Chapter Seven.

Chapter Seven.The Farmhouse—Traditions—Hunting Pictures—The Farmer’s Year—Sport—The Auction Festival—A Summer’s Day—Beauty of Wheat.The stream, after leaving the village and the washpool, rushes swiftly down the descending slope, and then entering the meadows, quickly loses its original impetuous character. Not much more than a mile from the village it flows placidly through meads and pastures, a broad, deep brook, thickly fringed with green flags bearing here and there large yellow flowers. By some old thatched cattle-sheds and rickyards, overshadowed with elm trees, a strong bay or dam crosses it, forcing the water into a pond for the cattle, and answering the occasional purpose of a ford; for the labourers in their heavy boots walk over the bay, though the current rises to the instep. They call these sheds, some few hundred yards from the farmhouse, the ‘Lower Pen.’ Wick Farm—almost every village has its outlying ‘wick’—stands alone in the fields. It is an ancient rambling building, the present form of which is the result of successive additions at different dates, and in various styles.When a homestead, like this, has been owned and occupied by the same family for six or seven generations, it seems to possess a distinct personality of its own. A history grows up round about it; memories of the past accumulate, and are handed down fresh and green, linking to-day and seventy years ago as if hardly any lapse of time had intervened. The inmates talk familiarly of the ‘comet year,’ as if it were but just over; of the days when a load of wheat was worth a little fortune; of the great snows and floods of the previous century. They date events from the year when the Foremeads were purchased and added to the patrimony, as if that transaction, which took place ninety years before, was of such importance that it must necessarily be still known to all the world.The house has somehow shaped and fitted itself to the character of the dwellers within it: hidden and retired among trees, fresh and green with cherry and pear against the wall, yet the brown thatch and the old bricks subdued in tone by the weather. This individuality extends to the furniture; it is a little stiff and angular, but solid, and there are nooks and corners—as the window-seat—suggestive of placid repose: a strange opposite mixture throughout of flowery peace and silence, with an almost total lack of modern conveniences and appliances of comfort—as though the sinewy vigour of the residents disdained artificial ease.In the oaken cupboards—not black, but a deep tawny colour with age and frequent polishing—may be found a few pieces of old china, and on the table at tea-time, perhaps, other pieces, which a connoisseur would tremble to see in use, lest a clumsy arm should shatter their fragile antiquity. Though apparently so little valued, you shall not be able to buy these things for money—not so much because their artistic beauty is appreciated, but because of the instinctive clinging to everything old, characteristic of the place and people. These have been there of old time: they shall remain still. Somewhere in the cupboards, too, is a curiously carved piece of iron, to fit into the hand, with a front of steel before the fingers, like a skeleton rapier guard; it is the ancient steel with which, and a flint, the tinder and the sulphur match were ignited.Up in the lumber-room are carved oaken bedsteads of unknown age; linen-presses of black oak with carved panels, and a drawer at the side for the lavender-bags; a rusty rapier, the point broken off; a flintlock pistol, the barrel of portentous length, and the butt weighted with a mace-like knob of metal, wherewith to knock the enemy on the head. An old yeomanry sabre lies about somewhere, which the good man of the time wore when he rode in the troop against the rioters in the days of machine-burning—which was like a civil war in the country, and is yet recollected and talked of. The present fanner, who is getting just a trifle heavy in the saddle himself, can tell you the names of labourers living in the village whose forefathers rose in that insurrection. It is a memory of the house, how one of the family paid 40 pounds for a substitute to serve in the wars against the French.The mistress of the household still bakes a batch of bread at home in the oven once now and then, priding herself that it is never ‘dunch,’ or heavy. She makes all kinds of preserves, and wines too—cowslip, elderberry, ginger—and used to prepare a specially delicate biscuit, the paste being dropped on paper and baked by exposure to the sun’s rays only. She has a bitter memory of some money having been lost to the family sixty years ago through roguery, harping upon it as a most direful misfortune: the old folk, even those having a stocking or a teapot well filled with guineas, thought a great deal of small sums. After listening to a tirade of this kind, in the belief that the family were at least half-ruined, it turns out to be all about 100 pounds. Her grandmother after marriage travelled home on horseback behind her husband; there had been a sudden flood, and the newly-married couple had to wait for several hours till the waters went down before they could pass. Times are altered now.Since this family dwelt here, and well within what may be called the household memory, the very races of animals have changed or been supplanted. The cows in the field used to be longhorns, much more hardy, and remaining in the meadows all the winter, with no better shelter than the hedges and bushes afforded. Now the shorthorns have come, and the cattle are housed carefully. The sheep were horned—up in the lumber-room two or three horns are still to be found. The pigs were of a different kind, and the dogs and poultry. If the race of men have not changed they have altered their costume; the smock-frock lingered longest, but even that is going.Some of the old superstitions hung on till quite recently. The value of horses made the arrival of foals an important occasion, and then it was the custom to call in the assistance of an aged man of wisdom—not exactly a wizard, but something approaching it nearly in reputation. Even within the last fifteen years the aid of an ancient like this used to be regularly invoked in this neighbourhood; in some mysterious way his simple presence and good-will—gained by plentiful liquor—was supposed to be efficacious against accident and loss. The strangeness of the business was in the fact that his patrons were not altogether ignorant or even uneducated—they merely carried on the old custom, not from faith in it, but just because it was the custom. When the wizard at last died nothing more was thought about it. Another ancient used to come round once or twice in the year, with a couple of long ashen staves, and the ceremony performed by him consisted in dancing these two sticks together in a fantastic manner to some old rhyme or story.The parlour is always full of flowers—the mantelpiece and grate in spring quite hidden by fresh green boughs of horse-chestnut in bloom, or with lilac, blue bells, or wild hyacinths; in summer nodding grasses from the meadows, roses, sweet-briar; in the autumn two or three great apples, the finest of the year, put as ornaments among the china, and the corners of the looking-glass decorated with bunches of ripe wheat. A badger’s skin lies across the back of the armchair; a fox’s head, the sharp white tusks showing, snarls over the doorway; and in glass cases are a couple of stuffed kingfishers, a polecat; a white blackbird, and a diver—rare here—shot in the mere hard by.On the walls are a couple of old hunting pictures, dusky with age, but the crudity of the colours by no means toned down or their rude contrast moderated: bright scarlet coats, bright white horses, harsh green grass, prim dogs, stiff trees, human figures immovable in tight buckskins; running water hard as glass, the sky fixed, the ground all too small for the grouping, perspective painfully emphasised, so as to be itself made visible; the surface everywhere ‘painty’—in brief, most of the possible faults compressed together, and proudly fathered by the artist’s name in full.One representing a meet, and the other full cry, the pack crossing a small river; the meet still and rigid, every horseman in his place—not a bit jingling, or a hoof pawing, or anything in motion. Now the beauty of the meet, as distinct from a drilled cavalry troop, is its animation: horses and riders moving here and there, gathering together and spreading out again, new-comers riding smartly up, in continuous freshness of grouping, and constant relief to the eye. The other—in full cry—all polished and smooth and varnished as when they left the stable; horses with glossy coats, riders upright and fatigueless, dogs clean, and not a sign of poaching on the turf. The dogs are coming out of the water with their tails up and straight—dogs as they trail their flanks out of a brook always, in fact, droop their tails, while their bodies look smaller and the curves project, because the water lays the hair flat to the body till several shakes send it out again. Not a speck on a top-boot, not a coat torn by a thorn, and the horses as plump as if fresh from their mangers, instead of having worked it down. Not a fleck of foam; the sun, too, shining, and yet no shadow—all glaring. And, despite of all, deeply interesting to those who know the countryside and have a feeling knowledge of its hunting history.For the horses are from life, and the men portraits; the very hedges and brooks faithful—in ground-plan, at least. The costume is true to a thread, and all the names of the riders and some of the hounds are written underneath. So that a hunter sees not the crude colour or faulty drawing, but what it is intended to represent. Under its harshness there is the poetry of life. But looking at these pictures the reflection will still arise how few really truthful hunting scenes we have on canvas in this the country of hunting. The best are so conventional, and have too much colour. All nature in the season is toned down and subdued—the gleaming red and bright yellows of the early autumn leaves soaked and soddened to a dull brown; the sky dark and louring—if it is bright there is frost; the glossy coat of the horses, and the scarlet; or what coloured cloth it may be, of the riders deadened by rain and the dewdrops shaken from the bushes. Think for a moment of a finish as it is in reality, and not in these gaudy, brilliant colour-studies.A thick mist clings in the hollow there by the osier-bed where the pack have overtaken the fox, so that you cannot see the dogs. Beyond, the contour of the hill is lost in the cloud trailing over it; the foreground towards us shows a sloping ploughed field, a damp brown, with a thin mist creeping along the cold furrows. Yonder, three vague and shadowy figures are pushing laboriously forward beside the leafless hedge; while the dirt-spattered bays hardly show against its black background and through the mist. Some way behind, a weary grey,—the only spot of colour, and that dimmed—is gamely struggling—it is not leaping—through a gap beside a gaunt oak tree, whose dark buff leaves yet linger. But out of these surely an artist who dared to face Nature as she is might work a picture.The year really commences at Wick farmhouse immediately before the autumn nominally begins—nominally, because there is generally a sense of autumn in the atmosphere before the end of September. Just about that time there comes a slackening of the work requiring earnest personal supervision. When the yellow corn has been cut and carted, and the threshing machine has prepared a sample for the markets—when the ricks are thatched, and the steam plough is tearing up the stubble—then the farmer can spare a day or so free from the anxieties of harvest. There is plenty of work to be done; in fact the yearly rotation of labour may be said to begin in the autumn too, but it does not demand such hourly attention. It is the season for picnics—while the sun is yet warm and the sward dry—on the downs among the great hazel copses, or the old entrenchment with its view over a vast landscape, dimmed, though, by yellow haze, or by the shallow lake in the vale.With the exception of knocking over a young rabbit now and then for household use, the farmer, even if he is independent of a landlord, as in this case, does not shoot till late in the year. Old-fashioned folk, though not in the least constrained to do so, still leave the first pick of the shooting to some neighbouring landowner between whose family and their own friendly relations have existed for generations. It is true that the practice becomes rarer yearly as the old style of men die out and the spirit of commerce is imported into rural life: the rising race preferring to make money of their shooting, by letting it, instead of cultivating social ties.At Wick, however, they keep up the ancient custom, and the neighbouring squire takes the pick of the wing-game. They lose nothing for their larder through this arrangement—receiving presents of partridges and pheasants far exceeding in number what could possibly be killed upon the farm itself; while later in the year the boundaries are relaxed on the other side, and the farmer kills his rabbit pretty much where he likes, in moderation.He is seldom seen without a gun on his shoulder from November till towards the end of January. No matter whether he strolls to the arable field, or down the meadows, or across the footpath to a neighbour’s house, the inevitable double-barrel accompanies him. To those who live much out of doors a gun is a natural and almost a necessary companion, whether there be much or little to shoot; and in this desultory way, without much method or set sport, he and his friends, often meeting and joining forces, find sufficient ground game and wildfowl to give them plenty of amusement. When the hedges are bare of leaves the rabbit-burrows are ferreted: the holes can be more conveniently approached then, and the frost is supposed to give the rabbit a better flavour.About Christmas-time, half in joke and half in earnest, a small party often agree to shoot as many blackbirds as they can, if possible to make up the traditional twenty-four for a pie. The blackbird pie is, of course, really an occasion for a social gathering, at which cards and music are forthcoming. Though blackbirds abound in every hedge, it is by no means an easy task to get the required number just when wanted. After January the guns are laid aside, though some ferreting is still going on.The better class of farmers keep hunters, and ride constantly to the hounds; so do some of the lesser men who ‘make’ hunters, and ride not only for pleasure but possible profit from the sale. Hunting is, to a considerable extent a matter of locality. In some districts it is the one great winter amusement, and almost every farmer who has got a horse rides more or less. In others which are not near the centres of hunting, it is rather an exception for the farmers to go out. On and near the Downs coursing hares is much followed. Then towards the spring, before the grass begins to grow long, comes the local steeplechase—perhaps the most popular gathering of the year. It is held near some small town, often rather a large village than a town, where it would seem impossible to get a hundred people together. But it happens to be one of the fixed points, so to say, in a wide hunting district, and is well known to every man who rides a horse within twenty miles.Numerous parties come to the race-ground from the great houses of the neighbourhood. The labouring people flock thereen masse; some farmers lend waggons and teams to the labourers that they may go. An additional—a personal—interest attaches to many of the races because the horses are local horses, and the riders known to the spectators. Some of these meetings are movable; they are held near one town one year and another the next, so as to travel round the whole hunting district—returning, say, the fourth year to the first place. Most of the market towns of any importance have their annual agricultural show now, which is well attended.In the spring comes the rook-shooting; the date varies a week or so according to the season, whether it has been mild and favourable or hard and late. This still remains a favourite occasion for a party. Sheep-shearing in sheep districts, as the Downs, is also remembered; some of the old folk make much of it; but as a general rule this ancient festival has fallen a good deal into disuse. It is not made the grand feast it once was for master and man alike—at least, not in these parts. With the change that has come across agriculture at large a variation has taken place in the life of the people. New festivals, and of a different character, have sprung up.The most important of these is the annual auction on the farm: the system of selling by auction which has become so widely diffused has, indeed, quite revolutionised agriculture in many ways. Where the farm is celebrated for a special breed of sheep, the great event of the year is the annual auction at home of ram lambs. Where the farm is famous for cattle, the chief occasion is the yearly sale of young shorthorns. And recently, since steam plough and artificial manure and general high pressure have been introduced, many large arable farmers sell their corn crops standing. The purchaser pays a certain price for the wheat as it grows, reaps it when ripe, and makes what profit he can.In either case the auctioneer is called in, a dinner is prepared, and everybody who likes to come is welcome. If there happens to be a great barn near the homestead it is usually used for the dinner. The marquee has yet to be invented which will keep out a thunderstorm—that common interruption of country meetings—like an old barn. But barns are not always available, and a tent is then essential. Though the spot may be lonely and several miles from a town or station, a large number of persons are sure to be there; and if it is an auction of sheep or cattle with a pedigree, many of them will be found to have come from the other end of the kingdom, and sometimes agents are present from America or the colonies. Much time is consumed in an examination of the stock, and then the dinner begins—at least two hours later than was announced. But this little peculiarity is so well understood by all interested as to cause no inconvenience.Scarcely any ale is to be seen; it is there if asked for; but the great majority now drink sherry. The way in which this wine has supplanted the old-fashioned October ale is remarkable, and a noticeable sign of the times. At home the farmer may still have his foaming jug, but whenever farmers congregate together on occasions like this, sherry is the favourite. When calling at the inns in the towns on market days—much business is transacted at the inns—spirits are usually taken, so that ale is no longer the characteristic country liquor. With the sherry cigars are handed round—another change. It is true the elderly men stick to their long clay pipes, and it is observable that some of the younger after a while go back to the yard of clay; but on the whole the cigar is now the proper thing.Then follow a couple of toasts, the stockowner’s and auctioneer’s—usually short—and an adjournment takes place—if it be stock, to the yards; if corn, the cloth is cleared of all but the wine, and the sale proceeds there and then. In either case the sherry and the cigars go round—persons being employed to press them freely upon all; and altogether a very jovial afternoon is spent. Some of the company do not separate till long after the conclusion of the sale: the American or colonial agent perhaps stays a night at the farmstead. In the house itself there is all this time yet more liberal hospitality proffered: it is quite open-house hospitality, master and mistress vying in their efforts to make everyone feel at home. These gatherings do much to promote a friendly spirit in the neighbourhood.In the summer the farmer is too much occupied to think of amusement. It is a curious fact that very few really downright country people care for fishing; a gun and a horse are as necessary as air and light but the rod is not a favourite. There seems to be greater enthusiasm than ever about horses; whether people bet or not, they talk and think and read more of horses than they ever did before.In this locality Clerk’s Ale, which used to be rather an event is quite extinct. The Court Leet is still held, but partakes slightly of the nature of a harmless farce. The lord of the manor’s court is no terror now. A number of gentlemen, more for the custom’s sake than anything, sit in solemn conclave to decide whether or no an old pollard tree may be cut down, how much an old woman shall pay in quit-rent for her hovel, or whether there was or was not a gateway in a certain hedge seventy years ago. However, it brings neighbours together, and causes the inevitable sherry to circulate briskly.The long summer days begin very early at Wick. About half-past two of a morning in June a faint twittering under the eaves announces that the swallows are awaking, although they will not commence their flight for awhile yet. At three o’clock the cuckoo’s call comes up from the distant meadows, together with the sound of the mower sharpening his scythe, for he likes to work while the dew is heavy on the grass, both for coolness and because it cuts better. He gets half a day’s work done before the sun grows hot, and about eight or nine o’clock lies down under the hedge for a refreshing nap. Between three and four the thrushes open song in the copse at the corner of the Home-field, and soon a loud chorus takes up their ditty as one after the other joins in.Then the nailed shoes of the milkers clatter on the pitching of the courtyard as they come for their buckets; and immediately afterwards stentorian voices may be heard in the fields bellowing ‘Coom up! ya-hoop!’ to which the cows, recognising the well-known call, respond very much in the same tones. Slowly they obey and gather together under the elms in the corner of the meadow, which in summer is used as the milking-place. About five or half-past another clattering tells of the milkers’ return; and then the dairy is in full operation. The household breakfasts at half-past six or thereabouts, and while breakfast is going on the heavy tramp of feet may be heard passing along the roadway through the rickyard—the haymakers marching to the fields. For the next two hours or so the sounds from the dairy are the only interruption of the silence: then come the first waggons loaded with hay, jolting and creaking, the carter’s lads shouting, ‘Woaght!’ to the horses as they steer through the gateway and sweep round, drawing up under the rick.Between eleven and twelve the waggons cease to arrive—it is luncheon time: the exact time for luncheon varies a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, or more, according to the state of the work. Messengers come home for cans of beer, and carry out also to the field wooden ‘bottles’—small barrels holding a gallon or two. After a short interval work goes on again till nearly four o’clock, when it is dinner-time. One or two labourers, deputed by the rest and having leave and licence so to do, enter the farmhouse garden and pull up bundles of onions, lettuces, or radishes—sown over wide areas on purpose—and carry them out to the cart-house, or where-ever the men may be. If far from home, the women often boil a kettle for tea under the hedge, collecting dead sticks fallen from the trees. At six o’clock work is over: the women are allowed to leave half an hour or so previously, that they may prepare their husbands’ suppers.As the sunset approaches the long broad dusty road loses its white glare, and yonder by the hamlet a bright glistening banner reflects the level rays of the sun with dazzling sheen; it is the gilding on the swinging wayside sign transformed for the moment from a wooden board rudely ornamented with a gilt sun, all rays and rotund cheeks, into a veritable oriflamme.There the men will assemble by-and-by, on the forms about the trestle table, and share each other’s quarts in the fellowship of labour. Or perhaps the work may be pressing, and the waggons are loaded till the white owl noiselessly flits along the hedgerow, and the round moon rises over the hills. Then those who have stayed to assist find their supper waiting for them in the brewhouse, and do it ample justice.Once during the morning, while busy in the hay-field, not so much with his hands as his eyes, watching that the ‘wallows’ may be turned over properly, and the ‘wakes’ made at a just distance from each other, that the waggon may pass easily between, the farmer is sure to be summoned home with the news of a swarm of bees. If the work be pressing, they must be attended to by deputy; if not, he hurries home himself; for although in these days bee-keeping is no longer what it used to be, yet the old-fashioned folk take a deep interest in the bees still. They tell you that ‘a swarm in May is worth a load of hay; a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon; but a swarm in July is not worth a fly’—for it is then too late for the young colony to store up a treasure of golden honey before the flowers begin to fade at the approach of autumn.It is noticeable that those who labour on their own land (as at Wick) keep up the ancient customs much more vigorously than the tenant who knows that he is liable to receive a notice to quit. And farms, for one reason or another, change tenants much more frequently now than they used to do. Here at Wick the owner feels that every apple tree he grafts, every flower he plants, returns not only a money value, but a joy not to be measured by money. So the bees are carefully watched and tended, as the blue tomtits find to their cost if they become too venturesome.These bold little bandits will sometimes make a dash for the hive, alighting on the miniature platform before the entrance, and playing havoc with the busy inmates. If alarmed they take refuge in the apple trees, as if conscious that the owner will not shoot them there, since every pellet may destroy potential fruit by cutting and breaking those tender twigs on which it would presently grow. It is a pleasant sight in autumn to see the room devoted to the honey—great broad milk-tins full to the brim of the translucent liquid, distilling slowly from pure white comb, from the top of whose cells the waxen covering has been removed.All the summer through fresh beauties, indeed, wait upon the owner’s footsteps. In the spring the mowing grass rises thick, strong, and richly green, or hidden by the cloth-of-gold thrown over it by the buttercups! He knows when it is ready for the scythe without reference to the almanac, because of the brown tint which spreads over it from the ripening seeds, sometimes tinged with a dull red, when the stems of the sorrel are plentiful. At first the aftermath has a trace of yellow, as if it were fading; but a shower falls, and fresh green blades shoot up. Or, passing from the hollow meads up on the rising slopes where the plough rules the earth, what so beautiful to watch as the wheat through its various phases of colour?First green and succulent; then, presently, see a modest ear comes forth with promise of the future. By-and-by, when every stalk is tipped like a sceptre, the lower stalk leaves are still green, but the stems have a faint bluish tinge, and the ears are paling into yellow. Next the white pollen—the bloom—shows under the warm sunshine, and then the birds begin to grow busy among it. They perch on the stalk itself—it is at that time strong and stiff enough to uphold their weight, one on a stem—but not now for mischief. You may see the sparrow carry away with him caterpillars for his young upon the housetop hard by; later on, it is true, he will revel on the ripe grains.Yesterday you came to the wheat and found it pale like this (it seems but twenty-four hours ago—it is really only a little longer); to-day, when you look again, lo! there is a fleeting yellow already on the ears. They have so quickly caught the hue of the bright sunshine pouring on them. Yet another day or two, and the faint fleeting yellow has become fixed and certain, as the colours are deepened by the great artist. Only when the wind blows and the ears bend in those places where the breeze takes most; it looks paler because the under part of the ear is shown and part of the stalk. Finally comes that rich hue for which no exact similitude exists. In it there is somewhat of the red of the orange, somewhat of the tint of bronze, and somewhat of the hue of maize; but these are poor words wherewith to render fixed a colour that plays over the surface of this yellow sea, for if you take one, two, or a dozen ears you shall not find it, but must look abroad, and let your gaze travel to and fro. Nor is every field alike; here are acres and acres more yellow, yonder a space whiter, beyond that a slope richly ruddy, according to the kind of seed that was sown.Out of the depths of what to it must seem an impenetrable jungle, from visiting a flower hidden below, a humble-bee climbs rapidly up a stalk a yard or two away while you look, and mounting to the top of the ear, as a post of vantage clear of obstructions, sails away upon the wind.“We be all jolly vellers what vollers th’ plough!”—but not to listen to, and take literally according to the letter of the discourse. It runs something like this the seasons through as the weather changes: “Terrible dry weather this here to be sure; we got so much work to do uz can’t get drough it. The fly be swarming in the turmots—the smut be on the wheat—the wuts be amazing weak in the straw. Got a fine crop of wheat this year, and prices be low, so uz had better drow it to th’ pigs. Last year uz had no wheat fit to speak on, and prices was high. Drot this here wet weather! the osses be all in the stable eating their heads off, and the chaps be all idling about and can’t do no work: a pretty penny for wages and not a job done. Them summer ricks be all rotten at bottom. The ploughing engine be stuck fast up to the axle, the land be so soft and squishey. Us never gets no good old frosts now, like they used to have. Drot these here frosty mornings! a-cutting up everything. There’ll be another rate out soon, a’ reckon. Us had better give up this here trade, neighbour!”And so on for a thousand and one grumbles, fitting into every possible condition of things, which must not, however, be taken too seriously; for of all other men the farmer is the most deeply attached to the labour by which he lives, and loves the earth on which he walks like a true autochthon. He will not leave it unless he is suffering severely.

The stream, after leaving the village and the washpool, rushes swiftly down the descending slope, and then entering the meadows, quickly loses its original impetuous character. Not much more than a mile from the village it flows placidly through meads and pastures, a broad, deep brook, thickly fringed with green flags bearing here and there large yellow flowers. By some old thatched cattle-sheds and rickyards, overshadowed with elm trees, a strong bay or dam crosses it, forcing the water into a pond for the cattle, and answering the occasional purpose of a ford; for the labourers in their heavy boots walk over the bay, though the current rises to the instep. They call these sheds, some few hundred yards from the farmhouse, the ‘Lower Pen.’ Wick Farm—almost every village has its outlying ‘wick’—stands alone in the fields. It is an ancient rambling building, the present form of which is the result of successive additions at different dates, and in various styles.

When a homestead, like this, has been owned and occupied by the same family for six or seven generations, it seems to possess a distinct personality of its own. A history grows up round about it; memories of the past accumulate, and are handed down fresh and green, linking to-day and seventy years ago as if hardly any lapse of time had intervened. The inmates talk familiarly of the ‘comet year,’ as if it were but just over; of the days when a load of wheat was worth a little fortune; of the great snows and floods of the previous century. They date events from the year when the Foremeads were purchased and added to the patrimony, as if that transaction, which took place ninety years before, was of such importance that it must necessarily be still known to all the world.

The house has somehow shaped and fitted itself to the character of the dwellers within it: hidden and retired among trees, fresh and green with cherry and pear against the wall, yet the brown thatch and the old bricks subdued in tone by the weather. This individuality extends to the furniture; it is a little stiff and angular, but solid, and there are nooks and corners—as the window-seat—suggestive of placid repose: a strange opposite mixture throughout of flowery peace and silence, with an almost total lack of modern conveniences and appliances of comfort—as though the sinewy vigour of the residents disdained artificial ease.

In the oaken cupboards—not black, but a deep tawny colour with age and frequent polishing—may be found a few pieces of old china, and on the table at tea-time, perhaps, other pieces, which a connoisseur would tremble to see in use, lest a clumsy arm should shatter their fragile antiquity. Though apparently so little valued, you shall not be able to buy these things for money—not so much because their artistic beauty is appreciated, but because of the instinctive clinging to everything old, characteristic of the place and people. These have been there of old time: they shall remain still. Somewhere in the cupboards, too, is a curiously carved piece of iron, to fit into the hand, with a front of steel before the fingers, like a skeleton rapier guard; it is the ancient steel with which, and a flint, the tinder and the sulphur match were ignited.

Up in the lumber-room are carved oaken bedsteads of unknown age; linen-presses of black oak with carved panels, and a drawer at the side for the lavender-bags; a rusty rapier, the point broken off; a flintlock pistol, the barrel of portentous length, and the butt weighted with a mace-like knob of metal, wherewith to knock the enemy on the head. An old yeomanry sabre lies about somewhere, which the good man of the time wore when he rode in the troop against the rioters in the days of machine-burning—which was like a civil war in the country, and is yet recollected and talked of. The present fanner, who is getting just a trifle heavy in the saddle himself, can tell you the names of labourers living in the village whose forefathers rose in that insurrection. It is a memory of the house, how one of the family paid 40 pounds for a substitute to serve in the wars against the French.

The mistress of the household still bakes a batch of bread at home in the oven once now and then, priding herself that it is never ‘dunch,’ or heavy. She makes all kinds of preserves, and wines too—cowslip, elderberry, ginger—and used to prepare a specially delicate biscuit, the paste being dropped on paper and baked by exposure to the sun’s rays only. She has a bitter memory of some money having been lost to the family sixty years ago through roguery, harping upon it as a most direful misfortune: the old folk, even those having a stocking or a teapot well filled with guineas, thought a great deal of small sums. After listening to a tirade of this kind, in the belief that the family were at least half-ruined, it turns out to be all about 100 pounds. Her grandmother after marriage travelled home on horseback behind her husband; there had been a sudden flood, and the newly-married couple had to wait for several hours till the waters went down before they could pass. Times are altered now.

Since this family dwelt here, and well within what may be called the household memory, the very races of animals have changed or been supplanted. The cows in the field used to be longhorns, much more hardy, and remaining in the meadows all the winter, with no better shelter than the hedges and bushes afforded. Now the shorthorns have come, and the cattle are housed carefully. The sheep were horned—up in the lumber-room two or three horns are still to be found. The pigs were of a different kind, and the dogs and poultry. If the race of men have not changed they have altered their costume; the smock-frock lingered longest, but even that is going.

Some of the old superstitions hung on till quite recently. The value of horses made the arrival of foals an important occasion, and then it was the custom to call in the assistance of an aged man of wisdom—not exactly a wizard, but something approaching it nearly in reputation. Even within the last fifteen years the aid of an ancient like this used to be regularly invoked in this neighbourhood; in some mysterious way his simple presence and good-will—gained by plentiful liquor—was supposed to be efficacious against accident and loss. The strangeness of the business was in the fact that his patrons were not altogether ignorant or even uneducated—they merely carried on the old custom, not from faith in it, but just because it was the custom. When the wizard at last died nothing more was thought about it. Another ancient used to come round once or twice in the year, with a couple of long ashen staves, and the ceremony performed by him consisted in dancing these two sticks together in a fantastic manner to some old rhyme or story.

The parlour is always full of flowers—the mantelpiece and grate in spring quite hidden by fresh green boughs of horse-chestnut in bloom, or with lilac, blue bells, or wild hyacinths; in summer nodding grasses from the meadows, roses, sweet-briar; in the autumn two or three great apples, the finest of the year, put as ornaments among the china, and the corners of the looking-glass decorated with bunches of ripe wheat. A badger’s skin lies across the back of the armchair; a fox’s head, the sharp white tusks showing, snarls over the doorway; and in glass cases are a couple of stuffed kingfishers, a polecat; a white blackbird, and a diver—rare here—shot in the mere hard by.

On the walls are a couple of old hunting pictures, dusky with age, but the crudity of the colours by no means toned down or their rude contrast moderated: bright scarlet coats, bright white horses, harsh green grass, prim dogs, stiff trees, human figures immovable in tight buckskins; running water hard as glass, the sky fixed, the ground all too small for the grouping, perspective painfully emphasised, so as to be itself made visible; the surface everywhere ‘painty’—in brief, most of the possible faults compressed together, and proudly fathered by the artist’s name in full.

One representing a meet, and the other full cry, the pack crossing a small river; the meet still and rigid, every horseman in his place—not a bit jingling, or a hoof pawing, or anything in motion. Now the beauty of the meet, as distinct from a drilled cavalry troop, is its animation: horses and riders moving here and there, gathering together and spreading out again, new-comers riding smartly up, in continuous freshness of grouping, and constant relief to the eye. The other—in full cry—all polished and smooth and varnished as when they left the stable; horses with glossy coats, riders upright and fatigueless, dogs clean, and not a sign of poaching on the turf. The dogs are coming out of the water with their tails up and straight—dogs as they trail their flanks out of a brook always, in fact, droop their tails, while their bodies look smaller and the curves project, because the water lays the hair flat to the body till several shakes send it out again. Not a speck on a top-boot, not a coat torn by a thorn, and the horses as plump as if fresh from their mangers, instead of having worked it down. Not a fleck of foam; the sun, too, shining, and yet no shadow—all glaring. And, despite of all, deeply interesting to those who know the countryside and have a feeling knowledge of its hunting history.

For the horses are from life, and the men portraits; the very hedges and brooks faithful—in ground-plan, at least. The costume is true to a thread, and all the names of the riders and some of the hounds are written underneath. So that a hunter sees not the crude colour or faulty drawing, but what it is intended to represent. Under its harshness there is the poetry of life. But looking at these pictures the reflection will still arise how few really truthful hunting scenes we have on canvas in this the country of hunting. The best are so conventional, and have too much colour. All nature in the season is toned down and subdued—the gleaming red and bright yellows of the early autumn leaves soaked and soddened to a dull brown; the sky dark and louring—if it is bright there is frost; the glossy coat of the horses, and the scarlet; or what coloured cloth it may be, of the riders deadened by rain and the dewdrops shaken from the bushes. Think for a moment of a finish as it is in reality, and not in these gaudy, brilliant colour-studies.

A thick mist clings in the hollow there by the osier-bed where the pack have overtaken the fox, so that you cannot see the dogs. Beyond, the contour of the hill is lost in the cloud trailing over it; the foreground towards us shows a sloping ploughed field, a damp brown, with a thin mist creeping along the cold furrows. Yonder, three vague and shadowy figures are pushing laboriously forward beside the leafless hedge; while the dirt-spattered bays hardly show against its black background and through the mist. Some way behind, a weary grey,—the only spot of colour, and that dimmed—is gamely struggling—it is not leaping—through a gap beside a gaunt oak tree, whose dark buff leaves yet linger. But out of these surely an artist who dared to face Nature as she is might work a picture.

The year really commences at Wick farmhouse immediately before the autumn nominally begins—nominally, because there is generally a sense of autumn in the atmosphere before the end of September. Just about that time there comes a slackening of the work requiring earnest personal supervision. When the yellow corn has been cut and carted, and the threshing machine has prepared a sample for the markets—when the ricks are thatched, and the steam plough is tearing up the stubble—then the farmer can spare a day or so free from the anxieties of harvest. There is plenty of work to be done; in fact the yearly rotation of labour may be said to begin in the autumn too, but it does not demand such hourly attention. It is the season for picnics—while the sun is yet warm and the sward dry—on the downs among the great hazel copses, or the old entrenchment with its view over a vast landscape, dimmed, though, by yellow haze, or by the shallow lake in the vale.

With the exception of knocking over a young rabbit now and then for household use, the farmer, even if he is independent of a landlord, as in this case, does not shoot till late in the year. Old-fashioned folk, though not in the least constrained to do so, still leave the first pick of the shooting to some neighbouring landowner between whose family and their own friendly relations have existed for generations. It is true that the practice becomes rarer yearly as the old style of men die out and the spirit of commerce is imported into rural life: the rising race preferring to make money of their shooting, by letting it, instead of cultivating social ties.

At Wick, however, they keep up the ancient custom, and the neighbouring squire takes the pick of the wing-game. They lose nothing for their larder through this arrangement—receiving presents of partridges and pheasants far exceeding in number what could possibly be killed upon the farm itself; while later in the year the boundaries are relaxed on the other side, and the farmer kills his rabbit pretty much where he likes, in moderation.

He is seldom seen without a gun on his shoulder from November till towards the end of January. No matter whether he strolls to the arable field, or down the meadows, or across the footpath to a neighbour’s house, the inevitable double-barrel accompanies him. To those who live much out of doors a gun is a natural and almost a necessary companion, whether there be much or little to shoot; and in this desultory way, without much method or set sport, he and his friends, often meeting and joining forces, find sufficient ground game and wildfowl to give them plenty of amusement. When the hedges are bare of leaves the rabbit-burrows are ferreted: the holes can be more conveniently approached then, and the frost is supposed to give the rabbit a better flavour.

About Christmas-time, half in joke and half in earnest, a small party often agree to shoot as many blackbirds as they can, if possible to make up the traditional twenty-four for a pie. The blackbird pie is, of course, really an occasion for a social gathering, at which cards and music are forthcoming. Though blackbirds abound in every hedge, it is by no means an easy task to get the required number just when wanted. After January the guns are laid aside, though some ferreting is still going on.

The better class of farmers keep hunters, and ride constantly to the hounds; so do some of the lesser men who ‘make’ hunters, and ride not only for pleasure but possible profit from the sale. Hunting is, to a considerable extent a matter of locality. In some districts it is the one great winter amusement, and almost every farmer who has got a horse rides more or less. In others which are not near the centres of hunting, it is rather an exception for the farmers to go out. On and near the Downs coursing hares is much followed. Then towards the spring, before the grass begins to grow long, comes the local steeplechase—perhaps the most popular gathering of the year. It is held near some small town, often rather a large village than a town, where it would seem impossible to get a hundred people together. But it happens to be one of the fixed points, so to say, in a wide hunting district, and is well known to every man who rides a horse within twenty miles.

Numerous parties come to the race-ground from the great houses of the neighbourhood. The labouring people flock thereen masse; some farmers lend waggons and teams to the labourers that they may go. An additional—a personal—interest attaches to many of the races because the horses are local horses, and the riders known to the spectators. Some of these meetings are movable; they are held near one town one year and another the next, so as to travel round the whole hunting district—returning, say, the fourth year to the first place. Most of the market towns of any importance have their annual agricultural show now, which is well attended.

In the spring comes the rook-shooting; the date varies a week or so according to the season, whether it has been mild and favourable or hard and late. This still remains a favourite occasion for a party. Sheep-shearing in sheep districts, as the Downs, is also remembered; some of the old folk make much of it; but as a general rule this ancient festival has fallen a good deal into disuse. It is not made the grand feast it once was for master and man alike—at least, not in these parts. With the change that has come across agriculture at large a variation has taken place in the life of the people. New festivals, and of a different character, have sprung up.

The most important of these is the annual auction on the farm: the system of selling by auction which has become so widely diffused has, indeed, quite revolutionised agriculture in many ways. Where the farm is celebrated for a special breed of sheep, the great event of the year is the annual auction at home of ram lambs. Where the farm is famous for cattle, the chief occasion is the yearly sale of young shorthorns. And recently, since steam plough and artificial manure and general high pressure have been introduced, many large arable farmers sell their corn crops standing. The purchaser pays a certain price for the wheat as it grows, reaps it when ripe, and makes what profit he can.

In either case the auctioneer is called in, a dinner is prepared, and everybody who likes to come is welcome. If there happens to be a great barn near the homestead it is usually used for the dinner. The marquee has yet to be invented which will keep out a thunderstorm—that common interruption of country meetings—like an old barn. But barns are not always available, and a tent is then essential. Though the spot may be lonely and several miles from a town or station, a large number of persons are sure to be there; and if it is an auction of sheep or cattle with a pedigree, many of them will be found to have come from the other end of the kingdom, and sometimes agents are present from America or the colonies. Much time is consumed in an examination of the stock, and then the dinner begins—at least two hours later than was announced. But this little peculiarity is so well understood by all interested as to cause no inconvenience.

Scarcely any ale is to be seen; it is there if asked for; but the great majority now drink sherry. The way in which this wine has supplanted the old-fashioned October ale is remarkable, and a noticeable sign of the times. At home the farmer may still have his foaming jug, but whenever farmers congregate together on occasions like this, sherry is the favourite. When calling at the inns in the towns on market days—much business is transacted at the inns—spirits are usually taken, so that ale is no longer the characteristic country liquor. With the sherry cigars are handed round—another change. It is true the elderly men stick to their long clay pipes, and it is observable that some of the younger after a while go back to the yard of clay; but on the whole the cigar is now the proper thing.

Then follow a couple of toasts, the stockowner’s and auctioneer’s—usually short—and an adjournment takes place—if it be stock, to the yards; if corn, the cloth is cleared of all but the wine, and the sale proceeds there and then. In either case the sherry and the cigars go round—persons being employed to press them freely upon all; and altogether a very jovial afternoon is spent. Some of the company do not separate till long after the conclusion of the sale: the American or colonial agent perhaps stays a night at the farmstead. In the house itself there is all this time yet more liberal hospitality proffered: it is quite open-house hospitality, master and mistress vying in their efforts to make everyone feel at home. These gatherings do much to promote a friendly spirit in the neighbourhood.

In the summer the farmer is too much occupied to think of amusement. It is a curious fact that very few really downright country people care for fishing; a gun and a horse are as necessary as air and light but the rod is not a favourite. There seems to be greater enthusiasm than ever about horses; whether people bet or not, they talk and think and read more of horses than they ever did before.

In this locality Clerk’s Ale, which used to be rather an event is quite extinct. The Court Leet is still held, but partakes slightly of the nature of a harmless farce. The lord of the manor’s court is no terror now. A number of gentlemen, more for the custom’s sake than anything, sit in solemn conclave to decide whether or no an old pollard tree may be cut down, how much an old woman shall pay in quit-rent for her hovel, or whether there was or was not a gateway in a certain hedge seventy years ago. However, it brings neighbours together, and causes the inevitable sherry to circulate briskly.

The long summer days begin very early at Wick. About half-past two of a morning in June a faint twittering under the eaves announces that the swallows are awaking, although they will not commence their flight for awhile yet. At three o’clock the cuckoo’s call comes up from the distant meadows, together with the sound of the mower sharpening his scythe, for he likes to work while the dew is heavy on the grass, both for coolness and because it cuts better. He gets half a day’s work done before the sun grows hot, and about eight or nine o’clock lies down under the hedge for a refreshing nap. Between three and four the thrushes open song in the copse at the corner of the Home-field, and soon a loud chorus takes up their ditty as one after the other joins in.

Then the nailed shoes of the milkers clatter on the pitching of the courtyard as they come for their buckets; and immediately afterwards stentorian voices may be heard in the fields bellowing ‘Coom up! ya-hoop!’ to which the cows, recognising the well-known call, respond very much in the same tones. Slowly they obey and gather together under the elms in the corner of the meadow, which in summer is used as the milking-place. About five or half-past another clattering tells of the milkers’ return; and then the dairy is in full operation. The household breakfasts at half-past six or thereabouts, and while breakfast is going on the heavy tramp of feet may be heard passing along the roadway through the rickyard—the haymakers marching to the fields. For the next two hours or so the sounds from the dairy are the only interruption of the silence: then come the first waggons loaded with hay, jolting and creaking, the carter’s lads shouting, ‘Woaght!’ to the horses as they steer through the gateway and sweep round, drawing up under the rick.

Between eleven and twelve the waggons cease to arrive—it is luncheon time: the exact time for luncheon varies a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, or more, according to the state of the work. Messengers come home for cans of beer, and carry out also to the field wooden ‘bottles’—small barrels holding a gallon or two. After a short interval work goes on again till nearly four o’clock, when it is dinner-time. One or two labourers, deputed by the rest and having leave and licence so to do, enter the farmhouse garden and pull up bundles of onions, lettuces, or radishes—sown over wide areas on purpose—and carry them out to the cart-house, or where-ever the men may be. If far from home, the women often boil a kettle for tea under the hedge, collecting dead sticks fallen from the trees. At six o’clock work is over: the women are allowed to leave half an hour or so previously, that they may prepare their husbands’ suppers.

As the sunset approaches the long broad dusty road loses its white glare, and yonder by the hamlet a bright glistening banner reflects the level rays of the sun with dazzling sheen; it is the gilding on the swinging wayside sign transformed for the moment from a wooden board rudely ornamented with a gilt sun, all rays and rotund cheeks, into a veritable oriflamme.

There the men will assemble by-and-by, on the forms about the trestle table, and share each other’s quarts in the fellowship of labour. Or perhaps the work may be pressing, and the waggons are loaded till the white owl noiselessly flits along the hedgerow, and the round moon rises over the hills. Then those who have stayed to assist find their supper waiting for them in the brewhouse, and do it ample justice.

Once during the morning, while busy in the hay-field, not so much with his hands as his eyes, watching that the ‘wallows’ may be turned over properly, and the ‘wakes’ made at a just distance from each other, that the waggon may pass easily between, the farmer is sure to be summoned home with the news of a swarm of bees. If the work be pressing, they must be attended to by deputy; if not, he hurries home himself; for although in these days bee-keeping is no longer what it used to be, yet the old-fashioned folk take a deep interest in the bees still. They tell you that ‘a swarm in May is worth a load of hay; a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon; but a swarm in July is not worth a fly’—for it is then too late for the young colony to store up a treasure of golden honey before the flowers begin to fade at the approach of autumn.

It is noticeable that those who labour on their own land (as at Wick) keep up the ancient customs much more vigorously than the tenant who knows that he is liable to receive a notice to quit. And farms, for one reason or another, change tenants much more frequently now than they used to do. Here at Wick the owner feels that every apple tree he grafts, every flower he plants, returns not only a money value, but a joy not to be measured by money. So the bees are carefully watched and tended, as the blue tomtits find to their cost if they become too venturesome.

These bold little bandits will sometimes make a dash for the hive, alighting on the miniature platform before the entrance, and playing havoc with the busy inmates. If alarmed they take refuge in the apple trees, as if conscious that the owner will not shoot them there, since every pellet may destroy potential fruit by cutting and breaking those tender twigs on which it would presently grow. It is a pleasant sight in autumn to see the room devoted to the honey—great broad milk-tins full to the brim of the translucent liquid, distilling slowly from pure white comb, from the top of whose cells the waxen covering has been removed.

All the summer through fresh beauties, indeed, wait upon the owner’s footsteps. In the spring the mowing grass rises thick, strong, and richly green, or hidden by the cloth-of-gold thrown over it by the buttercups! He knows when it is ready for the scythe without reference to the almanac, because of the brown tint which spreads over it from the ripening seeds, sometimes tinged with a dull red, when the stems of the sorrel are plentiful. At first the aftermath has a trace of yellow, as if it were fading; but a shower falls, and fresh green blades shoot up. Or, passing from the hollow meads up on the rising slopes where the plough rules the earth, what so beautiful to watch as the wheat through its various phases of colour?

First green and succulent; then, presently, see a modest ear comes forth with promise of the future. By-and-by, when every stalk is tipped like a sceptre, the lower stalk leaves are still green, but the stems have a faint bluish tinge, and the ears are paling into yellow. Next the white pollen—the bloom—shows under the warm sunshine, and then the birds begin to grow busy among it. They perch on the stalk itself—it is at that time strong and stiff enough to uphold their weight, one on a stem—but not now for mischief. You may see the sparrow carry away with him caterpillars for his young upon the housetop hard by; later on, it is true, he will revel on the ripe grains.

Yesterday you came to the wheat and found it pale like this (it seems but twenty-four hours ago—it is really only a little longer); to-day, when you look again, lo! there is a fleeting yellow already on the ears. They have so quickly caught the hue of the bright sunshine pouring on them. Yet another day or two, and the faint fleeting yellow has become fixed and certain, as the colours are deepened by the great artist. Only when the wind blows and the ears bend in those places where the breeze takes most; it looks paler because the under part of the ear is shown and part of the stalk. Finally comes that rich hue for which no exact similitude exists. In it there is somewhat of the red of the orange, somewhat of the tint of bronze, and somewhat of the hue of maize; but these are poor words wherewith to render fixed a colour that plays over the surface of this yellow sea, for if you take one, two, or a dozen ears you shall not find it, but must look abroad, and let your gaze travel to and fro. Nor is every field alike; here are acres and acres more yellow, yonder a space whiter, beyond that a slope richly ruddy, according to the kind of seed that was sown.

Out of the depths of what to it must seem an impenetrable jungle, from visiting a flower hidden below, a humble-bee climbs rapidly up a stalk a yard or two away while you look, and mounting to the top of the ear, as a post of vantage clear of obstructions, sails away upon the wind.

“We be all jolly vellers what vollers th’ plough!”—but not to listen to, and take literally according to the letter of the discourse. It runs something like this the seasons through as the weather changes: “Terrible dry weather this here to be sure; we got so much work to do uz can’t get drough it. The fly be swarming in the turmots—the smut be on the wheat—the wuts be amazing weak in the straw. Got a fine crop of wheat this year, and prices be low, so uz had better drow it to th’ pigs. Last year uz had no wheat fit to speak on, and prices was high. Drot this here wet weather! the osses be all in the stable eating their heads off, and the chaps be all idling about and can’t do no work: a pretty penny for wages and not a job done. Them summer ricks be all rotten at bottom. The ploughing engine be stuck fast up to the axle, the land be so soft and squishey. Us never gets no good old frosts now, like they used to have. Drot these here frosty mornings! a-cutting up everything. There’ll be another rate out soon, a’ reckon. Us had better give up this here trade, neighbour!”

And so on for a thousand and one grumbles, fitting into every possible condition of things, which must not, however, be taken too seriously; for of all other men the farmer is the most deeply attached to the labour by which he lives, and loves the earth on which he walks like a true autochthon. He will not leave it unless he is suffering severely.

Chapter Eight.Birds of the Farmhouse—Speech of a Starling—Population of a Gable—The King of the Hedge—The Thrushes’ Anvil.Wick farmhouse is thatched, and has many gables hidden with ivy. In these broad expanses of thatch, on the great ‘chimney-tuns’ as country folk call them, and in the ivy, tribes of birds have taken up their residence. The thatch has grown so thick in the course of years by the addition of fresh coats that it projects far from the walls and forms wide, far-reaching eaves. Over the cellar the roof descends within three or four feet of the ground, the wall being low, and the eaves here cast a shadow with the sun nearly at the zenith.On the higher parts of the roof, especially round the chimneys, the starlings have made their holes, and in the early summer are continuously flying to and fro their young, who never cease crying form food the whole day through. A tall ash tree stands in the hedgerow, about fifty yards from the house. On this tree, which is detached, so that they can see all round, the starlings perch before they come to the roof, as if to reconnoitre and to exchange pourparlers with their friends already on the roof; for if ever birds talk together starlings do. Many birds utter the same notes over and over again; others sit on a branch and sing the same song, as the thrush; but the starling has a whole syllabary of his own, every note of which evidently has its meaning, and can be varied and accented at pleasure.His whistle ranges from a shrill, piercing treble to a low, hollow bass; he runs a complete gamut, with ‘shakes,’ trills, tremulous vibrations, every possible variation. He intersperses a peculiar clucking sound, which seems to come from the depths of his breast, fluttering his wings all the while against his sides as he stands bolt upright on the edge of the chimney. Other birds seem to sing for the pure pleasure of singing, shedding their notes broadcast, or at most they are meant for a mate hidden in the bush. The starling addresses himself direct to his fellows: I think I may say he never sings when alone, without a companion in sight. He literally speaks to his fellows. I am persuaded you may almost follow the dialogue and guess the tenor of the discourse.A starling is on the chimney-top; yonder on the ash tree are four or five of his acquaintance. Suddenly he begins to pour forth a flood of eloquence—facing them as he speaks: Will they come with him down to the field where the cows are grazing? There will be sure to be plenty of insects settling on the grass round the cows, and every now and then they tear up the herbage by the roots and expose creeping things. “Come,” you may hear him say, modulating his tones to persuasion, “come quickly; you see it is a fresh piece of grass into which the cows have been turned only a few hours since; it was too long for us before, but where they have eaten we can get at the ground comfortably. The water-wagtail is there already; he always accompanies the herd, and will have the pick and choice of everything. Or what do you say to the meadow by the brook? The mowers have begun, and the swathe has fallen before their scythes; there are acres of ground there which we could not touch for weeks; now it is open, and the place is teeming with good food. The finches are there as busy as may be between the swathes—chaffinch and greenfinch, hedge-sparrow, thrushes, and blackbirds too. Are you afraid? Why, no one shoots in the middle of a summer’s day. Still irresolute? (with an angry shrillness). Will you or will you not? (a sharp short whistle of interrogation). You are simply idiots (finishing with a scream of abuse). I’m off!”Seeing him start, the rest follow at once, jealous lest he should enjoy these pleasures alone. As he flies every few minutes he closes his wings, so that for half a dozen yards he shoots like an arrow through the air; then rapidly uses them, and again closes and shoots forward, all the timekeeping a level straight course; going direct to his object.The starlings that breed in the roof, though they leave the place later on and congregate in flocks roosting in trees, still come back now and then to revisit their homes, especially as the new year opens, when they alight on the house frequently and consult on the approaching important period of nesting. If you should be sitting near a window close under the roof where they are busy, reading a book, with the summer sunshine streaming in, now and then a flash like lightning will pass across the page. It is a starling rapidly vibrating his wings before he perches on the thatch; the swift succession of light and shadow as the wings intercept the rays of the sun causes an impression on the eye like that left by a flash of lightning. They are beautiful birds: on their plumage, when seen quite close, the light plays in iridescent gleams.Upon the roof of the old farmstead, too, the chirp of the sparrow never ceases the livelong day. It is amusing to see these birds in the nesting season carrying up long straws—towing their burden through the air with evident labour—or feathers. These they sometimes drop just as they arrive at their destination. Eager to utter a chirp to their mates, they open their beaks, and away floats the feather, but they catch it again before it reaches the ground. Fluffy feathers are great favourites. The fowls, as they fly up to roost on the beams in the sheds, beat out feathers from their clumsy wings; these lie scattered on the ground, marking the spot. These roosting-places are magazines from which the small birds draw their supplies for domestic purposes. The sparrows have their nests in lesser holes in the thatch: sometimes they use a swallow’s nest built of mortar under the eaves, to which the owners have not returned.The older folk still retain some faint superstitions about swallows, looking upon them as semi-consecrated and not to be killed or interfered with. They will not have their nests knocked down. If they do not return to the eaves but desert their nests it is a sign of misfortune impending over the household. So, too, if the rooks quit the rookery or the colonies of bees in the hives on the sunny side of the orchard decay and do not swarm, but seem to die off, it is an evil omen. If at night a bird flutters against the window-pane in the darkness—as they will sometimes in a great storm of wind, driven, perhaps, from their roosting-places by the breaking of the boughs, and attracted by a light within—the knocking of their wings betokens that something sad is about to happen. If an invalid asks for a pigeon—taking a fancy to a dish of pigeons to eat—it is a sign either of coming dissolution or of extreme illness.But the swallows rarely fail to come in the spring, and soon begin to repair their nests or build new ones with mortar from the roads; a rainy day is very useful to them, and they alight at the edge of the puddles, finding the mud already mixed and tempered for them there. In such weather they will fly backwards and forwards by the side of a hedge for a length of time, skimming just above the grass, when, looking down on them instead of up at them, the white bar across the lower part of the body just before the tail forks is very noticeable. The darker feathers have a glossy bluish tinge on the black. They seem fond of flying round and near horses and cattle, as if insects were more numerous near animals. While driving on a sultry day I have watched a swallow follow the horse for a mile or more.It is a pleasant sight to watch them gliding just above the surface of smooth water, dipping every now and then. Once, while observing some swallows flying over a lake, on a windy day, when there were waves of some size, I saw a swallow struck by the crest of a wave and overwhelmed. It was about twenty yards from a lee shore, and the bird floated on the water, rising and sinking with the waves till they threw it on the bank. It was much exhausted, but when placed on a stone in the warm sunshine soon recovered and flew off.As another proof that quick as they are on the wing, they do not always judge their position or course precisely, I know a case where a swallow, in less than ten yards after leaving her nest under the eaves of a house, flew with great force against a door in the garden wall painted a dull blue. The beak was partly broken and the bird completely stunned: she died in a few minutes. There was some one in the garden close by at the time: his presence may have frightened the swallow; yet they are not usually timid where their nests are undisturbed. Perhaps in her hurry the dull blue colour of the gate may have deceived her sight; but she must have travelled that way a hundred times before.Swallows frequently come down the great chimneys at the farmhouse and are found in the rooms, but are always allowed to escape from the window. Swallows are said not to perch; but I have seen them repeatedly perch on those sticks which, where the thatch has somewhat decayed, project a few inches above the roof-tree. Sometimes a row of half a dozen may be observed settled on the roof here. You may see them, too, perch on the topmost boughs of the tall damson trees in the orchard; and again, later in the autumn, after nesting is over, they assemble in hundreds—one might almost say thousands—in the withy bed by the brook, settling on the slender willow wands. There they twitter together for an hour or more every evening. They can rise without the slightest difficulty from the ground, if it is level and not encumbered with grass, as from the surface of the roads. On dull cold days they settle on the house more frequently than when it is bright and sunny.At one end of the farmhouse, which is an irregular building, there is a quiet gable, and in it a casement arched over by the thatch, and shaded by a thick growth of ivy. The casement is low, and not more than eight or nine feet from the ground; the ivy has climbed the wall, it has spread too over the massive wall of the garden which just there abuts upon the house, so that there is a secluded corner formed by the angle. Here some time ago a number of logs of timber—oak, such as are sawn up into posts for field gateways—were left leaning half against the garden wall, half against the house, just under the window. There they have remained (there is never any hurry about things in the country) so long that the moss has begun to encase the lower portions. What with the projecting thatch, the thick ivy, the timber thrown carelessly beneath, the lichen-grown garden wall, and a large bush of lilac in the angle, the place could hardly be more quiet, and is consequently a favourite resort of the birds.Within reach from the window the swallows have their nests, and the sparrows their holes, on the right hand; within reach on the left hand, among the ivy, the water-wagtail has built her nest year after year. The wagtail may always be seen about the place—now in the cow-yards among the cattle, now in the rickyard, and even close to the door of the dwelling-house, especially frequenting the courtyard in front of the dairy. As he flies he rises up and then sinks again, in a succession of undulations, now spreading the tail out and now closing it. On the ground he generally alights near water; he is continually jerking the tail up and down.One spring a cuckoo came to this nest in the ivy close to the casement; she was seen flying near the house several times, and, being observed to visit the ivy-covered gable, was finally traced to the wagtail’s nest. For several days in succession, and several times a day, the cuckoo came, and would doubtless have left an egg had not she been shot by a person who wanted a cuckoo to stuff.It is difficult to understand upon what principle the cuckoo selected a nest thus placed. The ordinary considerations put forward as guiding birds and animals in their actions quite fail. Instinct would scarcely choose a spot so close to a house—actually on it; the desire of safety would not lead to it either, nor the idea of concealment. She might, no doubt, have found nests enough at a distance from houses, and much more likely to escape observation. Was there any kind of feeling that this particular wagtail was more likely to take care of the offspring than others?I doubt the cuckoo’s alleged total indifference to her young. They certainly linger in the neighbourhood of the nests which they have selected to deposit their eggs in. On another occasion a cuckoo used a wagtail’s nest in a different part of the garden here—in some ivy that had grown round the decaying stump of an old fir tree. This bird was watched, but not interfered with; she came repeatedly, and was seen on the nest, and the egg observed. Afterwards a cuckoo sang continuously day after day on an ash tree close to the garden.Lower down in the ivy, behind the logs of timber under the casement, the hedge-sparrow builds every year; and on the wood itself where the trunks formed a little recess was a robin’s nest. The hedge-sparrow, unlike his noisy namesake, is one of the quietest of birds: he slips about in the hedges and bushes all round the garden so quietly and unobtrusively that unless you watch carefully you will not see him. Yet he does not seem shy, and if you sit still will come along the hawthorn within a yard.In the thatch—under the eaves of the cellar, which are not more than four feet from the ground and come up to the ivy of the gable—the wren has a nest. Some birds seem always to make their nests in one particular kind of way, and generally in the same kind of tree or bush; robins, house-sparrows, and starlings, on the other hand, adjust their nests to all sorts of places.The window of a room in which I used to sleep overlooked the orchard, and there was a pear tree trained against the wall, some of the boughs of which came up to the window-sill. This pear tree acted as a ladder, up which the birds came. Pear trees are a good deal frequented by many birds; their rough bark seems to shelter numerous insects. The window was left open all night in the sultry summer weather, and presently a robin began to come in very early in the morning. Encouraged by finding that no one disturbed him, at last he grew bold enough to perch morning after morning on the rail at the foot of my bed. First he seemed to examine the inside of the window, then went on the floor, and, after a good look round, finally finished by sitting on the wooden framework for a few minutes before departing.This went on some time; then a wren came too; she likewise looked to see if anything edible could be found in the window first. Old-fashioned windows often have a broad sill inside—the window frame being placed nearly at the outer edge of the wall, so that the thickness of the wall forms a recess, which is lined with board along the bottom. Now this wooden lining was decayed and drilled with innumerable holes by boring insects, which threw up tiny heaps of sawdust, as one might say, just as moles throw up mounds of earth where they tunnel. Perhaps these formed an attraction to the wren. She also frequently visited an old-fashioned bookcase, on the top of which—it was very low—I often left some old worm-eaten folios and quartos, and may have occasionally picked up something there. Once only she ventured to the foot of the bed. After leaving the room she always perched on a thin iron projection which held the window open, and uttered her singularly loud notes, their metallic clearness seeming to make the chamber ring. Starlings often perched on the same iron slide, and sparrows continually; but only the robin and wren came inside. Tomtits occasionally entered and explored the same board-lining of the window, but no farther. They will, however, sometimes explore a room.I know a parlour the window of which was partly overhung by a similar pear tree, besides which there were some shrubs just outside, and into this room, being quiet and little used, the tomtits ventured every now and then. I fancy the placing of flowers in vases, on the table or on the mantelpiece attracts birds to rooms, if they are still. Insects visit the flowers; birds look for the insects: and this room generally abounded with cut flowers. Entering it suddenly one day, a tomtit flew from side to side in great agitation, and then dropped on the floor and allowed me to pick it up without an effort to escape. The bird had swooned from fright, and was quite helpless—the eyes closed. On being placed outside the window, in five minutes it came to itself and flew off feebly. In this way birds may frequently become a prey to cats and hawks when to all appearance they might easily escape—becoming so overwhelmed with alarm as to lose the power of motion.The robin is a most pugnacious creature. He will fight furiously with a rival; in fact, he never misses an opportunity of fighting. But he always chooses the very early morning for these encounters, and so escapes suspicion, except, of course, from people who rise early too. It is even said that the young cock robins, when they are full-grown, turn round on their own parents and fight with them vigorously. Neither is he a favourite with the upper class of cottagers—for there is an ‘upper ten’ even among cottagers—who have large fruit-gardens. In these they grow quantities of currants for preserving purposes. The robin is accused of being a terrible thief of currants, and meets with scant mercy.Sometimes while walking slowly along the footpath in a lane with hedges each side a robin will dart out of the hawthorn and pick up a worm or grub almost under your feet; then in his alarm at your presence drop it, and rush back in a flutter. Other birds will do the same thing, from which it would seem that the old saying that the eye sees what it comes to see is as applicable to them as to human beings. Their eyes, ever on the watch for food, instantly detect a tiny creeping thing several yards distant, though concealed by grass; but the comparatively immense bulk of a man appears to escape notice till they fly almost up against it.I fancy that the hive-bee and some kindred insects have a special faculty of seeing colour at a distance, and that colours attract them. It can hardly be scent, because when flowers are placed in a room and the window left open the wind generally blows strongly into the apartment, and odours will not travel against a breeze. It seems natural that in both cases the continual watch for certain things should enable bird and insect to observe the faintest indication. Slugs, caterpillars, and such creatures, too, in moving among the grass, cause a slight agitation of the grass-blades; they lift up a leaf by crawling under it, or depress it with their weight by getting on it. This may enable the bird to detect their presence, even when quite hidden by the herbage, experience having taught it that when grass is moved by the wind broad patches sway simultaneously, but when an insect or caterpillar is the agent only a single leaf or blade is stirred.At the farmhouse here, robins, wrens, and tomtits are always hanging about the courtyard, especially close to the dairy, where one or other may be constantly seen perched on the palings; neither do they scruple to enter the dairy, the brewhouse, or wood-house adjacent, when they see a chance. The logs (for fuel) stored in the latter doubtless afford them insects from under the dead bark.Among the most constant residents in the garden at Wick Farm are the song thrushes. They are the tamest of the larger birds; they come every morning right under the old bay-window of the sitting-room on the shady side of the house, where the musk-plant has spread abroad and covered the stone-pitching for many yards, except just a narrow path paved with broad flagstones. The musk finds root in every interstice of the pitching, but cannot push up through the solid flat flags; a fungus, however, has attempted even that, and has succeeded in forcing a great stone, weighing perhaps fifteen or twenty pounds, from its bed, so that instead of being level it forms an inclined plane. The carpet of musk yields a pleasant odour; in one corner, too, the ‘monkey-plant’ grows luxuriously, and the grass of the green or lawn is for ever trying to encroach upon the paving. In the centre of the green is a bed of gooseberries and a cherry tree; and though the fruit is so close to the window, both thrush and blackbird make as free with it as if it was in the hedgerow.The thrush, when he wishes to approach the house, flies first to the cover of these gooseberries; then, after reconnoitring a few minutes, comes out on the green and gradually works his way across it to the stone-pitching, and so along under the very window. The blackbird comes almost as often to the lawn, but it is in a different way. His manner is that of a bold marauder, conscious that he has no right, and aware that a shot from an ambuscade may lay him low, but defiantly risking the danger. He perches first on a bush, or on the garden wall, under the sheltering boughs of the lime trees, at a distance of some twenty yards; then, waiting till all is clear, he makes a desperate rush for the fruit trees or the lawn. The moment he has succeeded in violently seizing some delicious morsel off he goes, uttering a loud chuckle—half as a challenge, half as a vent for his pent-up anxiety.This peculiar chuckle is so well known by all the other birds as a note of alarm that every one in the garden immediately move; his position, if only a yard or two. When you are stealing down the side of the hedgerow, endeavouring to get near enough to observe the woodpecker in a tree, or with a gun to shoot a pigeon, the great anxiety is lest you startle a blackbird. If he thinks you have not seen him, he is cunning enough to slip out the other side noiselessly and fly down beside the hedge just above the ground for some distance. He then crosses the field to a hedge on the other side, and, just as he safely lands himself in a thick hawthorn bush a hundred yards away, defiantly utters his cry. The pigeon or the woodpecker will instantly glance round; but, the cry being at a distance, if you keep still a minute or two they will resume their occupation. But if you should disturb the blackbird on the side of the bank next you, where he knows you must have seen or heard him, or if he is obliged to come out on your side of the hedge, then he makes the meadow ring with his alarm-note, and immediately away goes pigeon or woodpecker, thrushes fly further down the hedge, and the rabbits feeding in the grass lift up their heads and, seeing you, rush to their burrows. In this way the blackbird acts as a general sentinel.He has two variations of this cry. One he uses when just about to change his feeding ground and visit another favourite corner across the field; it is as much as to say, “Take notice, all you menials; I, the king of the hedge, am coming.” The other is a warning, and will very often set two or three other blackbirds calling in the same way, whose existence till then was unsuspected. These calls are quite distinct from his song.Sometimes, when sitting on a rail in the shade of a great bush—a rail placed to close a gap—I have had a blackbird come across the meadow and perch just above my head. Till the moment of alighting he was ignorant of my presence, and for a second the extremity of his astonishment literally held him speechless at his own temerity. The next—what an outcry and furious bustle of excitement to escape! So in the garden here he makes a desperate rush, seizes his prey, and off again twenty or thirty yards, exhibiting an amusing mixture of courage and timidity. This process he will repeat fifty times a day. No matter how terribly frightened, his assurance quickly returns, and another foray follows; so that you begin by thinking him the most cowardly and end by finding him the most impudent of birds.I own I love the blackbird, and never weary of observing him. There is a bold English independence about him—an insolent consciousness of his own beauty. He must somehow have read Shakespeare, for he seems quite aware of his ‘orange-tawny bill’ and deep black hue. He might really know that he figures in a famous ballad, and that four-and-twenty of his species were considered a dish to set before a king.It is a sight to see him take his bath. In a meadow not far from the house here is a shallow but clear streamlet, running down a deep broad ditch overshadowed by tall hemlock and clogweed, arched over with willow, whose leaves when the wind blows and their under-side is exposed give the hedge a grey tint, with maple and briar. Hide yourself here on a summer morning among the dry grass and bushes, and presently the blackbird comes to stand a minute on a stone which checks the tiny stream like a miniature rock, and then to splash the clear water overhead and back with immense energy. He repeats this several times, and immediately afterwards flies to an adjacent rail, where, unfettered by boughs, he can preen his feathers, going through his toilet with the air of a prince. Finally, he perks his tail up, and challenges the world with the call already mentioned, which seems now to mean, “Come and see Me; am I not handsome?”On a warm June day, when the hedges are covered with roses and the air is sweet with the odour of mown grass, it is pleasant to listen to the blackbirds in the oaks pouring forth their rich liquid notes. There is no note so sweet and deep and melodious as that of the blackbird to be heard in our fields; it is even richer than the nightingale’s, though not so varied. Just before noonday—between eleven and twelve—when the heat increases, he leaves the low thick bushes and moist ditches and mounts up into an oak tree, where, on a branch, he sits and sings. Then another at a distance takes up the burden, till by-and-by, as you listen, partly hidden in a gateway, four or five are thus engaged in the trees of a single meadow.He sings in a quiet, leisurely way, as a great artist should—there is no haste, no notes thickening on notes in swift crescendo. His voice (so to speak) drops from him, without an effort, and is so clear that it may be heard at a long distance. It is not a set song; perhaps, in strict language, it is hardly a song at all, but rather a succession of detached notes with intervals between. Except when singing, the blackbird does not often frequent trees; he is a hedge-bird, though sometimes when you are looking at a field of green corn or beans one will rise out of it and fly to a tree—a solitary tree such as is sometimes seen in the midst of an arable field. At Wick Farm, sitting in the cool parlour, or in the garden under the shade of the trees, you may hear him almost every morning in the meadows that come right up to the orchard hedge. That hedge is his favourite approach to the garden: he flies to it first, and gradually works his way along under cover till nearer the cultivated beds. Both blackbird and thrush are particularly fond of visiting a patch of cabbages in a shady, quiet corner: there are generally two or three there after the worms and caterpillars, and so forth.The thrushes build in the garden in several places, especially in an ivy-hidden arbour—a wooden frame completely covered with ivy and creeping flowers. Close by is a thick box-hedge, six feet high and nearly as much through, and behind this is a low-thatched tool-house, where spades, moletraps, scythes, reaping-hooks, and other implements are kept. Here lies a sarsen-stone, hard as iron, about a foot thick, the top of which chances to be smooth and level. This is the thrush’s favourite anvil.He searches about under the ivy, under which the snails hide in their shells in the heat of the day, and brings them forth into the light. The shell is too large for his beak to hold it pincer-fashion, but at the entrance—the snail’s doorway—he can thrust his bill in, and woe then to the miserable occupant! With a hop and flutter the thrush mounts the stone anvil, and there destroys his victim in workmanlike style. Up goes his head, lifting the snail high in the air, and then, smash! the shell comes down on the stone with all the force he can use. About two such blows break the shell, and he then coolly chips the fragments off as you might from an egg, and makes very few mouthfuls of the contents. On the stone and round about it lie the fragments of many such shells—relics of former feasts. Sometimes he will do this close to the bay-window—if all is quiet—using the stone-flags for an anvil, if he chances to find a snail hard by; but he prefers the recess behind the box-hedge. The thrushes seem half-domesticated here; they are tame, too, in the hedges, and will sit and sing on a bough overhead without fear while you wait for a rabbit on the bank beneath.

Wick farmhouse is thatched, and has many gables hidden with ivy. In these broad expanses of thatch, on the great ‘chimney-tuns’ as country folk call them, and in the ivy, tribes of birds have taken up their residence. The thatch has grown so thick in the course of years by the addition of fresh coats that it projects far from the walls and forms wide, far-reaching eaves. Over the cellar the roof descends within three or four feet of the ground, the wall being low, and the eaves here cast a shadow with the sun nearly at the zenith.

On the higher parts of the roof, especially round the chimneys, the starlings have made their holes, and in the early summer are continuously flying to and fro their young, who never cease crying form food the whole day through. A tall ash tree stands in the hedgerow, about fifty yards from the house. On this tree, which is detached, so that they can see all round, the starlings perch before they come to the roof, as if to reconnoitre and to exchange pourparlers with their friends already on the roof; for if ever birds talk together starlings do. Many birds utter the same notes over and over again; others sit on a branch and sing the same song, as the thrush; but the starling has a whole syllabary of his own, every note of which evidently has its meaning, and can be varied and accented at pleasure.

His whistle ranges from a shrill, piercing treble to a low, hollow bass; he runs a complete gamut, with ‘shakes,’ trills, tremulous vibrations, every possible variation. He intersperses a peculiar clucking sound, which seems to come from the depths of his breast, fluttering his wings all the while against his sides as he stands bolt upright on the edge of the chimney. Other birds seem to sing for the pure pleasure of singing, shedding their notes broadcast, or at most they are meant for a mate hidden in the bush. The starling addresses himself direct to his fellows: I think I may say he never sings when alone, without a companion in sight. He literally speaks to his fellows. I am persuaded you may almost follow the dialogue and guess the tenor of the discourse.

A starling is on the chimney-top; yonder on the ash tree are four or five of his acquaintance. Suddenly he begins to pour forth a flood of eloquence—facing them as he speaks: Will they come with him down to the field where the cows are grazing? There will be sure to be plenty of insects settling on the grass round the cows, and every now and then they tear up the herbage by the roots and expose creeping things. “Come,” you may hear him say, modulating his tones to persuasion, “come quickly; you see it is a fresh piece of grass into which the cows have been turned only a few hours since; it was too long for us before, but where they have eaten we can get at the ground comfortably. The water-wagtail is there already; he always accompanies the herd, and will have the pick and choice of everything. Or what do you say to the meadow by the brook? The mowers have begun, and the swathe has fallen before their scythes; there are acres of ground there which we could not touch for weeks; now it is open, and the place is teeming with good food. The finches are there as busy as may be between the swathes—chaffinch and greenfinch, hedge-sparrow, thrushes, and blackbirds too. Are you afraid? Why, no one shoots in the middle of a summer’s day. Still irresolute? (with an angry shrillness). Will you or will you not? (a sharp short whistle of interrogation). You are simply idiots (finishing with a scream of abuse). I’m off!”

Seeing him start, the rest follow at once, jealous lest he should enjoy these pleasures alone. As he flies every few minutes he closes his wings, so that for half a dozen yards he shoots like an arrow through the air; then rapidly uses them, and again closes and shoots forward, all the timekeeping a level straight course; going direct to his object.

The starlings that breed in the roof, though they leave the place later on and congregate in flocks roosting in trees, still come back now and then to revisit their homes, especially as the new year opens, when they alight on the house frequently and consult on the approaching important period of nesting. If you should be sitting near a window close under the roof where they are busy, reading a book, with the summer sunshine streaming in, now and then a flash like lightning will pass across the page. It is a starling rapidly vibrating his wings before he perches on the thatch; the swift succession of light and shadow as the wings intercept the rays of the sun causes an impression on the eye like that left by a flash of lightning. They are beautiful birds: on their plumage, when seen quite close, the light plays in iridescent gleams.

Upon the roof of the old farmstead, too, the chirp of the sparrow never ceases the livelong day. It is amusing to see these birds in the nesting season carrying up long straws—towing their burden through the air with evident labour—or feathers. These they sometimes drop just as they arrive at their destination. Eager to utter a chirp to their mates, they open their beaks, and away floats the feather, but they catch it again before it reaches the ground. Fluffy feathers are great favourites. The fowls, as they fly up to roost on the beams in the sheds, beat out feathers from their clumsy wings; these lie scattered on the ground, marking the spot. These roosting-places are magazines from which the small birds draw their supplies for domestic purposes. The sparrows have their nests in lesser holes in the thatch: sometimes they use a swallow’s nest built of mortar under the eaves, to which the owners have not returned.

The older folk still retain some faint superstitions about swallows, looking upon them as semi-consecrated and not to be killed or interfered with. They will not have their nests knocked down. If they do not return to the eaves but desert their nests it is a sign of misfortune impending over the household. So, too, if the rooks quit the rookery or the colonies of bees in the hives on the sunny side of the orchard decay and do not swarm, but seem to die off, it is an evil omen. If at night a bird flutters against the window-pane in the darkness—as they will sometimes in a great storm of wind, driven, perhaps, from their roosting-places by the breaking of the boughs, and attracted by a light within—the knocking of their wings betokens that something sad is about to happen. If an invalid asks for a pigeon—taking a fancy to a dish of pigeons to eat—it is a sign either of coming dissolution or of extreme illness.

But the swallows rarely fail to come in the spring, and soon begin to repair their nests or build new ones with mortar from the roads; a rainy day is very useful to them, and they alight at the edge of the puddles, finding the mud already mixed and tempered for them there. In such weather they will fly backwards and forwards by the side of a hedge for a length of time, skimming just above the grass, when, looking down on them instead of up at them, the white bar across the lower part of the body just before the tail forks is very noticeable. The darker feathers have a glossy bluish tinge on the black. They seem fond of flying round and near horses and cattle, as if insects were more numerous near animals. While driving on a sultry day I have watched a swallow follow the horse for a mile or more.

It is a pleasant sight to watch them gliding just above the surface of smooth water, dipping every now and then. Once, while observing some swallows flying over a lake, on a windy day, when there were waves of some size, I saw a swallow struck by the crest of a wave and overwhelmed. It was about twenty yards from a lee shore, and the bird floated on the water, rising and sinking with the waves till they threw it on the bank. It was much exhausted, but when placed on a stone in the warm sunshine soon recovered and flew off.

As another proof that quick as they are on the wing, they do not always judge their position or course precisely, I know a case where a swallow, in less than ten yards after leaving her nest under the eaves of a house, flew with great force against a door in the garden wall painted a dull blue. The beak was partly broken and the bird completely stunned: she died in a few minutes. There was some one in the garden close by at the time: his presence may have frightened the swallow; yet they are not usually timid where their nests are undisturbed. Perhaps in her hurry the dull blue colour of the gate may have deceived her sight; but she must have travelled that way a hundred times before.

Swallows frequently come down the great chimneys at the farmhouse and are found in the rooms, but are always allowed to escape from the window. Swallows are said not to perch; but I have seen them repeatedly perch on those sticks which, where the thatch has somewhat decayed, project a few inches above the roof-tree. Sometimes a row of half a dozen may be observed settled on the roof here. You may see them, too, perch on the topmost boughs of the tall damson trees in the orchard; and again, later in the autumn, after nesting is over, they assemble in hundreds—one might almost say thousands—in the withy bed by the brook, settling on the slender willow wands. There they twitter together for an hour or more every evening. They can rise without the slightest difficulty from the ground, if it is level and not encumbered with grass, as from the surface of the roads. On dull cold days they settle on the house more frequently than when it is bright and sunny.

At one end of the farmhouse, which is an irregular building, there is a quiet gable, and in it a casement arched over by the thatch, and shaded by a thick growth of ivy. The casement is low, and not more than eight or nine feet from the ground; the ivy has climbed the wall, it has spread too over the massive wall of the garden which just there abuts upon the house, so that there is a secluded corner formed by the angle. Here some time ago a number of logs of timber—oak, such as are sawn up into posts for field gateways—were left leaning half against the garden wall, half against the house, just under the window. There they have remained (there is never any hurry about things in the country) so long that the moss has begun to encase the lower portions. What with the projecting thatch, the thick ivy, the timber thrown carelessly beneath, the lichen-grown garden wall, and a large bush of lilac in the angle, the place could hardly be more quiet, and is consequently a favourite resort of the birds.

Within reach from the window the swallows have their nests, and the sparrows their holes, on the right hand; within reach on the left hand, among the ivy, the water-wagtail has built her nest year after year. The wagtail may always be seen about the place—now in the cow-yards among the cattle, now in the rickyard, and even close to the door of the dwelling-house, especially frequenting the courtyard in front of the dairy. As he flies he rises up and then sinks again, in a succession of undulations, now spreading the tail out and now closing it. On the ground he generally alights near water; he is continually jerking the tail up and down.

One spring a cuckoo came to this nest in the ivy close to the casement; she was seen flying near the house several times, and, being observed to visit the ivy-covered gable, was finally traced to the wagtail’s nest. For several days in succession, and several times a day, the cuckoo came, and would doubtless have left an egg had not she been shot by a person who wanted a cuckoo to stuff.

It is difficult to understand upon what principle the cuckoo selected a nest thus placed. The ordinary considerations put forward as guiding birds and animals in their actions quite fail. Instinct would scarcely choose a spot so close to a house—actually on it; the desire of safety would not lead to it either, nor the idea of concealment. She might, no doubt, have found nests enough at a distance from houses, and much more likely to escape observation. Was there any kind of feeling that this particular wagtail was more likely to take care of the offspring than others?

I doubt the cuckoo’s alleged total indifference to her young. They certainly linger in the neighbourhood of the nests which they have selected to deposit their eggs in. On another occasion a cuckoo used a wagtail’s nest in a different part of the garden here—in some ivy that had grown round the decaying stump of an old fir tree. This bird was watched, but not interfered with; she came repeatedly, and was seen on the nest, and the egg observed. Afterwards a cuckoo sang continuously day after day on an ash tree close to the garden.

Lower down in the ivy, behind the logs of timber under the casement, the hedge-sparrow builds every year; and on the wood itself where the trunks formed a little recess was a robin’s nest. The hedge-sparrow, unlike his noisy namesake, is one of the quietest of birds: he slips about in the hedges and bushes all round the garden so quietly and unobtrusively that unless you watch carefully you will not see him. Yet he does not seem shy, and if you sit still will come along the hawthorn within a yard.

In the thatch—under the eaves of the cellar, which are not more than four feet from the ground and come up to the ivy of the gable—the wren has a nest. Some birds seem always to make their nests in one particular kind of way, and generally in the same kind of tree or bush; robins, house-sparrows, and starlings, on the other hand, adjust their nests to all sorts of places.

The window of a room in which I used to sleep overlooked the orchard, and there was a pear tree trained against the wall, some of the boughs of which came up to the window-sill. This pear tree acted as a ladder, up which the birds came. Pear trees are a good deal frequented by many birds; their rough bark seems to shelter numerous insects. The window was left open all night in the sultry summer weather, and presently a robin began to come in very early in the morning. Encouraged by finding that no one disturbed him, at last he grew bold enough to perch morning after morning on the rail at the foot of my bed. First he seemed to examine the inside of the window, then went on the floor, and, after a good look round, finally finished by sitting on the wooden framework for a few minutes before departing.

This went on some time; then a wren came too; she likewise looked to see if anything edible could be found in the window first. Old-fashioned windows often have a broad sill inside—the window frame being placed nearly at the outer edge of the wall, so that the thickness of the wall forms a recess, which is lined with board along the bottom. Now this wooden lining was decayed and drilled with innumerable holes by boring insects, which threw up tiny heaps of sawdust, as one might say, just as moles throw up mounds of earth where they tunnel. Perhaps these formed an attraction to the wren. She also frequently visited an old-fashioned bookcase, on the top of which—it was very low—I often left some old worm-eaten folios and quartos, and may have occasionally picked up something there. Once only she ventured to the foot of the bed. After leaving the room she always perched on a thin iron projection which held the window open, and uttered her singularly loud notes, their metallic clearness seeming to make the chamber ring. Starlings often perched on the same iron slide, and sparrows continually; but only the robin and wren came inside. Tomtits occasionally entered and explored the same board-lining of the window, but no farther. They will, however, sometimes explore a room.

I know a parlour the window of which was partly overhung by a similar pear tree, besides which there were some shrubs just outside, and into this room, being quiet and little used, the tomtits ventured every now and then. I fancy the placing of flowers in vases, on the table or on the mantelpiece attracts birds to rooms, if they are still. Insects visit the flowers; birds look for the insects: and this room generally abounded with cut flowers. Entering it suddenly one day, a tomtit flew from side to side in great agitation, and then dropped on the floor and allowed me to pick it up without an effort to escape. The bird had swooned from fright, and was quite helpless—the eyes closed. On being placed outside the window, in five minutes it came to itself and flew off feebly. In this way birds may frequently become a prey to cats and hawks when to all appearance they might easily escape—becoming so overwhelmed with alarm as to lose the power of motion.

The robin is a most pugnacious creature. He will fight furiously with a rival; in fact, he never misses an opportunity of fighting. But he always chooses the very early morning for these encounters, and so escapes suspicion, except, of course, from people who rise early too. It is even said that the young cock robins, when they are full-grown, turn round on their own parents and fight with them vigorously. Neither is he a favourite with the upper class of cottagers—for there is an ‘upper ten’ even among cottagers—who have large fruit-gardens. In these they grow quantities of currants for preserving purposes. The robin is accused of being a terrible thief of currants, and meets with scant mercy.

Sometimes while walking slowly along the footpath in a lane with hedges each side a robin will dart out of the hawthorn and pick up a worm or grub almost under your feet; then in his alarm at your presence drop it, and rush back in a flutter. Other birds will do the same thing, from which it would seem that the old saying that the eye sees what it comes to see is as applicable to them as to human beings. Their eyes, ever on the watch for food, instantly detect a tiny creeping thing several yards distant, though concealed by grass; but the comparatively immense bulk of a man appears to escape notice till they fly almost up against it.

I fancy that the hive-bee and some kindred insects have a special faculty of seeing colour at a distance, and that colours attract them. It can hardly be scent, because when flowers are placed in a room and the window left open the wind generally blows strongly into the apartment, and odours will not travel against a breeze. It seems natural that in both cases the continual watch for certain things should enable bird and insect to observe the faintest indication. Slugs, caterpillars, and such creatures, too, in moving among the grass, cause a slight agitation of the grass-blades; they lift up a leaf by crawling under it, or depress it with their weight by getting on it. This may enable the bird to detect their presence, even when quite hidden by the herbage, experience having taught it that when grass is moved by the wind broad patches sway simultaneously, but when an insect or caterpillar is the agent only a single leaf or blade is stirred.

At the farmhouse here, robins, wrens, and tomtits are always hanging about the courtyard, especially close to the dairy, where one or other may be constantly seen perched on the palings; neither do they scruple to enter the dairy, the brewhouse, or wood-house adjacent, when they see a chance. The logs (for fuel) stored in the latter doubtless afford them insects from under the dead bark.

Among the most constant residents in the garden at Wick Farm are the song thrushes. They are the tamest of the larger birds; they come every morning right under the old bay-window of the sitting-room on the shady side of the house, where the musk-plant has spread abroad and covered the stone-pitching for many yards, except just a narrow path paved with broad flagstones. The musk finds root in every interstice of the pitching, but cannot push up through the solid flat flags; a fungus, however, has attempted even that, and has succeeded in forcing a great stone, weighing perhaps fifteen or twenty pounds, from its bed, so that instead of being level it forms an inclined plane. The carpet of musk yields a pleasant odour; in one corner, too, the ‘monkey-plant’ grows luxuriously, and the grass of the green or lawn is for ever trying to encroach upon the paving. In the centre of the green is a bed of gooseberries and a cherry tree; and though the fruit is so close to the window, both thrush and blackbird make as free with it as if it was in the hedgerow.

The thrush, when he wishes to approach the house, flies first to the cover of these gooseberries; then, after reconnoitring a few minutes, comes out on the green and gradually works his way across it to the stone-pitching, and so along under the very window. The blackbird comes almost as often to the lawn, but it is in a different way. His manner is that of a bold marauder, conscious that he has no right, and aware that a shot from an ambuscade may lay him low, but defiantly risking the danger. He perches first on a bush, or on the garden wall, under the sheltering boughs of the lime trees, at a distance of some twenty yards; then, waiting till all is clear, he makes a desperate rush for the fruit trees or the lawn. The moment he has succeeded in violently seizing some delicious morsel off he goes, uttering a loud chuckle—half as a challenge, half as a vent for his pent-up anxiety.

This peculiar chuckle is so well known by all the other birds as a note of alarm that every one in the garden immediately move; his position, if only a yard or two. When you are stealing down the side of the hedgerow, endeavouring to get near enough to observe the woodpecker in a tree, or with a gun to shoot a pigeon, the great anxiety is lest you startle a blackbird. If he thinks you have not seen him, he is cunning enough to slip out the other side noiselessly and fly down beside the hedge just above the ground for some distance. He then crosses the field to a hedge on the other side, and, just as he safely lands himself in a thick hawthorn bush a hundred yards away, defiantly utters his cry. The pigeon or the woodpecker will instantly glance round; but, the cry being at a distance, if you keep still a minute or two they will resume their occupation. But if you should disturb the blackbird on the side of the bank next you, where he knows you must have seen or heard him, or if he is obliged to come out on your side of the hedge, then he makes the meadow ring with his alarm-note, and immediately away goes pigeon or woodpecker, thrushes fly further down the hedge, and the rabbits feeding in the grass lift up their heads and, seeing you, rush to their burrows. In this way the blackbird acts as a general sentinel.

He has two variations of this cry. One he uses when just about to change his feeding ground and visit another favourite corner across the field; it is as much as to say, “Take notice, all you menials; I, the king of the hedge, am coming.” The other is a warning, and will very often set two or three other blackbirds calling in the same way, whose existence till then was unsuspected. These calls are quite distinct from his song.

Sometimes, when sitting on a rail in the shade of a great bush—a rail placed to close a gap—I have had a blackbird come across the meadow and perch just above my head. Till the moment of alighting he was ignorant of my presence, and for a second the extremity of his astonishment literally held him speechless at his own temerity. The next—what an outcry and furious bustle of excitement to escape! So in the garden here he makes a desperate rush, seizes his prey, and off again twenty or thirty yards, exhibiting an amusing mixture of courage and timidity. This process he will repeat fifty times a day. No matter how terribly frightened, his assurance quickly returns, and another foray follows; so that you begin by thinking him the most cowardly and end by finding him the most impudent of birds.

I own I love the blackbird, and never weary of observing him. There is a bold English independence about him—an insolent consciousness of his own beauty. He must somehow have read Shakespeare, for he seems quite aware of his ‘orange-tawny bill’ and deep black hue. He might really know that he figures in a famous ballad, and that four-and-twenty of his species were considered a dish to set before a king.

It is a sight to see him take his bath. In a meadow not far from the house here is a shallow but clear streamlet, running down a deep broad ditch overshadowed by tall hemlock and clogweed, arched over with willow, whose leaves when the wind blows and their under-side is exposed give the hedge a grey tint, with maple and briar. Hide yourself here on a summer morning among the dry grass and bushes, and presently the blackbird comes to stand a minute on a stone which checks the tiny stream like a miniature rock, and then to splash the clear water overhead and back with immense energy. He repeats this several times, and immediately afterwards flies to an adjacent rail, where, unfettered by boughs, he can preen his feathers, going through his toilet with the air of a prince. Finally, he perks his tail up, and challenges the world with the call already mentioned, which seems now to mean, “Come and see Me; am I not handsome?”

On a warm June day, when the hedges are covered with roses and the air is sweet with the odour of mown grass, it is pleasant to listen to the blackbirds in the oaks pouring forth their rich liquid notes. There is no note so sweet and deep and melodious as that of the blackbird to be heard in our fields; it is even richer than the nightingale’s, though not so varied. Just before noonday—between eleven and twelve—when the heat increases, he leaves the low thick bushes and moist ditches and mounts up into an oak tree, where, on a branch, he sits and sings. Then another at a distance takes up the burden, till by-and-by, as you listen, partly hidden in a gateway, four or five are thus engaged in the trees of a single meadow.

He sings in a quiet, leisurely way, as a great artist should—there is no haste, no notes thickening on notes in swift crescendo. His voice (so to speak) drops from him, without an effort, and is so clear that it may be heard at a long distance. It is not a set song; perhaps, in strict language, it is hardly a song at all, but rather a succession of detached notes with intervals between. Except when singing, the blackbird does not often frequent trees; he is a hedge-bird, though sometimes when you are looking at a field of green corn or beans one will rise out of it and fly to a tree—a solitary tree such as is sometimes seen in the midst of an arable field. At Wick Farm, sitting in the cool parlour, or in the garden under the shade of the trees, you may hear him almost every morning in the meadows that come right up to the orchard hedge. That hedge is his favourite approach to the garden: he flies to it first, and gradually works his way along under cover till nearer the cultivated beds. Both blackbird and thrush are particularly fond of visiting a patch of cabbages in a shady, quiet corner: there are generally two or three there after the worms and caterpillars, and so forth.

The thrushes build in the garden in several places, especially in an ivy-hidden arbour—a wooden frame completely covered with ivy and creeping flowers. Close by is a thick box-hedge, six feet high and nearly as much through, and behind this is a low-thatched tool-house, where spades, moletraps, scythes, reaping-hooks, and other implements are kept. Here lies a sarsen-stone, hard as iron, about a foot thick, the top of which chances to be smooth and level. This is the thrush’s favourite anvil.

He searches about under the ivy, under which the snails hide in their shells in the heat of the day, and brings them forth into the light. The shell is too large for his beak to hold it pincer-fashion, but at the entrance—the snail’s doorway—he can thrust his bill in, and woe then to the miserable occupant! With a hop and flutter the thrush mounts the stone anvil, and there destroys his victim in workmanlike style. Up goes his head, lifting the snail high in the air, and then, smash! the shell comes down on the stone with all the force he can use. About two such blows break the shell, and he then coolly chips the fragments off as you might from an egg, and makes very few mouthfuls of the contents. On the stone and round about it lie the fragments of many such shells—relics of former feasts. Sometimes he will do this close to the bay-window—if all is quiet—using the stone-flags for an anvil, if he chances to find a snail hard by; but he prefers the recess behind the box-hedge. The thrushes seem half-domesticated here; they are tame, too, in the hedges, and will sit and sing on a bough overhead without fear while you wait for a rabbit on the bank beneath.

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