His Dominions:--the Woods--Meadows--and Water.
There is a part of the wood where the bushes grow but thinly and the
ashstoles are scattered at some distance from each other. It is on a
steep slope--almost cliff--where the white chalk comes to the surface.
On the edge above rise tall beech trees with smooth round trunks, whose
roots push and project through the wall of chalk, and bend downwards,
sometimes dislodging lumps of rubble to roll headlong among the bushes
below. A few small firs cling half-way up, and a tangled mass of brier
and bramble climbs nearly to them, with many a stout thistle flourishing
vigorously.
To get up this cliff is a work of some little difficulty: it is done by
planting the foot on the ledges of rubble, or in the holes which the
rabbits have made, holding tight to roots which curl and twist in
fantastic shapes, or to the woodbine hanging in festoons from branch to
branch. The rubble under foot crumbles and slips, the roots tear up
bodily from the thin soil, the branches bend, and the woodbine ‘gives,’
and the wayfarer may readily descend much more rapidly than he desires.
Not that serious consequences would ensue from a roll down forty feet of
slope; but the bed of brier and bramble at the bottom is not so soft as
it might be. The rabbits seem quite at home upon the steepest spot; they
may be found upon much higher and more precipitous chalk cliffs than
this, darting from point to point with ease.
Once at the summit under the beeches, and there a comfortable seat may
be found upon the moss. The wood stretches away beneath for more than a
mile in breadth, and beyond it winds the narrow mere glittering in the
rays of the early spring sunshine. The bloom is on the blackthorn, but
not yet on the may; the hedges are but just awakening from their long
winter sleep, and the trees have hardly put forth a sign. But the rooks
are busily engaged in the trees of the park, and away yonder at the
distant colony in the elms of the meadows.
The wood is restless with life: every minute a pigeon rises, clattering
his wings, and after him another; and so there is a constant fluttering
and motion above the ashpoles. The number of wood-pigeons breeding here
must be immense. Later on, if you walk among the ash, you may find a
nest every half-dozen yards. It is formed of a few twigs making a
slender platform, on which the glossy white egg is laid, and where the
bird will sit till you literally thrust her off her nest with your
walking-stick. Such slender platforms, if built in the hedgerow, so
soon as the breeze comes would assuredly be dashed to pieces; but here
the wind only touches the tops of the poles, and causes them to sway
gently with a rattling noise, and the frail nest is not injured. When
the pigeon or dove builds in the more exposed hedgerows the nest is
stronger, and more twigs seem to be used, so that it is heavier.
[Illustration: WOOD-PIGEON.]
Boys steal these eggs by scores, yet it makes no difference apparently
to the endless numbers of these birds, who fill the wood with their
peculiar hoarse notes, which some country people say resemble the
words, ‘Take two cows, Taffy.’ The same good folk will have it that when
the weather threatens rain the pigeon’s note changes to ‘Joe’s toe
bleeds, Betty.’ The boys who steal the eggs have to swarm up the
ashpoles for the purpose, and in so doing often stain their clothes with
red marks. Upon the bark of the ash are innumerable little excrescences
which when rubbed exude a small quantity of red juice.
The keeper detests this bird’s-nesting; not that he cares much about the
pigeons, but because his pheasants are frequently disturbed just at the
season when he wishes them to enjoy perfect quiet. It is easy to tell
from this post of vantage if any one be passing through the section of
the wood within view, though they may be hidden by the boughs. The
blackbirds utter a loud cry and scatter; the pigeons rise and wheel
about; a pheasant gets up with a scream audible for a long distance, and
goes with swift flight skimming away just above the ashpoles; a pair of
jays jabber round the summit of a tall fir tree, and thus the intruder’s
course is made known. But the wind, though light, is still too cold and
chilly as it sweeps between the beech trunks to remain at this
elevation; it is warmer below in the wood.
At the foot of the cliff a natural hollow has been further scooped out
by labour of man, and shaped into a small cave, large enough for three
or four to sit in. It is partly supported by strong wooden pillars, and
at the mouth a hut of slabs, thickly covered by furze-faggots, has been
constructed, with a door, and with roof thatched with reeds from the
lake. A rude bench runs round three sides; against the fourth some
digging tools recline--strong spades and grub-axes for rooting out a
lost ferret, left here temporarily for convenience. The place, rough as
it is, gives shelter, and, throwing the door open, there is a vista
among the ashpoles and the hazel bushes over-topped with great fir trees
and more distant oaks. In the later spring this is a lovely spot, the
ground all tinted with the shimmering colour of the bluebells, and the
hazel musical with the voice of the nightingale.
Outside the wood, where the downland begins to rise gradually, there
stretches a broad expanse of furze growing luxuriantly on the thin
barren soil, and a mile or more in width. It has a beauty of its own
when in full yellow blossom--a yellow sea of flower, scenting the air
with an almost overpowering odour as of a coarser pineapple, and full of
the drowsy hum of the bees busy in the interspersed thyme. It has
another beauty later on when the thick undergrowth of heath is in bloom,
and a pale purple carpet spreads around. Here rabbits breed and sport,
and hares hide, and the curious furze-chats fly to and fro; and lastly,
but not leastly, my lord Reynard the Fox loves to take his ease, till he
finally meets his fate in the jaws of clamouring hounds, or is
assassinated with the aid of ‘villanous saltpetre.’ He is not easily
shot, and will stand a charge fired broadside at a short distance
without the slightest injury or apparent notice, beyond a slight
quickening of his pace. His thick fur and tough skin turn the pellets.
Even when mortally wounded, life will linger for hours.
The ordinary idea of the fox is that of a flying frightened creature
tearing away for bare existence; he is really a bold and desperate
animal. The keeper will tell you that once, when for some purpose he was
walking up a deep dry ditch, his spaniel and retriever suddenly
‘chopped’ a fox, and got him at bay in a corner, when he turned, and in
an instant laid the spaniel helpless and dying, and severely handled the
retriever. Seeing his dogs so injured and the fox as it were under his
feet, the keeper imprudently attempted to seize him, but could not
retain his hold, and got the sharp white teeth clean through his hand.
Though but once actually bitten, he recollects being snapped at
viciously by another fox, whom he found in broad daylight asleep in the
hollow of a double mound, with scarcely any shelter, and within sixty
yards of a house. Reynard was curled upon the ivy which in the hedges
trails along the ground. The keeper crawled up on the bank and stopped,
admiring the symmetry of the creature, when, purposely breaking a twig,
the fox was up in a second, and snarled and snapped at his face, then
slipped into the ditch and away. The fox is, in fact, quite as
remarkable for boldness as for cunning. Last summer I met a fine fox on
the turnpike road and close to a tollgate, in the middle of the day. He
came at full speed with a young rabbit in his jaws, evidently but just
captured, and did not perceive that he was observed till within twenty
yards, when, with a single bound he cleared the sward beside the road,
alighting with a crash in the bushes, carrying his prey with him.
Hares will sometimes, in like manner, come as it were to meet people on
country roads. Is it that the eyes, being placed towards the side of the
head, do not so readily catch sight of dangers in front as on the
flanks, especially when the animal is absorbed in its purpose? Hares are
peculiarly fond of limping at dusk along lonely roads.
Foxes, when they roam from the woods into the meadow-land, prefer to
sleep during the day in those osier beds which are found in the narrow
corners formed by the meanderings of the brooks. Between the
willow-wands there shoots up a thick undergrowth of sedges, long coarse
grass, and reeds; and in these the fox makes his bed, turning round and
round till he has smoothed a place and trampled down the grass; then
reclining, well sheltered from the wind. A dog will turn round and round
in the same way before he lies down on the hearthrug.
These reeds sometimes grow to a great height, as much as ten or twelve
feet. Along the Thames they are used, bound in bundles, to pitch the
barges; when the hull has been roughly coated with pitch, one end of the
bundle of reeds (thickest end preferred) is set on fire and passed over
it to make it melt and run into the chinks. So, mayhap, the Saxon and
Danish rovers may have used them to pitch the bottoms of their ‘ceols’
when worn from constantly grounding on the shallows and eyots.
Here in the furze too is the haunt of the badger. This animal becomes
rarer year after year--the disuse of the great rabbit-warrens being one
cause; still he lingers, and may be traced in the rabbit ‘buries,’ where
he enlarges a hole for his habitation, sleeps during the day, and comes
forth in the gloaming. In summer he digs up the wasps’ nests, not, as
has been supposed, for the honey, but for the white larvæ they contain:
the wasp secretes no honey at all, and her nest is simply a series of
cells in which the grubs mature. Some credit the fox with a fondness for
the same food; and even the hornet’s nest is said to be similarly
ravaged. It is the nest of the humble-bee which the badger roots up for
the honey. The humble-bee uses a tiny hole in a dry bank, sometimes a
crack made by the heat in the earth, and really deposits true honey in
the comb. It is very sweet, like that of the hive bee, but a little
darker in colour and much less in quantity. The haymakers search for
these
[Illustration: A BADGER AT HIS FRONT DOOR.]
nests along the hedgerows in their dinner-hour, and eat the honey. There
seem to be several sub-species of humble-bee, differing in size and
habit. One has its nest as deep as possible in a hole; another makes a
nest with scarcely any protection beyond the thick moss of the bank,
almost on the surface of the ground. The badger’s hole has before it a
huge quantity of sand, which he has thrown out, and upon which the
imprint of his foot will be found, a mark, perhaps more like the spoor
of the large game of tropical forests than that left by any other
English animal. When seen it can ever afterwards be instantly identified
by the most careless observer.
In the meadows lower down, bounding the wood, the hay is gone or is
piled in summer ricks, which lean one one way and another the other, and
upon whose roofs, sloping at an obtuse angle, the green snakes lie
coiled in the sunshine. Often when the waggon comes, and the little rick
is loaded, the ‘pitch’ of hay on the prong as it is flung up carries
with it a snake whirling in the air. He falls on the sward and is
instantly pounced upon by the farmer’s dog, who worries him, seizes him
by the middle and shakes him, while the snake twists and hisses in vain.
Some dogs will not touch snakes, others seem to enjoy destroying them;
but it is noticeable that a dog which previously has passed or avoided
snakes, if once he kills one, never passes another without slaughtering
it. A slime from the snake’s skin froths over the dog’s jaws, and the
sight is very unpleasant.
I have often tried to discover how the snakes get upon these summer
ricks. Solomon could not understand the ‘way of a serpent upon the
rock,’ and the way of a common snake up the summer rick seems almost as
inexplicable. Though the roof or ‘top’ is often very much out of the
proper conical shape, and sometimes sinks down nearly to a level, the
sides for a height of three or four feet are generally perpendicular,
affording no projection of any kind whatever; hay is slippery, and the
rick is, of course, too large for the snake to encircle it. Yet there
they are commonly found, to the intense alarm of the labouring women,
who never can get over their dislike of snakes, though they see them so
frequently. The only way I can imagine by which they climb up is by
means of the holes, or galleries, used by field-mice. In summer ricks
there are sometimes many mice, and in pursuit of these the snake may
find its way up through their ‘runs.’ Toads are also occasionally found
on these ricks, and it is not exactly clear how they get there either;
but their object is plain--_i.e._ the insects which swarm on the hay.
The thick hedgerows of these woodland meads are full of trees, and
others stand out in groups in the grass, some of them hollow. Elms often
become hollow, and so do oaks; the latter have such large cavities
sometimes that one or more persons may easily crouch therein. This is
speaking of an ordinary sized tree; there are many instances of
patriarchs of the forest within whose capacious trunks a dozen might
stand upright.
These hollow trees, according to woodcraft, ought to come down by the
axe without further loss of time. Yet it is fortunate that we are not
all of us, even in this prosaic age, imbued with the stern utilitarian
spirit; for a decaying tree is perhaps more interesting than one in full
vigour of growth. The starlings make their nests in the upper
knot-holes; or, lower down, the owl feeds her young; and if you chance
to pass near, and are not aware of the ways of owls, you may fancy that
a legion of serpents are in the bushes, so loud and threatening is the
hissing noise made by the brood. The woodpecker comes for the insects
that flourish on the dying giant; so does the curious little
tree-climber, running up the trunk like a mouse; and in winter, when
insect-life is scarce, it is amusing to watch there the busy tomtit. He
hangs underneath a dead branch, head downwards, as if walking on a
ceiling, and with his tiny but strong bill chips off a fragment of the
loose dead bark. Under this bark, as he well knows, woodlice and all
kinds of creeping things make their home. With the fragment he flies to
an adjacent twig, small enough to be grasped by his claws and so give
him a firm foothold. There he pecks his morsel into minute pieces and
lunches on the living contents. Then, with a saucy chuckle of delight in
his own cleverness, he returns to the larger bough for a fresh supply.
As the bough decays the bark loosens, and is invaded by insects which
when it was green could not touch it.
For the acorns the old oak still yields come rooks, pigeons, and stately
pheasants, with their glossy feathers shining in the autumn sun.
Thrushes carry wild hedge-fruit up on the broad platform formed by the
trunk where the great limbs divide, and pecking it to pieces, leave the
seeds. These take root in the crevices which widen out underneath into a
mass of soft decaying ‘touchwood;’ and so from the crown of the tree
there presently stream downwards long trailing briers, bearing in June
the sweet wild roses and in winter red oval fruit. Ivy comes creeping
up, and in its thick warm coverts nests are built. Below, among the
powdery ‘touchwood’ which lines the floor of this living hut, great
fungi push their coloured heads up to the light. And here you may take
shelter when the rain comes unexpectedly pattering on the leaves, and
listen as it rises to a roar within the forest. Sometimes wild bees take
up their residence in the hollow, slowly filling it with comb, buzzing
busily to and fro; and then it is not to be approached so carelessly,
though so ready are all creatures to acknowledge kindness that ere now I
have even made friends with the inhabitants of a wasp’s nest.
A thick carpet of dark green moss grows upon one side of the tree, and
over it the tall brake fern rears its yellow stem. In the evening the
goat-sucker or nightjar comes with a whirling phantom-like flight,
wheeling round and round: a strange bird, which will roost all day on a
rail, blinking or sleeping in the daylight, and seeming to prefer a rail
or a branch without leaves to one that affords cover. Here also the
smaller bats flit in the twilight, and, if you stand still, will pursue
their prey close to your head, wheeling about it so that you may knock
them down with your hand if you wish. The labouring people call the bat
‘bat-mouse.’ Here also come many beetles; and sometimes on a summer’s
day the swallows will rest from their endless flight on the dying upper
branches, for they too like a bough clear or nearly clear of leaves. All
the year through the hollow tree is haunted by every kind of living
creature, and therefore let us hope it may yet be permitted to linger
awhile safe from the axe.
The lesser roots of the elm are porous like cane, and are sometimes
smoked as cigars by the ploughboys. The leaf of the coltsfoot, which
grows so luxuriantly in many places and used to be regularly gathered
and dried by the lower classes for the pipe, is now rarely used since
the commoner tobaccos have become universally accessible.
Often and often, when standing in a meadow gateway partly hidden by the
bushes, watching the woodpecker on the ant-hills, of whose eggs, too,
the partridges are so fond (so that a good ant year, in which their
nests are prolific, is also a good partridge year), you may, if you are
still, hear a slight faint rustle in the hedge, and by-and-bye a weasel
will steal out. Seeing you he instantly pauses, elevates his head, and
steadily gazes: move but your eyes and he is back in the hedge; remain
quiet, still looking straight before you as if you saw nothing, and he
will presently recover confidence, and actually cross the gateway almost
under you.
This is the secret of observation: stillness, silence, and apparent
indifference. In some instinctive way these wild creatures learn to
distinguish when one is or is not intent upon them in a spirit of
enmity; and if very near, it is always the eye they watch. So long as
you observe them, as it were, from the corner of the eyeball, sideways,
or look over their heads at something beyond, it is well. Turn your
glance full upon them to get a better view, and they are gone.
When waiting in a dry ditch with a gun on a warm autumn afternoon for a
rabbit to come out, sometimes a bunny will suddenly appear at the mouth
of a hole which your knee nearly touches. He stops dead, as if petrified
with astonishment, sitting on his haunches. His full dark eye is on you
with a gaze of intense curiosity; his nostrils work as if sniffing; his
whiskers move; and every now and then he thumps with his hind legs upon
the earth with a low dull thud. This is evidently a sign of great alarm,
at the noise of which any other rabbit within hearing instantly
disappears in the ‘bury.’ Yet there your friend sits and watches you as
if spell-bound, so long as you have the patience neither to move hand or
foot, nor to turn your eye. Keep your glance on a frond of the fern just
beyond him, and he will stay. The instant your eye meets his or a finger
stirs, he plunges out of sight.
It is so also with birds. Walk across a meadow swinging a stick, even
humming, and the rooks calmly continue their search for grubs within
thirty yards; stop to look at them, and they rise on the wing directly.
So, too, the finches in the trees by the roadside. Let the wayfarer pass
beneath the bough on which they are singing, and they will sing on, if
he moves without apparent interest; should he pause to listen, their
wings glisten in the sun as they fly.
The meadows lead down to the shores of the mere, and the nearest fields
melt almost insensibly into the green margin of the water, for at the
edge it is so full of flags, and rushes, and weeds, as at a distance to
be barely distinguishable there from the sward. As we approach, the
cuckoo sings passing over head; ‘she cries as she flies’ is the common
country saying.
I used to imagine that the cuckoo was fond of an echo, having noticed
that a particular clump of trees overhanging some water, the opposite
bank of which sent back a clear reply, was a specially favourite resort
of that bird. The reduplication of the liquid notes, as they travelled
to and fro, was peculiarly pleasant: the water, perhaps, lending, like a
sounding-board, a fulness and roundness to her song. She might possibly
have fancied that another bird was answering; certainly she ‘cried’ much
longer there than in other places. Morning after morning, and about the
same time--eleven o’clock--a cuckoo sang in that group of trees, from
noting which I was led to think that perhaps the cuckoo, though
apparently wandering aimlessly about, really has more method and
regularity in her habits than would seem.
Country people will have it that cuckoos are growing scarcer every year,
and do not come in the numbers they formerly did; and, whether it be the
chance of unfavourable seasons or other causes, it is certainly the fact
in some localities. I recollect seeing as many as four at once in a tall
elm--a tree they love--all crying and gurgling, as it were, in the
throat together; this was some years since, and that district is now
much less frequented by these birds.
There was a superstition that where or in whatever condition you
happened to be when you heard the cuckoo the first time in the spring,
so you would remain for the next twelvemonth; for which reason it was a
misfortune to hear her first in bed, since it might mean a long illness.
This, by-the-bye, may have been a pleasant fable invented to get
milkmaids up early of a morning.
The number of coarse fish in the brook which flows out of the shallow
mere bounding one edge of the keeper’s domain of woods has, he thinks,
very much decreased of recent years. When he first came here the stream
seemed full of fish, notwithstanding very little care had till then been
taken with their preservation. They used to net it once now and then,
and he has seen a full hundredweight of fair-sized jack, perch, tench,
etc., taken out of the water in a very short time, besides quantities of
smaller fry which were put back again. But although the brook, so far
as his jurisdiction goes, has since been comparatively well preserved,
yet he feels certain the fish have diminished.
There are no chemical works to account for this with the subtle poison
of their waste, neither are there mills to prevent the fish coming
up--perhaps it would be better if there were some mills, as they would
stop the fish going down. I have noticed that where old water-wheels
have ceased working the fish have almost disappeared. This, of course,
may be but a purely local phenomenon, but it is certainly the case in
some districts. Comparatively little wheat now is ground in rural
places; the greater portion is carried away to the towns and turned into
flour by steam. So that in walking up a brook you will now and then come
upon an ancient mill whose business has departed: the fabric itself is
tenanted by two or three cottage families, and their garden covers the
site of the old mill-pond. In the depths of that pool there were
formerly plenty of fish, with deep dark spots in which to hide. Their
natural increase was not swept away by floods; neither could they
wander, because of the dam and grating. They were also under the eye of
the miller, and so preserved. But when the dam was levelled and the
stream allowed to follow its course, this resting-place, so to say, was
abolished, and the fish dispersed were lost or captured.
Upon the particular brook which I have now in view there are no mills;
but there used to be several large ponds--distinct from the stream, yet
communicating by a narrow channel. These likewise sheltered the fish,
and were favourable to their propagation. Improvements, however, have
swept them away; they are filled up, every inch of ground having become
valuable for agricultural purposes. Then there were vast ditches running
up beside the hedgerows, and ending in the brook; perfect storehouses
these of all aquatic life. Fish used to go up them for shelter (they
were as deep or deeper than the brook itself, and it was a good jump for
a man across), and to feed on the insects blown off the overhanging
trees and bushes, or brought down by the streamlet draining the field
above. Wild duck made their nests among the rushes, sitting there while
their beautiful consorts, the mallards, swam lonely in the mere.
Moorhens were busy in the weeds, or came out to feed upon the sward.
Such great ditches are now filled up, and drains take their place. It is
better so, no doubt, in a purely utilitarian sense, but the fish haunt
the spot no more. Some of the reaches of the brook, where the ground was
flat and boggy, used to resemble a long narrow lake, extremely shallow,
with the deeper current running yards away from the shore: and here the
snipe came in the winter. But the banks are now made up higher by
artificial means, and the marsh is dry. All these changes diminish those
aquatic nooks and corners in which fish love to linger.
[Illustration: WILD DUCK AND MOORHEN.]
Finally came the weed said to have been imported from America, pushing
its way up stream, and filling it with an abominable mass of vegetable
matter that no fish could enter. Hereabouts, however, this pest has of
late shown signs of exhaustion--it does not grow with its former
vigour, and its progress seems checked. The brook, after winding for
several miles, the lower course being beyond the keeper’s boundaries,
empties itself into a canal; before the canal was made it ran much
farther, and itself increased in volume almost to a river. Now this
canal is fished day and night by people on the towpath: there is
nominally a close-time, but no one observes it, and the riparian owners,
having discovered that they had a right so to do, net it mercilessly.
The consequence is that the fish which go down the stream and enter the
canal are speedily destroyed, while the canal on its part sends no fish
to the upper waters. This is how the decrease of fish is accounted for,
and it is the same with perhaps half a dozen other brooks in the same
locality, all of which now fall into the canal, which is so incessantly
plied with rod and net and nightline that little escapes.