shoot; the young leaves of the aspen are white, and the tree as the wind
touches it seems to turn grey. The furrows run to the ditch under the
reeds, the ditch declines to a little streamlet which winds all hidden
by willowherb and rush and flag, a mere trickle of water under
brooklime, away at the feet of the corn. In the shadow, deep down
beneath the crumbling bank which is only held up by the roots of the
grasses, is a forget-me-not with a tiny circlet of yellow in the centre
of its petals.
The coming of the ears of wheat forms an era and a date, a fixed point
in the story of the summer. It is then that, soon after dawn, the clear
sky assumes the delicate and yet luscious purple which seems to shine
through the usual atmosphere, as if its former blue became translucent
and an inner and ethereal light of colour was shown. As the sun rises
higher the brilliance of his rays overpowers it, and even at midsummer
it is but rarely seen.
The morning sky is often, too, charged with saffron, or the blue is
clear, but pale, and the sunrise might be watched for many mornings
without the appearance of this exquisite hue. Once seen, it will ever be
remembered. Upon the Downs in early autumn, as the vapours clear away,
the same colour occasionally gleams from the narrow openings of blue
sky. But at midsummer, above the opening wheatears, the heaven from the
east to the zenith is flushed with it.
At noonday, as the light breeze comes over, the wheat rustles the more
because the stalks are stiffening and swing from side to side from the
root instead of yielding up the stem. Stay now at every gateway and lean
over while the midsummer hum sounds above. It is a peculiar sound, not
like the querulous buzz of the honey, nor the drone of the humble bee,
but a sharp ringing resonance like that of a tuning-fork. Sometimes, in
the far-away country where it is often much louder, the folk think it
has a threatening note.
Here the barley has taken a different tint now the beard is out; here
the oats are straggling forth from their sheath; here a pungent odour of
mustard in flower comes on the air; there a poppy faints with broad
petals flung back and drooping, unable to uphold its gorgeous robes.
The flower of the field pea, here again, would make a model for a lady's
hat; so would a butterfly with closed wings on the verge of a leaf; so
would the broom blossom, or the pink flower of the restharrow. This
hairy caterpillar, creeping along the hawthorn, which if touched,
immediately coils itself in a ring, very recently was thought a charm in
distant country places for some diseases of childhood, if hung about the
neck. Hedge mustard, yellow and ragged and dusty, stands by the gateway.
In the evening, as the dew gathers on the grass, which feels cooler to
the hand some time before an actual deposit, the clover and vetches
close their leaves--the signal the hares have been waiting for to
venture from the sides of the fields where they have been cautiously
roaming, and take bolder strolls across the open and along the lanes.
The aspens rustle louder in the stillness of the evening; their leaves
not only sway to and fro, but semi-rotate upon the stalks, which causes
their scintillating appearance. The stars presently shine from the pale
blue sky, and the wheat shimmers dimly white beneath them.
So time advances till to-day, watching the reapers from the shadow of
the copse, it seems as if within that golden expanse there must be
something hidden, could you but rush in quickly and seize it--some
treasure of the sunshine; and there _is_ a treasure, the treasure of
life stored in those little grains, the slow product of the sun. But it
cannot be grasped in an impatient moment--it must be gathered with
labour. I have threshed out in my hand three ears of the ripe wheat: how
many foot-pounds of human energy do these few light grains represent?
The roof of the Crystal Palace yonder gleams and sparkles this
afternoon as if it really were crystal under the bright rays. But it was
concealed by mist when the ploughs in the months gone by were guided in
these furrows by men, hard of feature and of hand, stooping to their
toil. The piercing east wind scattered the dust in clouds, looking at a
distance like small rain across the field, when grey-coated men, grey
too of beard, followed the red drill to and fro.
How many times the horses stayed in this sheltered corner while the
ploughmen and their lads ate their crusts! How many times the farmer and
the bailiff, with hands behind their backs, considering, walked along
the hedge taking counsel of the earth if they had done right! How many
times hard gold and silver was paid over at the farmer's door for labour
while yet the plant was green; how many considering cups of ale were
emptied in planning out the future harvest!
Now it is come, and still more labour--look at the reapers yonder--and
after that more time and more labour before the sacks go to the market.
Hard toil and hard fare: the bread which the reapers have brought with
them for their luncheon is hard and dry, the heat has dried it like a
chip. In the corner of the field the women have gathered some sticks and
lit a fire--the flame is scarce seen in the sunlight, and the sticks
seem eaten away as they burn by some invisible power. They are boiling a
kettle, and their bread, too, which they will soak in the tea, is dry
and chip-like. Aside, on the ground by the hedge, is a handkerchief tied
at the corners, with a few mushrooms in it.
The scented clover field--the white campions dot it here and
there--yields a rich, nectareous food for ten thousand bees, whose hum
comes together with its odour on the air. But these men and women and
children ceaselessly toiling know no such sweets; their food is as hard
as their labour. How many foot-pounds, then, of human energy do these
grains in my hand represent? Do they not in their little compass contain
the potentialities, the past and the future, of human life itself?
Another train booms across the iron bridge in the hollow. In a few hours
now the carriages will be crowded with men hastening home from their
toil in the City. The narrow streak of sunshine which day by day falls
for a little while upon the office floor, yellowed by the dingy pane, is
all, perhaps, to remind them of the sun and sky, of the forces of
nature; and that little is unnoticed. The pressure of business is so
severe in these later days that in the hurry and excitement it is not
wonderful many should forget that the world is not comprised in the
court of a City thoroughfare.
Rapt and absorbed in discount and dollars, in bills and merchandise, the
over-strung mind deems itself all--the body is forgotten, the physical
body, which is subject to growth and change, just as the plants and the
very grass of the field. But there is a subtle connection between the
physical man and the great nature which comes pressing up so closely to
the metropolis. He still depends in the nineteenth century, as in the
dim ages before the Pyramids, upon this tiny yellow grain here, rubbed
out from the ear of wheat. The clever mechanism of the locomotive which
bears him to and fro, week after week and month after month, from home
to office and from office home, has not rendered him in the least degree
independent of this.
But it is no wonder that these things are forgotten in the daily
struggle of London. And if the merchant spares an abstracted glance from
the morning or evening newspaper out upon the fields from the carriage
window, the furrows of the field can have but little meaning. Each
looks to him exactly alike. To the farmers and the labourer such and
such a furrow marks an acre and has its bearing, but to the passing
glance it is not so. The work in the field is so slow; the passenger by
rail sees, as it seems to him, nothing going on; the corn may sow itself
almost for all that is noteworthy in apparent labour.
Thus it happens that, although the cornfields and the meadows come so
closely up to the offices and warehouses of mighty London, there is a
line and mark in the minds of men between them; the man of merchandise
does not see what the man of the fields sees, though both may pass the
same acres every morning. It is inevitable that it should be so. It is
easy in London to forget that it is midsummer, till, going some day into
Covent Garden Market, you see baskets of the cornflower, or blue-bottle
as it is called in the country, ticketed "Corinne," and offered for
sale. The lovely azure of the flower recalls the scene where it was
first gathered long since at the edge of the wheat.
By the copse here now the teazles lift their spiny heads high in the
hedge, the young nuts are browning, the wild mints flowering on the
shores of the ditch, and the reapers are cutting ceaselessly at the ripe
corn. The larks have brought their loves to a happy conclusion. Besides
them the wheat in its day has sheltered many other creatures--both
animals and birds.
Hares raced about it in the spring, and even in the May sunshine might
be seen rambling over the slopes. As it grew higher it hid the leverets
and the partridge chicks. Toll has been taken by rook, and sparrow, and
pigeon. Enemies, too, have assailed it; the daring couch invaded it, the
bindweed climbed up the stalk, the storm rushed along and beat it down.
Yet it triumphed, and to-day the full sheaves lean against each other.
THE CROWS
On one side of the road immediately after quitting the suburb there is a
small cover of furze. The spines are now somewhat browned by the summer
heats, and the fern which grows about every bush trembles on the balance
of colour between green and yellow. Soon, too, the tall wiry grass will
take a warm brown tint, which gradually pales as the autumn passes into
winter, and finally bleaches to greyish white.
Looking into the furze from the footpath, there are purple traces here
and there at the edge of the fern where the heath-bells hang. On a furze
branch, which projects above the rest, a furze chat perches, with yellow
blossom above and beneath him. Rushes mark the margin of small pools and
marshy spots, so overhung with brambles and birch branches, and so
closely surrounded by gorse, that they would not otherwise be noticed.
But the thick growth of rushes intimates that water is near, and upon
parting the bushes a little may be seen, all that has escaped
evaporation in the shade. From one of these marshy spots I once--and
once only--observed a snipe rise, and after wheeling round return and
settle by another. As the wiry grass becomes paler with the fall of the
year, the rushes, on the contrary, from green become faintly yellow, and
presently brownish. Grey grass and brown rushes, dark furze, and fern,
almost copper in hue from frost, when lit up by a gleam of winter
sunshine form a pleasant breadth of warm colour in the midst of bare
fields.
After continuous showers in spring, lizards are often found in the
adjacent gardens, their dark backs as they crawl over the patches being
almost exactly the tint of the moist earth. If touched, the tail is
immediately coiled, the body stiffens, and the creature appears dead.
They are popularly supposed to come from the furze, which is also
believed to shelter adders.
There is, indeed, scarcely a cover in Surrey and Kent which is not said
to have its adders; the gardeners employed at villas close to the
metropolis occasionally raise an alarm, and profess to have seen a viper
in the shrubberies, or the ivy, or under an old piece of bast. Since so
few can distinguish at a glance between the common snake and the adder
it is as well not to press too closely upon any reptile that may chance
to be heard rustling in the grass, and to strike tussocks with the
walking-stick before sitting down to rest, for the adder is only
dangerous when unexpectedly encountered.
In the roadside ditch by the furze the figwort grows, easily known by
its coarse square stem; and the woody bines, if so they may be called,
or stalks of bitter-sweet, remain all the winter standing in the
hawthorn hedge. The first frosts, on the other hand, shrivel the bines
of white bryony, which part and hang separated, and in the spring a
fresh bine pushes up with greyish green leaves and tendrils feeling for
support. It is often observed that the tendrils of this bryony coil both
ways, with and against the sun.
But it must be remembered in looking for this that it is the same
tendril which should be examined, and not two different ones. It will
then be seen that the tendril, after forming a spiral one way, lengthens
out like a tiny green wax taper, and afterwards turns the other.
Sometimes it resumes the original turn before reaching a branch to cling
to, and may thus be said to have revolved in three directions. The dusty
celandine grows under the bushes; and its light green leaves seem to
retain the white dust from the road. Ground ivy creeps everywhere over
the banks, and covers the barest spot. In April its flowers, though much
concealed by leaves, dot the sides of the ditches with colour, like the
purple tint that lurks in the amethyst.
A small black patch marks the site of one of those gorse fires which are
so common in Surrey. This was extinguished before it could spread beyond
a few bushes. The crooked stems remain black as charcoal, too much burnt
to recover, and in the centre a young birch scorched by the flames
stands leafless. This barren birch, bare of foliage and apparently
unattractive, is the favourite resort of yellow-hammers. Perching on a
branch towards evening a yellow-hammer will often sit and sing by the
hour together, as if preferring to be clear of leafy sprays.
The somewhat dingy hue of many trees as the summer begins to wane is
caused not only by the fading of the green, but by the appearance of
spots upon the leaves, as may be seen on those birches which grow among
the furze. But in spring and early summer their fresh light green
contrasts with masses of bright yellow gorse bloom. Just before
then--just as the first leaves are opening--the chiffchaffs come.
The first spring I had any knowledge of this spot was mild, and had been
preceded by mild seasons. The chiffchaffs arrived all at once, as it
seemed, in a bevy, and took possession of every birch about the furze,
calling incessantly with might and main. The willow-wrens were nearly
as numerous. All the gorse seemed full of them for a few days. Then by
degrees they gradually spread abroad, and dispersed among the hedges.
But in the following springs nothing of the kind occurred. Chiffchaff
and willow-wren came as usual, but they did not arrive in a crowd at
once. This may have been owing to the flight going elsewhere, or
possibly the flock were diminished by failure to rear the young broods
in so drenching a season as 1879, which would explain the difference
observed next spring. There was no scarcity, but there was a lack of the
bustle and excitement and flood of song that accompanied their advent
two years before.
Upon a piece of waste land at the corner of the furze a very large
cinder and dust heap was made by carting refuse there from the
neighbouring suburb. During the sharp and continued frosts of the winter
this dust-heap was the resort of almost every species of bird--sparrows,
starlings, greenfinches, and rooks searching for any stray morsels of
food. Some birdcatchers soon noticed this concourse, and spread their
nets among the adjacent rushes, but fortunately with little success.
I say fortunately, not because I fear the extinction of small birds, but
because of the miserable fate that awaits the captive. Far better for
the frightened little creature to have its neck at once twisted and to
die than to languish in cages hardly large enough for it to turn in
behind the dirty panes of the windows in the Seven Dials.
The happy greenfinch--I use the term of forethought, for the greenfinch
seems one of the very happiest of birds in the hedges--accustomed during
all its brief existence to wander in company with friends from bush to
bush, and tree to tree, must literally pine its heart out. Or it may be
streaked with bright paint and passed on some unwary person for a Java
sparrow or a "blood-heart."
The little boy who dares to take a bird's nest is occasionally fined and
severely reproved. The ruffian-like crew who go forth into the pastures
and lanes about London, snaring and netting full-grown birds by the
score, are permitted to ply their trade unchecked. I mean to say that
there is no comparison between the two things. An egg has not yet
advanced to consciousness or feeling: the old birds, if their nest is
taken, frequently build another. The lad has to hunt for the nest, to
climb for it or push through thorns, and may be pricked by brambles and
stung by nettles. In a degree there is something to him approaching to
sport in nesting.
But these birdcatchers simply stand by the ditch with their hands in
their pockets sucking a stale pipe. They would rather lounge there in
the bitterest north-east wind that ever blew than do a single hour's
honest work. Blackguard is written in their faces. The poacher needs
some courage, at least; he knows a penalty awaits detection. These
fellows have no idea of sport, no courage, and no skill, for their
tricks are simplicity itself, nor have they the pretence of utility, for
they do not catch birds for the good of the farmers or the market
gardeners, but merely that they may booze without working for the means.
Pity it is that any one can be found to purchase the product of their
brutality. No one would do so could they but realise the difference to
the captive upon which they are lavishing their mistaken love, between
the cage, the alternately hot and cold room (as the fire goes out at
night), the close atmosphere and fumes that lurk near the ceiling, and
the open air and freedom to which it was born.
The rooks only came to the dust-heap in hard weather, and ceased to
visit it so soon as the ground relaxed and the ploughs began to move.
But a couple of crows looked over the refuse once during the day for
months till men came to sift the cinders. These crows are permanent
residents. Their rendezvous is a copse, only separate from the furze by
the highway.
They are always somewhere near, now in the ploughed fields, now in the
furze, and during the severe frost of last winter in the road itself, so
sharply driven by hunger as to rise very unwillingly on the approach of
passengers. A meadow opposite the copse is one of their favourite
resorts. There are anthills, rushes, and other indications of not too
rich a soil in this meadow, and in places the prickly restharrow grows
among the grass, bearing its pink flower in summer. Perhaps the coarse
grass and poor soil are productive of grubs and insects, for not only
the crows, but the rooks, continually visit it.
One spring, hearing a loud chattering in the copse, and recognising the
alarm notes of the missel-thrush, I cautiously crept up the hedge, and
presently found three crows up in a birch tree, just above where the
thrushes were calling. The third crow--probably a descendant of the
other two--had joined in a raid upon the missel-thrushes' brood. Both
defenders and assailants were in a high state of excitement; the
thrushes screeching, and the crows in a row one above the other on a
branch, moving up and down it in a restless manner. I fear they had
succeeded in their purpose, for no trace of the young birds was visible.
The nest of the missel-thrush is so frequently singled out for attack by
crows that it would seem the young birds must possess a peculiar and
attractive flavour; or is it because they are large? There are more
crows round London than in a whole county, where the absence of
manufactures and the rural quiet would seem favourable to bird life.
The reason, of course, is that in the country the crows frequenting
woods are shot and kept down as much as possible by gamekeepers.
In the immediate environs of London keepers are not about, and even a
little farther away the land is held by many small owners, and game
preservation is not thought of. The numerous pieces of waste ground, "to
let on building lease," the excavated ground, where rubbish can be
thrown, the refuse and ash heaps--these are the haunts of the London
crow. Suburban railway stations are often haunted by crows, which perch
on the telegraph wires close to the back windows of the houses that abut
upon the metals. There they sit, grave and undisturbed by the noisy
engines which pass beneath them.
In the shrubberies around villa gardens, or in the hedges of the small
paddocks attached, thrushes and other birds sometimes build their nests.
The children of the household watch the progress of the nest, and note
the appearance of the eggs with delight. Their friends of larger growth
visit the spot occasionally, and orders are given that the birds shall
be protected, the gardeners become gamekeepers, and the lawn or
shrubbery is guarded like a preserve. Everything goes well till the
young birds are almost ready to quit the nest, when one morning they are
missing.
The theft is, perhaps, attributed to the boys of the neighbourhood, but
unjustly, unless plain traces of entry are visible. It is either cats or
crows. The cats cannot be kept out, not even by a dog, for they watch
till his attention is otherwise engaged. Food is not so much the object
as the pleasure of destruction, for cats will kill and yet not eat their
victim. The crow may not have been seen in the garden, and it may be
said that he could not have known of the nest without looking round the
place. But the crow is a keen observer, and has not the least necessity
to search for the nest.
He merely keeps a watch on the motions of the old birds of the place,
and knows at once by their flight being so continually directed to one
spot that there their treasure lies. He and his companion may come very
early in the morning--summer mornings are bright as noonday long before
the earliest gardener is abroad--or they may come in the dusk of the
evening. Crows are not so particular in retiring regularly to roost as
the rook.
The furze and copse frequented by the pair which I found attacking the
missel-thrushes are situate at the edge of extensive arable fields. In
these, though not overlooked by the gamekeepers, there is a good deal of
game which is preserved by the tenants of the farm. After the bitter
winter and wet summer of 1879, there was a complaint, too well founded,
that the partridges were diminished in numbers. But the crows were not.
There were as many of them as ever. When there were many partridges the
loss of a few eggs or chicks was not so important. But when there are
but few, every egg or chick destroyed retards the re-stocking of the
fields.
The existence of so many crows all round London is, in short, a constant
check upon the game. The belt of land immediately outside the houses,
and lying between them and the plantations which are preserved, is the
crow's reserve, where he hunts in security. He is so safe that he has
almost lost all dread of man, and his motions can be observed without
trouble. The ash-heap at the corner of the furze, besides the crows,
became the resort of rats, whose holes were so thick in the bank as to
form quite a bury. After the rats came the weasels.
When the rats were most numerous, before the ash-heap was sifted, there
was a weasel there nearly every day, slipping in and out of their holes.
In the depth of the country an observer might walk some considerable
distance and wait about for hours without seeing a weasel; but here by
the side of a busy suburban road there were plenty. Professional
ratcatchers ferreted the bank once or twice, and filled their iron
cages. With these the dogs kept by dog-fanciers in the adjacent suburb
were practised in destroying vermin at so much a rat. Though ferreted
and hunted down by the weasels the rats were not rooted out, but
remained till the ash-heap was sifted and no fresh refuse deposited.