There are several reasons why these plants took so long to dry up. To begin with, they have inside their stems and leaves certain substances which hold water and delay its escape. Moreover their extraordinary shapes are of very great assistance. They prefer globular, round, circular, pear-shaped, or cylindrical forms.

Suppose you were to cut such a round mass into thin slices and lay them out flat, it is quite clear that they would cover a much greater surface. Thin leaves also, if squashed up into a round ball, would have a very much smaller surface.

The water can only escape from the surface exposed, so that these condensed round balls and fleshy columns have far less water-losing surface than ordinary leaves.

As a matter of fact, it was found by calculation that the surface of an Echinocactus was 300 times less for the same amount of stuff as that of an Aristolochia leaf. If the actual loss of water from the Echinocactus, as found by experiment, was reckoned as one unit per square inch, then the amount of water lost from a square inch of the Aristolochia was no less than 5000 units!

This shows that these odd, outrageous shapes of Prickly Pears, Cacti, and other succulents are an extraordinary help to them. We have already pointed out in a previous chapter how necessary their spines and prickles are if they must resist rats, mice, camels, and other enemies.

What we may call the "hedgehog" type of plant is also very common in desert countries. There are many woody little, much branched, twiggy shrublets, which bristle all over with thorns and spines. They are not at all fleshy, but do with the least conceivable amount of water.

Another striking characteristic of the desert flora is noticed by every one. Almost every plant is clothed either in white cottonwool, like the Lammie's Lug of our gardens, or else in grey hairs. The general tint of the landscape is not green, but it is rather the colour of the soil silvered over by these grey-haired plants.

The reason of this is, of course, quite easy to understand. We put on a thick overcoat if we are going to walk in a Scotch mist, to keep out the moisture. These plants cover themselves with hairs or cottonwool to keep the moisture inside. It does not escape easily through the woolly hairs on the skin.

One very strange plant should be noticed here. This is the Iceplant (Mesembryanthemum cristallinum). Every part of it is covered with little glittering swellings which shine in the sun like minute ice crystals. The swellings contain a store of water, or rather of colourless sap, which makes it able to exist in dry places. Dr. Ludwig says that a torn-off branch remained quite fresh for months on his study table. It is probable that these peculiar pearl or ice-like swellings also focus the sunlight, acting like lenses, upon the inner part of the leaf, but that is not as yet fully understood.

There are two grasses, growing in the desert, which are of some value; both are called Esparto or Halfa. They are very dry, woody, or rather wiry grasses, especially common in Algeria, Tripoli, and also found in Spain. One of them, Stipa tenacissima, grows in rocky soil in Morocco, Algeria, and Tripoli. The Arabs search for it in the hills, and dig it up by the roots; they then load their camels with the grass and bring it to the ports whence it is sent to London or other places. A very good and durable paper is made from it, and ropes, mats, and even shoes are also produced from the fibre. Part of the "esparto" is, however, furnished by another grass (Lygeum sparteum). The natives sometimes tie a knot in a halfa leaf, which, according to them, cures a strain of the back. The Stipa is also used as fodder, but it is not nutritious and is indeed sometimes dangerous. In one year Britain imported 187,000 tons of esparto, worth nearly £800,000. The yield is said to be about ten tons per acre.

Another very interesting plant at Tripoli and in the North African Desert generally, is a sort of broom, the Retama (Retama Raetam). It is not very unlike the common broom, but has long, leafless, whip-like branches covered by bright pink-and-white flowers. It can often be seen half submerged in waves of sand, and struggling nevertheless to hold its own. As it has no leaves its loss of water is very much kept down. This is the Juniper of the Bible, and it is still used for making coals.

The length of the roots is very great in most of the broom-like, "hedgehog," and other plants. A quite small plant not more than six or eight inches high will have a root as thick as one's thumb. Even at a depth of four or five feet below the surface its root will be as thick as the little finger, so that the root-length is at least twenty times the height of the visible part above ground. These thirsty roots explore the ground in every direction, and go very deep downwards in their search for water.

Another very interesting plant in the Egyptian Desert is Citrullus Colocynth, from which the drug colocynth is prepared. The great round yellow-green fruit and finely divided bright green leaves may be seen lying on the sand. It remains green all the summer, but appears not to have any particular protection against loss of water. It is always supplied by its roots with underground water. If a stem is cut through it withers away in a few minutes. This is found also in Asia Minor, Greece, and Spain. The pulp of the fruit contains a strong medicinal substance; it is a drastic purgative, and in overdoses is an irritant poison. This was probably the Wild Vine or gourd which the young prophet gathered, and which produced "death in the pot." He probably mistook it for a water melon. It is still plentiful near Gilgal (2 Kings xiv. 38-41).[64]

Below the surface of the earth, of course, there is not nearly the same dryness or danger of losing water, so that there are often a great number of bulbs, tubers, and the like hidden in the soil. There they wait patiently, sometimes for a whole year or even for a longer period. So soon as a shower of rain falls they start to life, push out their leaves, and live at very high pressure for a few days. After a shower of rain, the Karoo in South Africa, for instance, is an extraordinarily beautiful country. There are bulbous Pelargoniums, a very curious leafless cucurbitaceous plant (Acanthosicyos), hundreds and thousands of Lilies, Irids, and Amaryllids. A single scarlet flower of a Brunsvigia can be seen more than a mile away!

These tender and delicate, exquisitely beautiful bulbs flourish amongst the succulent Euphorbias and Mesembryanthemums, between the hedgehog-like thorny plants and the woody little densely-branched mats of the permanent flora. The rain stimulates even these last to put out green leaves and flowers, but their time comes later on, when by the return of the usual drought every leaf and flower and the fruit of every bulb has been shrivelled up, turned into powder, and scattered in dust by the wind.[65]

Then the Karoo becomes unlovely, desolate, and barren-looking, with only its inconspicuous permanent plants visible.

The above description applies to bulbs and perennial plants with underground stores of food. Yet these are by no means the only plants which manage to exist in the Egyptian and Arabian desert. After a shower of rain a whole crowd of tiny annuals suddenly develop from seed; they come into full flower and have set their seed before they are killed off by a return of the desert conditions, when the effects of the rain have died away. These plants are not really desert plants at all, for they only grow during the short time that it is not a desert. They are like the Ephemerid insects which live for a summer day only.

Nor is it only in Egypt that we find such ephemerals. Mr. Coville found them in the Colorado desert in North America. The plants are quite different, but similar conditions have brought about an entirely similar mode of life on the other side of the globe! In Colorado they seem to be much influenced by the quantity of rain. Mr. Orcutt, after the great rain of February, 1891, found plants of Amaranthus (allied to our Love-Lies-Bleeding), which were ten feet in height, but in 1892 he found specimens of the same in the same place only nine inches high, though they were perfect plants and in full flower; in this last year there was only the usual very scanty rainfall.

It is, however, in deserts when man has set to work and supplies water and strenuous labour, that the most wonderful results appear. The whole of lower Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, Damascus, Baghdad, Palmyra, and other historic cities, show what the desert can be made to produce.

As one slowly steams up the Nile from Philae or Shellal towards Wady Halfa, there are places where the brown, regular layers of the Nubian Sandstone form cliffs which advance almost to the water's edge. Yet there is a narrow strip of green which fringes the water.

It is upon the actual bank itself, which is a gentle slope of ten to fifteen feet, that Lupines, Lubia beans, and other plants are regularly cultivated. This narrow green ribbon remains almost always on each bank. Where the cliffs recede, one notices a line of tall, graceful date palms, mixed occasionally with the branched Dôm palm (the nut of which yields vegetable ivory).[66] Tamarisks, conspicuous for their confused, silvery-green foliage, can be noticed here and there. The Acacias are common enough, and sometimes one of them is used as a hedge. It is a spreading, intricately-branched little shrub, with very white branches and stout curved thorns.

If one lands and strolls along the banks below the palm trees or amongst plantations of barley, wheat, or lentils, one sees the native women in their dark green robes gathering fruits or digging. Goats and donkeys are tethered here and there. There are sure to be castor-oil bushes. Small but neat pigeons, with a chestnut-coloured breast and bluish-banded tails are perching on the palms or acacias, and utter their weak little coo. The air is suffering from the horrible creaking and groaning of a "sakkieh" water-wheel. This is made entirely of acacia wood, and is watering the plantations. Sometimes it seems like a crying child, then, perhaps, one is reminded of the bagpipes, but its most marked peculiarity is the wearisome iteration. It never stops. One of them is said to supply about 1-1/2 acres daily at a cost of seven shillings per diem. Exactly the same instrument can be seen pictured on the monuments of Egypt 4000 to 5000 years ago. The "shadouf" is of still older date. This is a long pole bearing at one end a pot or paraffin tin and balanced by a mass of dried mud or a stone. All day long a man can be seen scooping up the coffee-coloured water of the Nile and pouring it on the land for the magnificent sum of one piastre a day.

Where not irrigated, the soil is dry and parched and can only carry a few miserable little thorny bushes. The entire absence of grass on the brick-like soil has a very strange effect to English eyes.

The Date Palm, however, requires a little respectful consideration. If one enters a thick grove and looks upwards, the idea of Egyptian architecture as distinguished from Gothic and others is at once visible. It has quite the same effect as the great hall of columns near Luxor. The numerous stems ending in the crown at the top where the leaves spring off was quite clearly in the minds of the architect at Karnak and other temples. It goes on bearing its fruits for some two hundred years, and begins to yield when only seven years old. It revels in a hot, dry climate with its roots in water, and seems to require scarcely any care in cultivation. Yet during the first few years of its life it is necessary to water the seedling. A single tree may give eight to ten bunches of dates worth about six shillings. Generally it is reproduced by the suckers which spring out from the base of the tree.

Dates make a very excellent food, not merely pleasant but both wholesome and nutritious. Sometimes toddy is made by fermenting the sap, but this is a very wasteful process, as it is apt to kill the tree.

The stones are often ground up to make food for camels. The feathery leaves are exceedingly graceful. When quite young they are not divided, but they split down to the main stalk along the folds, so that a full-grown leaf affords but little hold to the wind.

In some parts of Egypt, as for instance at Mariout, which is some fifteen miles from Alexandria, the wild flowers are probably more beautiful than anywhere else in the world. Amongst the corn and barley, which can be there grown without irrigation, masses of scarlet Poppies and Ranunculus are mingled with golden-yellow Composites, bright purple Asphodels, and hundreds of other Eastern flowers. The result is a rich feast of colour indescribable and satisfying to the soul.

So that these deserts under the hand of man rejoice and blossom as the rose.

Why is it that, as Disraeli has pointed out, civilization, culture, science, and religion had their origins in the desert? The answer is not difficult to see: for there is a dry, healthy climate; the severe strain of a long day's journey is varied by enforced leisure, when, resting at his tent-door, the Arab is irresistibly compelled to study the stars and to contemplate the infinite beauty of the night. It seems also to have been in the desert of the old world that man first learnt to cultivate the soil. In fact, it was only by irrigation on great tracts of alluvium, such as were furnished by the Nile and Euphrates, that the enormous populations of Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, and the other great monarchies could be maintained. So that city life on a big scale first developed there.

CHAPTER XI
THE STORY OF THE FIELDS

What was Ancient Britain?—Marshes and bittern—Oak forest—Pines—Savage country—Cornfield—Fire—Ice—Forest—Worms—Paleolithic family—The first farmers—Alfred the Great's first Government agricultural leaflet—Dr. Johnson—Prince Charlie's time—Misery of our forefathers—Oatmeal, milk, and cabbages—Patrick Miller—Tennyson's Northern Farmer—Flourishing days of 1830 to 1870—Derelict farmhouses and abandoned crofts—Where have the people gone?—Will they come back?

WHEN the eyes of man first beheld Britain, what sort of country was this of ours? It is very interesting to try to imagine what it was like, but of course it is a very difficult task. Still it is worth the attempt, for we ought to know something of what has been done by our forefathers.

Where the great rivers Thames, Humber, Tyne, Forth, Clyde, Mersey, and Severn, approached the seashore they lost themselves in wildernesses of desolate, dreary fenlands. Here a small scrubby wood of willow, birch, and alder; there a miles-wide stretch of reeds and undrained marsh intersected by sluggish, lazy rivers, or varied by stagnant pools. The bittern boomed in those marshes. Herons, geese, swans, ducks, and aquatic birds of all sorts found what is now Chelsea a paradise, only disturbed by the eagle, harrier-hawk, vulture, and the like.

Neither at the mouth nor even much higher up in its valley-course, was a river a steady stream in a defined bed. Such beds as it had were probably four or five times their present width; they would be quite irregular, meandering about, changing at every flood, full of islands, loops, backwaters, and continually interrupted by snags of trees.

The rolling hills of the lowlands would be an almost unbroken forest of oak, except where perhaps level land and the absence of drainage produced a marsh or horrible peat-moss. But when we say forest, we do not mean a glorified Richmond Park.

In good soil there might indeed be tall and magnificent trees. But it would be quite impossible to see them! The giants of the forest would be concealed in an inextricable tangle of young trees, brushwood, fallen logs, creepers, and undergrowth. Where the soil was sandy or stony, it might be a scrub rather than a forest, of gnarled, twisted, and stunted oaks, or possibly thickets of sloe, birch, rowan, hawthorn, brambles, and briers.

Every stream would be "wild water" leaping down waterfalls and cutting out irregular, little woody ravines. Here and there boulders and escarpments of rock would break through the forest soil, which would be mossy, thick with undergrowth, and entangled with rotting fallen trunks and branches, crossing at every conceivable angle. The higher hills were covered by a dreary, sombre pine forest. It was of a monotonous, desolate character. Greenish-grey tufts of Old Man's Beard lichen hung from the branches. The ground, treacherous, and broken by boulders, peaty hollows, and dead logs, would be shrouded in a soft, thick cushion of feathery Mosses, with Blaeberry, Ferns, Trientalis, Linnea, Dwarf Cornel, and other rare plants. Through it descended raging and destructive torrents which here might be checked and foamed over dead logs, whilst in another place they cut out bare earth-escarpments or started new waterfalls which ate back into the hills behind.

At the summit of the higher hills, bare rock crags projected out of occasional alpine grassy slopes, or irregular terraces, ravines, and gullies. Below, these alpine ravines ended in a peat-moss, which scattered, dwarfed, distorted, and miserable-looking Scotch Firs and Birches painfully endeavoured to colonize. Here and there on very steep hillsides, wiry, tussocky grass might be growing instead of forest or peat.

A horrible, forbidding, and desolate land, where Deer, Irish elk, bison, bear, wolf, boar, wolverine, badger, and fox, alone enjoyed themselves.

Now consider our country to-day. Mark the "trim little fields"; "that hedge there must have been clipt about eighty years"; "The lifting day showed the stucco villas on the green and the awful orderliness of England—line upon line, wall upon wall, solid stone dock and monolithic pier."[67] The road, carefully macadamized, sweeps on correct and straight or gracefully curving from neat village to countrytown. In the heart of the country the roadsides are scraped bare to produce that hideous tidiness which is dear to the soul of the County Council roadman. That is if an individual whose life is spent in stubbing up roses, briers, and every visible wild flower, can possibly possess a soul! Those fields without a rock, or even a projecting stone, have been drained, dug over, and levelled with the greatest possible care. The very rivers have been straightened and embanked; the rows of pollarded willows have been planted; they may, when in flood, overflow, but the results are very soon no longer visible. Even on the moors and in the depths of the Highlands, black-faced sheep, draining, and the regular burning of the heather, have quite transformed our country.

The original woods have long since vanished: those which now exist are mostly quite artificial plantations, and the very trees are often strangers to Britain.

The story of the Herculean labour by which our country, once as wild and as savage as its early inhabitants the Icenians and Catieuchlanians (and probably with lineaments as barbarous as those of the Coritanian and Trinobant), has been changed to peaceful, fertile meadowlands or tidy arable, is one long romance. To tell it properly would require a book to itself. In this chapter we shall only try to sketch what may have happened on one particular cornfield which exists on the trap-rocks of Kilbarchan, near Glasgow.[68] The reader must bear in mind that even this is a very ambitious attempt! It is an exceedingly difficult undertaking.

The subsoil in this particular cornfield (on Pennell Brae) lies upon the trap-rock formed by one of those gigantic lava-flows which cover that part of Renfrewshire. The whole district at that time must have been exactly like Vesuvius during the late eruption. Its scenery in this early miocene period consisted of glowing molten rock, accompanied by flames of fire, electrical storms, clouds of gas, dust, ashes, and superheated steam.

Every plant and every animal must have been exterminated. That was unfortunate, for, at that time, Pines, Oaks, Guelder Rose, Willows, as well as Sequoias allied to the Mammoth tree and Sassafras, may have lived in Scotland along with tapirs, opossums, marsupials, and other extraordinary beasts.

When the lava cooled and became trap-rock, it was at once attacked by frost, by wind, and by rain. Then by a very slow process of colonization, vegetation slowly and gradually crept over the trap-rock and rich mould and plant remains accumulated. At a much later date, there was another wholesale destruction. This time, it was the great Ice Sheet coming down from the Highland hills. Probably it drove heavily over the top of Pennell Brae and worked up into fine mud and powder every vestige of the miocene vegetation.

The very rocks themselves would be scratched, polished, and rounded off. When the glaciers melted away and left the surface free, it would consist of these rounded rocks alternating with clay-filled hollows. The trap-rock below would be covered by a subsoil due to particles of trap, of Highland and other mud, with remains of the miocene vegetation. Upon this surface, frost, wind, sunshine, and rain would again begin to perform their work.

But the subsoil, thus wonderfully formed by fire in the miocene, by frost in the glacial, and by weather in our own geological period, very soon felt the protecting and sheltering effect of a plant-covering.

First a green herb rooted itself every here and there amidst the desolate boulder-clay or perhaps in a crevice where good earth had accumulated. Then the scattered colonists began to form groups; soon patches of green moss united them. Then a continuous green carpet could be traced over a few yards here and perhaps on a few feet somewhere else. But when things had got as far as this, progress became much more rapid, and soon the whole site of the future cornfield was covered over by a continuous green carpet. Only, every here and there, hard stones and uncompromising trap-rocks remained still protruding from the green covering.

In another chapter this first covering of the soil will be described at length.

So far it has been subsoil and underlying rock, but now the roots begin to disintegrate and work up the subsoil; the earthworm has his chance, and forms true soil. On this particular hillside, the water would drain away and there would be no danger of mosses strangling and choking the Blaeberry and the Heather. The worm flourished and multiplied, and the soil became rich and black. Here and there a Sloe or a Rowan, or Poplar, or perhaps Alder and Birch, began to appear. In certain places Whins and Brooms, Brambles and Briers, diversified the hillside. Then a few Scotch firs began to push their way up, through the thickets. At first they were very small and stunted, but as each one formed a dense, deep-going mass of hardy roots, they were able to investigate the riches of the subsoil. Every year the amount of leaf-mould above increased, until the original moss-covering was utterly destroyed and a pine forest (see Chap. XXVIII.) occupied Pennell Brae.

About this time, a paleolithic family may have encamped on the side of the cliff near a little stream which can still be traced. The camp was only a few sticks and branches, with a skin or two for shelter from the north wind. The women lopped down fir branches for firewood, and cut up the young trees. The children set fire to the shrubs on dry days and paths ran here and there through the forest. This would be about 198,000 B.C.

Every year meant a further very gradual, slow destruction of the pine forest.

About 60,000 B.C., our paleolithic hunters with chipped-stone weapons would be obliged to travel further to the north. New savages with round heads and polished-stone weapons would make life in Renfrewshire too uncertain and too diversified by massacres. These last possessed seed corn, a few fruit trees as well as goats, cattle, and perhaps a few hardy, shaggy ponies. At first these settlers would be obliged to live in a lake dwelling, say in Linwood Moss, which is close at hand. They would then drive their cattle over the surrounding district, and camp in slightly-built villages. Near at hand, probably on the hill, they would build a (round) camp or fort, where they could fly for safety in the continual fights and invasions of the period.

Sooner or later a village would be built near Pennell Brae. One summer day the villagers attacked the wood that covered it; they cut down all the small brushwood and hacked through the bark of every big tree. After a few weeks, when the trees were dead, the wood was set on fire. Then a rough fold made of rude wattle and daub was formed, and every night the cattle and sheep were driven in.

After three or four years, this fold would be ploughed up by exceedingly rude instruments. Barley or certain kinds of wheat would be grown year after year until the crop was not worth gathering. When that happened, another fold would be ploughed up. Probably the whole of Pennell Brae went through this rude sort of agricultural treatment at one time or another. At the same time goats, cattle, and the demand for firewood, obtained in the most reckless and wasteful manner, would have very seriously interfered with the forest.

Although no doubt great changes for the better were introduced, the spearmen of Wallace of Elderslie close by had their "infield" land, which was practically the sheepfold as above described, and their "outfield" or grazing commons. Even down to 1745 the above system was practised (see below).

But when men's minds were stirred up and invigorated by the great Revolution of 1788-1820, all sorts of new agricultural discoveries were made. Yet the cornfield on Pennell Brae was probably not drained or enclosed by stone walls and hedges until 1830 to 1840! About 1870, it was more profitable to its owner than it has ever been since, though even now it forms part of our British farmlands which yield, on the whole, a larger amount of oats per acre than those of any other country in the world (except possibly Denmark).

Let us however look a little closer into the long, long period during which the "fire and stone-axe methods" of farming prevailed. Before the Romans landed there seem to have been no towns.[69] There was but little cultivation, for the Britons wore skins and lived chiefly on milk and flesh.

In the time of King Alfred, the increase of population made it necessary to take more trouble about farming, so we find a description of what the good farmer ought to do. We might call this the very first Government leaflet, and it has led to the Agricultural Leaflets published by the Board of Agriculture for Great Britain and Ireland.

"Sethe wille wyrcan wastbaere lond ateo hin of tham acre aefest sona fearn and thornas and figrsas swasame weods."

He was to clear off fern, bracken, thorns, sloe, hawthorn, bramble, whin, and weeds. The names of the months give some idea of Anglo-Saxon methods of farming. May was Thrimylce, because the cows might then be milked thrice a day. August was Weodmonath (weed-month), November Blotmonath, or blood-month, because the cattle were then killed to supply salt beef for winter time.[70]

Very much later in history, after our English friends had laid waste and depopulated Scotland, so that woods sprang up again everywhere, and again long after that time when the gradual increase of population had again utterly destroyed those woods, a certain Dr. Johnson travelled from Carlisle to Edinburgh. This gentleman declared that he saw no tree between those places. This statement must not be taken too literally, for he had written a dictionary and considered himself not merely the Times but an Encyclopædia Britannica as well.[71]

The Earl of Dundonald (in 1795) thus describes the agriculture of 1745 (Prince Charlie's days): "The outfield land never receives any manure. After taking from it two or three crops of grain it is left in the state it was in at reaping the last crop, without sowing thereon grass-seeds for the protection of any sort of herbage. During the first two or three years a sufficiency of grass to maintain a couple of rabbits per acre is scarcely produced. In the course of some years it acquires a sward, and after having been depastured for some years more, it is again submitted to the same barbarous system of husbandry" (that is used as a fold and then ploughed up). In the same year (1745) in Meigle parish, the land was never allowed to lie fallow: neither pease, grass, turnips, nor potatoes were raised. No cattle were fattened. A little grain (oats or barley) was exported. In 1754 or thereabouts, there was only one cart in the parish of Keithhall. Everything was carried about on ponies' backs, as is the case nowadays in the most unsettled parts of Canada. The country in places was almost impassable. Bridges did not exist, and the roads were mere tracks. In Rannoch the tenants had no beds, but lay on the ground on couches of heather or fern. These houses were built of wattle and daub, and so low that people had to crawl in on hands and feet and could not stand upright.

"In the best times that class of people seldom could indulge in animal food, and they were in use to support themselves in part with the blood taken from their cattle at different periods, made into puddings or bread with a mixture of oatmeal. Their common diet was either oatmeal, barley, or bear, cleared of the husks in a stone trough by a wooden mallet, and boiled with milk; coleworts or greens also contributed much to their subsistence, and cabbages when boiled and mashed with a little oatmeal."[72] Potatoes were introduced in Dumfriesshire some time after 1750, and the use of lime as manure at about the same time. Even in 1775 the roads were such that no kind of loaded carriages could pass without the greatest difficulty.

There is a most fascinating account in Dr. Singer's work of a strong man's difficulties in starting reasonable agriculture in Dumfriesshire about the year 1785. This was Patrick Miller, of Dalswinton. (It was on Dalswinton Loch that he tried the very first steamboat.) "When I went to view my purchase, I was so much disgusted for eight or ten days that I then meant never to return to this county. A trivial accident set me to work, and I have in a great manner resided here ever since.... I have now gone over all of this estate, and this I have done without the aid of a tenant.... I need not inform you that the first steps in improvement are draining when necessary, inclosing sufficiently, removing stones, roots, rubbish of every kind, and liming.... These operations cost me, I reckon, about £11 per acre upon an average; and I lay my account with being repaid all my expenses by the first three crops, but at any rate by the fourth. When the land which I make arable will give at least (if brought from a state of nature) twenty times the rent when I began to improve it."

Major-General Dirom, of Mount Annan, writing from that place in 1811, says that all over Scotland for about thirty years (from 1780-1810) he has seen "cultivation extending from the valleys to the hills, commons inclosed, wastes planted, and heaths everywhere giving way to corn: ... extension of towns and villages, by new lines of excellent roads, magnificent bridges and inland navigation ... our rapidly increasing population, by our now exporting great quantities of grain from parts of Scotland into which it was formerly imported, and by the superior comfort and abundance which appear in the domestic economy of the inhabitants." If you read any newspaper of to-day published in Canada or in the Argentine Republic, you find exactly the same process at work, and the same enthusiasm about it. Even in 1840-1850 all these improvements were still vigorously going on.

Look at Tennyson's Northern Farmer (old style):—

Even in his days, the good farmer was following King Alfred's directions. About 1830-1850 most of the land was in good bearing, and the roads were sufficiently good to admit of the stage-coach with four horses. But they after all lasted but a very short time before the railways again entirely altered the conditions of country life.

As we have seen, rents were in places, five times as large in 1820-1830 as they had ever been previously.[73] Therefore it was that about this time the gentlemen's houses were in many places rebuilt on a more magnificent scale. Then also were begun those circles and strips, or belts of plantation, which are now conspicuous features of the Scotch lowlands. An enormous majority of these plantations are not more than eighty years old. I think avenues were planted in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The fashion about 1820 was to destroy them as unnatural, at least in England. Unfortunately no respect was paid to the economic practice of forestry, with very unfortunate results for the proprietor.

The rest of this chapter is necessarily unpleasant and distressing reading, but it is necessary if we are to understand the romance of the fields. As one wanders over the grassy pastures of Southern Scotland, where the black-faced sheep foolishly start away, and where one's ears are irritated by the scolding complaints of the curlew or whaup, it is no rare accident to find a few broken-down walls, a clump of nettles, and badly grown ash trees. That was once a farm steading, where a healthy troop of children used to play together after walking three or more miles barefoot to school. The ash trees were planted at every farm "toon," for the Scottish spear was a very necessary weapon until recent times. Often also, upon some monotonous grouse moor, one sees the ridges that betoken a little croft where a cottager lived.

In one parish (Troqueer) over seventy country cottages have been abandoned during the lifetime of a middle-aged person.

Many families, of which the laird was often the best farmer in the district and his own factor, have disappeared. The fine houses, with their parks and shootings, are let to strangers, who come for a few weeks or months, and then leave it in charge of a caretaker. Before this recent development, the "family" lived all the year round upon the land; they spent their income chiefly in wages to the country people. Where once forty or fifty people were employed all the year, there are now but three or four. The big house with shuttered windows and weed-grown walks, is a distressing and saddening spectacle.

Of course such changes must occur. The farmer's and the cottar's children are now carrying out in Canada, Australia, or the United States, what was done in Scotland from 1780-1830. India, South Africa, and China have been developed by the brains and hold the graves of many of the laird's sons.

Yet this poor old country, abandoned of her children, shows signs of revival. Both the poor and the rich are beginning to find out that a country life is healthier, quite as interesting, and sometimes quite as profitable as the overcrowded city with its manufactories, mills, and offices. All new countries are beginning to fill up, and there is some hope that a new and vigorous development of farming may make the countryside once more vigorous, prosperous, and full of healthy children.

CHAPTER XII
ON PLANTS WHICH ADD TO CONTINENTS

Lake Aral and Lake Tschad—Mangrove swamps of West Africa—New mudbanks colonized—Fish, oysters, birds, and mosquitoes—Grasping roots and seedlings—Extent of mangroves—Touradons of the Rhone—Sea-meadows of Britain—Floating pollen—Reeds and sedges of estuarine meadows—Storms—Plants on ships' hulls—Kelps and tangles in storms—Are seaweeds useless?—Fish.

THE way in which the savage, rugged, inhospitable Britain of the Ice Age changed into our familiar peaceful country formed the subject of the last chapter.

But plants do far more than cover the earth and render it fertile, for some of them assist in winning new land from the sea or from freshwater lakes. The Sea of Aral, for instance, or Lake Tschad are rapidly becoming choked up by reeds and other vegetation. Blown sand from the deserts around is caught and intercepted by these reeds, so that fertile pastures are gradually forming in what used to be the open water of a deepish lake.

By far the most extraordinary of all these plants which form new land are the Mangroves.

They are only found in the tropics or sub-tropical regions, and are always along the sea-coast. It is where a river ends in a delta, dividing into intricate and confused irregularly winding creeks, that the mangroves are especially luxuriant.

Such a river will have probably flowed through hundreds of miles of the most exuberant tropical forest, where growth is never checked by the cold grasp of winter.

Its waters are yellowish brown or café au lait coloured, because they are full of mud and of decaying vegetation, with dead leaves and decaying branches floating on the surface. So full are such rivers of decaying material that they have a distinct and unmistakable smell, which has been compared to "crushed marigolds."

So soon as the muddy water reaches the sea, most of its mud is deposited and forms great banks and shoals of shifting odoriferous slime, which confuses and interferes with the discharging mouths of the river.

It is upon these changing, horrible-smelling banks of bottomless slime that the Mangrove is especially intended to develop.

If one takes a canoe in such a delta and paddles inwards on the incoming tide, a dense forest of glossy-green mangroves will be found to cover the whole coast-line, and also to extend far inland by the winding creeks, lagoons, and river channels.

The whole theory of the mangroves becomes clearly revealed as soon as the water begins to sink at low tide. First one notices that the stem of every mangrove ends below, not in a single trunk, but in an enormous number of arched, stilt-like supporting roots. Not only the stem but the branches also give off descending roots, which branch into four or five grasping arched fingers as soon as they get near the water. When they reach the mud, these fingers grow down into it and form a new supporting root to the tree. It is very difficult to give any idea of the extraordinary appearance of these mangrove roots.

Imagine an orchard of very old apple trees in winter, and suppose that one were to cut off every tree and plant it upside down in black mud, and also to crowd them so closely together that the branches were all mixed and confused. This may give an idea of the odd and strange appearance of the root-system in a mangrove forest. Upon these arching roots, even on those which are not yet attached, multitudes of oysters may be seen. There is also a little fish (a sort of perch) which climbs up on to the roots or out of the mud below, and gasps or squatters about in it.

As to the mud itself, it is a horrible, greasy, oozy, black or blue-black slime of bottomless depth. "It is full of organic, putrefying, strongly-smelling material, clearly full of bacteria. The water itself is sometimes covered by a dirty, oily scum, and air-bubbles rising from the bottom, spread out on the surface and let loose their microbes in the atmosphere."[74] There are many crocodiles, which may be seen reposing on the mud above high tide. It is difficult to distinguish them from a rough log of wood, but it is still more difficult to kill them, for their scales turn any ordinary bullet. There is scarcely any experience more exasperating than when, after one has taken a long, careful, and accurate aim, one observes the sleeping brute suddenly wake and scurry down into the water with a hideous leer on its face. Sea-cows or manatees are said to live in these creeks. Little ducks of many kinds rise in hundreds and thousands, but the commonest bird is the "curlew" (either a whimbrel or closely allied to it). During the day they sift the mud with their long curved beaks for insects, and at sunset fly down in vast numbers to the mudbanks near the sea. A miserable little white crane called "Poor Joe" is common, and has the same habit. It is not worth shooting, and it is quite aware of the fact. Herons, cormorants, and other birds are often to be seen. Monkeys sometimes visit the mangroves, probably to eat oysters or crabs. There are several kinds of crablike creatures which climb up the roots and may be seen running about all over them. But during the three weeks spent by the writer in the Mahéla creeks of Sierra Leone, it was the insects that made the deepest impression upon him; as soon as the evening falls the mosquitoes appear in myriads and in millions. Such creeks and mangrove swamps are always feverstricken and dangerous, and probably enjoy the very worst climate in the whole world. Of course nowadays, when Sir Patrick Manson and Dr. Ross have discovered that the mosquito carries the malaria germ, it is possible with great care to guard against malaria. One has also the satisfaction of knowing that the mosquito itself cannot be perfectly at ease with all these tiny parasites attacking its digestive organs.

At first sight such swamps appear to be useless, impossible, and dangerous. But that is not the case. No one, of course, would ever willingly reside in mangrove swamps, and the mangroves themselves are of scarcely any use to man, although the bark does sometimes furnish a useful tanning material; but, indirectly, the mangroves are one of the most important of all Nature's geographical agents.

On those horrible, slimy, shifting mudbanks no other plants could manage to exist. If one looks carefully at the seaward side of the last of the mangrove swamps, then it is easy to see that they are colonizing and reclaiming the mud.

Not only do the roots depending from the branches grasp and colonize new mud, but the seedlings are also specially adapted to fulfil the same office.

They remain a long time attached to the parent fruit; they also grow to a considerable length before they fall off. When ready to fall, they have a distinct seedling stem, which swells out towards the base and ends in a pointed root. The seedling is, in fact, like a club hanging upside down and with a pointed end. When it does fall, it goes straight down deep into the mud; then it promptly forms some anchoring roots, and the young mangrove is fixed in new mud and begins to develop. So that the forest continually grows towards the sea.

Such mudbanks soon become pierced by roots in every direction. Then the leaves of the mangroves themselves, as well as silt, soil, and rubbish floating in the water, gradually accumulate about and around these roots. This must raise the level of the ground. Eventually the soil becomes hardened and is above the level of the water. When this happens, the mangrove, which likes salt water about its roots, becomes unhealthy and the ordinary jungle trees kill it and take its place. Thus in course of time, when the jungle is cleared, fertile ricefields may be thriving on what was once a pure, or rather impure, mudbank.

In this way, by the continual development of the mangroves, enormous stretches of land are being added to the continents, and the process continues so long as the character of the coast-line favours it.

The shore-line covered by these mangrove swamps is enormous. In fact, within the tropics one finds them almost everywhere along the seashore, but coral, rock, or an exceedingly dry climate such as that of Arabia or Northern Peru, prevents their growth. Central and South America, West and East Africa, India, Polynesia, Australia, and much of the Asiatic coast-line, is covered by mangroves.