THE PINE WOOD

There was a humming in the tops of the young pines as if a swarm of

bees were busy at the green cones. They were not visible through the

thick needles, and on listening longer it seemed as if the sound was

not exactly the note of the bee--a slightly different pitch, and the

hum was different, while bees have a habit of working close together.

Where there is one bee there are usually five or six, and the hum is

that of a group; here there only appeared one or two insects to a pine.

Nor was the buzz like that of the humble-bee, for every now and then

one came along low down, flying between the stems, and his note was

much deeper. By-and-by, crossing to the edge of the plantation, where

the boughs could be examined, being within reach, I found it was wasps.

A yellow wasp wandered over the blue-green needles till he found a pair

with a drop of liquid like dew between them. There he fastened himself

and sucked at it; you could see the drop gradually drying up till it

was gone. The largest of these drops were generally between two

needles--those of the Scotch fir or pine grow in pairs--but there were

smaller drops on the outside of other needles. In searching for this

exuding turpentine the wasps filled the whole plantation with the sound

of their wings. There must have been many thousands of them. They

caused no inconvenience to any one walking in the copse, because they

were high overhead.

Watching these wasps I found two cocoons of pale yellow silk on a

branch of larch, and by them a green spider. He was quite green--two

shades, lightest on the back, but little lighter than the green larch

bough. An ant had climbed up a pine and over to the extreme end of a

bough; she seemed slow and stupefied in her motions, as if she had

drunken of the turpentine and had lost her intelligence. The soft cones

of the larch could be easily cut down the centre with a penknife,

showing the structure of the cone and the seeds inside each scale. It

is for these seeds that birds frequent the fir copses, shearing off the

scales with their beaks. One larch cone had still the tuft at the

top--a pineapple in miniature. The loudest sound in the wood was the

humming in the trees; there was no wind, no sunshine; a summer day,

still and shadowy, under large clouds high up. To this low humming the

sense of hearing soon became accustomed, and it served but to render

the silence deeper. In time, as I sat waiting and listening, there came

the faintest far-off song of a bird away in the trees; the merest thin

upstroke of sound, slight in structure, the echo of the strong spring

singing. This was the summer repetition, dying away. A willow-wren

still remembered his love, and whispered about it to the silent fir

tops, as in after days we turn over the pages of letters, withered as

leaves, and sigh. So gentle, so low, so tender a song the willow-wren

sang that it could scarce be known as the voice of a bird, but was like

that of some yet more delicate creature with the heart of a woman.

A butterfly with folded wings clung to a stalk of grass; upon the under

side of his wing thus exposed there were buff spots, and dark dots and

streaks drawn on the finest ground of pearl-grey, through which there

came a tint of blue; there was a blue, too, shut up between the wings,

visible at the edges. The spots, and dots, and streaks were not exactly

the same on each wing; at first sight they appeared similar, but, on

comparing one with the other, differences could be traced. The pattern

was not mechanical; it was hand-painted by Nature, and the painter's

eye and fingers varied in their work.

How fond Nature is of spot-markings!--the wings of butterflies, the

feathers of birds, the surface of eggs, the leaves and petals of plants

are constantly spotted; so, too, fish--as trout. From the wing of the

butterfly I looked involuntarily at the foxglove I had just gathered;

inside, the bells were thickly spotted--dots and dustings that might

have been transferred to a butterfly's wing. The spotted meadow-orchis;

the brown dots on the cowslips; brown, black, greenish, reddish dots

and spots and dustings on the eggs of the finches, the whitethroats,

and so many others--some of the spots seem as if they had been splashed

on and had run into short streaks, some mottled, some gathered together

at the end; all spots, dots, dustings of minute specks, mottlings, and

irregular markings. The histories, the stories, the library of

knowledge contained in those signs! It was thought a wonderful thing

when at last the strange inscriptions of Assyria were read, made of

nail-headed characters whose sound was lost; it was thought a triumph

when the yet older hieroglyphics of Egypt were compelled to give up

their messages, and the world hoped that we should know the secrets of

life. That hope was disappointed; there was nothing in the records but

superstition and useless ritual. But here we go back to the beginning;

the antiquity of Egypt is nothing to the age of these signs--they date

from unfathomable time. In them the sun has written his commands, and

the wind inscribed deep thought. They were before superstition began;

they were composed in the old, old world, when the Immortals walked on

earth. They have been handed down thousands upon thousands of years to

tell us that to-day we are still in the presence of the heavenly

visitants, if only we will give up the soul to these pure influences.

The language in which they are written has no alphabet, and cannot be

reduced to order. It can only be understood by the heart and spirit.

Look down into this foxglove bell and you will know that; look long and

lovingly at this blue butterfly's underwing, and a feeling will rise to

your consciousness.

Some time passed, but the butterfly did not move; a touch presently

disturbed him, and flutter, flutter went his blue wings, only for a few

seconds, to another grass-stalk, and so on from grass-stalk to

grass-stalk as compelled, a yard flight at most. He would not go

farther; he settled as if it had been night. There was no sunshine, and

under the clouds he had no animation. A swallow went by singing in the

air, and as he flew his forked tail was shut, and but one streak of

feathers drawn past. Though but young trees, there was a coating of

fallen needles under the firs an inch thick, and beneath it the dry

earth touched warm. A fern here and there came up through it, the

palest of pale green, quite a different colour to the same species

growing in the hedges away from the copse. A yellow fungus, streaked

with scarlet as if blood had soaked into it, stood at the foot of a

tree occasionally. Black fungi, dry, shrivelled, and dead, lay fallen

about, detached from the places where they had grown, and crumbling if

handled. Still more silent after sunset, the wood was utterly quiet;

the swallows no longer passed twittering, the willow-wren was gone,

there was no hum or rustle; the wood was as silent as a shadow.

But before the darkness a song and an answer arose in a tree, one bird

singing a few notes and another replying side by side. Two goldfinches

sat on the cross of a larch-fir and sang, looking towards the west,

where the light lingered. High up, the larch-fir boughs with the top

shoot form a cross; on this one goldfinch sat, the other was

immediately beneath. At even the birds often turn to the west as they

sing.

Next morning the August sun shone, and the wood was all a-hum with

insects. The wasps were working at the pine boughs high overhead; the

bees by dozens were crowding to the bramble flowers; swarming on them,

they seemed so delighted; humble-bees went wandering among the ferns in

the copse and in the ditches--they sometimes alight on fern--and

calling at every purple heath-blossom, at the purple knapweeds, purple

thistles, and broad handfuls of yellow-weed flowers. Wasp-like flies

barred with yellow suspended themselves in the air between the

pine-trunks like hawks hovering, and suddenly shot themselves a yard

forward or to one side, as if the rapid vibration of their wings while

hovering had accumulated force which drove them as if discharged from a

cross-bow. The sun had set all things in motion.

There was a hum under the oak by the hedge, a hum in the pine wood, a

humming among the heath and the dry grass which heat had browned. The

air was alive and merry with sound, so that the day seemed quite

different and twice as pleasant. Three blue butterflies fluttered in

one flowery corner, the warmth gave them vigour; two had a silvery

edging to their wings, one was brown and blue. The nuts reddening at

the tips appeared ripening like apples in the sunshine. This corner is

a favourite with wild bees and butterflies; if the sun shines they are

sure to be found there at the heath-bloom and tall yellow-weed, and

among the dry seeding bennets or grass-stalks. All things, even

butterflies, are local in their habits. Far up on the hillside the blue

green of the pines beneath shone in the sun--a burnished colour; the

high hillside is covered with heath and heather. Where there are open

places a small species of gorse, scarcely six inches high, is in bloom,

the yellow blossom on the extremity of the stalk.

Some of these gorse plants seemed to have a different flower growing at

the side of the stem, instead of at the extremity. These florets were

cream-coloured, so that it looked like a new species of gorse. On

gathering it to examine the thick-set florets, if was found that a

slender runner or creeper had been torn up with it. Like a thread the

creeper had wound itself round and round the furze, buried in and

hidden by the prickles, and it was this creeper that bore the white or

cream-florets. It was tied round as tightly as thread could be, so that

the florets seemed to start from the stem, deceiving the eye at first.

In some places this parasite plant had grown up the heath and strangled

it, so that the tips turned brown and died. The runners extended in

every direction across the ground, like those of strawberries. One

creeper had climbed up a bennet, or seeding grass-stalk, binding the

stalk and a blade of the grass together, and flowering there. On the

ground there were patches of grey lichen; many of the pillar-like stems

were crowned with a red top. Under a small boulder stone there was an

ants' nest. These boulders, or, as they are called locally, "bowlers,"

were scattered about the heath. Many of the lesser stones were spotted

with dark dots of lichen, not unlike a toad.

Thoughtlessly turning over a boulder about nine inches square, lo!

there was subject enough for thinking underneath it--a subject that has

been thought about many thousand years; for this piece of rock had

formed the roof of an ants' nest. The stone had sunk three inches deep

into the dry soil of sand and peaty mould, and in the floor of the hole

the ants had worked out their excavations, which resembled an outline

map. The largest excavation was like England; at the top, or north,

they had left a narrow bridge, an eighth of an inch wide, under which

to pass into Scotland, and from Scotland again another narrow arch led

to the Orkney Islands; these last, however, were dug in the

perpendicular side of the hole. In the corners of these excavations

tunnels ran deeper into the ground, and the ants immediately began

hurrying their treasures, the eggs, down into these cellars. At one

angle a tunnel went beneath the heath into further excavations beneath

a second boulder stone. Without, a fern grew, and the dead dry stems of

heather crossed each other.

This discovery led to the turning over of another boulder stone not far

off, and under it there appeared a much more extensive and complete

series of galleries, bridges, cellars and tunnels. In these the whole

life-history of the ant was exposed at a single glance, as if one had

taken off the roofs of a city. One cell contained a dust-like deposit,

another a collection resembling the dust, but now elongated and a

little greenish; a third treasury, much larger, was piled up with

yellowish grains about the size of wheat, each with a black dot on the

top, and looking like minute hop-pockets. Besides these, there was a

pure white substance in a corridor, which the irritated ants seemed

particularly anxious to remove out of sight, and quickly carried away.

Among the ants rushing about there were several with wings; one took

flight; one was seized by a wingless ant and dragged down into a

cellar, as if to prevent its taking wing. A helpless green fly was in

the midst, and round the outside galleries there crept a creature like

a spider, seeming to try to hide itself. If the nest had been formed

under glass, it could not have been more open to view. The stone was

carefully replaced.

Below the pine wood on the slope of the hill a plough was already at

work, the crop of peas having been harvested. The four horses came up

the slope, and at the ridge swept round in a fine curve to go back and

open a fresh furrow. As soon as they faced down-hill they paused, well

aware of what had to be done, and the ploughman in a manner knocked his

plough to pieces, putting it together again the opposite way, that the

earth he was about to cut with the share might fall on what he had just

turned. With a piece of iron he hammered the edge of the share, to set

it, for the hard ground had bent the edge, and it did not cut properly.

I said his team looked light; they were not so heavily built as the

cart-horses used in many places. No, he said, they did not want heavy

horses. "Dese yer thick-boned hosses be more clutter-headed over the

clots," as he expressed it, _i.e._ more clumsy or thick-headed over the

clods. He preferred comparatively light cart-horses to step well. In

the heat of the sun the furze-pods kept popping and bursting open; they

are often as full of insects as seeds, which come creeping out. A green

and black lady-bird--exactly like a tortoise--flew on to my hand. Again

on the heath, and the grasshoppers rose at every step, sometimes three

or four springing in as many directions. They were winged, and as soon

as they were up spread their vanes and floated forwards. As the force

of the original hop decreased, the wind took their wings and turned

them aside from the straight course before they fell. Down the dusty

road, inches deep in sand, comes a sulphur butterfly, rushing as quick

as if hastening to a butterfly-fair. If only rare, how valued he would

be! His colour is so evident and visible; he fills the road, being

brighter than all, and for the moment is more than the trees and

flowers.

Coming so suddenly over the hedge into the road close to me, he

startled me as if I had been awakened from a dream--I had been thinking

it was August, and woke to find it February--for the sulphur butterfly

is the February pleasure. Between the dark storms and wintry rains

there is a warm sunny interval of a week in February. Away one goes for

a walk, and presently there appears a bright yellow spot among the

furze, dancing along like a flower let loose. It is a sulphur

butterfly, who thus comes before the earliest chiffchaff--before the

watch begins for the first swallow. I call it the February pleasure, as

each month has its delight. So associated as this butterfly is with

early spring, to see it again after months of leaf and flower--after

June and July--with the wheat in shock and the scent of harvest in the

land, is startling. The summer, then, is a dream! It is still winter;

but no, here are the trees in leaf, the nuts reddening, the hum of

bees, and dry summer dust on the high wiry grass. The sulphur butterfly

comes twice; there is a second brood; but there are some facts that are

always new and surprising, however well known. I may say again, if only

rare, how this butterfly would be prized! Along the hedgerow there are

several spiders' webs. In the centre they are drawn inwards, forming a

funnel, which goes back a few inches into the hedge, and at the bottom

of this the spider waits. If you look down the funnel you see his claws

at the bottom, ready to run up and seize a fly.

Sitting in the garden after a walk, it is pleasant to watch the

eave-swallows feeding their young on the wing. The young bird follows

the old one; then they face each other and stay a moment in the air,

while the insect food is transferred from beak to beak; with a loud

note they part. There was a constant warfare between the eave-swallows

and the sparrows frequenting a house where I was staying during the

early part of the summer. The sparrows strove their utmost to get

possession of the nests the swallows built, and there was no peace

between them It is common enough for one or two swallows' nests to be

attacked in this way, but here every nest along the eaves was fought

for, and the sparrows succeeded in conquering many of them. The

driven-out swallows after a while began to build again, and I noticed

that more than a pair seemed to work at the same nest. One nest was

worked at by four swallows; often all four came together and twittered

at it.