A black cannon ball lies in a garden, an ornament like a shell or a fossil, among blue lobelia and green ferns. It is about as big as a cricket ball—a mere trifle to look at. What a contrast with the immense projectiles thrown by modern guns! Yet it is very heavy—quite out of proportion to its size. Imagine iron cricket balls bounding along the grass and glancing at unexpected angles, smashing human beings instead of wickets. This cannon ball is not a memorial of the Civil War. It was shot at a carter with his waggon. Our grandfathers had no idea of taking care of other people's lives. Every man had to look out for himself; if you got in the way, that was your fault. A battery was practising, and they did not trouble themselves about the highway road which skirted the range; and as the carter was coming home with his waggon one of the balls ricocheted and rolled along in front of his horses. He picked it up and brought it home, and there it has lain many a long year, a silent witness, like the bricks Jack Cade put in the chimney, to the extraordinary change of ideas which has taken place. We are all expected nowadays to think not only of ourselves but of others, and if a man fires a gun without due precautions, and injures or even might have injured another, he is liable. All our legislation and all the drift of public opinion goes in this direction. Men were the same then as now; the change in this respect shows the immense value of ideas. They were then quite strangers to the very idea of taking any thought for those who might chance to be in the way. That has been inculcated of recent years. Those were the days when there was an irresponsible tyrant in every village, who could not indeed hang men at his castle gate by feudal right of gallows, but who could as effectually silence them by setting in motion laws made by the rich for the rich. It is on record how a poor carrier, whose only fortune was a decrepit horse, dared presumptuously, against the will of the lord of the manor, to water his horse at a roadside pond. For this offence he was taken before the justices and fined, his goods seized,—
And the knackers had his silly old horse,And so John Harris was bowled out!
Then there was a still more terrible offence—a hungry man picked up a rabbit. 'How dared John Bartlett for to venture for to go for to grab it?' But they put him in gaol and cured him of 'that there villanous habit,' which rhymes, and the tale thereof may be found by the student of old times in the 'Punch' of the day—a good true honest manly Punch, who brought his staff down heavily on the head of abuses and injustice. We do things every day in the present age equally unjust and cruel, only we cannot see them; as some one observed, one cannot see the eye because it is so close to the sight. In the almost sacred name of education tyrannies are being enacted surpassing anything recorded in the most outlying village in the most outlying time. One constantly sees cases of poor people sent to prison because they happen to have children. No other reason can be detected.
Our great-grandfathers' doctors never used to trouble themselves to write prescriptions for their poorer patients; they used to keep two or three mixtures always made up ready in great jars, and ladle them out. There was the bread and cheese mixture, very often called for, as the ailments of the labourers are commonly traceable to a heavy diet of cheese. As an old doctor used to say when he was called to a cottage, 'Hum; s'pose you've been eating too much fat bacon and cabbage!' Another was the club mixture, called for about May, when the village clubs are held and extra beer disturbs the economy. In factory towns, where the mechanics have dispensaries and employ doctors, something of the same sort of story has got about at the present day. The women are constantly coming for physic, and the assistants are stated to gravely measure a little peppermint and colour it pink or yellow, which does as well. Great invalids with long pockets, who have paid their scores of guineas and gone the round of fashionable physicians, do not seem to have received much more benefit than if they had themselves chosen the yellow or pink hue of their tinted water. It is wonderful what value the country poor set on a bottle of physic; they are twice as grateful for it as for a good dinner. Some of the doctors of old are said to have had an eye for an old book, or an old clock, or an old bit of furniture or china in the cottage, and when the patient was recovering they would take a fancy to it and buy it at their own valuation, for of course the humble labourer was obliged to regard such a wish as a command. The workhouse system puts the labourer completely under the thumb of the clergyman and the doctor. It was in this way that many good old pieces of work gradually found their destination in great London collections. Once now and then, however, the eager collector would come across some one independent, and meet with a sharp refusal to part with the old china bowl. The wife of a small farmer naïvely remarked about the tithes, 'You know it is such a lot to pay, and we never go there to church; you know it is too far to walk.' It was not the doctrine to which she objected—it was the paying for nothing; paying and never having anything. The farmers, staunch upholders of Church and State, are always grumbling because the clergy are constantly begging. One man took a deep oath that if the clergyman ever came to his house without asking for money he would cut a deep notch with his knife in the oaken doorpost. Ten years went by, still more years, and still no notch was cut. Odd things happen in odd places. There is a story of an old mansion where a powerful modern stove was put in an ancient hearth under a mantelpiece supported by carved oak figures of knights. The unwonted heat roasted the toes of these martyrs till their feet fell off. Another story relates how in our grandfathers' days a great man invited his friends to dinner, promising them a new dish that had never before been set upon the table. The fillet came in on the shoulders of several men, and when the cover was removed, lo an actress in a state of nature! One farmer lent his friend his dogcart. Time went on, and the dogcart was not returned; a year went by, still no cart. Country people are very peculiar in this respect, and do not like to remind their friends of obligations. Two years went by, and still no return, though the parties were in constant intercourse. I have known people borrow a hundred pounds in the country, and debtor and creditor meet several times a week for years, and nothing said about it on either side. No strained relations were caused—it seemed quite forgotten till executors came. Three years went by, still no dogcart, though it was seen daily on the roads in use. I was driving with a man once when we met a woman walking, and as we passed she put up her umbrella so as not to be able to see us. 'That's So-and-so,' said he; 'they borrowed some money from me a long time ago; they have never said anything about it. Whenever she meets me she always puts up her umbrella so as not to see me.' Four years went by, and still no dogcart. By this time it was looking shabby and getting shaken by rough usage; perhaps they did not like to return it in such a condition. Five years went by, and after that they seem to have lost all count of the dogcart, which faded away like a phantom. One farmer had been telling another something which his companion seemed to consider doubtful, and disputed; however, he finished up by saying, 'That's no lie, I can assure you.' 'Well, no; but I should certainly have taken it as such.' One fellow happening by chance in the hunting-field to come across the Prince of Wales, took off his hat withbothhands to express his deep humility. Here is a cottage nursery rhyme, genuinely silly:—
Right round my gardenThere I found a farden,Gave it to my motherTo buy a little brother,Brother was so crossSat him on a horse,Horse was so randyGave him some brandy,Brandy was so strongPut him in the pond,Pond was so deepPut him in the cradle androcked him off to sleep.
It is curious that there seems to be a distinct race of flat heads among the cottagers; the children look as if the front part of the head had been sat upon and compressed. Straw hats, the common sort, seem to be made to fit these shallow crowns. In some parts they cook dates; others cook oranges, making them into dumplings and also stewing them. These are favourite sweets. To go out singing from door to door at Christmas is called wassailing—a relic of the ancient time when wassail was a common word. When I was a boy, among other out-of-the-way pursuits, I took an interest in astrology. The principal work on astrology, from which all the others have been more or less derived, is Ptolemy's 'Tetrabiblos,' and there, pointing out the mysterious influence of one thing upon another, it mentions that the virtues of the magnet may be destroyed by rubbing it with garlic. This curious statement has been thrown against Ptolemy and held to invalidate his theories, because upon experiment garlic is not found to affect the magnet. Possibly, however, the plant Ptolemy meant may not have been the plant we now call garlic, for there is nothing so uncertain as the names of plants. There is a great confusion, and it is difficult to identify with certainty apparently well-known herbs with those used by the ancients. Possibly, too, the experiment was performed in a different manner. It happened one day, many years after reading this, I chanced to be talking to a village clockmaker about watches. We were discussing what a difficulty it was sometimes to get a watch to go right. I said I had heard that watches sometimes got magnetised, and went on in the most erratic manner until the magnetism was counteracted. Ah yes, he said, he recollected a case in the shop where he learnt his trade; they had a watch brought to them which had got magnetised, and he believed the influence was at last removed by the use of onions. Instantly memory ran back to Ptolemy's garlic; perhaps after all there was something in his statement; at all events, it is very curious that the subject should come up again in this unexpected way, in the darkness, as it were, of a village where the very name of the great mathematician was unknown. The clockmaker fumbled with an anecdote, and tried to tell me of another sort of magnetism which had got into a watch. The watch would not keep time, nothing would make it; till by-and-by it occurred to him to suggest to the owner to wind it up at breakfast-time instead of at night. For he fancied the owner became a little magnetised himself at night over the genial bowl, and so was irregular in winding his watch.
The robin, 'jolly Robin!' is an unlucky bird in some places. When the horse-chestnut leaves turn scarlet the redbreast sings in a peculiarly plaintive way, as if in tone with the dropping leaves and the chill air that follows the early morning frost. You may tell how much moisture there is in the air in a given place by the colours of the autumn leaves; the horse-chestnut, scarlet near a stream, is merely yellowish in drier soils. Cock robin sings the louder for the silence of other birds, and if he comes to the farmstead and pipes away day by day on a bare cherry tree or any bough that is near the door, after his custom, the farmer thinks it an evil omen. For a robin to sing persistently near the house winter or summer is a sign that something is about to go wrong. Yet the farmer will not shoot him. The roughest poaching fellows who would torture a dog will not kill a robin; it is bad luck to have anything to do with it. Most people like to see fir boughs and holly brought into the house to brighten the dark days with their green, but the cottage children tell you that they must not bring a green fir branch indoors, because as it withers their parents will be taken ill and fade away. Indeed the labouring people seem in all their ways and speech to be different, survivals perhaps of a time when their words and superstitions were the ways of a ruder England. The lanes and the gateways in the fields, as they say, are 'slubby' enough in November, and those who try to go through get 'slubbed' up to their knees. This expresses a soft, plastic, and adhesive condition of the mud which comes on after it has been 'raining hop-poles' for a week. The labourer has little else to do but to chop up disused hop-poles into long fagots with a hand-bill—in other counties a bill-hook. All his class bitterly resent the lowering of wages which takes place in winter; it is a shame, they say, and they evidently think that the farmers ought to be forced to pay them more—they are starvation wages. On the other hand, the farmer, racked in every direction, and unable to sell his produce, finds the labour bill the most difficult to meet, because it comes with unfailing regularity every Saturday. A middle-aged couple of cottagers left their home, and the wife told us how they had walked and walked day after day, but the farmers said they were too poor to give them a job. So at last the man, as they went grumbling on the highway, lost his temper, and hit her a 'clod' in the head, 'and I never spoke to him for anhourafterwards; no, that I didn't; not for an hour.' A clod is a heavy, lumping blow. Their home was 'broad' of Hurst—that is, in the Hurst district, but at some little distance.
'There a' sets' is a constant expression for there it lies. A dish on the table, a cat on the hearth, a plough in the field, 'there a' sets,' there it is. 'No bounds' is another. It may rain all day long, 'there's no bounds;' that is, no knowing. 'I may go to fair, no bounds,' it is uncertain, I have not made up my mind. A folk so vague in their ideas are very fond of this 'no bounds;' it is like the 'Quien sabe?' of the Mexicans, who knows? and accompanies every remark. An avaricious person is very 'having;' wants to have everything. What are usually called dog-irons on the hearth are called brand-irons, having to support the brand or burning log. Where every one keeps fowls the servant girls are commonly asked if they can cram a chicken, if they understand how to fatten it by filling its crop artificially. 'Sure,' pronounced with great emphasis on the 'su,' like the 'shure' of the Irish, comes out at every sentence. 'I shan't do it all, sure;' and if any one is giving a narration, the polite listener has to throw in a deep 'sure' of assent at every pause. 'Cluttered up' means in a litter, surrounded with too many things to do at once. Of a little girl they said she was pretty, but she had 'bolted' eyes; a portrait was a good one, but 'his eyes bolt so, meaning thereby full, staring eyes, that seem to start out of the head. A drunken man, says the poor wife, is not worth a hatful of crab apples. The boys go hoop-driving, never bowling. If in any difficulty they say, 'I hope to match it out to the end of the week,' to make the provisions last, or fit the work in. Most difficult of all to express is the way they say yes and no. It is neither yes nor no, nor yea nor nay, but a cross between it somehow. To say yes they shut their lips and then open them as if gasping for breath and emit a sort of 'yath' without the 'th,' more like 'yeah,' and better still if to get the closing of the lips you say 'em' first—'em-yeah.' The no is 'nah' with a sort of jerk on the h; 'na-h,' This yeah and nah is most irritating to fresh ears; you do not seem to know if your servant has taken any notice of what you said, or is making a mouth at you in derision.
The farmers are always complaining that the men crawl through their work and put no energy into anything, just as if they were afraid to use their hands. More particularly, if there is any little extra thing to be done, they could not possibly do it. A wheat rick was threshed one day, and when it was finished in the afternoon there were the sacks in a great heap about twenty or thirty yards from the barn. So soon as the rick was finished, the men asked for their money as usual, when the farmer said he wanted them to carry the sacks into the barn before they left. Oh no, they couldn't do that. 'Well, then,' said he, 'I can't pay you till you have done it.' No, they couldn't do it, couldn't be expected to carry sacks of wheat across the rickyard and into the barn like that, it was too much for any man to do; why couldn't he send for the cart? The farmer replied that the cart was two miles away, engaged in other labour; the night was coming on, and if it rained in the night the wheat would be damaged. No, they couldn't do it. The farmer would not pay them, and so the dispute continued for a long time. At length the farmer said, 'Well, if you won't do it, perhaps you will at least help me as far as this: will you lift up a sack and place it on another high enough for me to get it on my back, and I will myself carry them to the barn?' So small a favour they could not refuse, and having raised up a sack for him in this manner, he took it on his back and made off with it to the barn. He was anything but a strong man—far less able to carry a sack of wheat than the labourers—but determined not to be beaten. He carried one sack, then another and another, till he had got eight safely housed, when on coming back for the ninth he met a labourer with a sack on his back, shamed into giving assistance. After him a second man took a sack, and one by one they all followed, till in about half an hour all the wheat was in the barn. This is the spirit in which they work if the least little difficulty occurs, or they are asked to do anything that varies from what they did yesterday or the day before, they cannot possibly accomplish it.
Since, however, the farmers have been unable to sell their produce and winter wages have gone down, and work is scarce, the position of the labourer is a very dull one, and it is feared the present winter will be a hard time for many homes. Numbers talk of emigrating, and some have taken the first step, and will sell their furniture and leave a land where neither farmer nor labourer has any hope. One middle-aged cottage woman, married, kept harping upon the holiday they should have during the voyage to America. That seemed to her the great beauty of emigration, the great temptation. For ten days, while the voyage lasted, she would have nothing to do, but could rest! She had never had such a holiday in all her life. How hard must be the life which makes such a trifling circumstance as a week's rest appear so heavenly!
Passing by the kitchen door, I heard Louisa, the maid, chanting to a child on her knee:
Feyther stole th' Paason's sheep;A merry Christmas we shall keep;We shall have both mutton and beef—But we won't say nothing about it.
To rightly understand this rhyme you must sing it with long-drawn emphasis on each word, lengthening it into at least two syllables; the first a sort of hexameter, the second a pentameter of sound:
Fey-ther sto-ole th' Paa-son's sheep.
The last line is to come off more trippingly, like an 'aside.' This old sing-song had doubtless been handed down from the times when the labourers really did steal sheep, a crime happily extinct with cheap bread. Louisa was one of the rare old sort—hard-working, and always ready; never complaining, but satisfied with any food there chanced to be; sensible and sturdy; a woman who could be thoroughly depended on. Her boxes were full of good dresses, of a solid, unassuming kind, such as would wear well—a perfect wardrobe. Her purse was always well supplied with money; she had money saved up, and she sent money to her parents: yet her wages, until late years, had been small. In doing her duty to others she did good to herself. A duchess would have been glad to have her in her household. She had been in farmhouse service from girlhood, and had doubtless learned much from good housewives; farmers' wives are the best of all teachers: and the girls, for their own sakes, had much better be under them than wasting so much time learning useless knowledge at compulsory schools.
Freckles said, when he came in,He never would enter a tawny skin,
was another of her rhymes. Freckles come in with summer, but never appear on a dark skin, so that the freckled should rejoice in these signs of fairness.
Your father, the elderberry,Was not such a gooseberryAs to send in his bilberryBefore it was dewberry.
Some children are liable to an unpleasant complaint at night; for this there is a certain remedy. A mouse is baked in the oven to a 'scrump,' then pounded to powder, and this powder administered. Many ladies still have faith in this curious medicine; it reminds one of the powdered mummy, once the great cure of human ills. Country places have not always got romantic names—Wapse's Farm, for instance, and Hog's Pudding Farm. Wapse is the provincial for wasp.
Country girls are not all so shrewd as Louisa: we heard of two—this was some time since—who, being in service in London, paid ten shillings each to Madame Rachel for a bath to be made beautiful for ever. Half a sovereign out of their few coins! On the other hand, town servants are well dressed and have plenty of finery, but seldom have any reserve of good clothing, such as Louisa possessed. All who know the country regret the change that has been gradually coming over the servants and the class from which they are supplied. 'Gawd help the pore missis as gets hold ofyou!' exclaimed a cottage woman to her daughter, whose goings on had not been as they should be: 'God help the poor mistress who has to put up with you!' A remark that would be most emphatically echoed by many a farmer's wife and country resident. 'Doan't you stop if her hollers at 'ee,' said another cottage mother to her girl, just departing for service—that is, don't stop if you don't like it; don't stop if your mistress finds the least fault. 'Come along home if you don't like it.' Home to what? In this instance it was a most wretched hovel, literally built in a ditch; no convenience, no sanitation; and the father a drunkard, who scarcely brought enough money indoors to supply bread.
You would imagine that a mother in such a position would impress upon her children the necessity of endeavouring to do something. For the sake of that spirit of independence in which they seem to take so much pride, one would suppose they would desire to see their children able to support themselves. But it is just the reverse; the poorer folk are, the less they seem to care to try to do something. 'You come home if you don't like it;' and stay about the hovel in slatternly idleness, tails bedraggled and torn, thin boots out at the toes and down at the heels, half starved on potatoes and weak tea—stay till you fall into disgrace, and lose the only thing you possess in the world—your birthright, your character. Strange advice it was for a mother to give.
Nor is the feeling confined to the slatternly section, but often exhibited by very respectable cottagers indeed.
'My mother never would go out to service—shewouldn'tgo,' said a servant to her mistress, one day talking confidentially.
'Then what did she do?' asked the mistress, knowing they were very poor people.
'Oh, she stopped at home.'
'But how did she live?'
'Oh, her father had to keep her. If she wouldn't go out, of course he had to somehow.'
This mother would not let her daughter go to one place because there was a draw-well on the premises; and her father objected to her going to another because the way to the house lay down a long and lonely lane. The girl herself, however, had sense enough to keep in a situation; but it was distinctly against the feeling at her home; yet they were almost the poorest family in the place. They were very respectable, and thought well of in every way, belonging to the best class of cottagers.
Unprofitable sentiments! injurious sentiments—self-destroying; but I always maintain that sentiment is stronger than fact, and even than self-interest. I see clearly how foolish these feelings are, and how they operate to the disadvantage of those whom they influence. Yet I confess that were I in the same position I should be just as foolish. If I lived in a cottage of three rooms, and earned my bread by dint of arm and hand under the sun of summer and the frost of winter; if I lived on hard fare, and, most powerful of all, if I had no hope for the future, no improvement to look forward to, I should feel just the same. I would rather my children shared my crust than fed on roast beef in a stranger's hall. Perhaps the sentiment in my case might have a different origin, but in effect it would be similar. I should prefer to see my family about me—the one only pleasure I should have—the poorer and the more unhappy, the less I should care to part with them. This may be foolish, but I expect it is human nature.
English folk don't 'cotton' to their poverty at all; they don't cat humble-pie with a relish; they resent being poor and despised. Foreign folk seem to take to it quite naturally; an Englishman, somehow or other, always feels that he is wronged. He is injured; he has not got his rights. To me it seems the most curious thing possible that well-to-do people should expect the poor to be delighted with their condition. I hope they never will be; an evil day that—if it ever came—for the Anglo-Saxon race.
One girl prided herself very much upon belonging to a sort of club or insurance-if she died, her mother would receive ten pounds. Ten pounds, ten golden sovereigns was to her such a magnificent sum, that she really appeared to wish herself dead, in order that it might be received. She harped and talked and brooded on it constantly. If she caught cold it didn't matter, she would say, her mother would have ten pounds. It seemed a curious reversal of ideas, but it is a fact that poor folk in course of time come to think less of death than money. Another girl was describing to her mistress how she met the carter's ghost in the rickyard; the waggon-wheel went over him; but he continued to haunt the old scene, and they met him as commonly as the sparrows.
'Did you ever speak to him?'
'Oh no. You mustn't speak to them; if you speak to them they'll fly at you.'
In winter the men were allowed to grub up the roots of timber that had been thrown, and take the wood home for their own use; this kept them in fuel the winter through without buying any. 'But they don't getpaidfor that work.' She considered it quite a hardship that they were not paid for taking a present. Cottage people do look at things in such a curious crooked light! A mother grumbled because the vicar had not been to see her child, who was ill. Now, she was not a church-goer, and cared nothing for the Church or its doctrines—that was not it; she grumbled so terribly because 'it was his place to come.'
A lady went to live in a village for health's sake, and having heard so much of the poverty of the farmer's man, and how badly his family were off, thought that she should find plenty who would be glad to pick up extra shillings by doing little things for her. First she wanted a stout boy to help to draw her Bath chair, while the footman pushed behind, it being a hilly country. Instead of having to choose between half a dozen applicants, as she expected, the difficulty was to discover anybody who would even take such a job into consideration. The lads did not care about it; their fathers did not care about it; and their mothers did not want them to do it. At one cottage there were three lads at home doing nothing; but the mother thought they were too delicate for such work. In the end a boy was found, but not for some time. Nobody was eager for any extra shilling to be earned in that way. The next thing was somebody to fetch a yoke or two of spring water daily. This man did not care for it, and the other did not care for it; and even one who had a small piece of ground, and kept a donkey and water-butt on wheels for the very purpose, shook his head. He always fetched water for folk in the summer when it was dry, never fetched none at that time of year—he could not do it. After a time a small shopkeeper managed the yoke of water from the spring for her—hisboy could carry it; the labourer's could not. He was comparatively well-to-do, yet he was not above an extra shilling.
This is one of the most curious traits in the character of cottage folk—they do not care for small sums; they do not care to pick up sixpences. They seem to beafraid of obliging people—as if to do so, even to their own advantage, would be against their personal honour and dignity. In London the least trifle is snapped up immediately, and there is a great crush and press for permission to earn a penny, and that not in very dignified ways. In the country it is quite different. Large fortunes have been made out of matches; now your true country cottager would despise such a miserable fraction of a penny as is represented by a match. I heard a little girl singing—
Little drops of water, little grains of sand.
It is these that make oceans and mountains; it is pennies that make millionaires. But this the countryman cannot see. Not him alone either; the dislike to little profits is a national characteristic, well marked in the farmer, and indeed in all classes. I, too, must be humble, and acknowledge that I have frequently detected the same folly in myself, so let it not be supposed for an instant that I set up as a censor; I do but delineate. Work for the cottager must be work to please him; and to please him it must be the regular sort to which he is accustomed, which he did beside his father as a boy, which
his
father did, and
his
father before him; the same old plough or grub-axe, the same milking, the same identical mowing, if possible in the same field. He does not care for any new-fangled jobs: he does not recognise them, they have no
locus standi
—they are not established. Yet he is most anxious for work, and works well, and is indeed the best labourer in the world. But it is the national character. To understand a nation you must go to the cottager.
The well-to-do are educated, they have travelled, if not in their ideas, they are more or less cosmopolitan. In the cottager the character stands out in the coarsest relief; in the cottager you get to 'bed-rock,' as the Americans say; there's the foundation. Character runs upwards, not downwards. It is not the nature of the aristocrat that permeates the cottager, but the nature of the cottager that permeates the aristocrat. The best of us are polished cottagers. Scratch deep enough, and you come to that; so that to know a people, go to the cottage, and not to the mansion. The labouring man cannot quickly alter his ways. Can the manufacturer? All alike try to go in the same old groove, till disaster visits their persistence. It is English human nature.
The old woman tried to let the cuckoo out of the basket at Heathfield fair as usual on the 14th; but there seems to have been a hitch with the lid, for he was not heard immediately about the country. Just before that two little boys were getting over a gate from a hop-garden, with handfuls of Lent lilies—a beautiful colour under the dark sky. They grow wild round the margin of the hop garden, showing against the bare dark loam; gloomy cloud over and gloomy earth under. 'Sell me a bunch?' 'No, no, can't do that; we wants these yer for granmer.' 'Well, get me a bunch presently, and I will give you twopence for it.' 'I dunno. We sends the bunches we finds up to Aunt Polly in Lunnon, and they sends us back sixpence for every bunch.' So the wild flowers go to Lunnon from all parts of the country, bushels and bushels of them. Nearly two hundred miles away in Somerset a friend writes that he has been obliged to put up notice-boards to stay the people from tearing up his violets and primroses, not only gathering them but making the flowery banks waste; and notice-boards have proved no safeguard. The worst is that the roots are taken, so that years will be required to repair the loss. Birds are uncertain husbandmen, and sow seeds as fancy leads their wings. Do the violets get sown by ants? Sir John Lubbock says they carry violet seeds into their nests.
The lads, who still pelt the frogs in the ponds, just as they always did, in spite of so much schooling, call them chollies. Pheasants are often called peacocks. Bush-harrows, which are at work in the meadows at this time of year, are drudges or dredges. One sunny morning I noticed the broken handle of a jug on the bank of the road by the garden. What interested me was the fine shining glaze of this common piece of red earthenware. And how had the potter made that peculiar marking under the surface of the glaze? I touched it with my stick, when the pot-handle drew itself out of loop shape and slowly disappeared under some dead furze, showing the blunt tail of a blindworm. I have heard people say that the red ones are venomous, but the grey harmless. The red are spiteful, and if you see them in the road you should always kill them. It is curious that in places where blindworms are often seen their innocuous nature should not be generally known. They are even called adders sometimes. At the farm below, the rooks have been down and destroyed the tender chickens not long hatched; they do not eat the whole of the chicken, but disembowel it for food. Rooks are very wide feeders, especially at nesting-time. They are suspected of being partial to the young of partridge and pheasant, as well as to the eggs.
Looking down upon the treetops of the forest from a height, there seemed to come from day to day a hoariness in the boughs, a greyish hue, distinct from the blackness of winter. This thickened till the eye could not see into the wood; until then the trunks had been visible, but they were now shut out. The buds were coming; and presently the surface of the treetops took a dark reddish-brown tint. The larches lifted their branches, which had drooped, curving upwards as a man raises his arms above his shoulders, and the slender boughs became set with green buds. At a distance the corn is easily distinguished from the meadows beside it by the different shade of green; grass is a deep green, corn appears paler and yet brighter—perhaps the long winter has given it the least touch of yellow. Daisies are up at last—very late indeed. Big humble-bees, grey striped, enter the garden and drone round the banks, searching everywhere for a fit hole in which to begin the nest. It is pleasant to hear them; after the dreary silence the old familiar burr-rr is very welcome. Spotted orchis leaves are up, and the palm-willow bears its yellow pollen. Happily, the wild anemones will not bear the journey to London, they wither too soon; else they would probably be torn up like the violets. Neither is there any demand for the white barren strawberry blossom, or the purplish ground-ivy among the finely marked fern moss.
The rain falls; and in the copses of the valley, deep and moist, where grey lichen droops from the boughs, the thrushes sing all day—so delighted are they to have the earth soft again, and so busy with the nesting. At four o'clock in the morning the larks begin to sing: they will be half an hour earlier next month, adjusting their time nicely by the rising of the sun. They sing on till after the lamps are lit in the evening. Far back in the snow-time a pair of wagtails used to come several times a day close to the windows, their black markings showing up singularly well against the snow on the ground. They seemed to have just arrived. But now the weather is open and food plentiful they have left us. The wagtails appear to be the first of the migrant birds to return, long before the hail of April rattles against the windows and leaps up in the short grass. Out in the hop-gardens the poles are placed ready for setting, in conical heaps—at a distance resembling the tents of an army. Never were the labouring men so glad to see the spring, for never have so many of them been out of work or for longer periods. Yet, curiously enough, even if out of work and suffering, every sort of job will not suit them. One applicant for work was offered hop-pole shaving at 3s. a hundred—said to be a fair price; but the work did not please him, and he would not do it. On the other hand, a girl sent out 'to service' turned her back on domestic duties, ran away from her mistress, and joined her father and brother in the woods where they were shaving hop-poles. There she worked with them all the winter—the roughest of rough winters—preferring the wild freedom of the snow-clad woods, with hard food, to the indoor employment. No mistress there in the snow: one woman does not like another over her. A man stood idling at the cross-roads in the village for weeks, hands in pockets, waiting for work. Some one took pity on him, and said he could come and dig up an acre of grassland to make a market garden; 15s. a week was the offer, with spade found, and not long hours. 'Thank you, sir; I'll go and look at it,' said the labourer. He went; and presently returned to say that he did not care about it. In some way or other it did not fall in with his notions of what work for him ought to be. I do not believe he was a bad sort of fellow at all; but still there it is. No one can explain these things. A distinct line, as it were, separates the cottager, his ways and thoughts, from others. In a cottage with which I am acquainted an infant recently died. The body was kept in the parents' bedroom close to their bed, day and night, until burial. This is the custom. The cottage wife thinks that not to have the body of her child by her bed would be most unfeeling—most cruel to lay it by itself in a cold room away from her.
A black humble-bee came to the white hyacinths in the garden on the sunny April morning when the yellow tulip opened, and as she alighted on the flower there hovered a few inches in the rear an eager attendant, not quite so large, more grey, and hovering with the shrillest vibration close at hand. The black bee went round the other side of a bunch of hyacinths, and was hidden in the bell of a purple one. At thus temporarily losing sight of her, the follower, one might say, flew into a state of extreme excitement, and spun round and round in the air till he caught sight of her again and resumed his steady hovering. Then she went to the next bunch of hyacinths; he followed her, when, with a furious, shrill cry of swiftly beating wings, a second lover darted down, and then the two followed the lady in black velvet—buzz, buzz, buzz, pointing like hounds stationary in the air—buzz, buzz—while she without a moment's thought of them worked at the honey. By-and-by one rushed at her—a too eager caress, for she lost her balance and fell out of the flower on to the ground. Up she got and pursued him for a few angry circles, and then settled to work again. Presently the rivals darted at each other and whirled about, and in the midst of the battle off went the lady in velvet to another part of the garden, and the combatants immediately rushed after her. Every morning that the tulip opened its great yellow bell, these black humble-bees came, almost always followed by one lover, sometimes, as on the first occasion, by two. A bright row of polyanthus and oxlips seemed to be the haunt of the male bees. There they waited, some on the leaves and some on the dry clods heated by the sun, in ambush till a dark lady should come. The yellow tulip was a perfect weather-meter; if there was the least bit of harshness in the air, the least relic of the east wind, it remained folded. Sunshine alone was not sufficient to tempt it, but the instant there was any softness in the atmosphere open came the bell, and as if by a magic key all the bees and humble-bees of the place were unlocked, and forth they came with joyous note—not to visit the tulip, which is said to be a fatal cup of poison to them.
Any one delicate would do well to have a few such flowers in spring under observation, and to go out of doors or stop in according to their indications. I think there were four species of wild bee at these early flowers, including the great bombus and the small prosopis with orange-yellow head. It is difficult to scientifically identify small insects hastily flitting without capturing them, which I object to doing, for I dislike to interfere with their harmless liberty. They have all been named and classified, and I consider it a great cruelty to destroy them again without special purpose. The pleasure is to see them alive and busy with their works, and not to keep them in a cabinet. These wild bees, particularly the smaller ones, greatly resented my watching them, just the same as birds do. If I walked by they took no heed; if I stopped or stooped to get a better view they were off instantly. Without doubt they see you, and have some idea of the meaning of your various motions. The wild bees are a constant source of interest, much more so than the hive bee, which is so extremely regular in its ways. With an explosion almost like a little bomb shot out of a flower; with an immense hum, almost startling, boom! the great bombus hurls himself up in the air from under foot; well named—boom—bombus. Is it correct or is it only a generalisation, that insects like ants and hive bees, who live in great and well-organised societies, are more free from the attacks of parasites than the comparatively solitary wild bees? Ants are, indeed, troubled with some parasites, but these do not seem to multiply very greatly, and do not seriously injure the populousness of the nest. They have enemies which seize them, but an enemy is not a parasite. On the other hand, too, they have mastered a variety of insects, and use them for their delectation and profit. Hive bees are likewise fairly free from parasites, unless, indeed, their so-called dysentery is caused by some minute microbe. These epidemics, however, are rare. Take it altogether, the hive bee appears comparatively free of parasites. Enemies they have, but that is another matter.
Have these highly civilised insects arrived in some manner at a solution of the parasite problem? Have they begun where human civilisation may be said to have ended, with a diligent study of parasitic life? All our scientific men are now earnestly engaged in the study of bacteria, microbes, mycelium, and yeast, infinitesimally minute fungi of every description, while meantime the bacillus is eating away the lives of a heavy percentage of our population. Ants live in communities which might be likened to a hundred Londons dotted about England, so are their nests in a meadow, or, still more striking, on a heath. Their immense crowds, the population of China to an acre, do not breed disease. Every ant out of that enormous multitude may calculate on a certain average duration of life, setting aside risks from battle, birds, and such enemies. Microbes are unlikely to destroy her. Now this is a very extraordinary circumstance. In some manner the ants have found out a way of accommodating themselves to the facts of their existence; they have fitted themselves in with nature and reached a species of millennium. Are they then more intelligent than man? We have certainly not succeeded in doing this yet; they are very far ahead of us. Are their eyes, divided into a thousand facets, a thousand times more powerful than our most powerful microscopes, and can they see spores, germs, microbes, or bacilli where our strongest lenses find nothing? I have some doubts as to whether ants are really shut out of many flowers by hairs pointing downwards in a fringe and similar contrivances. The ant has a singularly powerful pair of mandibles: put one between your shirt and skin and try; the nip you will get will astonish you. With these they can shear off the legs or even the head of another ant in battle. I cannot see, therefore, why, if they wished, they could not nip off this fringe of hairs, or even sever the stem of the plant. Evidently they do not wish, and possibly they have reasons for avoiding some plants and flowers, which besides honey may contain spores—just as they certainly contain certain larvæ which attach themselves to the bodies of bees.
Possibly we may yet use the ants or some other clever insects to find out the origin of the fatal parasite which devours the consumptive. Some reason exists for imagining that this parasite has something to do with the flora, for phthisis ceases at a certain altitude, and it is very well known that the floras have a marked line of demarcation. Up to a certain height certain flowers will grow, but not beyond, just as if you had run a separating ditch round the mountain. With the flora the insects cease; whether the germ comes from the vegetation or from the insect that frequents the vegetation does not seem known. Still it would be worth while to make a careful examination of the plant and insect life just at the verge of the line of division. The bacillus may spring from a spore starting from a plant or starting from an insect. Most of England had an Alpine climate probably once, and some Alpine plants and animals have been stranded on the tops of our highest hills and remain there to this day. In those icy times English lungs were probably free of disease. Has formic acid ever been used for experiments on bacilli? It is the ant acid; they are full of it, and it is extracted and used for some purposes abroad. Perhaps its strong odour is repellent to parasites. To return: while the honey-bees live in comparative safety, the more or less solitary wild bees have a great struggle to repel various creatures that would eat them or their young, and, be as watchful as they may, all their efforts at nest-building are often rendered nugatory by the success of a parasite. So it is not worth while to catch them just for the purpose of identification, for they have enough enemies in the field without man and his heartless cabinets. The collector is the most terrible parasite of all. Let them go on with a happy hum, while the tulip opens in the sunshine.
The Emperor moth came out on the 2nd of April, and suddenly filled the cardboard box like the noonday phantom in the sunshine, so unexpected and wonderful. His wings, which as he rests are spread open, stretched from one side of the box to the other, hovering over his old home, a beautiful grey tipped with pink, and peacock-eyed, ring within ring. He clung to the piece of heather upon which the caterpillar was found seven months before, and which he had fixed in the threads of his cocoon. The immense dark green caterpillar banded with black and spotted with gold was found on the 29th of August among the heather on the hill-side; the sun burning, the air all alight with the fire of the beams, a day of flame—as if the keen tips of the pine needles would take fire in the glow. The caterpillar in its colour and size seemed almost tropical; those who have not seen it would scarcely believe that a caterpillar could be so magnificent; but indoors in the cardboard box he lost his sun-burnished colour and half his glory. Immediately afterwards he spun his cocoon, and there he stayed for seven long months, so that the moth thus suddenly appearing, without any cracking or opening of the cocoon, appeared to be created on the spot. At first, indeed, some thought it was a moth that had entered by the window, there being no rent or place of exit from the perfect case. Within, however, was the broken and blackened skin of the caterpillar and the detached thorax: the cocoon is like the baskets for taking fish at weirs, only the willows merely touch at the tip, and through these he had crept out, and they closed behind him.
The pale purple heather bloom still lies in the bottom of the box. Never again shall I see a day of such glory of light, of air burning with light; the very ferns in the shade were bright with the glow, despite their soft green. A sad hour it was to me, yet I could see all its beauty; sad, too, to think it will never return. So the Emperor moth came out on the 2nd of April, and the same day there was a yellow and a white butterfly in the garden. There had come a gleam of sunshine after two months of bitter north wind, and the insects took life immediately. Early in the morning the greenfinches were screaming at each other in the elm—they were in such a hurry to get out their song, they screamed; the chaffinches were challenging, and the starlings fluttering their wings at the high window, and all this excitement at one gleam of sun. A friend asked me what bird it was that always finished up its song with a loud call for 'ginger-beer'—whatever he sang he always said 'ginger-beer' at the end of it; it is the chaffinch, and a very good rendering of the notes. 'Quawk! Quoak!' the rooks as they went by were so contented enjoying the sunshine, they took out the harsh 'c' or 'k' and substituted the softer 'q'—'quawk! quowk!' Another perched on a tree made a short speech, perhaps he thought it was a song. Sea-gulls have curiously rook-like habits in some respects, following the plough like them, and in spring wheeling for hours round and round in the sky as the rooks do.
The blackbirds and thrushes that had been singing freely previously suddenly ceased singing about December 15, and remained silent for a month, and as suddenly began singing again about January 15. Where they all came from I cannot think, there seemed such an increase in their numbers; one wet morning in a small meadow there were forty-five feeding in sight that could be easily counted. They say the thrushes dig up and eat the roots of the arum, yet they are not root-eaters. Possibly it may have a medicinal effect; the whole plant has very strong properties, and is still much gathered, I suppose for the herbalists. The root is set rather deep, quite a dig with a pocket knife sometimes; one would fancy it was only those which had become accidentally exposed that are eaten by the thrushes. I have never seen them do it, and some further testimony would be acceptable. The old naturalists said the bear on awakening from its winter sleep dug up and ate the roots of the arum in order to open the tube of the intestine which had flattened together during hibernation. The blackbirds are the thrushes' masters, and drive them from any morsel they fancy. There is very little humanity among them: one poor thrush had lost the joint of its leg, and in order to pick up anything had to support itself with one wing like a crutch. This bird was hunted from every spot he chose to alight on; no sooner did he enter the garden than one of the stronger birds flew at him—'so misery is trodden on by many.' There was a drone-fly on a sunny wall on January 20, the commonest of flies in summer, quite a wonder then; the same day a house-sparrow was trying to sing, for they have a song as well as a chirp; on January 22 a tit was sharpening his saw and the gnats were jumping up and down in crowds—this up-and-down motion seems peculiar to them and may-flies. Then the snowdrops flowered and a hive-bee came to them; next the yellow crocus; bees came to these, too, and so eager were they that one bee would visit the same flower five or six times before finally going away. Bees are very eager for water in the early year; you may see them in crowds on the wet mud in ditches; there was a wild bee drowning in a basin of water the other day till I took him out.
Before the end of January the woodbine leaf was out, always the first to come, and never learning that it is too soon; whether the woodbine came over with 'Richard Conqueror' or the Romans, it still imagines itself ten degrees further south, so that some time seems necessary to teach a plant the alphabet. Immediately afterwards down came a north wind and put nature under its thumb for two months; the drone-fly hid himself, the bees went home, everything became shrivelled, dry, inhuman. The local direction of the wind might vary, but it was still the same polar draught, the blood-sucker; for, like a vampire, it sucks the very blood and moisture out of delicate human life, just as it dries up the sap in the branch. While this lasted there were no notes to make, the changes were slower than the hour hand of a clock; still it was interesting to see the tree-climber come every morning at eleven o'clock to the cobble-stone wall and ascend it exactly as he ascends trees, peering into chinks among the moss and the pennywort. He seemed almost as fond of these walls as of his tree trunks. He came regularly at eleven and again at three in the afternoon, and a barn owl went by with a screech every evening a little after eight. The starlings told the time of the year as accurately as the best chronometer at Whitehall. When I saw the last chimney swallow, November 30, they went by to their sleeping-trees about three o'clock in the afternoon—a long night, a short day for them. So they continued till in January the day had grown thirty minutes longer, when they went to roost so much the later; in February, four o'clock; in March, by degrees their time for passing by the windowen routedrew on to five o'clock. Let the cold be never so great or the sky so clouded, the mysterious influence of the light, as the sun slowly rises higher on the meridian, sinks into the earth like a magic rain. It enters the hardest bark and the rolled-up bud, so firm that its point will prick the finger like a thorn; it stirs beneath the surface of the ground. A magnetism that is not heat, and for which there is no exact name, works out of sight in answer to the sun. Seen or unseen, clouded or not, every day the sun lifts itself an inch higher, and let the north wind shrivel as it may, this invisible potency compels the bud to swell and the flower to be ready in its calyx. Progress goes on in spite of every discouragement. The birch trees reddened all along their slender boughs, and when the sunlight struck aslant, the shining bark shone like gossamer threads wet with dew.
The wood-pigeon in the fir trees could not be silent any longer. Whoo—too—whoo—ooe! then up he flew with a clatter of his wings and down again into the trees. 'Take two cows, Taffy,' he could not be silent any longer—whoo—too—whoo—ooe! The blackthorn bloom began to faintly show the tiniest white studs, and the boys in great triumph brought in the first blue thrush's eggs. Nature would go on though under the thumb of the north wind. Poor folk came out of the towns to gather ivy leaves for sale in the streets to make button-holes. Many people think the ivy leaf has a pleasant shape; it was used of old time among the Greeks and Romans to decorate the person at joyous festivals. The ivy is frequently mentioned in the classic poets. Not so with the countrywomen in the villages to-day, ground down in constant dread of that hateful workhouse system of which I can find no words to express my detestation. They tell their daughters never to put ivy leaves in their hair or brooch, because 'they puts it on the dead paupers in the unions and the lunatics in the 'sylums.' Such an association took away all the beauty of the ivy leaf. There is nature in their hearts, you see, although they are under the polar draught of poverty. At last there came a little warmth and the Emperor moth appeared, yellow and white butterflies came out, flowers bloomed, buds opened—ripened by the mystic magnetism of the sun in their sheaths and cocoons—great humble-bees came with a full-blown buzz, all before the swallow, the nightingale, and cuckoo. It was but for a day, and then down fell the bitter polar draught again.
In a sheltered spot the cuckoo was first heard on April 29, but only for one day; then, as the wind took up its accustomed northerly drift again, he was silent. The first chimney swallows (four) appeared on April 25, and were quickly followed by a number. They might be said to be about three weeks behind time, and the cuckoo a fortnight. The chiffchaff uttered his clear yet rather sad notes on April 26. The same morning at five o'clock there had been a slight snow shower, but it was a sunny day. On May 1 a stitchwort was in flower, a plant that marks the period distinctly. A swift appeared on May 2; I should not consider this late. A whitethroat was catching insects in the garden on May 6. The cuckoo sang again on May 8; the same day a Red Admiral butterfly was seen, and the turtle-dove heard cooing. Next day, the 9th, the cave swallow appeared, and also the bank martin. With the cooing of the turtledove the spring migrants are generally complete; a warm summer bird, he is usually the last, and if the others had not been seen they are probably in the country somewhere. The chimney swallows had been absent five months all but five days (last seen November 30), so that reckoning the first and the last, they may be said to stay in England seven months—much longer than one would think without taking the dates. Up till April 20 the hedges seemed as bare as they were in January, a most dreary spectacle of barren branches, and the great elms gaunt against the sky. After that the hedges gradually filled with leaf, and were fully coloured when the turtle-dove began to sing, but still the elms were only just budding, and but faintly tinted with green.
Chaucer was right in singing of the 'floures' of May notwithstanding the northern winds and early frosts and December-like character of our Mays. That the cycle of weather was warmer in his time is probably true, but still even now, under all the drawbacks of a late and wintry season, his description is perfectly accurate. If any one had gone round the fields on old May-day, the 13th,hisMay-day, they might have found the deep blue bird's-eye veronica, anemones, star-like stitchworts, cowslips, buttercups, lesser celandine, daisies, white blackthorn, and gorse in bloom—in short, a list enough to make a page bright with colour, though the wind might be bitter. In the coldest and most exposed place I ever lived in, and with a spring as cold as this, the May garlands included orchids, and the meadows were perfectly golden with marsh-marigolds. For some reason or other the flowers seem to come as near as they can to their time, let the weather be as hard as it may. They are more regular than the migrant birds, and much more so than the trees. The elm, oak, and ash appear to wait a great deal on the sun and the atmosphere, and their boughs give much better indications of what the weather has really been than birds and flowers. The migrant birds try their hardest to keep time, and some of them arrive a week or more before they are noticed. Elm, oak, and ash are the surest indicators; the horse-chestnut is very apt to put forth its broad succulent leaves too soon; the sycamore, too, is an early tree in spite of everything. It has been said that of late years we have not had any settled, soft, warm weather till after midsummer. There has been a steady continual cold draught from the northward till the sun reached the solstice, so that the summers, in fact, have not commenced till the end of June. There is a good deal of general truth in this observation; certainly we seem to have lost our springs. I do not think I have heard it thunder this year up to the time of writing. The absence of electrical disturbance shows a peculiar state of atmosphere unfavourable to growth, so that the corn will not hide a partridge, and in some places hardly a sparrow. Where did the painters get their green leaves from this year in time for the galleries? Not from the trees, for they had none.
A flock of rooks was waddling about in a thinly grown field of corn which scarcely hid their feet, and a number of swallows, flying very low, scarcely higher than the rooks' breasts, wound in and out among them. The day was cloudy and cold, and probably the insects had settled on the ground. The rooks' feet stirred them up, and as they rose they were taken by the swallows. All over the field there were no other swallows, nor in the adjacent fields, only in that one spot where the rooks were feeding. On another occasion swallows flying low over a closely cropped grass field alighted on the sward to try and catch their prey. There seems a scarcity of some kinds of insect life, due doubtless to the wind. Out of a dozen butterfly chrysalids collected, six were worthless; they were stiff, and when opened were stuffed full of small white larvae, which had eaten away the coming butterfly in its shell. They were the offspring of a parasite insect, which thus provided for the sustenance of its young by eating up other young, after the cruel way of nature. Why does one robin carefully choose a thatched cave for its nest, out of reach except by a ladder, and safe from all beasts of prey, and another place its nest on a low grassy bank scarcely hidden by a plant of wild parsley, and easily taken by the smallest boy? At first it looks like a great difference in intelligence, but probably each bird acted as well as could be under the circumstances. Each robin has to fight for his locality, and he has to make the best of his territory; if he trespassed on another bird's premises he would be driven away. You must build your house where you happen to possess a plot of land. It is curious to see the male bird feeding the female, not only while on the nest, but when she comes away from it; the female perches on a branch and utters a little call, and the male brings her food. He was feeding her the other evening on the bare boughs of a fig tree some distance from the nest. The warmth of the sun, although we could not feel it, must have penetrated into the earth some time since, for a slowworm came forth on a mound for the first time on April 16. He coiled up on the eastern side every morning for some hours, but was never seen in the afternoon. His short, thick body and unfinished tail, more like a punch or the neck of a stumpy bottle, was turned in a loop, the head nearly touching the tail, like a pair of sugar-tongs. Coming out from the stitchwort and grasses, the spiders often ran over his shining dark brown surface, something the colour of glazed earthenware. A snake or an adder would have begun to move away the moment any one stopped to look at it; but the slowworm takes no notice, and hence it is often said to be blind. He seems to dislike any sharp noise, and is really fully aware of your presence. Close by the mound, which stands in a corner of the garden, there is a great bunch of blue comfrey, to which the bees and humble-bees come in such numbers as to seem to justify the idea that these insects prefer blue. Or perhaps the blue flowers secrete sweeter honey. Every kind of wild bee as yet flying visits this plant, tiny bees barely a quarter of an inch long, others as big as two filberts, some a deep amber, some striped like wasps. A little of Chaucer's May has come; now and then a short hour or two of sunshine between the finger and thumb of the north wind. Most pleasant it is to see the eave swallow dive down from the roof and rush over the scarcely green garden—a household sign of summer. In the lane if you gather them the young leaves of the sycamore have a fragrant scent like a flower, and low down ferns are unrolling. On the low wall sits a yellow-hammer, just brightly touched afresh with colour. Happy greenfinches go by, and it is curious to note how the instant they enter the hedge they are lost now under the leaves; so few days ago they would have been unconcealed. So near is it to summer that the first thrush begins to sing at three o'clock in the morning.
The leaves are starting here and there from green buds on the hedge, but within doors a warm fire is still necessary, when one day there is a slight sound in the room, so peculiar, and yet so long forgotten, that though we know what it is, we have to look at the object before we can name it. It is a house-fly, woke up from his winter sleep, on his way across to the window-pane, where he will buzz feebly for a little while in the sunshine, flourishing best like a hothouse plant under glass. By-and-by he takes a turn or two under the centrepiece, and finally settles on the ceiling. Then, one or two other little flies of a different species may be seen on the sash; and in a little while the spiders begin to work, and their round silky cocoons are discovered in warm corners of the woodwork. Spiders run about the floors and spin threads by the landing windows; where there are webs it is certain the prey is about, though not perhaps noticed. Next, some one finds a moth. Poor moth! he has to suffer for being found out.
As it grows dusk the bats flitter to and fro by the house; there are moths, then, abroad for them. Upon the cucumber frame in the sunshine perhaps there may be seen an ant or two, almost the first out of the nest; the frame is warm. There are flowers open, despite the cold wind and sunless sky; and as these are fertilised by insects, it follows that there must be more winged creatures about than we are conscious of. How strange it seems, on a bleak spring day, to see the beautiful pink blossom of the apricot or peach covering the grey wall with colour—snowflakes in the air at the time! Bright petals are so associated with bright sunshine that this seems backward and inexplicable, till it is remembered that the flower probably opens at the time nearest to that which in its own country brings forth the insects that frequent it. Now and again humble-bees go by with a burr; and it is curious to see the largest of them all, the big bombus, hanging to the little green gooseberry blossom. Hive-bees, too, are abroad with every stray gleam of sun; and perhaps now and then a drone-fly—last seen on the blossoms of the ivy in November. A yellow butterfly, a white one, afterwards a tortoiseshell—then a sudden pause, and no more butterflies for some time. The rain comes down, and the gay world is blotted out. The wind shifts to the south, and in a few days the first swallows are seen and welcomed, but, as the old proverb says, they do not make a summer. Nor do the long-drawn notes of the nightingale, nor even the jolly cuckoo, nor the tree pipit, no, nor even the soft coo of the turtle-dove and the smell of the May flower. It is too silent even now: there are the leading notes; but the undertone—the vibration of the organ—is but just beginning. It is the hum of insects and their ceaseless flitting that make the summer more than the birds or the sunshine. The coming of summer is commonly marked in the dates we note by the cuckoo and the swallow and the oak leaves; but till the butterfly and the bee—one with its colour, and one with its hum—fill out the fields, the picture is but an outline sketch. The insects are the details that make the groundwork of a summer day. Till the humble-bees are working at the clover it is too silent; so I think we may begin our almanack with the house-fly and the moth and the spider and the ant on the cucumber frame, and so on, till, finally, the catalogue culminates with the great yellow wasp. He is the final sign of summer; one swallow does not make it, one wasp does. He is a connoisseur of the good things of the earth, and comes not till their season.
On the top of an old wall covered with broad masses of lichen, the patches of which grew out at their edges as if a plate had taken to spreading at its rim, the tits were much occupied in picking out minute insects; the wagtails came too, sparrows, robins, hedge-sparrows, and occasionally a lark; a bare blank wall to all appearance, and the bare lichen as devoid of life to our eyes. Yet there must have been something there for all these eager bills—eggs or pupæ. A jackdaw, with iron-grey patch on the back of his broad poll, dropped in my garden one morning, to the great alarm of the small birds, and made off with some large dark object in his beak—some beetle or shell probably, I could not distinguish which, and should most likely have passed the spot without seeing it. The sea-kale, which had been covered up carefully with seaweed, to blanch and to protect it from the frost, was attacked in the cold dry weather in a most furious manner by blackbirds, thrushes, and starlings. They tore away the seaweed with their strong bills, pitching it right and left behind them in as workmanlike style as any miner, and so boring deep notches into the edge of the bed. When a blackbird had made a good hole he came back to visit it at various times of the day, and kept a strict watch. If he found any other blackbird or thrush infringing on his diggings, he drove him away ferociously. Never were such works carried on as at the edge of that seaweed; they moved a bushel of it. To the eye there seemed nothing in it but here and there a small white worm; but they found plenty, and the weather being so bitter, I let them do much as they liked; I would rather feed than starve them.
Down at the sea-shore in the sunny hours, out from the woodwork of the groynes or bulwarks, there came a white spotted spider, which must in some way have known the height to which the tide came at that season, because he was far below high-water mark. The moles in an upland field had made in the summer a perfect network of runs. Out of curiosity we opened some, and found in them large brown pupæ. In the summer-house, under the wooden eaves, if you look, you will find the chrysalis of a butterfly, curiously slung aslant. Coming down Galley Hill, near Hastings, one day, a party was almost stopped by finding they could only walk on thousands of caterpillars, dark with bright yellow bands, which had sprung out of the grass. The great nettles—now, nothing is so common as a nettle—are sometimes festooned with a dark caterpillar, hundreds upon each plant, hanging like bunches of currants. Could you find a spot the size of your watch-seal without an insect or the germ of one?
The agriculturists in some southern counties give the boys in spring threepence a dozen for the heads of young birds killed in the nest. The heads are torn off, to be produced, like the wolves' of old times, as evidence of extinction. This—apart from the cruelty of the practice—is, I think, a mistake, for, besides the insects that injure crops, there are some which may be suspected of being inimical to human life, if not directly, indirectly; and if it were not for birds, we should run a very good chance of being literally eaten up. The difficulty is that people cannot believe what they cannot immediately see, and there are very few who have the patience or who feel sufficient interest to study minute things.
I have taken these instances haphazard; they are large instances, as it were, of big and visible things. They only give the rudest idea of the immensity and complexity of insect life in our own country. My friend the sparrow is, I believe, a friend likewise to man generally. He does a little damage, I admit; but if he were to resort to living on damage solely in his enormous numbers, we should not have a single flower or a single ear of wheat. He does not live by doing mischief alone evidently. He is the best scavenger the Londoners have got, and I counsel them to prize their sparrows, unless they would be overrun with uncomfortable creatures; and possibly he plays his part indirectly in keeping down disease. They say in some places he attacks the crocus. He does not attack mine, so I suspect there must be something wrong with the destroyed crocuses. Some tried to entice him from the flower with crumbs; they would perhaps have succeeded better if they had bought a pint of wheat at the seedsman's and scattered it. In spring, sparrows are not over-fond of crumbs; they are inordinately fond of wheat. During the months of continued dry, cold, easterly winds, which we have had to endure this season, all insect-eating birds have been almost as much starved as they are in winter when there is a deep snow. Nothing comes forth from the ground, nothing from the deep crannies which they cannot peck open; the larva remains quiescent in the solid timber. Not a speck can they find. The sparrow at such a time may therefore be driven to opening flower-buds. Looked at in a broad way, I am convinced he is a friend. I have always let them build about the house, and shall not drive them away.
If you do not know anything of insects, the fields are somewhat barren to you. The buttercups are beautiful, still they are buttercups every day. The thrush's song is lovely, still one cannot always listen to the thrush. The fields are but large open spaces after a time to many, unless they know a little of insects, when at once they become populous, and there is a link found between the birds and the flowers. It is like opening another book of endless pages, and coloured illustrations on every page.
Blessings on the man, said Sancho Panza, who first invented sleep. Blessings on the man who first invented the scarlet geranium, and thereby brought the Hummingbird moth to the window-sill; for, though seen ever so often, I can always watch it again hovering over the petals and taking the honey, and away again into the bright sunlight. Sometimes, when walking along, and thinking of everything else but it, the beautiful Peacock butterfly suddenly floats by the face like a visitor from another world, so highly coloured, and so original and unlike and unexpected. In bright painters' work like the wings of butterflies, which often have distinct hues side by side, I think nature puts very little green; the bouquet is not backed with maiden-hair fern; the red and the blue and so on have no grass or leaves as a ground colour; nor do they commonly alight on green. The bright colours are left to themselves unrelieved. None of the butterflies, I think, have green on the upper side of the wing; the Green Hairstreak has green under wings, but green is not put forward.
Something the same may be noticed in flowers themselves: the broad surface, for instance, of the peach and apricot, pink without a green leaf; the pear tree white, but the leaves come quickly; the apple, an acre of pink and white, with the merest texture of foliage. Nor are there many conspicuous green insects— the grasshopper; some green flies; the lace-fly, a green body and delicate white wings. With the wild flowers, on the contrary, there seems to come a great deal of green. There is scarcely a colour that cannot be matched in the gay world of wings. Red, blue, and yellow, and brown and purple—shaded and toned, relieved with dots and curious markings; in the butterflies, night tints in the pattern of the under wings, as if these were shaded with the dusk of the evening, being in shadow under the vane. Gold and orange, red, bright scarlet, and ruby and bronze in the flies. Dark velvet, brown velvet, greys, amber, and gold edgings like military coats in the wild bees. If fifteen or twenty delicate plates of the thinnest possible material, each tinted differently, were placed one over the other, and all translucent, perhaps they might produce something of that singular shadow-painting seen on the wings of moths. They are the shadows of the colours, and yet they are equally distinct. The thin edges of the flies' wings catch the sunbeams, and throw them aside. Look, too, at the bees' limbs, which are sometimes yellow, and sometimes orange-red with pollen. The eyes, too, of many insects are coloured. They know your shadow from that of a cloud. If a cloud comes over, the instant the edge of the shadow reaches the Grass moths they stop, so do some of the butterflies and other insects, as the wild bees remain quiescent. As the edge of your shadow falls on them they rise and fly, so that to observe them closely it must not be allowed to overlap them.