When heard, this call is generally uttered several hundred feet above the
valley. A curlew was heard flying above, and repeating its cry, but was
not discernible. Again the call was heard, but no curlew seen, though such
a large bird must have been visible. In the line of sound was a starling
sitting on a chimney-pot. Again the curlew called, the long-drawn notes
sounding from exactly the same place in the sky. It was the starling,
reproducing with perfect accuracy the call, as it was used to hear it from
the high-flying curlews crossing the valley. Apparently the tradition that
they were good talkers has died out in rural England. It was always one of
the firm beliefs of East Anglia that if a starling's tongue were slit with
a thin sixpence it would learn to talk at once, but that otherwise it
would only mimic other birds. The operation, like most other traditional
brutalities, was absolutely unnecessary. Talking starlings were common
enough, and must have been for many years previous to the time when they
were no longer valued as cage-birds. Has not Sterne in his "Sentimental
Journey" immortalised the poor bird whose one and leading sentiment, had
he been able to find words for it, was "I can't get out! I can't get
out!"?
* * * * *
From early spring until after midsummer the starlings have young broods in
more varied places and positions than probably any other birds in England.
They like the homes of men, and build with equal pleasure in thatched
roofs, under tiles, in the eaves and under the leads of churches (though a
recent edict by the Bench of Bishops has forbidden them the towers by
causing wire netting to be placed over the louvre boards), and also in
places the most remote from mankind. In the most solitary groves on
Beaulieu Heath, under the ledges of stark Cornish precipices, and in ruins
on islets in mountain lochs in Scotland, they tend their hungry nestlings
with the same assiduous care. The good done by the starlings throughout
the spring, summer, and autumn is incalculable. The young are fed entirely
on insect food, and as the birds always seek this as close to home as
possible, they act as police to our gardens and meadows. They do a little
mischief when nesting and in the fruit season, partly because they have
ideas. It was alleged recently that they picked off the cherry blossoms
and carried them off to decorate their nests with. Later they are among
the most inveterate robbers of cherry orchards and peckers of figs, which
they always attack on the ripest side. But they have never developed a
taste for devouring corn, like the rice-birds and starlings of the United
States. They have a good deal in common with those bright, clever, and
famous mimics, the Indian mynahs, which they much resemble physically.
This was the bird which Bontius considered "went one better" than Ovid's
famous parrot:--
"Psittacus, Eois quamvis tibi missus ab oris
Jussa loquar; vincit me sturnus garrulus Indis."
The mynahs have also the starling's habit of building in houses, and
especially in temples. There is a finish about the mynah's and the
starling's mimicry which certainly beats that of the parrots.
In their attendance on sheep and cattle the starlings have another
creditable affinity. They are very like the famous rhinoceros-birds of
Africa, to which also they are related. The rhinoceros-birds always keep
in small flocks, every member of which sits on the back of the animal,
whether antelope, buffalo, or rhinoceros, on which it is catching insects.
The starlings do not keep so closely to the animal's body, though they
frequently alight on the back of a sheep or cow and run all over it. But
when seeking insect food among cattle the little groups of starlings
generally keep in a pack and attend to a single animal. Mr. J.G. Millais,
watching deer in a park with his glasses, saw a starling remove a fly from
the corner of a deer's eye. When they have run round it, and over it, and
caught all the flies they can there, they rise with a little unanimous
exclamation, and fly on to the next beast. Their winter movements are also
interesting. By day they associate with other birds, mainly with rooks.
Gilbert White thought they did this because the rooks had extra nerves in
their beaks, and were able to act as guides to the smaller birds searching
for invisible food. Probably it is only due to the sociable instinct.
Towards night they nearly always repair in innumerable flocks to some
favourite roosting-place, either a reed-bed or a wood of evergreens, where
they assemble in thousands. One of these communal sleeping-places is the
duck island in St. James's Park. In hard weather they feed on the saltings
and round the shore, especially where rotten seaweed abounds, with great
quantities of insect life in it. At such times they roost in the crevices
of the great sea cliffs. Under Culver Cliff, for instance, they may be
seen flying along the shore and coming in to bed in the frost fog with the
cormorants and other fishers of the deep.
FLOWERS OF THE GRASS FIELDS
Just before hay-time, the crowning glory of the Thames-side flats is given
by the flowers growing in the grass. Their setting, among the uncounted
millions of green grass stems, appeals not only by the contrast of colour,
but by the sense of coolness and content which these sheltered and softly
bedded blossoms suggest. The meadows which they adorn are best-loved of
all the fields of England; but they would never be as dear to Englishmen
as they are were it not for the flowers which deck them. The blossoms and
plants found in the tall grasses differ from those on lawns and grazing
pastures. They are taller, more delicate, and of a more graceful growth.
The daisy, so dear to pastoral poets, is not a flower of the hayfield. The
myriads of springing stems choke the daisy flowers, which love to lie low,
on their flat and shallow-rooted stars of leaves. The daisy is a lawn
plant that loves low turf, and only in early spring on the pasture-fields
does it whiten the unmown grasses. The turf glades of the New Forest,
grazed short by cattle for eight hundred years, are very properly called
"lawns"; and on these the daisies grow in thousands, showing that they are
true lawns, and not grassfields mown yearly by the scythe. What makes a
flower of the grasses it is difficult to say. Bulbs flourish among them,
and clovers, trefoils, and vetch. White ox-eye daisies love the grass, and
many orchids, and in shady places white cow-parsley, and blue wild
geraniums, and all the buttercups. Others, like the yellow snapdragon and
the scarlet poppy, will have none of it, but love a dry and dusty fallow
or a cornfield that has run to waste, shimmering with heat and drought. Up
the valley of the Pang, you may see acres of poppies on a fallow as
scarlet as a field-marshal's coat, and not one in the meadows by the
stream. Even before the sheltering grass stems shoot upward and around
them, drawing all the flower-life skywards as trees draw other trees
upright towards the light, there are plants which are found only growing
in the meadows, springing from the turf carpet, and happy in no other
setting. Chief of these are the wild daffodils or Lent-lilies, the
ornaments of old orchards and of the green meadows of Devon and the Isle
of Wight. Why they, like the snowdrops, and in other parts of Europe the
narcissi, should choose the turf in which to flower, instead of the woods,
where grass does not grow, is one of the secrets of the flower-world. So,
too, the wild hyacinths grow not in the meadows, though the fritillaries,
the chequered red or pale "snake flowers," are grass-lovers, and grow only
in the alluvial meadows by the streams and brooks of the valleys. Early
though the fritillaries are, they are a real "grass flower," flourishing
best where there is some early succulent growth around them, for they like
the shelter so given. This they enjoy even early in the year, because
their favourite home is in meadows over which flood-waters run in winter,
and there the grass grows fast. With the cowslip comes the early common
orchis, with its red-purple flower, and later the masses of buttercups,
and the ox-eye daisies. Both these flowers are increasing in our meadows,
the former to the detriment of the grass itself, and to the loss of the
butter-makers, for the cows will not eat the buttercups' bitter stems.
Like the ox-eye daisy, the buttercup is a typical meadow flower, tall, so
that it tops the grasses and catches the sun in its petals, thin-foliaged,
for no real grass-growing flower has broad or remarkable leaves, and with
a habit of deep, underground growth far below the upper surface of the
matted grass roots. You cannot easily pull up a buttercup root, or that of
any flower of the meadows. The stems break first, for they draw their
sustenance from a deep stratum of earth. Most of the meadow flowers and
blossoms in the mowing grass belong to the beautiful, rather than to the
useful, order of plants. They are fitted to weave a garland from rather
than to distil into simples and potions. As Gerard says of the butterfly
orchis, "there is no great use of these in physicke, but they are chiefly
regarded for the pleasant and beautiful flowers wherewith Nature hath
seemed to play and disport herselfe." Herein they differ from the roadside
plants and the blossoms of waste-lands and woods, for these, especially
the former, swell the list of the medicinal plants, the garden not of
Flora, but of Aesculapius. It is these which have been gathered for
centuries by the wise men and wise women of the villages from the
Apennines to Exmoor, while, if we may infer from the story of agriculture,
the flowers of the grassfields are in a sense modern and artificial. They
owe their numbers to the discovery of the art of haymaking. Before men
learnt to cut, dry, and stack hay, which, after fermenting partly in the
stacks under pressure, becomes a manufactured food, it may be concluded
that there were no such flower-spangled fields, in this country at least,
as now form such a striking feature of rural England. Cattle and sheep
wandered all over the common pastures, and ate the grass down, or trampled
it under foot. Consequently, it never grew long, or formed the protecting
bed in which the flowers now lie, and many of the meadow plants could
seldom have flowered at all. The hungry cattle would graze down all the
soft, juicy young buds and leaves, wandering at will over the valleys,
under charge only of the herdsman. When haymaking became general the
cattle were confined in spring and early summer, and the fields of "mowing
grass" appeared, and nourished year by year the plants peculiar to this
form of cultivation. The proof that this is so may be seen in the New
Forest. There the private fields, carefully protected during the spring,
from the tread or bite of cattle, and mown yearly in the summer, have all
the wealth of flowers peculiar to our hay-meadows. Outside, in the forest
itself, these flowers hardly exist, except by some pool-side, or on the
meadow-like border of a bog. They are only natural in the second sense,
because our mowing grass is a natural product of enclosed ground, when
cattle are excluded. Some flowers just invade the meadows, venturing out a
few yards from the hedges or woods, but never spreading broadcast over the
sun-warmed central acres. Such are the blue bird's-eye, which just colours
the mowing grass in shady spots and patches near the fence, and
occasionally the bee-orchis and the butterfly-orchis. The latter does not
grow tall in the meadows as it does in the woods, but affects a humbler
growth. Blue wild geraniums also flourish in patches in the meadows, and
sometimes cranesbill and campion. But campions do not seed well among the
thick grasses and seldom hold their own, as they do where a copse has been
cut down, or on a hedgeside. And, though it is not a flower, there is the
"quaking grass" beloved of children, though useless as cattle food, and a
sign of bad pasturage, but the only grass which cottage people gather to
keep, as a memento of the hayfields.
[Illustration: ORCHIS. _From photographs by E. Seeley_.]