Who would believe in being seriously tormented by a plague of oaks? Such
nevertheless has been our lot for the last few weeks. As plagues go they
are certainly better than locusts, not to speak of others that we read
of in the Bible. For all that we find them quite troublesome enough.
Although so young that they were only dropped from the parent bough last
autumn, they already cling to the ground with all the tenacity of their
ancestors; the most exasperated pull causing considerable fatigue to the
puller, but producing no effect whatever upon the youthful athlete. Many
of them are in the engaging condition of being still attached to their
natal acorn, which, acting as a sort of grappling iron, effectually
hinders their being drawn up, even through the soft soil of our
flower-borders. Last year was a most bountiful one for acorns, and every
sty in the neighbourhood revelled in plenty. Since we do not ourselves
keep pigs, we hope that another season we may be less blessed!
Biologists have a theory--they would call it a law--which they call the
law of “Multiplication in Geometrical Progression.” By that law the
plants of any region would, under favouring conditions, increase from a
hundred to a thousandfold every year. Happily for people who wish to
walk about they never really do anything of the sort; on the contrary,
the population of any given district, apart from man’s interference,
remains for the most part all but stationary. Until a parent is
considerate enough to die, and make way for it, every green child that
is born is bound to die in its infancy. These little oaks of ours are an
excellent example of that fact, as well as of the summary fashion with
which Nature is in the habit of wielding her maternal sceptre. They are,
as anyone can see, as hale and as vigorous as could be desired; hearts
of oak, every one of them, and they know it. Not an oaklet amongst them
but sees itself in nightly visions as an umbrageous giant, lifting high
in air a mighty trunk, and spreading out branches that all the fowls of
the air could lodge upon with comfort. Alas, for so much prospective
dignity! Every one of these youthful monarchs is doomed to an early
death, and it is merely a question of what stage of immaturity he will
be called upon to perish at!
There is yet another biological dictum which these deluded young
sovereigns may serve to illustrate. Before Darwin, or any other
expositor, laid it down in prose, it had been already laid down in
unforgettable verse--thus:--
“No being on this earthly ball
Is like another, all and all.”
Nothing certainly on this earthly ball can be truer. Never two living
beings came into the world precisely alike, and these baby oaks differ
each of them in some imperceptible fashion from its baby brother. Here
is a handful plucked at random out of the flower-beds that will prove
it. In this one that I hold in my fingers, it is easy to see that the
future giant would have been a somewhat thick-set, and stunted colossus.
This one again has already a tendency to self-division, and would
probably have ended by becoming forked. Yet again this one would, if it
had been spared--appropriate phrase--have grown up to be the very ideal
of oaks; a glory of the woods; star-proof; sun-proof; magnificent in its
life, and in its death destined to be converted into the very
straightest and most wind-defying of masts. This last, by the way, is
not a loss that we need delay to weep over, seeing that long before it
could have reached maturity, masts will in all probability have gone to
join the other relics of the past; even yachts being converted probably
by that time into little electrical monsters, with ingenious
arrangements for enabling them to become submarine ones, whenever the
wars of that date threaten to interfere with the comfort of their
owners.
Poor baby oaks! They gave me a great deal of trouble to pull up, and
now, with that inopportune remorse, sometimes ascribed to murderers, I
am disposed to grow quite pitiful over them. They have been so spoilt,
moreover, in the process, that they are not even worth putting into a
flower-vase. Imagine having been potentially capable of serving as the
tutelary deity, the beloved shade, the _rendezvous_ of all the lovers of
a parish for possibly half a dozen generations, and being found actually
unfit to fill a bow-pot for an hour! Could poet or pessimist hit upon
instance of malicious destiny more dramatically or tragically complete?