CHAPTER XIII

Annihilating all that’s madeTo a green thought in a green shade.

Bostell Woods is a favourite haunt of birds’-nesting boys and youths in summer, and as it is quite impossible to keep an eye on their doings, very few of the larger and rarer species are able to breed there; but in the adjoining wooded grounds, belonging to Christ’s Hospital, the jay, magpie, white owl and brown owl still breed, and the nightingale is common in summer.

Not far from Bostell we have the Plumstead and Woolwich Commons, together an area of about 450 acres; but as these spaces are used solely as recreation grounds, and are not attractive to birds, it is not necessary to describe them. West and south-west of Greenwich, in that rural portion of the South-east district through which our way now lies, the first open space we come to is the Hilly Fields (45 acres) at Brockley; a green hill with fine views from the summit, but not a habitation of birds. A little farther on, with Nunhead Cemetery between, lies Peckham Rye and Peckham Rye Park (113 acres). The Rye, or common, is a wedge-shaped piece of ground used for recreation, and consequently not a place where birds are found. From thenarrow end of the ground a very attractive prospect lies before the sight: the green wide space of the Rye is seen to be bounded by a wood (the park), and beyond the wood are green hills—Furze Hill, and One Tree, or Oak of Honor, Hill. The effect of distance is produced by the trees and hills, and the scene is, for this part of London, strikingly rural. The park at the broad extremity of the Rye, I have said, has the appearance of a wood; and it is or was a wood, or the well-preserved fragment of one, as perfect a transcript of wild nature as could be found within four miles of Charing Cross. This park was acquired for the public in 1891, and as the wildest and best portion was enclosed with an iron fence to keep the public out, some of us cherished the hope that the County Council meant to preserve it in the exact condition in which they received it. There the self-planted and never mutilated trees flourished in beautiful disorder, their lower boughs mingling with the spreading luxuriant brambles; and tree, bramble, and ivy were one with the wild grasses and woodland blossoms among them. If, as tradition tells, King John hunted the wild stag at Peckham, hecould not have seen a fresher, lovelier bit of nature than this. But, alas! the gardeners, who had all the rest of the grounds to prettify and vulgarise and work their will on, could not keep their hands off this precious spot; for some time past they have been cutting away the wild growths, and digging and planting, until they have well nigh spoiled it.

There is no doubt that a vast majority of the inhabitants of London, whose only glimpses of nature can be had in the public parks, prefer that that nature should be as little spoiled as possible; that there should be something of wildness in it, of Nature’s own negligence. It is infinitely more to them than that excessive smoothness and artificiality of which we see so much. To exhibit flower-beds to those who crave for nature is like placing a dish of Turkish Delight before a hungry man: a bramble-bush, a bunch of nettles, would suit him better. And this universal feeling and perpetual want of the Londoner should be more considered by those who have charge of our open spaces.

Small birds are abundant in Peckham Park, but there is no large species except the nowalmost universal wood-pigeon. A few rooks, in 1895, and again in 1896, tried to establish a rookery here, but have now gone away. The resident songsters are the thrush, blackbird, robin, dunnock, wren, tits, chaffinch, greenfinch, and starling. Among the blackbirds there are, at the time of writing this chapter, two white individuals.

Close to Peckham Rye and Park there are two large cemeteries—Nunhead on one side and Camberwell Cemetery on the other. Both are on high ground; the first (40 acres) is an extremely pretty spot, and has the finest trees to be seen in any metropolitan burying-ground. From the highest part of the ground an extensive and charming view may be had of the comparatively rural district on the south side. Small birds, especially in the winter months, are numerous in this cemetery, and it is pretty to see the starlings in flocks, chaffinches, robins, and other small birds sitting on the gravestones.

Camberwell Cemetery is smaller and newer, and has but few trees, but is on even higher ground, as it occupies a slope of the hill above the park. If there is any metropolitanburying-ground where dead Londoners find a post-mortem existence tolerable, it must, I imagine, be on this spot; since by perching or sitting on their own tombstones they may enjoy a wide view of South-east London—a pleasant prospect of mixed town and country, of houses and trees, and tall church spires, and green slopes of distant hills.

It is to be hoped that when this horrible business of burying our dead in London is brought to an end, Nunhead and Camberwell Cemeteries will be made one large open space with Peckham Rye and Park.

A mile from the Rye is Dulwich Park (72 acres); it is laid out more as a garden than a park, and may be said to be one of the prettiest and least interesting of the metropolitan open spaces. I mean ‘prettiest’ in the sense in which gardeners and women use the word. It lies in the midst of one of the most rural portions of South-east London, having on all sides large private gardens, park-like grounds, and woods. The bird life in this part is abundant, including in summer the blackcap, garden-warbler, willow-wren, wood-wren, redstart, pied wagtail, tree pipit, and cuckoo. Thelarge birds commonly seen are the rook, carrion crow, daw, and wood-pigeon. The park itself, being so much more artificial than the adjacent grounds, has comparatively few birds.

A mile west of Dulwich Park, touching the line dividing the South-east and South-west districts, is Brockwell Park (78 acres). Like Clissold and Ravenscourt, this is one of the old private parks of London, with a manor house in it, now used as a refreshment house. It is very open, a beautiful green hill, from which there are extensive and some very charming views. Knight’s Hill, not yet built upon, is close by. The elm-trees scattered all about the park are large and well grown, and have a healthy look. On one part of the ground is a walled-round delightful old garden—half orchard—the only garden containing fruit-trees, roses, and old-fashioned herbs and flowers in any open space in London. Another great attraction is—I fear we shall before long have to saywas—the rookery. Six years ago it was the most populous rookery in or near London, and extended over the entire park, there being few or no large trees without nests; but when the park wasopened to the public, in 1891, the birds went away, all excepting those that occupied nests on the large trees at the main gate, which is within a few yards of Herne Hill station. They were evidently so used to the noise of the trains and traffic, and to the sight of people in the thoroughfare on which they looked down, that the opening of the park did not disturb them. Nevertheless this remnant of the old rookery is becoming less populous each year. In the summer of 1896 I counted thirty-five occupied nests; in 1897 there were only twenty nests. Just now—February 1898—eight or ten pairs of birds are engaged in repairing the old nests.

THE ROOKERY, BROCKWELL PARK

It is very pleasant to find that here, at all events, very little (I cannot say nothing) has so far been done to spoil the natural character and charm of this park—one of the finest of London’s open spaces.

Introductory remarks—Comparative large extent of public ground in South-west London—Battersea Park—Character and popularity—Bird life—Clapham Common: its present and past character—Wandsworth Common—The yellowhammer—Tooting Common—Tooting Bec—Questionable improvements—A passion for swans—Tooting Graveney—Streatham Common—Bird life—Magpies—Rookery—Bishop’s Park, Fulham—A suggestion—Barn Elms Park—Barnes Common—A burial-ground—Birds—Putney Heath, Lower Putney Common, and Wimbledon Common—Description—Bird life—Rookeries—The badger—Richmond Park—Its vast extent and character—Bird life—Daws—Herons—The charm of large soaring birds—Kew Gardens—List of birds—Unfavourable changes—The Queen’s private grounds.

Inthe foregoing chapters the arbitrary lines dividing the London postal districts have not been always strictly kept to. Thus, the Green Park and St. James’s Park, which are in the South-west, were included in the West district, simply because the central parks, with Holland Park, form one group, or rather one chain of open spaces. In treating of the South-westdistrict it will again be found convenient to disregard the line at some points, since, besides excluding the two parks just named, I propose to include Kew Gardens, Richmond Park, and Wimbledon Common—large spaces which lie for the most part outside of the Post-Office boundary. These spaces do nevertheless form an integral part of London as it has been defined for the purposes of this book: they belong to the South-west district in the same way that Hampstead Heath does to the North-west, Hackney Marsh and Wanstead Old Park to the East, Plumstead and Bostell to the South-east. All these open spacestouchLondon, although they are not entirely cut off from the country. Again, for the same reason which made me exclude Epping Forest, Ham Common, &c., from the East district, I now exclude Hampton Court Park and Bushey Park from the South-west. It might be said that Richmond Park is not less rural than Bushey Park, or even than Epping Forest; that with regard to their wild bird life all these big open spaces on the borders of London are in the same category; but the line must be drawn somewhere, and having made my rule I must keep to it. Doubtlessbefore many years the tide of buildings will have completely encircled and flowed beyond the outermost open spaces described in this and the preceding chapters.

Within these limits we find that the South-west district, besides being the least densely populated portion of London, is immeasurably better off in open spaces than any other. There is, in fact, no comparison. The following is a very rough statement of the amount of space open to the public in each of the big districts, omitting the cemeteries, and all gardens, squares, greens, recreation grounds, and all other open spaces of less than ten acres in size. West London,includingGreen Park and St. James’s Park, has about 1,500 acres. North London (North-west and North districts), which has two very large spaces in Regent’s Park and Hampstead Heath, has about 1,300 acres. East London, excluding Epping Forest, Wanstead Flats, and Ham Common, has less than 1,000 acres. South-east London, 1,500 to 1,600 acres. South-west London has about 7,500 acres, or 2,200 acres more than all the other districts together. This does not include Old Deer Park, which is not open to the public. If we include Green,St. James’s, Bushey, and Hampton Court Parks, the South-west district would then have about 8,650 acres in large open spaces. All the rest of London, with the whole vast space of Epping Forest thrown in, would have 7,500, or 1,150 acres less than the South-west district.

The large open spaces of South-west London, although more scattered about than is the case in other metropolitan districts, do nevertheless form more or less well-defined groups. Battersea Park is an exception: it is the only open space in this district which has, so to speak, been entirely remade, the digging and planting, which have been so vigorously going on for several years past, having quite obliterated its original character. Coming to speak of the open spaces in detail, I propose first to describe this made park; to go next to the large commons south of Battersea—Clapham, Wandsworth, Tooting, and Streatham; then, returning to the river-side, to describe Bishop’s Park, Fulham, and its near neighbour, Barnes Common; and, finally, to go on to the large spaces at Kew, Putney, Wimbledon, and Richmond.

Battersea Park (198 acres), formerly a marsh,has within the last few years been transformed into the most popular open-air resort in the metropolis. The attempt to please everybody usually ends in pleasing nobody; at Battersea the dangerous experiment has been tried with success; for no person would be so unreasonable as to look for that peculiar charm of wildness, which still lingers in Bostell Heath and Wimbledon Common, in a garden planted in a marsh close to the heart of London. The ground has certainly been made the most of: the flat surface has been thrown into mounds, dells, and other inequalities; there are gardens and rockeries, large well-grown trees of many kinds, magnificent shrubberies, and, best of all, a pretty winding lake, with an area of about 16 acres, and large well-wooded islands on it. Besides the attraction which the beautiful grounds, the variety of plants and of ornamental water-fowl and other animals have for people generally, crowds are drawn to this spot by the facilities afforded for recreations of various kinds—boating, cycling, cricket, tennis, &c. This popularity of Battersea is interesting to us incidentally when considering its wild bird life, for it might be supposed that the number ofpeople and the incessant noise would drive away the shyer species, and that the birds would be few. This is not the case: the wild bird life is actually far more abundant and varied than in any other inner London park. Mere numbers and noise of people appear to have little effect on birds so long as they are protected.

Battersea Park has a good position to attract birds passing through or wandering about London, as these are apt to follow the river; and it also has the advantage of being near the central parks, which, as we have seen, serve as a kind of highway by which birds come into London from the west side. In the park itself the lake and wooded islands, and extensive shrubberies with dense masses of evergreen, tempt them to build. But it must also be said, in justice, that the superintendent of this park fully appreciates the value of the birds, and takes every pains to encourage and protect them. A few years ago, when he came to Battersea, there were about a dozen blackbirds; now as many as forty have been counted feeding in the early morning on one lawn; and in spring and summer, at about four o’clock every morning, there is such a concert of thrushes and blackbirds,with many other bright voices, as would be hard to match in any purely rural district. It is interesting to know that the wren, which is dying out in other London parks, has steadily increased at Battersea, and is now quite common. Robins and hedge-sparrows are also more numerous than in our other open spaces. A number of migrants are attracted to this spot every summer; of these the pied wagtail, lesser whitethroat, reed-warbler, and cuckoo bred last season. The larger birds are the wood-pigeon, moorhen, dabchick, and to these the carrion crow may now be added as a breeding species.

Clapham Common (220 acres) is the nearest to central London of that large, loose group of commons distinctive of the South-west district, its distance from Battersea being a little over a mile, and from Charing Cross about three miles and a half. Like Hackney Downs, it is a grassy space, but flatter, and having the appearance of a piece of ground not yet built upon it may be described as the least interesting open space in the metropolis. To the smoke and dust breathing, close-crowded inhabitants of Bethnal Green,which is not green nor of any other colour found in nature, this expanse of grass, if they had it within reach, would be an unspeakable boon, and seem to their weary eyes like a field in paradise. But Clapham is not over-crowded; it is a place of gardens full of fluttering leaves, and the exceeding monotony of its open space, set round with conspicuous houses, must cause those who live near it to sigh at the thought of its old vanished aspect when the small boy Thomas Babington Macaulay roamed over its broken surface, among its delightful poplar groves and furze and bramble bushes, or hid himself in its grass-grown gravel-pits, the world forgetting, by his nurse forgot. These grateful inequalities and roughnesses have been smoothed over, and the ancient vegetation swept away like dead autumn leaves from the velvet lawns and gravel walks of a trim suburban villa. When this change was effected I do not know: probably a good while back. To the Claphamites of the past the furze must have seemed an unregenerate bush, and the bramble something worse, since its recurved thorns would remind them of an exceedingly objectionable person’s finger-nails. As for the yellowhammer,that too gaily apparelled idle singer, who painted his eggs with so strange a paint, it must indeed have been a relief to get rid of him.

At present Clapham Common is no place for birds.

Wandsworth Common (183 acres) is a very long strip of ground, unfortunately very narrow, with long monotonous rows of red brick houses, hideous in their uniformity, at its sides. Here there is no attempt at disguise, no illusion of distance, no effect of openness left: the cheap speculative builder has been permitted to spoil it all. A railway line which cuts very nearly through the whole length of the common still further detracts from its value as a breathing-space. The broadest part of the ground at its western extremity has a good deal of furze growing on it, and here the common joins an extensive piece of ground, park-like in character, on which stands an extremely picturesque old red brick house. When this green space is built upon Wandsworth will lose the little that remains of its ancient beauty and freshness.

Among the small birds still to be found hereis the yellowhammer, and it strikes one as very curious to hear his song in such a place. Why does he stay? Is he tempted by the little bit of bread and no cheese which satisfies his modest wants—the small fragments dropped by the numberless children that play among the bushes after school hours? The yellowhammer does not colonise with us; he goes and returns not, and this is now the last spot in the metropolis within four miles and a half of Charing Cross where he may still be found. He was cradled on the common, and does not know that there are places on the earth where the furze-bushes are unblackened by smoke, where at intervals of a few minutes the earth is not shaken by trains that rush thundering and shrieking, as if demented, into or out of Clapham Junction.

I fear the yellowhammer will not long remain in such a pandemonium. The people of Wandsworth are hardly deserving of such a bird.

Tooting Common is the general name for two commons—Tooting Bec and Tooting Graveney, 144 and 66 acres respectively. A public road divides them, but they form reallyone area. Tooting Bec has a fair amount of gorse and bramble bushes scattered about, and a good many old trees, mostly oak. The number of old trees gives this space something of a park-like appearance, but it is not exhilarating; on the contrary, its effect on the mind is rather depressing, on account of the perfect flatness of the ground and the sadly decayed and smoke-blackened condition of the trees. An ‘improvement’ of the late Metropolitan Board of Works was the planting of a very long and very straight avenue of fast-growing black poplars, and this belt of weed-like ungraceful trees, out of keeping with everything, has made Tooting Bec positively ugly.

Another improvement has been introduced by the County Council; this is the usual small pond and the usual couple of big swans. The rage for putting these huge birds in numberless small ponds and miniature lakes can only proceed from a singular want of imagination on the part of the park gardeners and park decorators employed by the Council; or we might suppose that the Council have purchased a big job lot of swans, which they are anxious to distribute about London. These dreary littleponds might easily be made exceedingly interesting, if planted round with willows and rushes and stocked with a few of the smaller pretty ornamental water-fowl in place of their present big unsuitable occupants.

Tooting Graveney has a fresher, wilder aspect, and is a pleasanter place than its sister common. Its surroundings, too, are far more rural, as it has for neighbours Streatham Park and the wide green spaces of Furze Down and Totterdown Fields. Tooting Graveney itself is in the condition of the old Clapham Common as Macaulay knew it in his boyhood. Its surface is rough with grass-grown mounds, old gravel-pits, and excavations, and it is grown over with bushes of furze, bramble, and brier, and with scattered birch-trees and old dwarf hawthorns, looking very pretty. Wild birds are numerous, although probably few are able to rear any young on the common. The missel-thrush, now very rare in London, breeds in private grounds close by.

Streatham Common (66 acres) is the least as well as the outermost of the group of large commons; it is but half the size of ClaphamCommon. But though so much smaller than the others, it is the most interesting, owing to the hilly nature of the ground and to the fine prospect to be had of the country beyond. It forms a rather long strip, and from the highest part at the upper end the vision ranges over the beautifully wooded and hilly Surrey country to and beyond Epsom. This upper end of the common is extremely pretty, overgrown with furze and bramble bushes, and pleasantly shaded with trees at one side. Birds when breedingcannot be protected on the common; the wild bird life is nevertheless abundant and varied, on account of the large private grounds adjoining. It is pleasant to sit here on a spring or summer day and watch the jays that come to the trees overhead; like other London jays and the London fieldfares, they are strangely tame compared with these birds in the country. Out in the sunshine the skylark mounts up singing; and here, too, may be heard the nightingale. He does not merely make a short stay on his arrival in spring, as at some other spots in the suburbs, but remains to breed. Yet here we are only six and a half miles from Charing Cross. It is still more surprising to find the magpie at Streatham, in the wooded grounds which join the common. Rooks are numerous at Streatham, and their rookery close to Streatham Common station is a singularly interesting one. It is on an avenue of tall elms which formerly stood on open grass-land. A few years ago this land was built over, rows of houses being erected on each side of and parallel with the avenue, which now stands in the back gardens or yards, with the back windows of the houses looking on it. Butin spite of all these changes, and the large human population gathered round them, the birds have stuck to their rookery; and last summer (1897) there were about thirty inhabited nests.

NIGHTINGALE ON ITS NEST

From Streatham we go back to the river, to a point about a mile and a half west of Wandsworth Common, to Fulham Palace grounds on the Middlesex side, and the open spaces at Barnes on the Surrey side.

Bishop’s Park, Fulham, of which about 12 acres are free to the public, is one of London’s rare beauty-spots. A considerable portion of the palace grounds is within the moat, and the moat, the noble old trees, and wide green spaces, form an appropriate setting to the ancient stately Bishop’s Palace. The lamentable mistake has been made of placing this open space in the control of the Fulham Vestry; and, as might have been expected, they have been improving it in accordance with the æsthetic ideas of the ordinary suburban tradesman, by cutting down the old trees, planting rows of evergreens to hide the beautiful inner grounds from view, and by erecting cast-iron painted fountains, shelters, andother architectural freaks of a similar character. That the inhabitants of Fulham can see unmoved this vulgarisation of so noble and beautiful a remnant of the past—the spot in London which recalls the moated Bishop’s Palace at Wells—is really astonishing.

To the bird-lover as well as to the student of history this is a place of memories, for here in the time of Henry VIII. spoonbills and herons built their nests on the old trees in the bishop’s grounds. At the present time there are some sweet songsters—thrush, blackbird, robin, dunnock, wren, chaffinch, and a few summer visitants. Here, too, we find the wood-pigeon, but not the ‘ecclesiastical daw’ or other distinguished species, and, strange to say, no moat-hen in the large old moat. How much more interesting this water would be, with its grass-grown banks and ancient shade-giving trees, if it had a few feathered inhabitants! Simply by lowering the banks at a few points and planting some reeds and rushes, it would quickly attract those two very common and always interesting London species, the moorhen and the little grebe. The sedge-warbler, too, would perhaps come in time.

I have been informed that London Bishops care for none of these things.

Looking across the river from Fulham Palace grounds, an extensive well-wooded space is seen on the south bank; this is Barn Elms Park, now occupied by the Ranelagh Sporting Club. It is one of the best private parks in London, with fine old elm-trees and a lake, and would be a paradise of wild birds but for the shooting which goes on there and scares them away.

Close to Barn Elms is Barnes Common (100 acres), a pleasant open heath, not all flat, grown with heather, and dotted with furze and bramble bushes and a few trees. One of its attractions is Beverley Brook, which rises near Malden, about eight miles away, and flows by Coombe Woods, Wimbledon, through Richmond Park, and, finally, by Barnes Common to the Thames: the brook and a very pretty green meadow separate the common from Barn Elms Park.

The London and South-Western Railway Company have been allowed to appropriate a portion of this open space; but that indeed seems a very small matter when we find that the parishes of Barnes and Putney have establishedtwo cemeteries on the common, using a good many of its scanty 100 acres for the purpose. What would be said if the Government were to allow two cemeteries for the accommodation of the parishes of Kensington and Paddington to be made in the middle of Kensington Gardens? I fail to see that it is less an outrage to have turned a portion of Barnes Common into hideous walled round Golgothas, with mortuary chapels, the ground studded with grave-stones and filled with putrefying corpses. It is devoutly to be hoped that before very long the people of London will make the discovery that it rests with themselves whether their house shall be put in order or not; and when that time comes that these horrible forests of grave-stones and monuments to the dead will be brushed away, and that such bodies as the Barnes Conservators and the Fulham Vestry will for ever be deprived of the powers they so lamentably misuse.

It would be difficult for any bird, big or little, to rear its young on a space so unprotected as this common; many birds, however, come to it, attracted by its open heath-like character. Here the skylark and yellowhammermay be heard, as well as the common resident songsters found in other open spaces. The carrion crow is a constant visitor, and very tame, knowing that he is safe. Beverley Brook has no aquatic birds in it, but it would be easy to make a small rushy sanctuary in the marshy borders, protected from mischievous persons, for the moorhen, sedge-warbler, and other species. I have seen a small boy with an earthworm at the end of a piece of thread pull out thirty to forty minnows in as many minutes. Little grebes and kingfishers would not want for food in such a place.

South and west of Barnes Common, London, as we progress, becomes increasingly rural, with large private park-like grounds, until we arrive at the open spaces of Putney Heath, Lower Putney Common, and Wimbledon Common, which together form an area of 1,412 acres, or nearly three times as large as Hampstead Heath. It seems only appropriate that the most rural portion of the most rural district in London should have so large an open space, and that in character this space should be wilder and more refreshing to the spirit than any other in themetropolis. It has the further advantage (from the point of view of the residents) of not being too easy of access to the mass of the people. This makes it ‘select,’ a semi-private recreation ground for the residents, and a ‘Happy Hampstead’ to a limited number of cockneys of a superior kind. Here the fascinating game of golf, excluded from other public spaces, may be practised; and the golfer, arrayed like the poppies of the cornfield and visible at a vast distance, strolls leisurely about as his manner is, or stands motionless to watch the far flight of his small ball, which will kill no one and hit no one, since strangers moving about on the grounds are actually fewer than would be seen on the links at Hayling, or even Minehead.

It is a solitary place, and its solitariness is its principal charm. A wide open heath, with some pretty patches of birch wood, stretches of brown heather, dotted in places with furze-bushes like little black islands; but on that part which is called Putney Heath furze and bramble and brier grow thick and luxuriant. One may look far in some directions and see no houses nor other sign of human occupancy to spoil the effect of seclusion and wildness.Over all is the vast void sky and the rapturous music of the skylark.

At Wimbledon one has the idea of being at a considerable elevation; the highest point is really only 300 feet above the sea level, but it is set in a deep depression, and from some points the sight may range as far as the hills about Guildford and Godalming. There are persons of sensitive olfactories who affirm that when the wind blows from the south coast they can smell the sea-salt in it.

WIMBLEDON COMMON

But Wimbledon is not all open heath and common; it has also an extensive wood, delightfully wild, the only large birch wood near the metropolis. The missel-thrush, nuthatch, and tree-creeper breed here, and the jay is common and tame; I have seen as many as six together. In this wood a finer concert of nightingales may be heard in summer than at any other place near London. In winter fieldfares and pewits are often seen. Carrion crows from Coombe Woods and other breeding-places in the neighbourhood are constantly seen on the common in pairs and small parties, and are strangely familiar. Rooks, too, are extremely abundant. Richmond Park is their roosting-placein winter, and there are numerous rookeries, large and small, in the neighbourhood—at Sheen Gate, at various points along the Kingston road, at Norbiton and Kingston, on the estate of the late Madame Lyne Stevens, at Coombe Woods, and at Wimbledon itself, in some large elms growing at the side of the High Street on Sir Henry Peek’s property. Concerning this rookery there is an interesting fact to relate. About six years ago the experiment of shooting the young rooks was tried, with the very best intentions, the rookery being greatly prized. But these rooks were not accustomed to be thinned down (for their own good) every summer, and they forsook the trees. Everything was then done to entice them back; artificial nests were constantly kept on the tree-tops, and in winter food in abundance was placed for the birds; but though they came readily enough to regale on bread and scraps they refused to settle until last spring (1897), when they returned in a body and rebuilt the rookery.

This book is mainly about birds, but I cannot help mentioning the fact that in the wood at Wimbledon that rare and interesting mammal, the badger, found at only one other spot on theborders of London, is permitted to spend his hermit life in peace.

Here, in solitude and shade,Shambling, shuffling plantigrade,Be thy courses undismayed.

It may seem almost absurd in writing of a London wild animal to quote from Bret Harte’s ode to the great grizzly in the Western wilderness! Nevertheless Wimbledon may be proud to possess even the poor little quaint timid badger—cousin, a million times removed, to the mighty bear, the truculent coward, as the poet says, with tiger claws on baby feet, who has a giant’s strength and is satisfied to prey on wasps’ nests.

Recently, on one of the largest estates in England, in a part of the country where the badger is now all but extinct, it was reported at the big house that a pair of these animals had established themselves in the forest, which, it may be mentioned, is very large—about eighteen miles round. A grand campaign was at once organised, and a large number of men and boys, armed with guns, spades, hatchets, pitchforks, and bludgeons, and followed by manydogs, went out to the attack. Arrived at the den, at the roots of a giant beech-tree, they set to work to dig the animals out. It was a huge task, but there were many to help, and in the end the badgers were found, old and young together, and killed.

Let us imagine that when this business was proceeding with tremendous excitement and noise of shouting men and barking dogs, some person buried at that spot in old Palæolithic times had been raised up to view the spectacle; that it had been explained to him that these hunters were his own remote descendants; that one of them was a mighty nobleman, a kind of chief or king, whose possessions extended on every side as far as the eye could see; that the others were his followers who served and obeyed him; and that they were all engaged in hunting and killing the last badger, the most terrible wild beast left in the land! I think that the old hunter, who, with his rude stone-headed spear had fought with and overcome even mightier beasts than the grizzly bear, would have emitted a strange and perhaps terrifying sound, a burst of primitive laughter very shrill and prolonged, resemblingthe neigh of a wild horse, or perhaps deep, from a deep chest, like the baying of a bloodhound.

Richmond Park (2,470 acres) both in its vast extent and character is unlike any other metropolitan open space. The noblest of the breathing-spaces on our borders, it is also the most accessible, and more or less well known to tens of thousands of persons; but it is probably intimately known only to a few. Speaking for myself, I can say that after having visited it occasionally for years, sometimes to spend a whole day in it, sometimes to get lost in it, both in fine and foggy weather, I do not know it so well as other large open spaces which have not been visited more often. Any person well acquainted with the country would probably find it easy at a moment’s notice to name half a dozen parks which have pleased him better than this one, on account of a certain monotony in the scenery of Richmond, but in size it would surpass most or all of them. So large is it that half a dozen such London parks as Clissold, Waterlow, and Ravenscourt might easily be hidden in one corner of it, where it would not be easy to find them. There are roadsrunning in various directions, and on most days many persons may be seen on them, driving, riding, cycling, and walking; yet they all may be got away from, and long hours spent out of sight and hearing of human beings, in the most perfect solitude. This is the greatest attraction of Richmond Park, and its best virtue. Strange to say, this very quietude and solitariness produce a disturbing effect on many Londoners. Alas for those who have so long existed apart from Nature as to have become wholly estranged, who are troubled in mind at her silence and austerity! To others this green desert is London’s best possession, a sacred place where those who have lost their strength may find it again, and those who are distempered may recover their health.

The largeness and quietness of Richmond, its old oak woods, water, and wide open spaces, and its proximity to the river, have given it not only an abundant but a nobler wild bird life than is found at any other point so near to the centre of the metropolis. Here all the best songsters, including the nightingale, may be heard. Wild duck and teal and a few other water birds, rear their young in the ponds. Ourtwo most beautiful woodland birds, the green woodpecker and the jay, are common. Rooks are numerous, especially in winter, when they congregate to roost. Here, too, you may hear the carrion crow’s ‘voice of care.’ Jackdaws are certainly more plentiful than anywhere within one hundred miles of London. One day I counted fifty in a flock, and saw them settle on the trees; then going a little distance on I saw another flock numbering about forty, and beyond this lot from another wood sounded the clamour of a third flock. Even then I had probably not seenallthe Richmond daws; perhaps not more than half the entire number, for I was assured by a keeper that there were ‘millions.’ He was a very tall white-haired old man with aquiline features and dark fierce eyes, and therefore must have known what he was talking about.

Best of all are the herons that breed in the park, and appear to be increasing. One fine evening in February last I counted twenty together at Sidmouth Wood. A multitude of rooks and daws had settled on the tree-tops where the herons were; but after a few minutes they rose up with a great noise, and werefollowed by the herons, who mounted high above the black cawing crowd, looking very large and majestic against the pale clear sky. It was the finest spectacle in wild bird life I had ever seen so close to London.

It is a great thing for Richmond to have the heron, which is no longer common; and now that the kite, buzzard, and raven have been lost, it is the only large soaring inland species which, once seen, appears as an indispensable part of the landscape. Take it away, and the large comparatively wild nature loses half its charm.

In a former chapter I have endeavoured to show how great the æsthetic value of the daw is to our cathedrals. The old dead builders of these great temples owe perhaps as much to this bird as to the softening and harmonising effects of time and weather. Again, every one must feel that the effect of sublimity produced on us by our boldest cliffs is greatly enhanced by the sea-fowl, soaring along the precipitous face of the rocks, and peopling their ledges, tier above tier of birds, the highest, seen from below, appearing as mere white specks. A similar effect is produced by large soaring birds on any inland landscape; the horizon is widened andthe sky lifted to an immeasurable height. Some such idea as this, of the indescribable charm of the large soaring bird, of its value to the artistic eye in producing the effect of distance and vastness in nature, was probably in our late lost artist-poet’s mind when he painted the following exquisite word-picture:—

High up and light are the clouds; and though the swallows flitSo high above the sunlit earth, they are well a part of it;And so though high over them are the wings of the wandering hern,In measureless depths above him doth the fair sky quiver and burn.

Speaking for myself, without the ‘wandering hern,’ or buzzard, or other large soaring species, the sky does not impress me with its height and vastness; and without the sea-fowl the most tremendous sea-fronting cliff is a wall which may be any height; and the noblest cathedral without any jackdaws soaring and gamboling about its towers is apt to seem little more than a great barn, or a Dissenting chapel on a gigantic scale.

Kew Gardens, with the adjoining spaces of Old Deer Park and the Queen’s Private Grounds,comprising an area of about 600 acres, with a river frontage of over two miles, is in even closer touch with London than its near neighbour, Richmond Park. From the heart of the city two principal thoroughfares run west, and, uniting on the farther side of Hammersmith, extend with few breaks in the walls of brick and glass on either side to Kew Bridge. The distance from the Mansion House to the bridge is about ten miles, and the few remaining gaps in the westernmost portion of this long busy way are now rapidly being filled up. What was formerly the village of Kew is now an integral part of London the Monotonous, in appearance just like other suburbs—Wormwood Scrubs, Kilburn, Muswell Hill, Green Lanes, Dulwich, and Norwood.

Kew Gardens (251 acres) is, or until very recently was, one of the three or four spots on the borders of the metropolis most favoured by the birds. They were attracted to it by its large size, the woodland character of most of the ground, and its unrivalled position on the river in the immediate vicinity of several other extensive open spaces. The breeding place of most of the birds was in the Queen’s PrivateGrounds, a wedge of land between the Gardens and Old Deer Park, a wilderness and perfect sanctuary for all wild creatures. In this green wooded spot and the adjoining gardens the following species have bred annually: missel-thrush, throstle, blackbird, redstart, robin, nightingale, whitethroat, lesser whitethroat, blackcap, garden-warbler, chiffchaff, willow-wren, wood-wren, sedge-warbler, dunnock, wren, great, coal, blue, and long-tailed tits, nuthatch, tree-creeper, pied wagtail, tree-pipit, spotted flycatcher, swallow, house-martin, greenfinch, common sparrow, chaffinch, starling, jay, crow, swift, green and lesser woodpecker, wryneck, cuckoo, pheasant, partridge, wood-pigeon, moorhen, dabchick—in all forty-three species. Besides these there is good reason to believe that the following six species have been breeders in the Queen’s grounds during recent years: goldcrest, marsh tit, goldfinch, hawfinch, bullfinch, and magpie.

This list will prove useful to London naturalists in the near future, as many changes in the bird life of Kew may shortly be looked for. With the opening of the Queen’s grounds the partridge and pheasant will cease to breed there;the crow is not now allowed to build in the gardens; the nightingales have decreased to a very few birds during the last three or four seasons; and last summer (1897) the wood-wren failed to put in an appearance. To say that there will be other and greater changes is unhappily only too safe a prophecy to make. For several years past tree-felling has been vigorously prosecuted in the gardens to give them a more open park-like appearance; new gravelled roads have been laid down in all directions, and the policy generally has been that of the landscape-gardener which makes for prettiness, with the result that the aspect and character of this spot have been quite altered, and it is fast becoming as unsuitable a breeding place for the summer warblers and other shy woodland species as any royal west-end park.

Up till two months ago, it was some consolation to those who grieved at the changes in progress in Kew Gardens to think that the Queen’s private grounds adjoining were safe from the despoiler. This area is separated from the gardens by nothing but a wire fence; one could walk the entire breadth of the grounds with that untrimmed, exquisitely beautifulwooded wilderness always in sight; many acres of noble trees—oak, ash, elm, beech, hornbeam, and Spanish chestnut; a shady paradise, the old trunks draped with ivy, or grey and emerald green with moss; masses of bramble and brier, furze and holly, growing untouched beneath; the open green spaces a sea of blue in spring with the enchanting blue of the wild hyacinth. There was not anywhere on the borders of London—that weary circuit of fifty miles—so fresh and perfect a transcript of wild woodland nature as this, with the sole exception of Lord Mansfield’s private grounds at Hampstead.

Unhappily just before the announcement was made early in 1898 that the Queen had graciously decided to admit the public to this lovely ground, a gang of labourers was sent in to grub up the undergrowth, to lop off lower branches, and cut down many scores of the noblest old trees, with the object apparently of bringing the place more into harmony with the adjoining trim gardens. It is earnestly to be hoped that nothing further will be done to ruin the most perfect beauty-spot that remains to London.

Here our survey ends.

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