Part 3 (1/2)
At the foot of the cliff a natural hollow has been further scooped out by labour of man, and shaped into a small cave large enough for three or four to sit in. It is partly supported by strong wooden pillars, and at the mouth a hut of slabs, thickly covered by furze-f.a.ggots, has been constructed, with a door, and with roof thatched with reeds from the lake. A rude bench runs round three sides; against the fourth some digging tools recline--strong spades and grub-axes for rooting out a lost ferret, left here temporarily for convenience. The place, rough as it is, gives shelter, and, throwing the door open, there is a vista among the ash-poles and the hazel bushes overtopped with great fir trees and more distant oaks. In the later spring this is a lovely spot, the ground all tinted with the s.h.i.+mmering colour of the bluebells, and the hazel musical with the voice of the nightingale.
Outside the wood, where the downland begins to rise gradually there stretches a broad expanse of furze growing luxuriantly on the thin barren soil, and a mile or more in width. It has a beauty of its own when in full yellow blossom--a yellow sea of flower, scenting the air with an almost overpowering odour as of a coa.r.s.er pineapple, and full of the drowsy hum of the bees busy in the interspersed thyme. It has another beauty later on when the thick undergrowth of heath is in bloom, and a pale purple carpet spreads around. Here rabbits breed and sport, and hares hide, and the curious furze-chats fly to and fro; and lastly, but not leastly, my lord Reynard the Fox loves to take his ease, till he finally meets his fate in the jaws of clamouring hounds, or is a.s.sa.s.sinated with the aid of ”villainous saltpetre.” He is not easily shot, and will stand a charge fired broadside at a short distance without the slightest injury or apparent notice, beyond a slight quickening of his pace. His thick fur and tough skin turn the pellets.
Even when mortally wounded, life will linger for hours.
The ordinary idea of the fox is that of a flying frightened creature tearing away for bare existence; he is really a bold and desperate animal. The keeper will tell you that once when for some purpose he was walking up a deep dry ditch his spaniel and retriever suddenly ”chopped”
a fox, and got him at bay in a corner, when he turned, and in an instant laid the spaniel helpless and dying and severely handled the retriever.
Seeing his dogs so injured and the fox as it were under his feet, the keeper imprudently attempted to seize him, but could not retain his hold, and got the sharp white teeth clean through his hand.
Though but once actually bitten, he recollects being snapped at viciously by another fax, whom he found in broad daylight asleep in the hollow of a double mound with scarcely any shelter and within sixty yards of a house. Reynard was curled up on the ivy which in the hedges trails along the ground. The keeper crawled up on the bank and stopped, admiring the symmetry of the creature, when, purposely breaking a twig, the fox was up in a second, and snarled and snapped at his face, then slipped into the ditch and away. The fox is, in fact, quite as remarkable for boldness as for cunning. Last summer I met a fine fox on the turnpike road and close to a tollgate, in the middle of the day. He came at full speed with a young rabbit in his jaws, evidently but just captured, and did not perceive that he was observed till within twenty yards, when, with a single bound he cleared the sward beside the road, alighting with a crash in the bushes, carrying his prey with him.
Hares will sometimes, in like manner, come as it were to meet people on country roads. Is it that the eyes, being placed towards the side of the head, do not so readily catch sight of dangers in front as on the flanks, especially when the animal is absorbed in its purpose? Hares are peculiarly fond of limping at dusk along lonely roads.
Foxes, when they roam from the woods into the meadow-land, prefer to sleep during the day in those osier-beds which are found in the narrow corners formed by the meanderings of the brooks. Between the willow-wands there shoots up a thick undergrowth of sedges, long coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, and reeds; and in these the fox makes his bed, turning round and round till he has smoothed a place and trampled down the gra.s.s; then reclining, well sheltered from the wind. A dog will turn round and round in the same way before he lies down on the hearthrug.
These reeds sometimes grow to a great height, as much as ten or twelve feet. Along the Thames they are used, bound in bundles, to pitch the barges; when the hull has been roughly coated with pitch, one end of the bundle of reeds (thickest end preferred) is set on fire and pa.s.sed over it to make it melt and run into the c.h.i.n.ks. So, mayhap, the Saxon and Danish rovers may have used them to pitch the bottoms of their ”ceols”
when worn from constantly grounding on the shallows and eyots.
Here in the furze too is the haunt of the badger. This animal becomes rarer year after year--the disuse of the great rabbit-warrens being one cause; still he lingers, and may be traced in the rabbit ”buries,” where he enlarges a hole for his habitation, sleeps during the day, and comes forth in the gloaming. In summer he digs up the wasps' nests, not, as has been supposed, for the honey, but for the white larvae they contain: the wasp secretes no honey at all, and her nest is simply a series of cells in which the grubs mature. Some credit the fox with a fondness for the same food; and even the hornet's nest is said to be similarly ravaged. It is the nest of the humble-bee which the badger roots up for the honey. The humble-bee uses a tiny hole in a dry bank, sometimes a crack made by the heat in the earth, and really deposits true honey in the comb. It is very sweet, like that of the hive-bee, but a little darker in colour and much less in quant.i.ty. The haymakers search for these nests along the hedgerows in their dinner-hour, and eat the honey.
There seem to be several sub-species of humble-bee, differing in size and habit. One has its nest as deep as possible in a hole; another makes a nest with scarcely any protection beyond the thick moss of the bank, almost on the surface of the ground. The badger's hole has before it a huge quant.i.ty of sand, which he has thrown out, and upon which the imprint of his foot will be found, a mark, perhaps, more like the spoor of the large game of tropical forests than that left by any other English animal. When seen it can ever afterwards be instantly identified by the most careless observer.
In the meadows lower down, bounding the wood, the hay is gone or is piled in summer ricks, which lean one one way and another the other, and upon whose roofs, sloping at an obtuse angle, the green snakes lie coiled in the suns.h.i.+ne. Often when the waggon comes, and the little rick is loaded, the ”pitch” of hay on the p.r.o.ng as it is flung up carries with it a snake whirling in the air. He falls on the sward and is instantly pounced upon by the farmer's dog, who worries him, seizes him by the middle and shakes him, while the snake twists and hisses in vain. Some dogs will not touch snakes, others seem to enjoy destroying them; but it is noticeable that a dog which previously has pa.s.sed or avoided snakes, if once he kills one, never pa.s.ses another without slaughtering it. A slime from the snake's skin froths over the dog's jaws, and the sight is very unpleasant.
I have often tried to discover how the snakes get upon these summer ricks. Solomon could not understand the ”way of a serpent upon the rock,” and the way of a common snake up the summer rick seems almost as inexplicable. Though the roof or ”top” is often very much out of the proper conical shape, and sometimes sinks down nearly to a level, the sides for a height of three or four feet are generally perpendicular, affording no projection of any kind whatever; hay is slippery, and the rick is, of course, too large for the snake to encircle it. Yet there they are commonly found to the intense alarm of the labouring women, who never can get over their dislike of snakes, though they see them so frequently. The only way I can imagine by which they climb up is by means of the holes, or galleries, used by field-mice. In summer ricks there are sometimes many mice, and in pursuit of these the snake may find its way up through their ”runs.” Toads are also occasionally found on these ricks, and it is not exactly clear how they get there either; but their object is plain--i.e. the insects which swarm on the hay.
The thick hedgerows of these woodland meads are full of trees, and others stand out in groups in the gra.s.s, some of them hollow. Elms often become hollow, and so do oaks; the latter have such large cavities sometimes that one or more persons may easily crouch therein. This is speaking of an ordinary-sized tree; there are many instances of patriarchs of the forest within whose capacious trunks a dozen might stand upright.
These hollow trees, according to woodcraft, ought to come down by the axe without further loss of time. Yet it is fortunate that we are not all of us, even in this prosaic age, imbued with the stern utilitarian spirit; for a decaying tree is perhaps more interesting than one in full vigour of growth. The starlings make their nests in the upper knot-holes; or, lower down, the owl feeds her young; and if you chance to pa.s.s near, and are not aware of the ways of owls, you may fancy that a legion of serpents are in the bushes, so loud and threatening is the hissing noise made by the brood. The woodp.e.c.k.e.r comes for the insects that flourish on the dying giant; so does the curious little tree-climber, running up the trunk like a mouse; and in winter, when insect-life is scarce, it is amusing to watch there the busy tomt.i.t. He hangs underneath a dead branch, head downwards, as if walking on a ceiling, and with his tiny but strong bill chips off a fragment of the loose dead bark. Under this bark, as he well knows, woodlice and all kinds of creeping things make their home. With the fragment he flies to an adjacent twig, small enough to be grasped by his claws and so give him a firm foothold. There he pecks his morsel into minute pieces and lunches on the living contents. Then, with a saucy chuckle of delight in his own cleverness, he returns to the larger bough for a fresh supply. As the bough decays the bark loosens, and is invaded by insects which when it was green could not touch it.
For the acorns the old oak still yields come rooks, pigeons, and stately pheasants, with their glossy feathers s.h.i.+ning in the autumn sun.
Thrushes carry wild hedge-fruit up on the broad platform formed by the trunk where the great limbs divide, and, pecking it to pieces, leave the seeds. These take root in the crevices which widen out underneath into a ma.s.s of soft decaying ”touchwood;” and so from the crown of the tree there presently streams downwards long trailing briars, bearing in June the sweet wild roses and in winter red oval fruit. Ivy comes creeping up, and in its thick warm coverts nests are built. Below, among the powdery ”touchwood” which lines the floor of this living hut, great fungi push their coloured heads up to the light. And here you may take shelter when the rain comes unexpectedly pattering on the leaves, and listen as it rises to a roar within the forest. Sometimes wild bees take up their residence in the hollow, slowly filling it with comb, buzzing busily to and fro; and then it is not to be approached so carelessly, though so ready are all creatures to acknowledge kindness that ere now I have even made friends with the inhabitants of a wasp's nest.
A thick carpet of dark green moss grows upon one side of the tree, and over it the tall brake fern rears its yellow stem. In the evening the goat-sucker or nightjar comes with a whirling phantom-like flight, wheeling round and round: a strange bird, which will roost all day on a rail, blinking or sleeping in the daylight, and seeming to prefer a rail or a branch without leaves to one that affords cover. Here also the smaller bats flit in the twilight, and, if you stand still, will pursue their prey close to your head, wheeling about it so that you may knock them down with your hand if you wish. The labouring people call the bat ”bat-mouse.” Here also come many beetles; and sometimes on a summer's day the swallows will rest from their endless flight on the dying upper branches, for they too like a bough clear or nearly clear of leaves.
All the year through the hollow tree is haunted by every kind of living creature, and therefore let us hope it may yet be permitted to linger awhile safe from the axe.
The lesser roots of the elm are porous like cane, and are sometimes smoked as cigars by the ploughboys. The leaf of the coltsfoot, which grows so luxuriously in many places and used to be regularly gathered and dried by the lower cla.s.ses for the pipe, is now rarely used since the commoner tobaccos have become universally accessible.
Often and often, when standing in a meadow gateway partly hidden by the bushes, watching the woodp.e.c.k.e.r on the ant-hills, of whose eggs, too, the partridges are so fond (so that a good ant year, in which their nests are prolific, is also a good partridge year) you may, if you are still, hear a slight faint rustle in the hedge, and by-and-by a weasel will steal out. Seeing you he instantly pauses, elevates his head, and steadily gazes: move but your eyes and he is back in the hedge; remain quiet, still looking straight before you as if you saw nothing, and he will presently recover confidence, and actually cross the gateway almost under you.
This is the secret of observation: stillness, silence, and apparent indifference. In some instinctive way these wild creatures learn to distinguish when one is or is not intent upon them in a spirit of enmity; and if very near, it is always the eye they watch. So long as you observe them, as it were, from the corner of the eyeball, sideways, or look over their heads at something beyond, it is well. Turn your glance full upon them to get a better view, and they are gone.
When waiting in a dry ditch with a gun on a warm autumn afternoon for a rabbit to come out, sometimes a bunny will suddenly appear at the mouth of a hole which your knee nearly touches. He stops dead, as if petrified with astonishment, sitting on his haunches. His full dark eye is on you with a gaze of intense curiosity; his nostrils work as if sniffing; his whiskers move; and every now and then he thumps with his hind legs upon the earth with a low dull thud. This is evidently a sign of great alarm, at the noise of which any other rabbit within hearing instantly disappears in the ”bury.” Yet there your friend sits and watches you as if spell-bound, so long as you have the patience neither to move hand or foot nor to turn your eye. Keep your glance on a frond of the fern just beyond him, and he will stay. The instant your eye meets his or a finger stirs, he plunges out of sight.
It is so also with birds. Walk across a meadow swinging a stick, even humming, and the rooks calmly continue their search for grubs within thirty yards; stop to look at them, and they rise on the wing directly.
So, too, the finches in the trees by the roadside. Let the wayfarer pa.s.s beneath the bough on which they are singing, and they will sing on, if he moves without apparent interest; should he pause to listen, their wings glisten in the sun as they fly.
The meadows lead down to the sh.o.r.es of the mere, and the nearest fields melt almost insensibly into the green margin of the water, for at the edge it is so full of flags, and rushes, and weeds as at a distance to be barely distinguishable there from the sward. As we approach, the cuckoo sings pa.s.sing over head; ”she cries as she flies” is the common country saying.
I used to imagine that the cuckoo was fond of an echo, having noticed that a particular clump of trees overhanging some water, the opposite bank of which sent back a clear reply, was a specially favourite resort of that bird. The reduplication of the liquid notes, as they travelled to and fro, was peculiarly pleasant: the water, perhaps, lending, like a sounding-board, a fulness and roundness to her song. She might possibly have fancied that another bird was answering; certainly she ”cried” much longer there than in other places. Morning after morning, and about the same time--eleven o'clock--a cuckoo sang in that group of trees, from noting which I was led to think that perhaps the cuckoo, though apparently wandering aimlessly about, really has more method and regularity in her habits than would seem.