Hampshire Days

The result of my observations on these birds and on three other pairs which I found breeding close by—one in the village, another just outside of it, and the third by the thorn-grown foundation of ruined Abbotstone not far off—came as a surprise to me; for it appeared that the cirl in its breeding habits and language was not like other buntings, nor indeed like any other bird. The young hatched out of the curiously marked or "written" eggs are like those of the yellowhammer, black as moor-hen chicks in their black down, opening wide crimson mouths to be fed. But should the parent birds, or one of them, be watching you at the nest, they will open not their beaks, but hearing and obeying the warning note they lie close as if glued to the bottom of the nest. It is a curious sound. Unless one knows it, and the cause of it, one may listen a long time and not discover the bird that utters it. The buntings sit as usual, motionless and unseen among the leaves of the tree, and, so long as you are near the nest, keep up the sound, an excessively sharp metallic chirp, uttered in turns by both birds, but always a short note in the female, and a double note in the male, the second one prolonged to a wail or squeal. No other bird has an alarm or warning note like it: it is one of those very high sounds that are easily missed by the hearing, like the robin's fine-drawn wail when in trouble about his young; but when you catch and listen to it the effect on the brain is somewhat distressing. A Hampshire friend and naturalist told me that a pair of these birds that bred in his garden almost drove him crazy with their incessant sharp alarm note.

The effect of this warning sound on the young is very striking: before they can fly or are fit to leave the nest, they are ready, when approached too closely, to leap like startled frogs out of the nest, and scuttle away into hiding on the ground. Once they have flown they are extremely difficult to find, as, on hearing the parent's warning note, they squat down on their perch and remain motionless as a leaf among the leaves. Often I could only succeed in making them fly by seizing and shaking the branches of a thorn or other bush in which I knew they were hidden. So long as the young bird keeps still on its branch, the old bird on some tree twenty or thirty or forty yards away remains motionless, though all the time emitting the sharp, puzzling, warning sound; but the very instant that the young bird quits his perch, darting suddenly away, the parent bird is up too, shooting out so swiftly as almost to elude the sight, and in a moment overtakes and flies with the young bird, hugging it so closely that the two look almost like one. Together they dart away to a distance, usually out over a field, and drop and vanish in the grass. But in a few moments the parent bird is back again, sitting still among the leaves, emitting the shrill sound, ready to dart away with the next young bird that seeks to escape by flight.

This method of attending and safe-guarding the young is, indeed, common among birds, but in no species known to me is it seen in such vigour and perfection. What most strikes one is the change from immobility when the bird sits invisible among the leaves, marking the time with those excessively sharp, metallic clicks and wails like a machine-bird, to unexpected, sudden, brilliant activity.

When not warned into silence and immobility by the parent the young cirls are clamorous enough, crying to be fed, and these, too, have voices of an excessive sharpness. Of other native species the sharpest hunger-cries that I know are those of the tits, especially the long-tailed tit, and the spotted fly-catcher; but these sounds are not comparable in brain-piercing acuteness to those of the young cirls.

Another thing I have wondered at in a creature of so quiet a disposition as the cirl bunting is the extraordinary violence of the male towards other small birds when by chance they come near his young, in or out of the nest. So jealous is he that he will attack a willow-wren or a dunnock with as much fury as other birds use only towards the most deadly enemies of their young.

Here, by the Itchen, where we have all four buntings, I find that the reed-bunting—called black-head or black-top—is, after the cirl, the latest singer. He continues when, towards the end of August, the corn-bunting and yellowhammer become silent. He is the poorest singer of the bunting tribe, the first part of his song being like the chirp of an excited sparrow, somewhat shriller, and then follows the long note, shrill too, or sibilant and tremulous. It is more like the distressful hunger-call of some young birds than a song-note. A reedy sound in a reedy place, and one likes to hear it in the green valley among the wind-rustled, sword-shaped leaves and waving spears of rush and aquatic grass. So fond is he of his own music that he will sing even when moulting. I was amused one day when listening to a reed-bunting sitting on a top branch of a dwarf alder tree in the valley of Ovington, busily occupied in preening his fluffed-out and rather ragged-looking plumage, yet pausing at short intervals in his task to emit his song. So taken up was he with the feather-cleaning and singing, that he took no notice of me when I walked to within twenty-five yards of him. By-and-by, in passing one of his long flight-feathers through his beak it came out, at which he appeared very much surprised. First he raised his head, then began turning it about this way and that, as if admiring the feather he held, or trying to get a better sight of it. For quite a minute he kept it, forgetting to sing, then in turning it about he accidentally dropped it. Bending his head down, he watched its slow fall to the grass below very intently, and continued gazing down even after it was on the ground; then, pulling himself together, he resumed the feather-preening task, with its musical interludes.

The worst day during the bad weather when the young cirl buntings left the nest brought the wintry spell to an end. A few days of such perfect weather followed that one could wish for no higher good than to be alive on that green earth, beneath that blue sky. One could best appreciate the crystal purity and divine blueness of the immense space by watching the rooks revelling on high in the morning sunshine, looking in their blackness against the crystalline blue like bird-figures with outspread, motionless wings, carved out of anthracite coal, and suspended by invisible wires in heaven. You could watch them, a numerous company, moving upward in wide circles, the sound of their voices coming fainter and fainter back to earth, until at that vast height they seemed no bigger than humble-bees.

The oak in August

This clarity of atmosphere had a striking effect, too, on the appearance of the trees, and I could not help noticing the superiority of the oak to all other forest trees in this connection. There comes a time in late summer when at last it loses that "glad light grene" which has distinguished it among its dark-leafed neighbours, and made it in our eyes a type of unfading spring and of everlastingness. It grows dark, too, at last, and is as dark as a cypress or a cedar of Lebanon; but observe how different this depth of colour is from that of the elm. The elm, too, stands alone, or in rows, or in isolated groups in the fields, and in the clear sunshine its foliage has a dull, summer-worn, almost rusty green. There is no such worn and weary look in the foliage of the oak in August and September. It is of a rich, healthy green, deep but undimmed by time and weather, and the leaf has a gloss to it. Again, on account of its manner of growth, with widespread branches and boughs and twigs well apart, the foliage does not come before us as a mere dense mass of green—an intercepting cloud, as in a painted tree; but the sky is seen through it, and against the sky are seen the thousand thousand individual leaves, clear-cut and beautiful in shape.

It was one of my daily pleasures during this fine weather to go out and look at one of the solitary oak trees growing in the adjoining field when the morning sunlight was on it. To my mind it looked best when viewed at a distance of sixty to seventy yards across the open grass field with nothing but the sky beyond. At that distance not only could the leaves be distinctly seen, but the acorns as well, abundantly and evenly distributed over the whole tree, appearing as small globes of purest bright apple-green among the deep green foliage. The effect was very rich, as of tapestry with an oak-leaf pattern and colour, sprinkled thickly over with round polished gems of a light-green sewn into the fabric.

To an artist with a soul in him, the very sight of such a tree in such conditions would, I imagined, make him sick of his poor little ineffectual art.

CHAPTER XIV

Yellow flowers—Family likeness in flavours and scents—Mimulus luteus—Flowers in church decoration—Effect of association—Mimulus luteus as a British plant—A rule as to naturalised plants wanted—A visit to Swarraton—Changes since Gilbert White's day—"Wild musk"—Bird life on the downs—Turtle-dove nestlings—Blue skin in doves—A boy naturalist—Birds at the cottage—The wren's sun-bath—Wild fruits ripen—An old chalk pit—Birds and elderberries—Past and present times compared—Calm days—Migration of swallows—Conclusion.

The oak in the field and a flowering plant by the water were the two best things plant life contained for me during those beautiful late summer days by the Itchen. About the waterside flower I must write at some length.

Of our wild flowers the yellow in colour, as a rule, attract me least; not because the colour is not beautiful to me, but probably on account of the numerous ungraceful, weedy-looking plants of unpleasant scent which in late summer produce yellow flowers—tansy, fleabane, ragwort, sow-thistle, and some of other orders, the worst of the lot being the pepper saxifrage, an ungainly parsley in appearance, with evil-smelling flowers. You know them by their odours. If I were to smell at a number of strong-scented flowers unknown to me in a dark room, or blindfolded, I should be able to pick out the yellow ones.

They would have the yellow smell. The yellow smell has an analogue in the purple taste. It may be fancy, but it strikes me that there is a certain family resemblance in the flavours of most purple fruits, or their skins—the purple fruit-flavour which is so strong in damson, sloe, black currant, blackberry, mulberry, whortleberry, and elderberry.

All the species I have named were common in the valley, and there were others—St. John's wort, yellow loosestrife, etc.—which, although not ungraceful nor evil-smelling, yet failed to attract. Nevertheless, as the days and weeks went on and brought yet another conspicuous yellow waterside flower into bloom, which became more and more abundant as the season advanced, while the others, one by one, faded and failed from the earth, until, during the last half of September, it was in its fullest splendour, I was completely won by it, and said in my haste that it was the brightest blossom in all the Hampshire garland, if not the loveliest wild flower in England. Nor was it strange, all things considered, that I was so taken with its beauty, since, besides being beautiful, it was new to me, and therefore had the additional charm of novelty; and, finally, it was at its best when all the conspicuous flowers that give touches of brilliant colour here and there to the green of this greenest valley, including most of the yellow flowers I have mentioned, were faded and gone.

Mimulus luteus

No description of this flower, Mimulus luteus, known to the country people as "wild musk," is needed here—it is well known as a garden plant. The large foxglove-shaped flowers grow singly on their stems among the topmost leaves, and the form of stem, leaf, and flower is a very perfect example of that kind of formal beauty in plants which is called "decorative." This character is well shown in the accompanying figure, reduced to little more than half the natural size, from a spray plucked at Bransbury, on the Test. But the shape is nothing, and is scarcely seen or noticed twenty-five to fifty yards away, the proper distance at which to view the blossoming plants; not indeed as a plant-student or an admirer of flowers in a garden would view it, as the one thing to see, but merely as part of the scene. The colour is then everything. There is no purer, no more beautiful yellow in any of our wild flowers, from the primrose and the almost equally pale, exquisite blossom which we improperly name "dark mullein" in our books on account of its lovely purple eye, to the intensest pure yellow of the marsh marigold.

MIMULUS LUTEUS

On 17th September it was Harvest Festival Sunday at the little church at Itchen Abbas, where I worshipped that day, and I noticed that the decorators had dressed up the font with water-plants and flowers from the river; reeds and reed-mace, or cat's-tail, and the yellow mimulus. It was a mistake. Deep green, glossy foliage, and white and brilliantly coloured flowers look well in churches; white chrysanthemums, arums, azaleas, and other conspicuous white flowers; and scarlet geraniums, and many other garden blooms which seen in masses in the sunshine hurt the sense—cinerarias, calceolarias, larkspurs, etc. The subdued light of the interior softens the intensity, and sometimes crudity, of the strongest colours, and makes them suitable for decoration. The effect is like that of stained-glass windows, or of a bright embroidery on a sober ground. The graceful, grey, flowery reeds, and the light-green reed-mace, with its brown velvet head, and the moist yellow of the mimulus, which quickly loses its freshness, look not well in the dim, religious light of the old village church. These should be seen where the sunlight and wind and water are, or not seen at all.

Mimulus and Camaloté

Beautiful as the mimulus is when viewed in its natural surroundings, by running waters amidst the greys and light and dark greens of reed and willow, and of sedge and aquatic grasses, and water-cress, and darkest bulrush, its attractiveness was to me greatly increased by association. Now to say that a flower which is new to one can have any associations may sound very strange, but it is a fact in this case. Viewing it at a distance of, say, forty or fifty yards, as a flower of a certain size, which might be any shape, in colour a very pure, luminous yellow, blooming in profusion all over the rich green, rounded masses of the plants, as one may see it in September at Ovington, and at many other points on the Itchen, from its source to Southampton Water, and on the Test, I am so strongly reminded of the yellow camaloté of the South American watercourses that the memory is almost like an illusion. It has the pure, beautiful yellow of the river camaloté; in its size it is like that flower; it grows, too, in the same way, singly, among rounded masses of leaves of the same lovely rich green; and the camaloté, too, has for neighbours the green blades of the sedges, and grey, graceful reeds, and multitudinous bulrushes, their dark polished stems tufted with brown.

Looking at these masses of blossoming mimulus at Ovington, I am instantly transported in thought to some waterside thousands of miles away. The dank, fresh smell is in my nostrils; I listen delightedly to the low, silvery, water-like gurgling note of the little kinglet in his brilliant feathers among the rushes, and to the tremulous song of the green marsh-grasshoppers or leaf-crickets; and with a still greater delight do I gaze at the lovely yellow flower, the unforgotten camaloté, which is as much to me as the wee, modest, crimson-tipped daisy was to Robert Burns or to Chaucer; and as the primrose, the violet, the dog-rose, the shining, yellow gorse, and the flower o' the broom, and bramble, and hawthorn, and purple heather are to so many inhabitants of these islands who were born and bred amid rural scenes.

On referring to the books for information as to the history of the mimulus as a British wild flower, I found that in some it was not mentioned, and in others mentioned only to be dismissed with the remark that it is an "introduced plant." But when was it introduced, and what is its range? And whom are we to ask?

After an infinite amount of pains, seeing and writing to all those among my acquaintances who have any knowledge of our wild plant life, I discovered that the mimulus grows more or less abundantly in or by streams here and there in most English counties, but is more commonly met with south of Derbyshire; also that it extends to Scotland, and is known even in the Orkneys. Finally, a botanical friend discovered for me that as long ago as 1846 there had been a great discussion, in which a number of persons took part, on this very subject of the date of the naturalisation in Britain of the mimulus, in Edward Newman's botanical magazine, the Phytologist. It was shown conclusively by a correspondent that the plant had established itself at one point as far back as the year 1815.

A British species?

There may exist more literature on the subject if one knew where to look for it; but we are certainly justified in feeling annoyed at the silence of the makers of books on British wild flowers, and the compilers of local lists and floras. And what, we should like to ask of our masters, is a British wild flower? Does not the same rule apply to plants as to animals—namely, that when a species, whether "introduced" or imported by chance or by human agency, has thoroughly established itself on our soil, and proved itself able to maintain its existence in a state of nature, it becomes, and is, a British species? If this rule had not been followed by zoologists, even our beloved little rabbit would not be a native, to say nothing of our familiar brown rat and our black-beetle: and the pheasant, and red-legged partridge, and capercailzie, and the fallow-deer, and a frog, and a snail, and goodness knows how many other British species, introduced into this country by civilised man, some in recent times. And, going farther back in time, it may be said that every species has at some time been brought, or has brought itself, from otherwhere—every animal from the red deer and the white cattle, to the smallest, most elusive microbe not yet discovered; and every plant from the microscopical fungus to the British oak and the yew. The main thing is to have a rule in such a matter, a simple, sensible rule, like that of the zoologist, or some other; and what we should like to know from the botanists is—Have they got a rule, and, if so, what is it? There are many who would be glad of an answer to this question: judging from the sale of books on British wild flowers during the last few years, there must be several millions of persons in this country who take an interest in the subject.

A visit to Swarraton

One bright September day, when the mimulus was in its greatest perfection, and my new pleasure in the flower at its highest, I by chance remembered that Gilbert White, of Selborne, in the early part of his career, had been curate for a time at Swarraton, a small village on the Itchen, near its source, about four miles above Alresford. That was in 1747. To Swarraton I accordingly went, only to find what any guide-book or any person would have told me, that the church no longer exists. Only the old churchyard remained, overgrown with nettles, the few tombstones that had not been carried away so covered with ivy as to appear like green mounds. A group of a dozen yews marked the spot where the church had formerly stood; and there were besides some very old trees, an ancient yew and a giant beech, and others, and just outside the ground as noble an ash tree as I have ever seen. These three, at any rate, must have been big trees a century and a half ago, and well known to Gilbert White. On inquiry I was told that the church had been pulled down a very long time back—about forty years, perhaps; that it was a very old and very pretty church, covered with ivy, and that no one knew why it was pulled down. The probable reason was that a vast church was being or about to be built at the neighbouring village of Northington, big enough to hold all the inhabitants of the two parishes together, and about a thousand persons besides. This immense church would look well enough among the gigantic structures of all shapes and materials in the architectural wonderland of South Kensington. But I came not to see this building: the little ancient village church, in which the villagers had worshipped for several centuries, where Gilbert White did duty for a year or so, was what I wanted, and I was bitterly disappointed. Looking away from the weed-grown churchyard, I began to wonder what his feelings would be could he revisit this old familiar spot. The group of yew trees where the church had stood, and the desolate aspect of the ground about it would disturb and puzzle his mind; but, on looking farther, all the scene would appear as he had known it so long ago—the round, wooded hills, the green valley, the stream, and possibly some of the old trees, and even the old cottages. Then his eyes would begin to detect things new and strange. First, my bicycle, leaning against the trunk of the great ash tree, would arrest his attention; but in a few moments, before he could examine it closely and consider for what purpose it was intended, something far more interesting and more wonderful to him would appear in sight. Five large birds standing quietly on the green turf beside the stream—birds never hitherto seen. Regarding them attentively, he would see that they were geese, and it would appear to him that they were of two species, one white and grey in colour, with black legs, the other a rich maroon red, with yellow legs; also that they were both beautiful and more graceful in their carriage than any bird of their family known to him. Before he would cease wondering at the presence at Swarraton of these Magellanic geese, no longer strange to any living person's eye in England, lo! a fresh wonder—beautiful yellow flowers by the stream, unlike any flower that grew there in his day, or by any stream in Hampshire.

But how long after White's time did that flower run wild in Hampshire? I asked, and then thought that I might get the answer from some old person who had spent a long life at that spot.

I went no farther than the nearest cottage to find the very one I wanted, an ancient dame of seventy-four, who had never lived anywhere but in that small thatched cottage at the side of the old churchyard. She was an excessively thin old dame, and had the appearance of a walking skeleton in a worn old cotton gown; and her head was like a skull with a thin grey skin drawn tightly over the sharp bones of the face, with pale-coloured living eyes in the sockets. Her scanty grey hair was gathered in a net worn tightly on her head like a skull-cap. The old women in the villages here still keep to this long-vanished fashion.

I asked this old woman to tell me about the yellow flowers by the water, and she said that they had always been there. I told her she must be mistaken; and after considering for awhile she assured me that they grew there in abundance when she was quite young. She distinctly remembered that before her marriage—and that was over fifty years ago—she often went down to the stream to gather flowers, and would come in with great handfuls of wild musk.

When she had told me this, even before she had finished speaking, I seemed to see two persons before me—the lean old woman with her thin colourless visage, and, coming in from the sunshine, a young woman with rosy face, glossy brown hair and laughing blue eyes, her hands full of brightest yellow wild musk from the stream. And the visionary woman seemed to be alive and real, and the other unsubstantial, a delusion of the mind, a ghost of a woman.

But was the old woman right—was the beautiful yellow mimulus, the wild musk or water-buttercup as she called it, which our botanists refuse to admit into their works intended for our instruction, or give it only half a dozen dry words—was it a common wild flower on the Hampshire rivers more than half a century ago?

Bird life on the downs

From the valley and the river with its shining yellow mimulus and floating water-grass in the crystal current—that green hair-like grass that one is never tired of looking at—back to the ivy-green cottage, its ancient limes and noble solitary oaks, and, above all, its birds; then back again to the stream—that mainly was our life. But close by on either side of the valley were the downs, and these too drew us with that immemorial fascination which the higher ground has for all of us, because of the sense of freedom and power which comes with a wide horizon. That was a fine saying of Lord Herbert of Cherbury that a man mounted on a good horse is lifted above himself: one experiences the feeling in a greater degree on any chalk down. One extensive open down within easy distance was a favourite afternoon walk. Here on the short fragrant turf an army of pewits were to be found every day, and usually there were a few stone-curlews with them. It is not here as in the country about Salisbury, where the Hawking Club has its headquarters, and where they have been "having fun with the thick-knees," as they express it in their lingo, until there are no thick-knees left. But the chief attraction of this down was an extensive thicket of thorn and bramble, mixed with furze and juniper and some good-sized old trees, where birds were abundant, many of them still breeding. Here, down to the end of September, I found turtle-doves' nests with newly-hatched young and incubated eggs. I always felt more than compensated for scratches and torn clothes when I found young turtle-doves in the down, as the little creatures are then delightful to look at. Sitting hunched up on its platform, the head with its massive bulbous beak drawn against its arched back, the little thing is less like a bird than a mammal in appearance—a singularly coloured shrew, let us say. The colour is indeed strange, the whole body, the thick, fleshy, snout-like beak included, being a deep, intense, almost indigo blue, and the loose hair-like down on the head and upper parts a light, bright primrose yellow.

There are surprising colours in some young birds: the cirl nestling, as we have seen, is black and crimson—clothed in black down with gaping crimson mouth; loveliest of all is the young snipe in down of brown-gold, frosted with silvery white; but for quaintness and fantastic colouring the turtle-dove nestling has no equal. In all of our native doves, and probably in all doves everywhere, the skin is blue and the down yellow, but the colours differ in intensity. I tried to find a newly-hatched stock-dove to compare it with the turtle nestling but failed, although the species is quite common and, like the other two, breeds till October. Ring-dove nestlings were easy to see, but in these the blue colour, though deep on the beak and head, is quite pale on the body, fading almost to white on some parts; and the down, too, is very pale, fading to whitish tow-colour on the sides and back.

A boy naturalist

When seeking for a ring-dove in down I had an amusing adventure. At a distance of some miles from the Itchen, near the Test, one day in September, I was hunting for an insect I wanted in a thick copse by Tidbury Ring, an ancient earthwork on the summit of a chalk hill. Hearing a boy's voice singing near, I peeped out and saw a lad of about fifteen tending some sheep: he was walking about on his knees, trimming the herbage with an old rusty pair of shears which he had found! It startled him a little when I burst out of the cover so near him, but he was ready to enter into conversation, and we had a long hour together, sitting on the sunny down. I mentioned my desire to find a newly-hatched ring-dove, and he at once offered to show me one. There were two nests with young close by, in one the birds were half-fledged, the others only came out of their shells two days before. These we went to look for, the boy leading the way to a point where the trees grew thickest. He climbed a yew, and from the yew passed to a big beech tree, in which the nest was placed, but on getting to it he cried out that the nest was forsaken and the young dead. He threw them down to me, and he was grieved at their death as he had known about the nest from the time it was made, and had seen the young birds alive the day before. No doubt the parents had been shot, and the cold night had quickly killed the little ones.

This was the most intelligent boy I have met in Hampshire; he knew every bird and almost every insect I spoke to him about. He was, too, a mighty hunter of little birds, and had captured stock-doves and wheatears in the rabbit burrows. But his greatest feat was the capture of a kingfisher. He was down by the river with a sparrow-net at a spot where the bushes grow thick and close to the water, when he saw a kingfisher come and alight on a dead twig within three yards of him. The bird had not seen him standing behind the bush: it sat for a few moments on the twig, its eyes fixed on the water, then it dropped swiftly down, and he jumped out and threw the net over it just as it rose up with a minnow in its beak. He took it home and put it in a cage.

I gave him a sharp lecture on the cruelty of caging kingfishers, telling him how senseless it was to confine such a bird, and how impossible to keep it alive in prison. It was better to kill them at once if he wanted to destroy them. "Of course your kingfisher died," I said.

"No," he replied. He stood the cage on a chair, and the bird was no sooner in it than his little sister, a child of two who was fidgeting round, pulled the door open and out flew the kingfisher!

Birds at the cottage

Returning to the cottage, whether from the high down, the green valley, or the silent, shady wood, it always seemed a favourite dwelling- or nesting-place of the birds, where indeed they most abounded. Now that bright genial weather had come after the cold and storm to make them happy, the air was full of their chirpings and twitterings, their various little sounds of conversation and soliloquy, with an occasional bright, loud, perfect song. It was generally the wren, whose lyric changes not through all the changeful year, that uttered it. It was this small brown bird, too, that amused me most with the spectacle of his irrepressible delight in the new warmth and sunlight. There were about a dozen wrens at the cottage, and some of them were in the habit of using their old undamaged nests in the ivy and woodbine as snug little dormitories. But they cared nothing for the human inhabitants of the cottage; they were like small birds that had built their nest in the interstices of an eagles' eyrie, who knew nothing and cared nothing about the eagles. Occasionally, when a wren peeped in from the clustering ivy or hopped on to a window-sill and saw us inside, he would scold us for being there with that sharp, angry little note of his, and then fly away. Nor would he take a crumb from the table spread out of doors every day for the birds that disdained not to be fed. The ivy and creepers that covered the cottage abounded with small spiders, caterpillars, earwigs, chrysalids, and what not; that was good enough for him—Thank you for your kind intentions!

Looking from a window at a bed of roses a few feet away, I discovered that the wren took as much pleasure in a dust bath as any bird. He would come to the loose soil and select a spot where the bed sloped towards the sun, and then wriggle about in the earth with immense enjoyment. Dusting himself, he would look like a miniature partridge with a round body not much bigger than a walnut. After dusting would come the luxurious sun-bath, when, with feathers raised and minute wings spread out and beak gaping, the little thing would lie motionless and panting; but at intervals of three or four seconds a joyful fit of shivering would seize him, and at last, the heat becoming too great, he would shake himself and skip away, looking like a brown young field-vole scuttling into cover.

This bright and beautiful period came to an end on 22nd August, and we then had unsettled weather with many sudden changes until 3rd September—cloudy oppressive days, violent winds, thunderstorms, and days of rain and sunshine, and morning and evening rainbows; it was a mixture of April, midsummer, and October.

This changeful period over, there was fine settled weather; it was the golden time of the year, and it continued till our departure on the last day of September.

The fruit season was late this year—nearly a fortnight later than in most years; and when the earliest, the wild arum, began to ripen, the birds—thrushes and chaffinches were detected—fell upon and devoured all the berries, regardless of their poisonous character almost before their light-green had changed to vivid scarlet. Then came the deep crimson fruit of the honeysuckle; it ripened plentifully on the plants growing against the cottage, and the cole-tits came in bands to feed on it. It was pretty to see these airy little acrobats clinging to the twine-like pendent sprays hanging before an open window or door. They were like the little birds in a Japanese picture which one has seen. Then came the elderberries, which all fruit-loving birds feast on together. But the tits and finches and warblers and thrushes were altogether out-numbered by the starlings that came in numbers from the pasture-lands to take part in the great fruit-feast.

An old chalk pit

The elder is a common tree here, but at the cottage we had, I think, the biggest crop of fruit in the neighbourhood; and it now occurs to me that the vast old chalk pit in which the trees grew has not yet been described, and so far has only been once mentioned incidentally. Yet it was a great place, but a few yards away at the side of the old lime trees and the small protecting fence. The entrance to it and its wide floor was on a level with the green valley, while at its upper end it formed a steep bank forty feet high. It was doubtless a very old pit, with sides which had the appearance of natural cliffs and were overhung and draped with thorn-trees, masses of old ivy, and traveller's joy. Inside it was a pretty tangled wilderness; on the floor many tall annuals flourished—knapweed and thistle and dark mullein and teazel, six to eight feet high. Then came some good-sized trees—ash and oak—and thorn, bramble and elder in masses. It was a favourite breeding-place of birds of many species; even the red-backed shrike had nested there within forty yards of a human habitation, and the kingfisher had safely reared his young, unsuspected by the barbarous water-keeper. The pit, too, was a shelter in cold rough weather and a roosting-place at night. Now the fruit was ripe, it was a banqueting-place as well, and the native birds were joined by roving outsiders, missel-thrushes in scores, and starlings in hundreds. The noise they produced—a tangle of so many various semi-musical voices—sounded all day long; and until the abundant fruit had all been devoured the chalk pit was a gigantic green and white bowl full to overflowing with sunshine, purple juice, and melody.

The biggest crop of this fruit, out of the old chalk pit, was in the garden of a cottage in the village, close to the river, occupied by an old married couple, hard workers still with spade and hoe, and able to make a Living by selling the produce of their garden. It was a curious place; fruit trees and bushes, herbs, vegetables, flowers, all growing mixed up anyhow, without beds or walks or any line of demarcation between cultivated plants and brambles and nettles on either side and the flags and sedges at the lower end by the river. In the midst of the plot, just visible among the greenery, stood the small, old, low-roofed thatched cottage, where the hens were free to go in and lay their eggs under the bed or in any dark corner they preferred. A group of seven or eight old elder-trees grew close to the cottage, their branches bent and hanging with the weight of the purpling clusters.

"What are you going to do with the fruit?" I asked the old woman; and this innocent question raised a tempest in her breast, for I had unwittingly touched on a sore subject.

Past and present times

"Do!" she exclaimed rather fiercely, "I'm going to do nothing with it! I've made elderberry wine years and years and years. So did my mother; so did my grandmother; so did everybody in my time. And very good it were, too, I tell 'e, in cold weather in winter, made hot. It warmed your inside. But nobody wants it now, and nobody'll help me with it. How'm I to do it—keep the birds off and all! I've been fighting 'em years and years, and now I can't do it no longer. And what's the good of doing it if the wine's not good enough for people to drink? Nothing's good enough now unless you buys it in a public-house or a shop. It wasn't so when I were a girl. We did everything for ourselves then, and it were better, I tell 'e. We kep' a pig then—so did everyone; and the pork and bacon it were good, not like what we buy now. We put it mostly in brine, and let it be for months; and when we took it out and biled it, it were red as a cherry and white as milk, and it melted just like butter in your mouth. That's what we ate in my time. But you can't keep a pig now—oh dear, no! You don't have him more'n a day or two before the sanitary man looks in. He says he were passing and felt a sort of smell about—would you mind letting him come in just to have a sniff round? He expects it might be a pig you've got. In my time we didn't think a pig's smell hurt nobody. They've got their own smell, pigs have, same as dogs and everything else. But we've got very partickler about smells now.

"And we didn't drink no tea then. Eight shillings a pound, or maybe seven-and-six—dear, dear, how was we to buy it! We had beer for breakfast and it did us good. It were better than all these nasty cocoa stuffs we drink now. We didn't buy it at the public-house—we brewed it ourselves. And we had a brick oven then, and could put a pie in, and a loaf, and whatever we wanted, and it were proper vittals. We baked barley bread, and black bread, and all sorts of bread, and it did us good and made us strong. These iron ranges and stoves we have now—what's the good o' they? You can't bake bread in 'em. And the wheat bread you gits from the shop, what's it good for? 'Tisn't proper vittals—it fills 'e with wind. No, I say, I'm not going to git the fruit—let the birds have it! Just look at the greedy things—them starlings! I've shouted, and thrown sticks and all sorts of things, and shaken a cloth at 'em, and it's like calling the fowls to feed. The more noise I make the more they come. What I say is, If I can't have the fruit I wish the blackbirds 'ud git it. People say to me, 'Oh, don't talk to me about they blackbirds—they be the worst of all for fruit.' But I never minded that—because—well I'll tell 'e. I mind when I were a little thing at Old Alresford, where I were born, I used to be up at four in the morning, in summer, listening to the blackbirds. And mother she used to say, 'Lord, how she do love to hear a blackbird!' It's always been the same. I's always up at four, and in summer I goes out to hear the blackbird when it do sing so beautiful. But them starlings that come messing about, pulling the straws out of the thatch, I've no patience with they. We didn't have so many starlings when I were young. But things is very different now; and what I say is, I wish they wasn't—I wish they was the same as when I were a girl. And I wish I was a girl again."

Listening to this tirade on the degeneracy of modern times, it amused me to recall the very different feeling on the same subject expressed by the old Wolmer Forest woman. But the Itchen woman had more vigour, more staying-power in her: one could see it in the fresh colour in her round face, and the pure colour and brightness of her eyes—brighter and bluer than in most blue-eyed girls. Altogether, she was one of the best examples of the hard-headed, indomitable Saxon peasants I have met with in the south of England. She was past seventy, impeded by an old infirmity, the mother of many men and women with big families of their own, all scattered far and wide over the county,—all too poor themselves to help her in her old age, or to leave their work and come such a distance to see her, excepting when they were in difficulties, for then they would come for what she could spare them out of her hardly-earned little hoard.

I admired her "fierce volubility"; but that sudden softening at the end about the blackbird's beautiful voice, and that memory of her distant childhood, and her wish, strange in these weary days, to have her hard life to live over again, came as a surprise to me.

Migration of swallows

In days like these, so bright and peaceful, one thinks with a feeling of wonder that many of our familiar birds are daily and nightly slipping away, decreasing gradually in numbers, so that we scarcely miss them. By the middle of September the fly-catchers and several of the warblers, all but a few laggards, have left us. Even the swallows begin to leave us before that date. On the 8th many birds were congregated at a point on the river a little above the village, and on the 10th a considerable migration took place. Near the end of a fine day a big cloud came up from the north-west, and beneath it, at a good height, the birds were seen flying down the valley in a westerly direction. I went out and watched them for half an hour, standing on the little wooden bridge that spans the stream. They went by in flocks of about eighty to a couple of hundred birds, flock succeeding flock at intervals of three or four minutes. By the time the sun set the entire sky was covered by the black cloud, and there was a thick gloom on the earth; it was then some eight or ten minutes after the last flock, flying high, had passed twittering on its way that a rush of birds came by, flying low, about on a level with my head as I stood leaning on the handrail of the bridge. I strained my eyes in vain to make out what they were—swallows or martins—as in rapid succession, and in twos and threes, they came before me, seen vaguely as dim spots, and no sooner seen than gone, shooting past my head with amazing velocity and a rushing sound, fanning my face with the wind they created, and some of them touching me with their wing-tips.

On the evening of 18th September a second migration was witnessed at the same spot, flock succeeding flock until it was nearly dark. On the following evening, at another point on the river at Ovington, I witnessed a third and more impressive spectacle. The valley spreads out there to a great width, and has extensive beds of reeds, bulrushes, and other water plants, with clumps and rows of alders and willows. It was growing dark; bats were flitting round me in numbers, and the trees along the edge of the valley looked black against the pale amber sky in the west, when very suddenly the air overhead became filled with a shrill confused noise, and, looking up through my binocular, I saw at a considerable height an immense body of swallows travelling in a south-westerly direction. A very few moments after catching sight of them they paused in their flight, and, after remaining a short time at one point, looking like a great swarm of bees, they began rushing wildly about, still keeping up their shrill excited twittering, and coming lower and lower by degrees; and finally, in batches of two or three hundred birds, they rushed down like lightning into the dark reeds, shower following shower of swallows at intervals of two or three seconds, until the last had vanished and the night was silent again.

It was time for them to go, for though the days were warm and food abundant, the nights were growing cold.

The early hours are silent, except for the brown owls that hoot round the cottage from about four o'clock until dawn. Then they grow silent, and the morning is come, cold and misty, and all the land is hidden by a creeping white river-mist. The sun rises, and is not seen for half an hour, then appears pale and dim, but grows brighter and warmer by degrees; and in a little while, lo! the mist has vanished, except for a white rag, clinging like torn lace here and there to the valley reeds and rushes. Again, the green earth, wetted with mist and dews, and the sky of that soft pure azure of yesterday and of many previous days. Again the birds are vocal; the rooks rise from the woods, an innumerable cawing multitude, their voices filling the heavens with noise as they travel slowly away to their feeding-grounds on the green open downs; the starlings flock to the bushes, and the feasting and chatter and song begin that will last until evening. The sun sets crimson and the robins sing in the night and silence. But it is not silent long; before dark the brown owls begin hooting, first in the woods, then fly across to the trees that grow beside the cottage, so that we may the better enjoy their music. At intervals, too we hear the windy sibilant screech of the white owl across the valley. Then the wild cry of the stone-curlew is heard as the lonely bird wings his way past, and after that late voice there is perfect silence, with starlight or moonlight.

INDEX

Account of English Ants, by the Rev. W. Gould, quoted, 88, 93

Adder, life remaining in severed head of, 76; its basking-place, 80; its consciousness of human presence, 82

"Adder-stinger," New Forest name for the dragon-fly, 121

Agarics eaten by squirrels, 106

Alarm-cries of birds, 94

Alga, an aerial, 195; still essentially a water-plant, 195

America, South, dragon-flies in, 122; the camaloté in, 286; a wasp experience in, 129

Anax imperator in the New Forest, 118

Anglers, swifts occasionally caught by, 265

Anglo-Saxon settlers, a conquering race, 228, 230

Ants, removal of dead by, 87; behaviour of, towards queen, 88; caterpillar hunting by, 92; vast populations of, 111

Arum, berries of, eaten by birds, 298

Asilus, a rapacious fly, 46

Associations, sympathy with lower animals due to human, 43, 46; memories recalled by, 107-109; value of, in matters of faith, 186; charm due to, 286

Autumn in the New Forest, 1

Bank-vole and hornet, 9

Bankes, Mr. E. A., his observation of nightjars, 39

Barrow on the heath, the, 48-52

Beaulieu, historical associations of, 36; a heath near, 38

Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, quoted as to the fire-fly, 125

Bellamy, J. C., his Natural History of North Devon referred to, 251

Bird-life, annual destruction of, 26

Birds near the Boldre, 6; their silence in late summer, 89; mixed gatherings of, 90; alarm cries of, 94; by the Itchen, 249

Blackbird, mortality among young of, 56; an orphan, by the Itchen, 270; tamed by feeding, 272; gregarious instinct in the young, 274

Blackburn, Mrs. Hugh, her account of the young cuckoo, 14

Blackmoor, church at, 191

Boldre or Lymington river, 3; a house by the, 4; between the Exe and the, 29, 35

Bourne, the, or Selborne stream, 171

Boy, a New Forest, 158; his ignorance of the Forest wild life, 159; a naturalist, 295

Boys, stray, in Wolmer, 216

Bracken, possible cause of pleasure in appearance of, 63

Brockenhurst, Croöleptus iolithus on gravestones at, 195

Bullfinches, 188

Bunting, four kinds of, by the Itchen, 278

Butterflies of the New Forest, 117; moths and, collectors of, 120; English names of, 120

Calopteryx virgo in the Forest, 118; colouring of, 122

Camaloté, its appearance recalled by mimulus, 286

Cats, Egyptian, story of their fascination by fire, 99

Cattle tormented by forest flies, 66

Celt, the black, Iberian origin of, 236; Huxley, a specimen of the, 240

Chaffinch, its especial dread of the weasel, 94-96; arum berries eaten by the, 298

Chalk-pit by the Itchen, fruit harvest for birds in, 299

Churches of Hampshire villages, 184; Gilbert White's strictures on, 184; their charm, 185; wanton destruction of, 186; their harmony with their surroundings, 187, 190

Cicada anglica, doubt as to his song, 135, 136

Cirl-bunting, the, at Selborne, 172; quality of its voice, 173; not distinguished by White from the yellowhammer, 173; by the Itchen, 250; his song, 251; his plumage, 251; its late breeding, 275; its breeding habits, 275; its warning note, 276; safeguarding of young by, 276

Cladothrix odorifera, scent of fresh earth due to, 154

Cockchafer grubs sought for by starlings, 57

Cockerel and martins at Selborne, 166

Cole-tit, honeysuckle berries eaten by, 298

Contrast a source of enjoyment, 203

Coot, the, on the Itchen, 253, 254; his struggles with grebe for water-weed, 255; his parental wisdom, 256; greediness of young corrected by, 257

Cordulegaster annulatus, 118; his serpent-like colouring, 121

Courtship by stag-beetle, 71; among the green grasshoppers, 151; among the flower-spiders, 156, 159

Craig, Mr., his observations on the nestling cuckoo, 21

Creighton, Dr., on the young cuckoo question, 14

Crickets, house and field, their music compared, 169

Croöleptus iolithus, beautiful tints of the, 195

Crowhurst, hollow yew tree at, 199

Cuckoo, young, its behaviour, 13; in robin's nest, 15; its rapid growth, 15; its spasmodic efforts to eject obstacles, 16-20

Dabchick, see Grebe, little

Dark people in Hampshire, 231; two types of them, 231; mutual distrust between blonde and, 234; Iberian origin of one type 236

Dark Water, the, 38; flies on the, 67; Calopteryx virgo on the, 122

"Deadman's Plack," memorial cross at, 140

Death, life-appearances after, 77; unknown to lower animals, 86

Death of Fergus quoted as to the yew, 196

Degeneration, Ray Lankester on, 149

Dog, his recollection of a hidden bone, 108

Domestication, change in habits caused by, 169

Dragon-flies, lack of English names for, 118; their strange appearance, 121; a flight of blue, settled on bracken, 123

Drayton, Michael, quoted as to the coot, 258

Drumming or bleating of snipe, 40

Drumming-trees of woodpeckers, 11-13

Dust-bath, a wren's enjoyment of a, 296

Earth, odour of, 154

Edgar, King, memorial of his murder of Athelwold, 140

Eggs, ejection of, by young cuckoo, 16-19, 22

Elaboration and degeneration, 148

Elderberries by the Itchen, 298

Emblems on old gravestones, 193

Epeira, grasshopper killed by, 44

Ephemeræ, destruction of, by swifts, 267

Exe, valley of the, 35

Eye colours, racial feeling with regard to, 234

Family, a more or less happy, 254, 258

Farringdon, cirl bunting at, 173; Gilbert White curate at, 197; yew tree at, 198

Fascination, question of, 95; the weasel's method of, 96; as exerted on mammals, 97; inquiry as to interpretation of, 101; its disadvantage to those subject to it, 102; as exerted by diving-birds on fishes, 262

Fear, paralysing effect of, on birds and mammals, 96-100; on fishes, 262