their whiteness that they almost suggest yet brighter gleams of
sunshine. Some, again, are dark and sombre, and like patches of
moving shadow. Now one brave in black and scarlet flashes past.
Now one on wings of golden brown sails leisurely along. And some
there are, small, sylph-like figures, that float lightly by, as
blue as the unclouded heaven overhead. Some moths, too, are
abroad, even at this hour and in this fierce sunshine--moths clad
in the very softest tints, the most ethereal tones of fawn and
grey, of brown and yellow. Some are without a mark on their pure
colouring, and some are daintily pencilled with shell-like lines
and bars. To and fro in the sunbeams, whose misty shafts slant
through the thickets, hover a crowd of winged things--of great
bees, black or yellow or tipped with fiery red, flies of many
hues, beetles light and dark--and the sound of their multitudinous
wings seems to fill the hot summer air. Insects make up no small
part, perhaps even the larger part, of the life of the woodland.
The woods just now are swarming with caterpillars, many of which,
perhaps even the majority, belong to the class called geometers,
from the curious way in which they move along, arching their
bodies in a fashion that reminds the observer of a man measuring
a distance by "spanning" it with his hand. A much more curious
point about them is their wonderful mimicry of the twigs of the
tree on which they live: a fact which has earned for them the name
of "stick" caterpillars. Their skins are the colour of the bark,
their bodies have knots and markings exactly like twigs. And when
one of them waits motionless, standing erect on its hinder set of
feet--an attitude it can preserve for hours together, it looks so
like a piece of stick that even a naturalist has related how he
was about to prune a twig from one of his fruit trees, and had
even touched it with his knife before he saw that it was not
vegetable at all, but one of these "stick" caterpillars. One
cannot help wondering if birds are taken in too.
The curious movements of these geometers are due to their
comparatively scant supply of legs. There is an amusing ballad
called "The Bishop and the Caterpillar," which describes, after
the manner of "Ingoldsby," how a great dignitary of the Church
inspected a village school. The children acquitted themselves
well:--
"For the Bishop, to his great pleasure, found
That they knew the date when our Queen was crowned.
And the number of pence which make up a pound;
And the oceans and seas which our island bound;
That the earth is nearly, but not quite, round;
Their orthography, also, was equally sound."
The gratified examiner, declaring that it was only fair for the
scholars to have their turn, proposed they should question him. A
small boy in the audience, unawed even by a Bishop, instantly
"... raised his head
And abruptly said:
How many legs has a caterpillar got?"
Here was a poser indeed. Kings of Israel, now, his lordship might
have known; very likely the date of the Second Punic War; perhaps
even some of the counties of England. But caterpillars were beyond
his ken. It was to no purpose that he privately invoked, under
cover of making a speech, the aid of the rector, of the curates,
of the schoolmaster. Not one of them knew. In vain was the beadle
sent out in hot haste to interrogate passers-by. He returned
disconsolate, and whispered to the anxious Bishop "Nobody knows."
In the end the questioner himself supplied the information, and
"... with a countenance gay,
Said 'Six, for I counted 'em yesterday.'"
It rather spoils the point of the story that, although
caterpillars have indeed, on one-half of the body, the six legs of
the perfect or winged condition, most of them have ten more, very
substantial ones too, on the other half, making not six, but
sixteen. Some, indeed, have only fourteen; while these geometers
are driven to adopt the attitudes they do because they have to
shuffle along as best they can, on no more than ten legs
altogether.
There are few points of brighter colour among the world of green.
Not many brilliant flowers grow well in the very heart of the
woods. Along the paths there is a fringe of hawkweed and crowfoot
and yellow cistus. And where the sunlight is less broken by the
trees there are patches of red lychnis and tall crowns of white
cow parsley. In the clearings strawberries run riot, in flower
still, but with scantier harvest than usual of the small sweet
fruit, in whose pleasant flavour is a dash of woodland wildness.
There is honeysuckle everywhere, trailing on the ground, creeping
among the bushes, and climbing up out of the green tangle, laying
hold of trees and saplings to help it to the light. And as it
climbs it twines with fatal clasp about the friendly stems, slowly
tightening its embrace, sometimes cutting deep into the wood,
sometimes even killing the branch outright, and going up until at
times a green canopy of it crowns boughs thirty feet above the
ground, while its flowery clusters scent the woodland. And as
evening darkens, "What time the blackbird pipes to vespers from
his perch," when the heat of the long summer day gives place to
the cooler, sweeter air of night, the fragrance grows until the
whole glade is conscious of its subtle charm. Briar bushes there
are in plenty, and some of them are lightly set with delicate
blossoms. But the dog-roses are at their best, not here, but on
the skirts of the wood, where the long, swaying sprays are crowded
with those sweetest flowers of June.
But the glory of the woodland is in its trees; in its sturdy oaks,
and stately beeches, its old Scotch firs and graceful larch trees.
There is no season when the larch is without some charm. It is
beautiful in the springtime, when its sprays are set with
exquisite red blossoms, like fairy jewel-work. It is beautiful
when among soft tufts of green the brown cones harden in the
pleasant sun of May. It is beautiful now, when the flowing,
feathery plumes wear the soberer hue of summer. Nor is the beauty
greatly less when, in the chill autumn days, that hue changes
slowly into yellow. Nor is it wholly lost, even in the dead of
winter, when, in the frosty sunshine, the bare boughs seem to glow
like gold against the pale blue sky.
The mist of bluebells, that lingered here so late, has vanished.
The fiery spikes of early orchis are all spent and faded. The
'lords and ladies' have given place to little clusters of green
berries, that these sunny days will swiftly ripen to red beads of
coral. Yet there are other flowers, with even more of beauty, that
love the greater heat of summer. Few are more lovely than the
white butterfly orchis; fewer still more fragrant. It has allies
that mimic with marvellous faithfulness the forms of bees and
flies and spiders. They are plants of the heath, of the sunny
meadow, and the open hill. But here is one, perhaps the least
striking of the clan, that will flourish in the shadow, and that
grows well even here in the half twilight of the trees. The
quiet-coloured petals of the tway-blade are not like fly or bee or
any insect. Each floweret on its plain, unscented spike is the
little green figure of a man, a man with outstretched arms. One
might almost fancy that the plant was copying shapes long lost to
our dulled vision; that this quiet nook was not alone
"... for pretty cares
With mate and nest,
A lurking-place of tender airs
From south and west;"
but that it was peopled still by the green-clad gnomes of old
belief; that these woodland aisles were even now a place
"Where elves hold midnight revel,
And fairies linger still."
[Illustration: THE HARVEST MOON.]
CHILL OCTOBER.
It is the heavy rain no less than the chilly air, the wet days as
well as the frosty nights, which have earned for October its added
name, and which mark this month so clearly as the real end of a
season. We often get a long spell of warm weather in September; it
may linger even over the opening of October; but it is October
that sets for good and all its fiery seal upon the ruins of the
summer. Yet October has been a delightful month; a month of golden
dawns, bright days, and fiery sunsets. And it is closing with
quiet moonlight nights under whose gauzy veil the landscape lies
transfigured, and far hills show faintly as through mists of
dreamland. This is St. Martin's Summer:
"The summer and the winter here
Midway a truce are holding.
A soft, consenting atmosphere
Their tents of peace enfolding."
The colours of the leaves, that so long seemed cold and sullen,
are swiftly changing in the sharpening air of night. Among the
tattered foliage there broaden, day after day, gleams of that
fiery splendour that in a few weeks will flare through the length
and breadth of the woodland, like the afterglow of summer. The few
last leaves of the wild cherry shine like fire in the coppice, and
the horse chestnuts in the meadow are all gold from base to crown.
Dead leaves lie thick upon the rustling pathway, where brown of
oakleaf, crimson of beech, russet of maple, and gold of elm, lends
each its own particular note of colour to the splendid carpet;
while the foliage of the sycamore, still clinging to its brilliant
stalks, is painted with such varied tints, such greens and browns,
such inky blacks and flaming yellows, that one might almost fancy
some young dryad had been wandering through the woodland with her
brush and had tried her colours on the leaves.
So bright the days have been, so warm is the lingering sunshine,
that even the thrush has been trying over his old sweet songs, yet
to airs so quiet and subdued that they seemed but a reverie of
springtime. All day the robin sings. He is the minstrel of the
autumn. Now when other birds are silent his voice rings clear
through the deserted woods, and we realise more fully how passing
sweet are his familiar melodies.
There are few signs of life among the autumn trees. The jays
wrangle as they gather the acorns, and at times a troop of
fieldfares chatter as they pass. But the sounds of the October
woodland are the patter of falling leaves--now filling the air
like rain, and now whirled along the path in fiery eddy; the rush
of the wind among the rocking tops; and now and then the creak of
branches interlocked, that chafe and fret almost with a cry of
pain, such as in old days, ere Pan was dead, startled the
woodcutter on the slopes of Apennine.
We wander in the woods, however, with senses unattuned to sights
and sounds about us. Had we but eyes we could not fail to see some
life stirring even now. Were our ears but trained aright we should
be aware of ceaseless sounds of movement. The birds are here, had
we but the gift to see them. If no ringdove coos in the shadow of
the pines, we may hear as our footsteps rustle on the leafy ways,
the crash of wings among distant branches. If no woodpecker's
shout breaks in upon the stillness, we may watch the silent figure
of the forester in green close crouched against the giant elm. If
no magpie chatters in the tree-tops we may at least catch a
glimpse of black and white plumage as the wary old campaigner
dives into the thickets. This old fir just off the pathway, with
its close growing foliage and its canopies of ivy and woodbine, is
a screen at once from the wind and the keen eyes of the
woodlanders. In its shadow we may stand aside and watch the life
of the woods go by, perhaps even overhear some of the secrets of
the
"Light wingèd dryads of the trees."
Jays, that just now were busy over the acorns, are moving
leisurely down the slope, absorbed in gossip, wholly unconscious
of any spectator of their movements. There is a wide difference
between the quick, impetuous actions of a startled jay, on the
look-out for danger, and his lazy, loitering manner when he is
quite at his ease, and thinks no one is watching him. Now, as
they come nearer, they break into a chorus of loud, harsh notes,
mingling with their own wild sylvan speech scraps borrowed from
magpie and missel-thrush. Now one mimics the hoarse cry of a crow
just sailing over. Now they all join in a babel of odd,
inarticulate, indescribable sounds. Still nearer they come.
Suddenly one alights close by, three yards off at farthest. He is
off again in a moment, too scared to speak. Here comes another.
He, too, settles near, but notices nothing. What a handsome fellow
he is! What a splendid touch of blue there is in his wing--a blue
such as no sapphire or lapis or turquoise could really rival for a
moment. His crest is slightly lifted; the sunlight glistens on his
polished bill. Easily he sways on a tall ash sapling, looking idly
round. Suddenly he starts--is gone. One by one his comrades reach
the tree. One after one the startled birds take wing again and
vanish in the thickets. The rustle of their quick movements dies
away. Their clamorous cries grow fainter, and then cease. Silence
settles down once more--the silence of a sleep.
The sharp touch of winter in October has changed the whole face of
things. Cold and wind and wet have set their mark alike on
woodland and on garden border. Everywhere there is change. The
birds of summer have all left us. No bee or wasp is stirring. In
this pallid sunshine are no gnats to poise in cloudy column. No
moths hover on quivering wings among the ruined flowers. Of the
shy four-footed creatures of whose lives we know so little, some
are still broad awake and busy, caring nothing for the cold; but
some have already entered on their winter sleep. The dormouse is
rolled in his snug ball of moss, the hedgehog is buried in his bed
of leaves. Grass-snake and viper have crawled away into warm
hiding places in banks or among the roots of trees. The frog has
buried himself in his cold bed of mud at the bottom of the pond.
The toad has squeezed his burly figure into a hole in a tree
stump, or under some sheltering stone. It is the fondness of the
toad for hiding in holes and corners--not only in winter, but to
some extent all the year--which has given rise to so many
marvellous tales of the discovery of toads in the heart of trees
or in solid blocks of marble. Toads may often be found in holes.
But never yet was one found living in any cavity whatsoever where
there was no communication with the outer world, no chink through
which insects might make their way after the manner of the fly
into the parlour of the spider.
Long before the frosts of October, and while the weather was still
warm and sunny, snails were to be seen collected in hundreds on
the fences of fields and lanes--on their way, no doubt, to winter
quarters. Though whether they expected to find suitable lodgings
up there at the tops of the palings, or whether they were only
sunning themselves for the last time before crawling down to earth
to bury themselves in the holes into which the posts were driven,
is perhaps less clear.
Some few snails are provided already with close-fitting doors.
Others will seal up their gates with a temporary barricade, behind
which they will sleep until the trumpet-call of spring shall break
on their dull senses. Do they dream, these snails? Do visions of
plump cabbages and brilliant dahlias flit through their molluscous
minds? Do they in slumber enjoy again the midnight raid upon the
marrow-bed, or cry havoc on the choicest lilies of the garden?
There is a strange stillness in the woods these autumn days; a
mournful silence, as of regret for the lost summer. The birds are
quiet; the insects, whose life and beauty lent so much to the
brightness of the summer, are dying in the sharpening air, or are
creeping away to hide themselves for the winter. October is a
fatal month for the lower forms of life. The different species of
our native insects are numbered by tens of thousands, and of the
myriads of these with which the air of August, and even of
September, teemed, only a few, a very few, will survive the
chillier dawns and sunsets of this month, which marks the limit of
their lives. At the best their lives are brief. The lives of
insects, in their perfect condition, are more often numbered only
by months, or even weeks: while the little sad-coloured
stone-flies that haunt the banks of streams, entering on their
last stage without mouths, spend only a few days of strange
existence; and there are other flies which, born after sunset and
dying before sunrise, never see the full light of day at all.
Those insects which survive the winter do so as a rule by retiring
into the shelter of buildings, into crevices in walls, or into
hollow trees, and there remaining, motionless and apparently
lifeless, all through the cold season, coming out again at the
return of spring. Some butterflies are especially fond of taking
up their quarters for the winter in the roofs of houses; and the
cornices of unoccupied rooms seem particularly favourite
resting-places. There is a case on record in which a Small
Tortoiseshell butterfly, having entered a church during
service-time one Sunday in August, settled calmly on a rafter over
the heads of the congregation, closed its wings, and then and
there took up its quarters for the season. It was happily beyond
the reach of the verger's broom, though under the eyes of the
clergyman,--himself a naturalist, and there it hung, week after
week, all the winter through. At length, on a warm Sunday in May,
after a sleep of just nine months' duration, the little creature
opened its wings again and fluttered down from its perch,
"apparently as fresh in colour and condition as if just out of the
chrysalis".
In the same way another of the race flew into a sitting-room in a
little country town, one day during the hot weather of September,
and finally established itself in the cornice, where for six long
months it hung motionless. One fine morning in the following March
it was fluttering at the window. The sash was lifted. The little
creature dashed out into the sunshine, almost with the speed of a
swallow.
A striking feature of the autumn garden some years is the
multitude of sober-coloured moths hovering among the flower-beds,
morning, noon, and night. The moths themselves not only do no harm
in the garden, but are of no small service to the gardener by
carrying pollen on their tufted heads from flower to flower, and
thus unconsciously fertilising many a blossom that might otherwise
have borne no seed at all. But it is quite otherwise with the
caterpillars, insignificant but noxious little grubs, which, in
some seasons, appear in such hosts as to devastate whole fields.
In Germany it has been found necessary to use a machine, drawn by
horses, to sweep up these caterpillars, which are collected from
it in sacks and then destroyed.
The perfect insect, the commonest perhaps of all the moths, is a
beautiful little creature, though there is nothing striking in its
colouring. It is known as the "Silver Y," from a conspicuous mark
on each of its front wings. Its scientific name of "Gamma" has
been given to it from another and more learned reading of the
letter.
It has been found very difficult to bestow a rational English
"popular name" on each of the two thousand species of moths that
inhabit these islands. Some of the names, indeed, appear almost,
if not quite, meaningless, while some, on the other hand, are
highly appropriate. The Humming-bird Hawk moth is marvellously
like the bird whose name it bears, as every one must admit who
watches it poise with outstretched trunk before a flower, on wings
that move so swiftly that they show like a halo round it. Two
other Hawk moths are called Elephants, but this is because of the
strange-looking head of the caterpillar, which can be extended
like a sort of dwarf proboscis. Another moth, the Death's Head,
bears a skull and cross-bones on its back.
The moths of the large class known as Geometers are so called
because the caterpillars, as they loop themselves along, have the
air of measuring the space they traverse, as a man might span it
with his hand. The Tiger is a moth of brilliant colouring. The
Widow and the Old Lady are clad in sombre hues. The Quakers are
mostly dressed in soft shades of sober brown, while the sixteen
varieties of Footmen wear among them almost as many varieties of
livery.
Such names might, indeed, give rise to misconception. We can well
understand the feelings of the old market-woman who, toiling up
the steep path through the wood with her eggs and butter,
overheard a party of schoolboys talking over their captures of the
day. We can picture her dismay as she heard one youngster describe
how he had chased a small Elephant through the wood, and just
missed capturing a Tiger. We can imagine her alarm at hearing
another boy boast of having killed two Quakers and a Footman. And
how, at a distant shout from another member of the party that he
had just knocked down an Old Lady, she dropped her basket and fled
for her life.
But of all the signs in Nature's calendar that mark, like figures
on a dial, the movement of the seasons, there is none more
certain, none more full of mournful augury, than the passing of
the birds.
Their going is secret, silent; they vanish unseen and unheard. We
have learnt much in recent years with regard to migration. With
one single exception, we know where every one of the summer
migrants goes to rear its brood. The haunt of one only--the
curlew-sandpiper--still defies discovery. But there is as much
cause for wonder as ever that the stork and the swallow observe
the time of their coming. And how some birds contrive to find
their way over vast stretches of unbroken sea is as great a
mystery as when Anacreon saw the
"Cranes from hoary winter fly,
To flutter in a kinder sky;"
or when the Hebrew watched the wandering hawk stretch her wings
toward the south.
Among the few sounds that break the stillness of the autumn night
is a faint and hurried cry, that at times may be heard out of the
darkness--the note of some bird passing over unseen. It is the cry
of the redwing--a feeble note, and yet the very trumpet-call of
coming winter. In the spring the sight of the first swallow raises
hopes of better times, of sunshine and warm weather. In autumn
this voice calling out of the dark is a warning that cold and
hunger are driving the redwing from its Northern home, that the
Arctic night is settling down among the Norway hills.
Vast indeed is the array of these feathered fugitives. And if most
of us see but little of plover or wild duck, of goose or swan or
sandpiper, we may perhaps hear them as they pass. Often in the
silence of these autumn nights, or even when the wind is blowing,
we may hear the swift flight of the mallard overhead, or the
musical voices of plovers; perhaps at times the trumpet-notes of
geese, or even the whistling of the whooper's wings. Now and then,
too, there floats down out of the starlit stillness the wild call
of some unknown bird, the voice of some nameless stranger crying
in the dark:
"And with no language but a cry."
[Illustration: ON SEDGMOOR.]
TURF MOOR: A HAPPY HUNTING GROUND.
The traveller who at this season of the year is whirled along the
iron highway of the northern part of Somersetshire will perhaps be
led to form but a poor opinion of West Country scenery, for he
sees little from the rail of the heath-covered heights of Exmoor,
of the wooded glens of Quantock, or of the green heart of Mendip.
The line is laid for many miles across a wide stretch of low-lying
moorland--so low that it would be flooded each high tide were it
not for the old sea wall by the shore. There are parts of the
monotonous expanse that may well remind the wayfarer of the
opening lines of one of Ingoldsby's ballads:
"O, Salisbury Plain is bleak and bare,
At least so I've heard many people declare,
For I fairly confess that I never was there.
Not a shrub nor a tree, nor a bush can you see,
No hedges, no ditches, no gates, no stiles,
Much less a house or a cottage for miles."
There are indeed parts of this great plain that are almost
absolutely bare of timber save for a few scanty rows of pollard
willow trees. There are hardly any hedge-rows, there are few
gates, and fewer stiles. The cottages are far apart, built only on
the low risings--once islands in the Severn sea, which the
moorfolk fondly call "hills," because they are not "drownded out"
in flood time.