ON THE VERMIN OF FENCES.
One of the great objections urged to more hedge-row fences than are
necessary, is that of harbouring _Vermin_; it therefore becomes
necessary to inquire into the history of those creatures designated by a
name everywhere held in reproach.
The meaning of the term vermin has not been very accurately defined.
Johnson considers “any noxious animal” to belong to vermin; whilst
Bailey, anxious to be more specific, defines vermin to be “any kind of
hurtful creature or insect, as rats, mice, lice, fleas, bugs, &c.;” but
whatever lexicographers may say upon the subject, there can be no doubt
that, in country language, what are known as noxious animals are
distinguished from noxious insects, the first being in most counties
known as “Varment,” to which belong rats, mice, stoats, &c., to which
the keeper would add kites, hawks, owls, magpies, and other birds; the
second term being limited to those parasitic creatures by which both man
and some inferior animals may be attacked.
The farmer’s notion of vermin, as applied to the hedge-row, differs from
these, as it includes all beasts, birds, reptiles, insects, &c., which
directly injure the hedge, together with such as choose the hedge-row or
the bank on which it might be grown as a breeding-place, from which they
migrate to farm crops, and so become injurious, not to the hedge alone,
but to the farm in general.
Some notion of these may be inferred from the following list:—
1. _Rabbits_—By burrowing in the hedge-bank.
2. _Hedge-hog_—Ignorantly included with hedge-row vermin
by the farmer.
3. {_Stoats_} These burrow or make the hedge-row or bank
{_Rats_ } a place of refuge and concealment.
{_Mice_ }
4. _Snakes_—Erroneously supposed to be injurious.
5. {_Slugs_ } Both breed extensively in hedge-rows, which
{_Snails_} often form these hybernacula.
{_Insects_ injurious to the growing hedge-plants.
{ _Do._ protected by the hedge, and migrating to the
6. { farm crops.
{ _Do._ harboured by hedge-row weeds, and thence
{ migrating to the crops.
7. _Birds_ in general, according to the dictum of the Sparrow
Clubbists.
1. The rabbit is one of the greatest pests to the bank on which hedges
are too often grown, and therefore is injurious to the growing hedge, to
say nothing of the mischief which these creatures do to the crops. The
other day we visited a field in which a hedge-bank had been undermined
with no less than fifty holes in the distance of five-and-twenty yards;
these ramified in every direction, not only through the raised mound,
but into the fields on either side of the hedge, and out of which
rabbits were dug from a depth of as much as four feet. Here the
ridiculous nature of the mound was the primary cause of the mischief,
and hence we here offer an illustration of the general facts which met
our view:—
[Illustration: _Diagram of a Mound and Ditch in Oolite Sands._
ft. in.
_a._ A rabbit hole.
1. and 5. Grass and weeds which cannot be ploughed 5 0
2. Mound for fence 8 0
3. Bottom of ditch 3 0
4. Field side of ditch 6 0
6. Arable field ——
-----
Total 22 0
]
Here it will be seen that not only has nearly twenty feet of land been
taken up with the fence, but the plan upon which it is made of itself
suggests a rabbit-warren, and especially when we say that the soil is of
a loose sandy nature, and the ditch has never yet been a conduit for
running water, and is therefore perfectly unnecessary.
2. The hedge-hog is here only mentioned in the hope of dispelling a
popular prejudice with regard to him. He is ruthlessly destroyed as
vermin, on the supposition that the hedge screens a traitor who is ever
ready to suck eggs or to take a meal from the cow’s udder. Now, as
regards the first charge, one would have thought that, from the
pertinacity displayed by those who bring it in destroying birds’ eggs
and birds of every kind, they would have little care upon this head.
His sucking of cows has never been witnessed by any competent observer,
and with such the idea was never entertained, nor can it be supposed
that a cow would suffer the approach of a creature so thoroughly armed
with spines as the hedge-hog. In the words of Yarrell we may conclude
that “this is about as well-founded an accusation as that of Pliny,
exaggerated as it is by Sperling, who assures us that it ascends trees,
knocks off the apples and pears, and, throwing itself down upon them
that they may stick to its spines, trots off with the prize! Ælian gives
us the same story, substituting figs for apples, and omitting the
climbing power of the animal.”
3. This section contains creatures for which few of us entertain any
affection; at the same time, it may perhaps be true that some of the
greatest of farm pests, in the shapes of rats and mice, have greatly
increased since the destruction of the polecat, stoat, and other of our
smaller carnivorous quadrupeds.
As regards mice in general, one source of alarm connected with their
former occupancy of the hedge-row has nearly vanished from among us. We
allude to the supposed injury they were thought to inflict on any
creature over which they might creep.
At one time, if a cow or sheep offered any symptom of paralysis or
injury, more particularly of the hind-quarters, the creature was said to
be “mouse-crope,” for which were several popular remedies, which were
used by way of direct applications, such as a liberal application of
rods of wytch-hazel, drawing twigs of mountain-ash or rowan-tree over
the affected parts; but the more general plan of action was to operate
upon the offending creature upon the same principle as pertains to the
present day in the case of a bite by a dog—namely, that the bitten
subject is not safe from the direst calamities so long as the author of
the mischief is alive; and acting upon this, there are few persons in
rural districts who would not demand the death of a dog by whom they may
have been bitten, and this not as a measure of precaution, to prevent
the like occurrence happening again, but as the first thing to be done
to ensure a safe cure. So with a “mouse-crope” subject: action was at
once taken against the mouse, but this through the agency of the
“shrew-ash,” which potent remedy is thus described by Gilbert White, in
his charming “Natural History of Selborne:”—
Now, a shrew-ash is an ash whose twigs or branches, when gently
applied to the limbs of cattle, will immediately relieve the pains
which a beast suffers from the running of a shrew-mouse over the
part affected; for it is supposed that a shrew-mouse is of so
baneful and deleterious a nature, that wherever it creeps over a
beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the suffering animal is
afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened with the loss of the
use of the limb. Against this accident, to which they were
continually liable, our provident forefathers always kept a
shrew-ash at hand, which, when properly medicated, would maintain
its virtue for ever. A shrew-ash was made thus:—Into the body of
the tree a deep hole was bored with an augur, and a poor devoted
shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, and plugged in, no doubt, with
several quaint incantations, long since forgotten.
That the shrew-mouse was generally held in the greatest dread, there is
no doubt; but, we find in Dorsetshire, where this notion still prevails,
that the idea of mischief is not confined to the shrew, but is believed
of any mouse. We had a steer in one of our feeding-pits, which, as he
did not gain flesh, was said to be “moss-crop,” the western vernacular
for mouse-crope. Still, field mice, without regard to species, are
supposed to be the most baneful in this way; at the same time, we may
trace an evidence of the former generally prevailing belief in the
injurious tendencies of even our common mouse, in the fact that when you
have so far convinced a lady friend, who may have a “horror of a mouse,”
of their harmless nature, you are sure to be met with the unanswerable
remark, which gains point from the manner of its utterance, “But suppose
a mouse should creep over me?” We may now entirely discard every notion
of the evils of mouse-crope cattle as an argument against the hedge-row
as a harbour for rats and mice; still, these are vermin in the true
sense of the word, and which hedge-rows, unless kept trim and clean at
bottom, are sure to encourage.
4. Snakes in hedge-rows are very common, and especially on banks facing
the south; of these, the common ringed snake and the slow-worm are often
met with. They excite great terror in most people; but still they may be
said not merely to be quite harmless, but absolutely useful, as they
live upon insects and small fry in general, and so, in reality, they
ought not to be classed as vermin, but take their place amongst their
most decided enemies.
5. The land mollusks, to which belong the snail and the slug, are
sheltered in hedges by thousands; and highly destructive they are, and
more especially in small overshadowed enclosures. The quantity of
vegetation which these consume is enormous, and we are sorry to think
that they are on the increase—a fact which we deem to be due to the
indiscriminate slaughter of small birds, more especially the blackbird,
thrush, and lark, which are their most determined enemies. As farmers,
we might well afford them a dessert of small fruit for the good they do
in destroying slugs and snails.
6. Hedge-row shrubs are liable to be injured by many insects, more
especially the caterpillars of different kinds of moths and butterflies,
which sometimes eat away all their leaves, and so greatly retard the
growth of the hedge. Upon this subject we quote from “Our Woodlands,
Heaths, and Hedges,” for the purpose of introducing to our readers a
small book by W. S. Coleman, which should be in the hands of all country
readers:—
The foliage of the hawthorn, remarkable for its elegance, is the
chosen food of a great number of interesting insects, principally
the caterpillars of various _lepidoptera_.
Several species of these are of a gregarious nature, living
together in extensive colonies under a thick net-work of silk,
which serves them for a common protection while feeding on the
foliage enclosed with themselves in a silken tent.
Among these social net-weavers are the caterpillars of a fine
insect, the black-veined white butterfly (_Pieris cratægi_), a
rarity in some districts, but in certain localities, and at certain
periods, abounding to such an extent as entirely to strip the
hawthorn hedges of their foliage. Similar depredations are
committed by the gaily-coloured progeny of the common lackey moth,
and of the gold-tailed and brown-tailed moths; but the most
formidable devastators, though the tiniest individually, are the
little ermine moths (_Yponomenta_), small silvery-grey creatures,
minutely spotted with black. The curious twig-like caterpillars of
the brimstone moth (a pretty canary-coloured creature, with brown
markings), and of several other geometers, are common upon
hawthorn.
Last summer (1864), the hawthorn trees and hedges about the parks and
squares of London were entirely defoliated by caterpillars, which
progressed from tree to tree in squads of numberless individuals, only
seeking a new site of action when the former one had been despoiled of
every vestige of leaf and bud.
But it is not only the hawthorn which becomes attacked by insects: all
other hedge-row trees and shrubs have their peculiar enemies, to
describe which would take more space than we have to spare, and we
therefore conclude the chapter with a few remarks upon the weeds of
dirty hedge-rows. These harbour various insects, which migrate to our
crops, and do an immense amount of injury. For instance, such plants as
Jack by the Hedge (_Erysimum alliaria_), treacle mustard (_Sisymbrium
officinale_), wild mustards, and other forms of _Cruciferæ_, in
hedge-rows, afford a winter nidus for the turnip flea beetles (_Haltica
concinna_ and _H. nemorum_),[25] from which they take their flight to
the more delicate turnip and swede crops as soon as these come up.
[25] See _How to Grow Good Roots_, pp. 43 and 44 of the present work.
Birds need only here be mentioned incidentally, as there is still a
conflict of opinions as to the use of the bird family to the farmer; and
those species which mostly build in and frequent our hedges are perhaps
those upon which evil suspicions are most universally held. Amongst
these are the hedge-sparrow, finch, linnet, and others—and that these
are mischievous at times, we are not prepared to deny; but we should be
sorry if the curtailment of hedges, for which we are advocates, should
result in the destruction of our small birds, as we conclude most of the
species to be at times eminently useful.