Part 34 (1/2)
{31} The above lists are, of course, only selections. Indeed, on the occasion to which the last list refers, one of the party produced a series of water-colour paintings of wild flowers which are found in the neighbourhood, beautifully executed by Dr. Burgess, of Spilsby, and numbering about 500.
{32} In speaking of the silene quinque vulneralis, on a previous page, I said that there was no absolute reason why it should not re-appear in the garden of the Victoria Hotel. The holy thistle is a case in point.
Several years ago seeing that it was being steadily exterminated, and that the end was inevitably near, the writer transplanted a root to his own garden. It flourished there through two seasons, but was eventually, by mistake, ”improved” away, when the garden beds were being dug over.
To his surprise, some years after, a vigorous plant of it was found growing in his kitchen garden among the potatoes. Alas! That also has now gone the way of all thistle flesh.
{33} ”Bage” is an old Lincolns.h.i.+re word meaning a sod. In the overseer's accounts of the neighbouring parish of Roughton occurs this entry twice in the year 1707: ”2s. 6d. paid for one day's work of church moor bages”; _i.e._, peat cut for fuel.
{34a} The birch trees of the neighbourhood, with their silvery bark and light and elegant foliage have been very much reduced in numbers, as the wood is used for ”clogs” in the manufacturing districts of Yorks.h.i.+re and elsewhere.
{34b} There is a ”Pyewipe” Inn at Lincoln, and Pyewipe Hall, near Kirton-in-Lindsey.
{34c} This may seem to the ordinary uninitiated mind to be a stretch of the imagination; but if we are to believe Mr. Cornish, the old practised gunners on our coasts, who make the cries of our wild fowl a life-long study can almost understand them as well as human speech. See ”Animals, their Life and Conversation,” by C. J. Cornish.
{34d} They also frequented other moorlands in the north of the county, in the neighbourhood of Market Rasen and Caistor.
{35} The writer has enjoyed the privilege (often a welcome relief from hard literary, and other labours) of shooting over this ground for more than a quarter of a century, having known it for double that period. His father-in-law had it before him; a genuine sportsman of the old type, being one of a trio, who clung to the last, even far into the seventies, to the old flint gun-the late General Hall, of Sixmile Bottom, near Newmarket, being the second, and I believe the famous sportsman, Sir Richard Sutton, the third, two of whose guns became the property of my father-in-law. Only one man was left in the kingdom who made the flints.
A grand weapon was a genuine ”flint” of old ”Joe” Manton; with plenty of metal, a hard hitter, and often equally serviceable when converted into a breech-loader. Its only drawbacks were, that the exposure of the powder rendered it uncertain in damp weather; and the slowness of ignition; but this latter, to a sportsman who had known no other ”arm of precision,”
was little hindrance, and naturally, entered into his calculations whenever he pulled trigger.
{36a} The writer, from one cause or another, has probably had a unique experience of shooting in the neighbourhood of Woodhall and elsewhere.
To say nothing of shooting in nine other counties, he at one time shot over the whole of the Kirkstead estate. During the absence from home of the late owner of the Woodhall estate, T. J. Stafford Hotchkin, Esq., when residing abroad, he, with a friend, shot over all Woodhall. Within the nineties, he, with two others, rented the greater part of the Woodhall shooting for three years. He has shot, at one time or another, in more than 50 parishes in the county. _Tempora Mutantur_. Probably hard times have had an astringent effect on the hospitality of the shooting fraternity.
{36b} I quote from a poem, long ago out of print, written by Richard Ellison, Esq. (of Boultham), ent.i.tled ”Kirkstead, or the Pleasures of Shooting,” and published in 1837; the proceeds of its sale to be given to the funds of a fancy fair held in aid of Lincoln County Hospital.
{38} Another anecdote of the said keeper may here be given, which is amusing. Soon after the above incident he gave notice to quit his place, in order (as he said) to better himself. He had often heard me descant on the charms of grouse shooting and deer-stalking, and he came to me to ask me to help him to a situation in Scotland. I got him the post of keeper on a large moor on the sh.o.r.es of Loch Ness. He was a man with a big head, a bulky body, and with rather weak bandy legs (not unlike many a sketch in ”Punch”), and though a good English keeper, and able to stride along through the turnips, in a level country like our own, he was not adapted for mountaineering. One season in the Highlands cooled his ardour, and the very next year he called on me again, being out of place.
”Well,” I asked my friend, ”how is it you're here again”? ”To tell you the truth, sir,” he replied, ”I could not stand those barelegged Highland gillies. [N.B.-He had, himself, no fine calves to show.] They were always a-laughing at me. And their gaelic was worse than Latin and Greek. You'll never catch me in Scotland again.” We can picture to ourselves the bandy legs bearing the unwieldly body up a steep brae side; stumbling over loose stones, struggling through the tall heather, till breathless he would pause, while the agile gillies would, chuckling, leave him behind; pause and ponder with the conclusion not slowly arrived at, ”What a fool I was to leave Woodhall for work like this.” The Sa.s.senach was indeed out of his element on the Scotch hills. He took my advice; picked up a wife half his own age, and now keeps a country public-house, where he can recount his Scotch and other adventures at the bar.
{39} This is also confirmed by a writer in the ”Naturalist,” of 1895, p.
67. He says the bird ”is very erratic in its nesting habits.” He has found its egg in a pheasant's nest, and in two cases the egg laid on the bare ground. Only last season I myself found an egg lying without any nest.
{40} This peculiar protective property is not confined to the partridge, but seems to apply to game birds generally. The keeper on the Woodhall shooting reported to me, on one occasion, that a pheasant had nested close to a footpath, where she was certain to be disturbed, and asked permission to take the eggs to hatch under one of his hens. Mr. E. M.
Cole reports in the ”Naturalist” of 1892, p. 182, _Phasia.n.u.s Colchicus_ nest of seven or eight eggs ”found May 6th, on the road margin.” Mr. J.
Watson, in his book ”Sylvan Folk,” says: ”A party of ornithologists were trying to get a specimen of the ptarmigan in breeding plumage, but failed up to luncheon time. Sitting down, the lunch was unstrapped from a pony, and a strap fell on a ptarmigan, sitting, actually, under the pony. On another occasion a dog sat down upon the hen ptarmigan, which it had not discovered in the middle of the party.”-”Sylvan Folk,” p. 147, Fisher Unwin, 1889.
{42} The writer once witnessed a fight in the air between a kite and a heron. Hearing a confused sound of harsh cries overhead, he looked up, and soon caught sight of two large birds wheeling round and round, each apparently doing its utmost to get above the other. The two, however, were very evenly matched, for, whereas the kite had its strong beak and talons, deadly weapons for seizing and rending when at close quarters, and could make a powerful swoop at his prey-the heron, though an awkward bird in the air, and ungainly in its movements, had yet its long, sharp, bill, with which it could receive its enemy as it were ”at point of bayonet,” and even transfix him, should he make a reckless onset. Again and again, when the kite succeeded in getting uppermost, he would make a rapid downward swoop upon the heron; but as he neared the latter, he was forced swiftly to turn aside, to avoid being pierced through by the long bill. This went on for a considerable time, the two birds by turns surmounting each other, until they were lost to view in a cloud; and as to which ultimately gained the day, ”witness deponeth not.”
As Mary Howitt prettily says;-
Up, up into the skies, Thy strenuous pinions go; While shouts, and cries, and wondering eyes Still reach thee from below.
But higher and higher, like a spirit of fire, Still o'er thee hangs thy foe; Thy cruel foe, still seeking With one down-plunging aim To strike thy precious life For ever from thy frame; But doomed, perhaps, as down he darts, Swift as the rustling wind, Impaled upon thy upturned beak, To leave his own behind.
TO THE HERON
{44a} The writer, when the sport of hawking was revived some 40 years ago by the late Mr. Barr, witnessed several trials of his hawks, and himself tried hawking with the sparrow-hawk on a small scale. A great friend of his took up the sport at one time, and spent a good deal of money on it in securing good birds and well trained; but it almost invariably resulted in their getting away. Failing to kill his quarry, the bird would fly wildly about in search of it, thus getting beyond recall, and so would eventually go off and resume its wild habits. After losing a hawk for some days, the writer has caught sight of it again, called it, and swung his ”lure” in the air to attract it. The hawk has come and fluttered about him, almost within arm's length, but carefully eluded being taken; and so, after a little playful dalliance, has flown away again.
{44b} Lord Lilford, the great naturalist, states that a pair of owls, with their adult progeny, will, in three months, rid the land of no less than 10,000 vermin; and Frank Buckland states that he found the remains of 20 dead rats in one owl's nest.
{45} Among his various pets the writer has tried to keep owls, but not with success. On one occasion he brought home two young birds, taken from a nest on the moor. They were put into an empty pigeon-cote. The next morning they were found dead, with their claws, in fatal embrace, buried deep in each other's eyes. At another time he reared a couple, and got them fairly tame. They were allowed to go out at night to forage for themselves. But on one occasion, for the delectation of some visitors, he turned them out in the afternoon before dusk, and (presumably), taking offence at the affront put upon them, they never returned to their quarters. For a time he heard them in the dusk, and when he called they would even hover about him, uttering a low kind of purr but keeping carefully out of his reach.