THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

MEMORIES OF THE MONTHS

THIRD SERIES

Memories of the Months

THIRD SERIES
BY THE RIGHT HON.

SIR HERBERT MAXWELL

BART., M.P., F.R.S.

floras non numero nisi felices

LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD

1903

e>e r. 3

INTRODUCTION

As the shadows lengthen, the man becomes more and
more garrulous. 'La jeunesse a lui reparait,' quoth
Alexandre Dumas, ' apportant tous ces souvenirs suaves,
qui sont plutot des parfums que des pens6es.' Courtesy
and forbearance on the part of his friends provide
him with an audience, nor does he spare them, spin-
ning interminable yarns, sometimes of very indifferent
texture.

But he who commits his memories to print cannot
reckon on similar indulgence. Good manners may
compel attention to an old fellow from his company, but
nobody is under any obligation to read what he chooses
to write, wherefore nobody has any right to complain if
he chooses that silent mode of monologue. What has
tempted me to indulge in it again is the agreeable recep-
tion accorded to two former series of these ' Memories/
I can but hope that the present volume, filled with what
are plutot des parfums que des pensees, may be found in
some degree redolent of the greenwood, the hillside and
its falling Hoods, and refresh those who have learned to

vi INTRODUCTION

draw their purest pleasures from those never- failing
sources.

Of the papers which follow, Nos. II, X, XIX, XXVI,
and XXVII. have appeared already in Blackwood's
Magazine, and are republished by kind permission of
the proprietor of that venerable periodical.

HERBERT MAXWELL.

MONREITH, 1903.

CONTENTS

JANUARY

PAGE

I. THE SAD PLIGHT OF BRITISH FORESTRY .... J

II. MIDWINTER IN THESSALY •. . 26

III. THE PLAGUE OF VOLES . 89

IV. MOMENTUM VtrSUS MATTER . . . . . . 41

FEBRUARY

V. THE GOLD-CRESTED WREN .44

M. THE PROBLEM OF DISPERSAL 49

MARCH

VII. THE TRUE SALMON DISEASE . . . . . . 64

VIII. THE HABIT OF HOLLIES . 68

IX. BIRNAM WOOD 61

APRIL

X. NAMES OF PLACES . . ... . . . 66

XL HOW SALMON-POOLS ARE NAMED . . . . .90

XII. THE MAGNOLIA . . . . . . . . . , 94

MAY

XIII. THE BLACKTHORN . . . . . . . . 9?

XIV. WHY CERTAIN BIRDS MOB OTHERS . . . i , 98
XV. LAPWINGS ... . . . . . . . 99

xvi. PLOVERS' EGGS AND OTHERS . . . .. -.'. . , 101

73S3S6

CONTENTS

xvii. 'TWIXT SPRING AND SUMMER

XVIII. THE BLACK-BACKED GULL.

JUNE

103
112

. 114

141

XXI. THE FOOD OF THE DIPPER

. 142

. 145

XXIV. AN INTREPID KINGFISHER
XXV. CATS .

. 145
. 147

JULY

XXVI. SUMMER-TIDE IN A HIGHLAND FOREST . . . .150

XXVJI. THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT 171

AUGUST

XXVIII. DITTANY 194

xxix. THE DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH 195

XXX. THE VOICE OF ATROPOS 197

SEPTEMBER

XXXI. A SCOTTISH BLOOD-FEUD 200

XXXII. AN UNSUCCESSFUL STALK 224

XXXIII. THE GROWING EVIL OF COLLECTORS 227

XXXIV. PROGRESSIVE INTELLIGENCE IN BEES . . . .231
XXXV. BUMBLE-BEES 233

OCTOBER

XXXVI. SPIDEKS 236

XXXVII. THE WEB •;..'. 237

XXXVIII. MESSALINA OF THE MESHES 240

CONTENTS ix

PAGE

XXXIX. NEMESIS . . . 243

XL. SOME LJ5PIDOPTERA 244

XLI. OWLS 245

NOVEMBER

XLII. LICHENS . 251

XLIII. A GRACIOUS SCENE 256

XLFV. FIELDFARES 257

XLV. BIRD-MIGRATION . . 259

XLVI. ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE 260

XLVII. INSECT MECHANICS . . 262

XLVIII. INSECT SOCIOLOGY . . 264

XLIX. MOUND BIRDS 265

L. THE YUCCA MOTH 269

LI. EELS 271

LII. SNAILS AND SLUGS 276

DECEMBER

LIII. PRIMITIVE LEECHCRAFT 281

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE LADY OF THE LAKE

DUNKELD WATER: 'is HE CLEAN OR FOUL?'

IN BIBNAM WOOD

ON THE MINNICK

DONALD

WELL ABOVE THEM

Frontispiece.
To face p. 54
64
92
154
226

January

DURING the last session of Parliament (1901) I was asked
by a well-known naturalist to move the Home
Office to interfere with the wholesale slaughter plight of
of crossbills on a certain estate in the north British
of Scotland. Although I was distressed to hear
of the destruction of a beautiful and interesting bird,
whereof the splendid flame colour on head and breast
fades, sooner or later, after death to a greenish ashen hue,
I felt unable to comply with my friend's request by reason,
first, that the Home Office does not interfere in Scottish
local government ; and, second, that the Wild Birds Pre-
servation Act of 1894 was specially designed to commit to
County Councils the responsibility for protecting such
species as the interests and special features of different
districts rendered it desirable to encourage. But know-
ing the owner of the estate in question to be a genuine
lover of nature, little likely to sanction, still less to direct,
the persecution of any wild creature without good reason,
I took occasion to ask him the reason for the killing of
the crossbills. He gave one to which it was not easy to
demur. The owner of extensive fir woods, he has set
himself to intelligent and economic management of the
same, and is most naturally anxious to avail himself of
A

2 THE SAD PLIGHT OF BRITISH FORESTRY

natural regeneration— that is, the growth of self-sown
seedlings upon ground where ripe timber has been felled.
To ensure this, which is far the most economic method of
securing a fresh crop, a plentiful supply of natural seed is
essential ; and that, in the case of pine woods, is precisely
what flocks of crossbills prevent. They split the cones
with their powerful beaks, devour the seeds, and defeat
the object of the forester. If the choice were proved to
lie between pine forest and crossbills, most people would
give their vote in support of the pines, as contributing
more to both the beauty and wealth of the district ; but
in fact the case for the pines is stronger than that, for it
is the presence of pines that attracts these large flocks
of crossbills. It conies to this, therefore, that if you do
not reduce the number of your crossbills, you must do
without natural pine forest; and if you do not have
extensive pine forest you will have no crossbills, for they
will go to other lands where their favourite diet can
be had in plenty. Troublesome as crossbills are, their
presence with us in larger numbers than formerly is a
gratifying proof of the extent to which reafforestation
has made headway in the Highlands during the last half-
century. Of all the counties of the United Kingdom,
Inverness-shire now contains the largest extent of wood-
land, 150,929 acres; at the beginning of last century there
were few more treeless wastes.

Still more gratifying is the start which has been made
in the north by applying scientific system to forestry.
Too long has the old, wasteful, hand-to-mouth, rule-of-
thumb manner prevailed ; not a moment too soon have
some Highland landowners awakened to the increasing
value of home timber, and have begun to recognise

JANUAEY 3

forestry as farming on a large scale. It requires, however,
more than common prescience to adopt a revolution in a
system of cultivation wherein the rotation of crops must
be measured, not by seasons, but by centuries.

In 1887 Sir John Lubbock's Select Committee of the
House of Commons pronounced British woodland manage-
ment to be capable of material improvement, and reported
themselves as satisfied that a considerable proportion of the
foreign timber imported might be grown at home under
a more skilful system. These imports at that time were
reckoned at the value of £16,000,000, exclusive of forest
products other than timber to the value of £14,000,000.
Their value had increased to upwards of £21,000,000 in
1899, whereof £5,000,000 was paid for rough-hewn logs,
and £16,000,000 for sawn timber. The latter import
consisted nearly entirely of pine or fir from the Baltic,
Scandinavia, and Canada, and there exists no physical
reason why every foot of this should not have been grown
on British soil had it been the will of our people to do so.
Of course there remains the economic question, whether
British land is not or cannot be turned to more directly
profitable account than in timber -growing. Of the
16,000,000 acres which the Select Committee reported as
being waste land, producing no crop of any kind, a great
deal yields a fine rent for sporting purposes. Many a
Highland proprietor derives a larger annual revenue by
letting his land as a deer forest than if it were covered
with trees managed on business principles. But that may
not always be the case; indeed, a great deal of these
16,000,000 acres is of little or no value for sporting
purposes, especially in Ireland; and Mr. Nisbet, in his
recent admirable contribution to the Haddon Hall Library

4 THE SAD PLIGHT OF BRITISH FORESTRY

Our Forests and Woodlands,1 has shown good cause for
reflection whether, both from a private and a national
point of view, the time has not come to found a new
source of wealth by the proper treatment of waste land
which is neither deer forest nor grouse moor. Pointing
to the enormous and rapid development of the United
States and of Germany in timber-consuming industry, he
regards the recent rapid rise in the price of timber as no
temporary fluctuation. The visible supply of timber in
the world has been diminishing for many years; the
demands upon it have been constantly increasing. What
must be the not remote result ?

1 Briefly stated (says Mr. Nisbet) the economic conditions now
already obtaining, and practically certain soon to become greatly
accentuated, are such that the present sources of supply through-
out the world are just able to meet the existing demand. But
the demand seems certain to increase, and such enhancement
can only be met by working out timber from backwoods and
remote tracts which are at present unremunerative. Hence a
general rise in prices throughout Scandinavia, Eussia, and Canada
must be the direct result of competition between Britain,
America, and Germany.'

It is quite true that in some timber-producing countries
the State has interfered to ensure judicious reafforestation,
and in others, such as Western Australia and Queensland,
private commercial foresight has made provision against
reckless denudation ; but the restoration of felled wood
is a process which cannot be hurried ; the average time
required for timber crops to mature leaves very little
change out of a century. On favourable soil and in good
exposure Scots fir and larch may be most profitably

1 London : J. M. Dent and Co., 1900.

JANUAEY 5

cleared at about eighty years' growth ; but heavy sacrifice
of capital is incurred if the final fall of oak is made before
it is 120 or 140 years old. If Mr. Nisbet be correct in
his forecast — and his experience of forestry in many
countries entitles his opinion to respectful attention —
demand must have overtaken the supply before many
years have past.

In view of the approach of this crisis, it is natural to
inquire what preparation is being made at home to meet
it, and what part existing British woodlands are capable
of bearing to meet the requirements of the timber market.
Now, among the many sharp lessons we have learned from
the competition of foreign produce none has been more
ruthlessly rubbed in than this, that the first conditions of
profitable trade in open markets are regularity of supply
and uniformity of quality. Nobod}* who has followed the
course of the dairy industry in Britain and Ireland — who
has marked, first, the overwhelming success of Danish
and French butter, manufactured with scientific precision
and delivered with organised punctuality, and, second,
the marked revival of the home industry in consequence
of the adoption of a better system — can want a clearer
illustration of this principle. To how many estates in
the British Islands can one point as supplying, or being
capable of supplying, the timber trade on these terms ?
Positively the only ones known to me are some of the
vast Highland woodlands : they are scientifically managed,
and will some day be ready to put timber regularly and
of uniform quality on the market. But that day is not
yet ; a very small proportion of the crop is ripe, or even
nearly ripe.

The woodland of the United Kingdom extends to a little

6 THE SAD PLIGHT OF BRITISH FORESTRY

over three million acres. Most people go through life
with a very vague impression about the extent of an acre ;
none but trained minds can apprehend what is meant
by a million. Perhaps the most vivid way of explaining
the present extent of British and Irish woodland is to
state that, were it all united in a continuous mass, it
would cover with 'a boundless contiguity of shade' the
entire counties of Oxford, Worcester, Warwick, Leicester,
Northampton, and Nottingham. Those three million acres
would by no means suffice, even had they received for
one hundred years past the most skilful management, for
the present requirements of the home timber market;
but Mr. Nisbet reckons that they might have been made
to meet one- third of the demand now supplied by the
foreigner.

'If our three million acres of woodlands were trebled in
extent ' (says he), ' and were all managed on business principles,
in place of being under uneconomic management as game
coverts and pleasure-grounds, as is now mostly the case with
British forests, this would merely be able to supply existing
requirements, and no more. Nay, even if we had twelve
million acres under forest, and all under the best of manage-
ment, they would probably be just about able to supply the
demand for timber likely to exist at the time plantations now
formed may become mature.'

That is to say, in from one to two hundred years ! It is
obvious that a forecast at such long range must be under-
stood with ' errors excepted ' ; but then — no forecast, no
forestry. To forecast the general value of timber a
hundred years hence is hazardous indeed ; still more so to
predict what trees it will then prove to have been most
worth planting now. It so happens that, at the present

JANUARY 7

time, the native timber which meets with the readiest
sale in Scotland, and at the highest price, is that of
sycamore. Writers in the first half of last century set
small store by it. ' The timber of our sycamore,' wrote
Cobbett, 'is white and soft, and not valuable by any
means.' But it is now in so much request by calico
printers and, I believe, carpet manufacturers that bolls
measuring twelve inches on the square readily fetch from
2s. 6d. to 5s. a foot, according to distance from a railway
or harbour. On the other hand the demand and price
for poplar, so much in request for railway wagons fifty
years ago, have fallen off considerably. Still, in spite of
these changes in value, it is hard to conceive any stage
of civilisation when the timber of mature oak, ash, elm,
Scots fir and larch will fail to command a remunerative
price.

When we turn to consider the general quality of the
timber grown in our three million acres of woodland, the
prospect is even more discouraging than the deficiency
in extent. The average English landowner knows nothing
of economic forestry; but he knows all that is to be
known about shooting; he has also a fine taste for great
trees, which it is only dire necessity can induce him to
sacrifice. Now the combination of these two motives —
desire for game and pride in great trees — has wrought
the ruin of English woodland from the forester's point
of view. Clean, long stems, such as one may see in the
well-managed Foret de Blois, or, still more admirable, in
the fine oak wood between Blois and Cour-Cheverny, are
incompatible, except on soils of exceptional character,
with thick undercover for game, because they can only
be obtained by growing trees so close together as to

8 THE SAD PLIGHT OF BKITISH FORESTRY

sustain an unbroken canopy of foliage until they have
attained their full height. This exclusion of sunlight,
necessary to prevent the formation of side branches, is
inimical to the growth of most plants producing under-
cover. Except on the most generous soils, the floor of
a wood so treated is apt to become as bare as that of a
barn. This is of less importance nowadays, one would
suppose, because of the intensely artificial character
which cover-shooting has been made to assume; indeed,
hurdles and made-up stick shelters are often placed at
such places where it is desired to have a rise of pheasants,
and to the guns placed outside the wood it can matter
very little whether the birds rise from a natural brake
or from a makeshift.

But a rightly managed woodland, bearing a proper
rotation of crop, will contain trees in all stages of growth,
including breadths from five to twenty years planted,
than which there is no kind of cover more beloved of
game. Here I make no reference to copse, the subject
of anxiety being the supply of mature timber, not forest
products in general. In the attempt to make every wood
a pheasant cover, landowners have got into the habit of
unmerciful thinning, leaving trees so far apart as to throw
out side limbs instead of building up stems. Great must
be the bewilderment of a German forester, scientifically
trained and of ripe experience, when he sees for the first
time a typical English woodland, managed, it must seem
to him, purposely to prevent the formation of clean
timber, and the trees encouraged to form great spreading
heads as if for orchard purposes.

If the quality of the timber produced be unsatisfactory
compared with that from Continental forests, still more

JANUARY 9

prohibitive to profitable trading is the uncertain and
intermittent nature of the supply. An English timber
merchant knows exactly what he wants, and can be sure
of getting it through his Continental agents; but it is
all a matter of chance what he could get in any season
out of the three million acres at his door, so to speak.
Sentiment, love of landscape, solicitude for game, all
render landowners in this country very half-hearted in
getting the most out of their woods. A few weeks ago
I was staying at a fine historic castle in the Midlands.
The far-reaching park was rich with glorious masses of
woodland, just verging on the turn of the leaf. The
prospect from the lofty terrace was enchanting, and I
gladly accepted my host's invitation to take a turn with
him through his trees. Alas ! nearer acquaintance with
them revealed an innumerable series of might-have-beens.
The soil is generous, the varied fall of the ground just
what affords foundation for the noblest forest; all that
has been lacking is the directing mind of man. Lavish,
unrestrained growth in every direction ; traces of arbitrary
unequal felling; in the blank spaces headlong jungle of
seedlings and saplings crowded in a mutually wasteful
struggle for existence.

We passed through an extensive wood which had once
consisted mainly of oaks, clothing the northern declivity
of the hill whereon the castle stands. These oaks have
been grown well and sufficiently close to draw them up to
a great height, thus taking full advantage of the good soil
and propitious shelter ; they averaged about eighty feet in
height, with noble clean stems, some forty or fifty feet with-
out a branch, and seemed to be about two hundred years
old. Assuming that the wood consisted of about fifty acres,

10 THE SAD PLIGHT OF BRITISH FORESTRY

there could not have been less than 9000 or 10,000 cubic
feet of sound oak timber per acre (according to the
reduced British measurement of square-of-quarter girth)
when this oak crop reached maturity fifty years ago. At
Is. per foot this represents a value of £22,500 or £25,000.
The greater part of this value has been sacrificed in the
supposed interest of the landscape. Ten or fifteen years
ago the oaks were suddenly and severely thinned, by way
of improving the beauty of the wood ; and the admission
of light has brought up a strong growth of ash and beech
saplings, with other undergrowth, among which have been
planted a number of what are usually classed as orna-
mental coniferce, but which in such a scene are simply
so many eyesores. So far from the beauty of this fine
woodland being enhanced by what has been done, it has
been ruined. My host pointed out with much concern
that the oaks were failing. His forester, had he known
the rudiments of his business, when he was directed to
change the close oak wood into an open one should have
warned his employer that the trees left standing were
bound to fail. The inevitable result of suddenly isolating
an oak which has been grown to middle age or maturity
in close highwood is that an eruption of twigs and
branchlets springs from the trunk and from the branches
below the crown; the tree becomes ' stag-headed,' and
the timber is greatly spoilt. That is exactly what has
happened in the wood I am describing. These oaks have
passed their best; they could not have improved even
had they been let alone ; treated as they have been, they
are past praying for, and the rest of their existence must
be a long-drawn process of decay, diversified with random
and morbid growth.

JANUARY 11

Now, so great is the prejudice of English landowners
against treating woodland commercially, and so great
their affection for individual trees, that had I spoken the
thought in my mind my host had dubbed me a miserly,
bawbee-hunting Scot. So I held my peace. None the
less am I convinced that the proper treatment of these
remaining oaks is to fell and sell them, to make way for
a fresh crop. There seemed to be about thirty of these
lofty oaks left upon each of the fifty acres. At present
prices these clean-grown stems cannot be worth less than
£7, 10s. a piece as they stand. The aggregate value,
therefore, of the whole wood still amounts to JEl.1,300.1

Here was a typical instance of the condition of things
on many estates. The owner is generally devoted to his
trees, and regards it as sacrilege to treat them as a crop.
He takes pride in what he believes to be judicious
thinning, which is nearly always thinning carried to an
injudicious extent, so as to induce a maximum of great
limbs and a minimum of clean stem. He dabbles in
arboriculture, but is ignorant of the principles of forestry,2
with the result that what might have been a valuable
and productive woodland is turned into a mixture of
arboretum, pleasure-ground, and game preserve, which
seldom covers the expense of keeping, still less yields
any equivalent to the agricultural rent of the land. It
is picturesque, indeed, and full of delightful combina-

1 I have purposely made this calculation extremely low. It is a fact
that my friend showed me where one of these oaks on the outskirt of the
wood had been recently felled, and the timber thereof sold for £20.

- The two crafts are ver}- different from each other, yet the terms are
often treated as synonymous. It is ominous of this misconception that
the chief organisation for promoting forestry in Scotland should be called
the Scottish Arboricultural Society.

12 THE SAD PLIGHT OF BRITISH FORESTRY

tions of form and colour, light and shade. To an
artist it may furnish more subjects than a well-ordered
forest; but then an artist will prefer a weedy, poorly
cultivated wheat-field for his foreground to a heavy
level crop. That does not save the poor, dirty crop
from being a reproach to all concerned in growing
it. The artist is best pleased with straggling, irregular
woodland; but it does not require a merely commercial
intellect to be conscious of the peculiar beauty of well-
managed forest. The eye rejoices in the vigour and
symmetry of the trees ; the imagination is stirred by the
long vistas of shade and mystery; the mind is gratified
by the evidence of applied knowledge and skill ; all three
derive pleasure from the evidence of human presence and
energy in the regular and beautiful operations of forestry.
Here and there the rein may be given to the purely
picturesque. Round the mansion-house, by the river,
or in the park proper are the right places for trees to
develop their characteristic forms unhampered by others,
to assume venerable proportions, and to linger out long
ages of decay and grotesque distortion. Such are the
proper places for arboriculture as distinct from forestry.
It would be very far to misjudge my purpose if this were
read as intended to interfere with English park scenery.
My contention is that the right management of woodland
is something quite distinct from landscape gardening
and conscious effort at effect. Beautiful effects are in-
evitable in all places where trees abound, no matter how
they are grown. Advantage may be taken of the presence
of woods to form the middle distance or horizon in park
scenery; they will serve that decorative purpose every
whit as well if, instead of being wastefully and wrongfully

JANUARY 13

grown as at present, they are managed as a regular source
of revenue.

More than that, if woodland can be rendered not only
regularly remunerative, but a reserve that can be drawn
upon in times of special pecuniary pressure, it might
prove the very means of preserving that liberal park
scenery whereof Englishmen are so justly proud. The
King who never said a foolish thing, and never did a
wise one, is reported to have described trees as natural
excrescences of the earth supplied by Providence for the
redemption of needy landowners. English landowners,
as a class, perhaps cannot be pronounced needy — at least
compared with the same class in many Continental
countries, and having regard to their scale of living —
but they are very much less affluent than they were
thirty years ago. Rents have fallen from thirty to fifty
per cent. ; in some districts even more ; and the loss falls
entirely on the free income of the landowner, for expenses
of management and upkeep go on as before, and rates
have risen by leaps and bounds. In addition to all this,
the new death-duties have to be faced: two or three
successions at short intervals would render most landed
estates of moderate size insolvent, or, at all events, bring
them to the hammer. The pride of English parks — of
all other prides the most innocently ostentatious and
extravagant, and yet the least selfish, seeing what enjoy-
ment these parks afford to wayfarers and tourists — is
seriously threatened. Is it not culpable blindness which
restrains their owners from turning to account an obvious
source of revenue, and providing the means of meeting
sudden drafts upon the capital of the estate which main-
tains the park ?

14 THE SAD PLIGHT OF BRITISH FORESTRY

The forests of Belgium cover 1,750,000 acres, and yield
a return of £4,000,000 sterling a year. The existing
3,000,000 acres of woodland in Great Britain and Ireland,
if under management equally skilful and careful as the
Belgian, ought to give £7,000,000 a year. What is the
income from them ? Who can tell ?

The prospect is not reassuring if we turn to the State
woodlands for instruction in profitable management. Our
greatest national forest — the New Forest — contains 63,000
acres, whereof Parliament has decreed (by the Act of 1877)
that 46,000 acres shall be kept for ever, in the words of
Mr. Lascelles, as ' a vast pleasure-ground, combined with
a cattle-farm.' He pays it too high a compliment. The
' cattle-farm ' is nothing but miserably poor pasture, grazed
in common. There are also 17,600 acres of thriving wood,
planted before sentiment prevailed over common-sense,
and 4600 acres of decaying wood, for which sentiment
will not allow common -sense to provide the necessary
regeneration.

In very few of the other State forests — even in those
like the 25,000 acres of the Forest of Dean, where wood
is grown and cut to supply the market — do the returns
meet the expenditure, let alone paying the rent of the
land. There is no net income, but a deficit; and the
same is undoubtedly the case in regard to the woodland
upon nineteen estates out of twenty in the United King-
dom.

If I am acquitted of any desire to interfere with the
peculiar character of park scenery, scarcely shall I be
suspected of any enmity to field-sports. Yet it would
be idle to refuse to recognise that in the list of British
field-sports there are two whereof the effect is directly

JANUARY 15

hostile to good forestry. The first of these is deer-stalking,
which is absolutely incompatible with any young wood
whatever upon certain extensive tracts of waste land ;
the other is cover-shooting as practised at present, especi-
ally if part of the plan be the maintenance of a heavy
stock of ground game.

As to deer-stalking, leaving out the islands which are
unsuitable for planting, it is only a comparatively small
proportion of the counties of Caithness, Sutherland, Ross
and Cromarty, Inverness, Perth, Argyll, Forfar, Aberdeen,
and Bute which is devoted to deer. These counties
amount in aggregate of acres to about eleven millions
and a half, whereof about 424,170 are under woodland
and 2,000,000 acres are deer forest.

Trees cannot be grown profitably in the latitude and
climate of Northern Scotland at a greater elevation than
1500 feet ; much of the deer ground lies above this
level ; and of that which lies below it there is a great deal
like the Moor of Rannoch and the Caithness wastes which,
although it undoubtedly bore continuous forest at one
time, is now sour, deep moss, and would require herculean
preparation and drainage before it could be induced to
do so again. Therefore, before the reformer casts covetous
eyes on the deer forests of the north, a beginning ought
to be made upon the great waste lands which carry no
deer. Consider, for example, that great tract of moor
and mountain which constitutes the southern uplands of
Scotland. It extends from the Lammermuirs on the east,
across the counties of Peebles and Lanark, skirts the great
Ayrshire coalfield, and rises to its greatest height — 2764
feet — in the Kells range, between Loch Boon and the
Solway. Practically the whole of this great territory is

16 THE SAD PLIGHT OF BRITISH FORESTRY

under sheep farms, which for the last quarter of a century
have been such a precarious industry that landlords have
been at their wits'- end to let the ground at half or a
quarter the former rent. Much, very much, of this land
is in an excellent condition for planting. Shreds of the
great forest it once bore may still be seen clinging to the
sides of 'cleuchs' in upper Nithsdale, and nestling in
the glens of Galloway. Wherever, in short, there is
shelter from the winter gales, whereof the force was once
broken by the mass of forest, but which now sweep across
the bare land Avith unmitigated fury, and wherever the
ground is so steep as to keep off the axe of covetous man
and the teeth of browsing sheep, there still is a spon-
taneous growth of oak, ash, wych-elm, and — that sure
index of good woodland soil — holly. Nothin'g is being done
towards reafforestiiig this great district. The fact is that
most landowners have no capital to lock up in planting
until woodland begins to make a return ; those that could
afford to do so either prefer a quicker return or distrust
the probability of any return from an industry which
shows such a bad record in the past as British forestry.

When a man invests his capital in a farm, he sets to
work to cultivate it according to certain well-established
rules of good husbandry ; he employs men experienced in
carrying these rules into effect, and he can obtain advice
from a department of the Government. There is a
practical code of British husbandry and stock-rearing,
and there are agricultural societies in every county of
the realm to encourage and instruct individual effort.
Nothing of the kind exists in British forestry. Our
abundant coal supply has enabled us to become indifferent
to wood fuel ; our wealth puts the timber of every part

JANUARY 17

of the globe at our disposal. Here and there a few care-
ful landowners have borrowed from foreign countries and
put in practice the rules of good forestry, but by far the
larger proportion of British woods are run on amateur
lines, modified by local custom. Nor is the experience of
British State forests such as to encourage one to look to
Government to acquire and plant land. At present one
must be content, I suppose, to state the facts of the case
which are these : the land is to be had at a low rate of
purchase for the asking; it requires no fencing, for a
sheep farm may be planted from end to end, at least on
the suitable parts of it; there is every prospect of a
continuous rise in the price of timber, and a probability
that the country will be in dire straits for a supply before
trees now planted shall have grown to a size to meet it.

It is no use discussing a project of this long-range
character without entering upon details. Let me do so
as briefly as possible.

Suppose that Parliament could be persuaded to vote a
sum of £10,000 a year for the purchase and planting of
suitable land. There are tens of thousands of acres now
offered for sale in Scotland, producing an annual rent of
not more than two shillings an acre as sheep pasture, of
indifferent or no merit as grouse ground, but very suitable
for growing timber. Thirty years' purchase — a liberal price,
as times go — would secure 1000 such acres for £3000.
Planting this at three feet by three (probably the most
profitable distance on level ground, although many
planters save expense by placing the trees four feet
apart) l will require 4,840,000 trees for the 1000 acres (it

1 I have submitted a case where planting is necessary, but there is
much ground where the soil will respond readily to the infinitely cheaper
B

18 THE SAD PLIGHT OF BRITISH FORESTRY

will take one-third or one-half less on sloping ground),
and will cost about £6 an acre=£6000.1 Here we have
an immediate initial outlay of £9000, supposing the whole
area to be planted at once ; but it might be found expedient
to spread the planting over five or even ten years, so as to
secure a successional period of maturity, if the same kinds
of trees are used on the whole of the ground. The balance
of the £10,000 voted, £1000 invested at 3 per cent.,
would pay the annual tool bill, in addition to which an
annual charge must be reckoned upon :

Head forester £120

Four woodmen at £60 .... 240 -
Repairs and buildings . . . . 100

£460

or say £500 a year. Shall we be able to meet this charge,
receive interest on the capital sunk, and find our capital
in hand at the end of the century ? We ought to do so,
if the statistics of commercially managed woods on the
Continent are trustworthy, for we intend to manage this
forest on stringently economic principles, not planting
oak here to please somebody's fancy, nor fir there because
it will look romantic. We shall not even be guided in
choice of trees by the highest prices current at the moment
for different species, but we shall suit our crop to soil and
situation, so as to grow the maximum weight of timber
whereof every acre is capable.

For the first ten years no return can be expected from

method of dibbling seed. A sown crop gives a far more liberal return in
thinnings than a planted one.

1 No provision is made in this for fencing, which would not be required
where a whole farm is to be planted.

2 A larger number of woodmen will be required on 1000 acres after ten
years, but by that time the forest will have begun to return some revenue.

JANUARY 19

the plantation ; therefore the capital of £9000 originally
sunk will have increased in that time at 4 per cent,
compound interest to £13,322, 3s. 6d. In order to receive
4 per cent, upon this money, and to defray the annual
expense of £500, we must make a net profit of £1033 a
year off our 1000 acres. Between ten and fifteen years
thinnings will be worth little except for fencing purposes,
and cannot be reckoned on as doing more than covering
the expense of cutting and removal. From fifteen years
onwards the income will steadily increase, beginning with
pit-props, for which there is an almost insatiable demand
in this country, proceeding to the medium-sized trees
removed in judicious thinning, until the period of com-
mercial maturity, which in the case of Scots fir and larch
should be at about eighty years, when the regular falls
will begin.

' I venture (says Mr. Nisbet) to say that an anticipation of
seventy-five cubic feet per acre is quite justifiable as an average
annual yield. Often much over a hundred cubic feet in actual
solid contents, and therefore still considerably in excess of
seventy-five cubic feet, even if all be reduced to correspond with
the customary British (square-of-quarter girth) measurement,
which makes an allowance of 2H per cent, for wastage in con-
version, is not an unusual yield for conifer crops on good soil.'

It is not quite clear' whether Mr. Nisbet claims that
the 'average annual yield' is to be held to include the
first ten unproductive years, or whether it is applicable
only to an established woodland in full working order.
But if the German returns, upon which he founds, mean
anything, they include such portions of an established
woodland as have been cleared in rotation, and are under
seedlings or young planting.

20 THE SAD PLIGHT OF BRITISH FORESTRY

Taking prices at the improbably low figure of 6d. a foot,
1000 acres, yielding an annual average of seventy-five
cubic feet per acre, will give a gross return of £1875, 5s.,
or 37s. 6d. an acre from land which, as sheep pasture,
yielded a rent of 2s. an acre, or £100 for 1000 acres. The
average balance-sheet would appear as follows, subject to
a slight additional charge for insurance.

EXPENDITURE. RECEIPTS.

Interest at 4 per cent. Sale of 75 cubic feet

on capital £13,332 £532 18 | per acre at 6d. on
Average annual ex- 1000 acres . . £1875 5

penses . . . 500 0
Net profit . . 842 7

£1875 5

£1875 5

If no more than £10,000 were voted annually for the
next fifty years the State would have made a progressive
investment of half a million — about the cost of four days'
war against the Boers — and earned a gross revenue of
£93,750, supposing the price of timber fifty years hence
at no more than 6d. a foot. The experiment would seem
to be worth trying.

It will occur at once to any one acquainted with the
vicissitudes of woodland that no account has been taken
of the effect of forest fires and gales. One reply to that
objection is that agricultural owners provide against fire,
and shipowners against loss from gales, by insurance, and
that there is margin enough in the estimated income
either to pay an adequate premium to an insurance
company, or, as many large shipping companies do,
maintain an independent casualty fund by annual pay-
ments. But there is a further consideration. As regards
fire, undoubtedly coniferous woods must always be liable

JANUARY 21

to conflagration, but such is not the case with plantations
of hard wood — oak, ash, and the like — especially in a
climate like ours, which is always humid while the trees
are in their winter repose. And as regards gales, it
must be observed that much of the havoc wrought from
time to time by exceptional storms is owing partly to our
practice of planting narrow belts and isolated clumps and
partly to the insane degree to which thinning is usually
carried. Trees that have been encouraged to spread
exaggerated branches, and to carry heads out of all
proportion to their height will succumb to a storm that
may be lifted harmlessly over a solid block of well-ordered
woodland. The force of a gale is greatly aggravated in
effect upon the belt and clump system of plantation. A
thousand continuous acres of woodland will suffer far less
from storm than 1000 acres scattered over an estate of
10,000 acres.

Yet another consideration. It is upon trees that
have arrived at or have passed commercial maturity
that storms tell with most disastrous effect. Where such
trees are preserved for scenic or ornamental effect, they
must take their chance ; but it is part of the system of
economic forestry that trees shall not be suffered to stand
after the annual increase of their cubic contents shows a
falling off

Let me illustrate this point from a page in my private
record of folly. My first election to Parliament in 1880
was a costly affair ; Sir Henry James had not then passed
his Act restricting candidates' expenses in proportion to
constituencies. A thousand pounds of ready cash would
have been a welcome contribution to paying the bill, and
that is just about the sum which I was told I could get

22 THE SAD PLIGHT OF BKITISH FORESTRY

for thirty acres or so of Scots fir and larch, growing on a
remote corner of the estate. I rode up to look at the
trees : they were about ninety years old, and better grown
than most on our exposed seaboard. Unluckily, it was
a lovely autumn day: the wood looked so gracious — a
roebuck stood so picturesquely in a sunny glade where
the heather was in bloom — the whole scene was so be-
witching, that I had not the heart to order its destruction.
The trees were spared, but I never stood among them
again. The gales of 1882-83 made a clean sweep of that
wood, and I had to content myself with £100 for the
wreck.

One effect of the establishment of well-directed State
forests, indirect, but exceedingly important both in a
national and individual point of view, would be the
creation of a standard of management ; a model of good
forestry which would speedily effect a revolution upon
private estates. At the present time there is no such
standard or model, if it be not in the far north, among
the splendid woodlands of some of our great Highland
proprietors. It is possible now to obtain from these
estates well-trained, experienced men; but most land-
owners elsewhere show disinclination to pay them in
proportion to their attainments. Mr. Nisbet quotes the
case of a landowner who turns upwards of £1000 a year
from his woods, and pays his forester 15s. a week ! Of
course, this is a highly exceptional case. Few landowners
receive any profit from their woods at all ; the balance of
the account is generally far the other way; but those
who do manage to make the ends more than meet will
not hesitate to pay well for a competent man.

Further, the establishment by the State of the forestry

JANUARY . 23

industry on a business footing would in time set up a
regular trade in home timber. It is no exaggeration to
say that no such regular trade exists at the present time.
Merchants, although willing to offer for home timber
when it is offered them, rely for the bulk of their supplies
from abroad — from countries where they can be perfectly
sure of getting the exact quantity and quality that they
want. At home there is no approach to regularity or
certainty of supply, still less to uniformity in quantity.
Trees subjected to excessive thinning — to arboricultural
instead of forestal treatment — throw out innumerable
branches: each branch means a knot in the wood, and
the timber produced must be coarse and irregular. This
must continue to be so unless and until a considerable
area in the United Kingdom is under regular rotation
of timber crop. To quote Mr. Nisbet once more : ' Avail-
able markets cannot be utilised to the best advantage if
the quantity of wood offered one year is large, the next
year small, a third year wanting altogether, and so on
irregularly. "First a hunger then a burst" is bad in
this as in all other cases.'

Lastly, the social effect of establishing a healthy
industry like forestry in a thinly populated region is
not to be overlooked. From every quarter of the realm
comes the lament that the sons of the soil are flocking
into the great towns. Give them steady and attractive
employment, lodge them comfortably, pay them liberally,
and plenty of men will remain on the land, as is proved
by the fact that there is never the slightest difficulty in
obtaining men as gamekeepers, gardeners, stalkers, and
gillies in the most remote parts of the country. Where
a couple of shepherds now suffice for the care of sheep

24 THE SAD PLIGHT OF BRITISH FORESTRY

on 1000 acres, five or six men will find employment on
a similar extent of woodland.

I cannot close this paper — too long already — without
a parting reference to the game question. If it be the
case, as I believe it is, that the very existence of landed
property, as we have known and enjoyed it, is threatened
by the operation of the death-duties, surely it is high
time for proprietors to turn to the best account the
resources of their estates. It will be admitted that,
speaking generally, woodland is an undeveloped source
of revenue. I have endeavoured to show that this great
source of wealth may be developed without sacrificing
either the interests of sport or the peculiar beauty of
parks. But there is one creature figuring largely in
bags of game, whereof the presence is everlastingly
incompatible with remunerative forestry — the rabbit, to
wit. Let the greater excommunication be pronounced
upon this most destructive and almost irrepressible
pest. Just as Philip the Second sentenced the whole
of the people of the Netherlands to death, so let us
issue a mortal ban upon rabbits, but with this important
difference, that, whereas Philip's decree fell short of
complete execution, ours ought to be carried to the
uttermost effect.

'But,' I hear somebody grumble, 'is not this an
interference with legitimate sport? Kabbit-shooting is
capital fun, and you propose to put an end to it.' Well,
people who want to enjoy rabbit-shooting must do so
by enclosing warrens, otherwise we must do without
profitable woodland. No landowner who has had the
courage and taken the pains to calculate honestly what
rabbit-shooting costs him will be disposed to differ with

JANUARY 25

this, provided the calculation is honest and founded on
full information. At least, he who does so differ can
care little about his woods. Upon ground where even
a moderate stock of rabbits exists every piece of new
planting must be fenced with wire -netting sunk into
the ground. What would this mean upon a woodland
.where ten acres are felled annually in rotation, and
therefore ten acres replanted ? Simply an addition to
the cost of planting of between £2 and £3 an acre. Wire-
netting cannot be erected at less than 6d. a yard; to
fence ten acres in an exact square will therefore cost
between £20 and £30. But this is not all. Where
rabbits abound, seedlings and coppice are destroyed, and
the wood cannot be restored by natural regeneration,
which, upon suitable soils, serves as the costless substitute
for replanting. To the debit of the rabbit account,
therefore, must be placed, not only £2 or £3 an acre,
the cost of erecting wire-netting, but £6 an acre, the
cost of replanting; in other words, an initial tax upon
the young wood of from £8 to £9 an acre— £80 or £90
upon ten acres. British forestry, if it is to take the
place as an industry to which our soil, climate, and
requirements entitle it, must be relieved from this
intolerable burden, or else it must remain a monument
of mismanagement — a source of marvel to intelligent
foreigners at the present time, and the subject of bitter
malediction from our grandchildren in the future.

[Since these lines were written the Departmental
Committee on Forestry, presided over by Mr. Munro
Ferguson, M.P., have issued their report (1902), and
strongly recommend, inter alia, 'the establishment of
at least two large State forests, which shall demonstrate

26 MIDWINTER IN THESSALY

the most perfect technical and economic developments
of the art of forestry.']

II

For downright, resourceless cheerlessness commend me
Midwinter to an oriental town under a visitation of cold,
inTneasaiy aii faQ business of Eastern architects and
upholsterers being to provide protection from heat. I
shall not easily forget the misery of arriving in Larissa
during the memorable tempest which swept over Greece
in January 1893. The previous day had been one of
delusive splendour; but, even as we lay basking on the
deck of one of those evil little steamers which traverse
the ^Egean Sea, we beheld a fleecy scud creeping across
the sky; then tall clouds piled themselves upon it,
flashing lightning from their violent skirts; a bitter
north wind swept down from the mountains ; lashing
rain changed hilly roads into watercourses, and level
ones into sloughs of ineffable despond.

To arrive at nightfall at the capital of Thessaly — the
granary of Greece — under these circumstances was some-
what depressing; still, the town looked cheerful from a
distance, for it was the eve of Friday, the Moslem
Sabbath, and every minaret bore its girdle of lamps,
twinkling gaily against the dark sky. Worse was to
come. Our hotel — the ^evo^o^elov TOV 'O\vfj,7rov, or
hostelry of Olympus— bore evidence of the revival of
prosperity which annexation to Greece brought to
Thessaly in 1881. Formerly a common khan, it had been
rebuilt, and outwardly, with display of broad white walls
and multitudinous green shutters, promised some degree
of comfort according to European notions, especially from

JANUARY 27

the contrast it afforded to the rest of the town, which is
mostly mud-built.

Ne crede colori! A more inhospitable retreat for a
bitter winter night could hardly have been devised.
There was hardly any furniture except beds in the lofty
rooms (beds happened to be the only furniture we had
brought with us); the only carpets in the house were
hung on the walls of a gaunt sitting-room, where all the
servants and several idlers from the street were gathered
round a small brazier of charcoal; and throughout this
large house there was not a single fireplace or stove, all
cooking being done at the hotel restaurant in the next
street but one. The walls were so thin as to seem, on
this blustery night, as if their sole purpose was to prevent
the contents of the rooms being blown into the streets :
positively, it was colder indoors than out. To crown all,
every corner of the house was pervaded with that
stench which of all others is least endurable by civilised
nostrils.

However, it was no use showing peevishness under the
inevitable; to do so would be in discreditable contrast
with the unfailing good-humour of the townspeople of
all classes — whether Greeks or Turks. The only thing
to do was to keep on every available wrap, and get some
dinner at the restaurant. It was fairly warm in the
dining-saloon, though everybody, including a party of
Greek officers, dined in their greatcoats.

After dinner we were slow in turning out to face the
frosty gale, and, preceded by a porter carrying a Chinese
lantern, struggled back through filth ankle-deep to the
Hotel of Olympus. Without the leading of that kindly
light it would hardly have been possible to thread the

28 MIDWINTER IN THESSALY

miry labyrinth, for gas and electric light were equally
unknown in Larissa, and as petroleum lamps were few
and very far between, even in the main street, the darkling
wayfarer might easily find himself up to his middle in a
muck-heap, or heels over head in one of the pits dug for
the trees with which the municipality were preparing to
adorn the 7r\areia or principal square. The old town
law, making it penal to move about after dark without
a lantern, had lately been repealed; but in fact nearly
every one carried a coloured paper lantern for his own
safety, and the effect of the dancing lights was very pretty.
An important ceremony awaited us before we got to
bed. The kind consideration of the Government at Athens
had caused our approach to be announced to the Demarch
or Prefet of Larissa by telegram. The message had been
sent from Volo before we left that town, but was delivered
in Larissa some time after our arrival. The Demarch, much
concerned that we had not been received with more atten-
tion, came to explain the circumstances. It was, it seems,
the Feast of St. John ; the telegraph clerk at Larissa was
named John : he had been celebrating the festival of his
eponymus not wisely, but too well ; — in fact — rarest of all
misdemeanours in Greece — he had got very drunk. The
Demarch was profuse in expressing his chagrin ; and his
purpose of retribution on the delinquent was translated
by our dragoman to the effect that poor John ' would be
stopped for one — two months, and perhaps, in the end,
thrown away altogether!' We expressed earnest hope
that, inasmuch as ' John ' was the only man within many
miles of Larissa who could transmit or receive telegrams,
his doom might be deferred until after our departure
from the city.

JANUARY 29

Things wore a brighter aspect next morning. The rain
had stopped : it was as cold as ever, but the wind was busy
drying up the streets.

Since the time of which I am writing, the tide of war
has swept over the plains of Thessaly, and Larissa has
been besieged and captured by the Turks. In 1893 the
city was in a very interesting state of transition. For cen-
turies the city and the magnificent province of Thessaly,
of which it is the capital, slumbered — and groaned in
its slumber — under Turkish misrule, till it was ceded
to Greece in 1881 under the Treaty of Berlin. It is the
only part of that kingdom where, previous to the war,
large landed proprietors were still to be found — scarcely,
in sooth, to be found, for most of them, being Turks, had
retired to Constantinople, in spite of the inducements
which the Greek Government offered them to remain.
That enlightened and courageous statesman, Monsieur
Tricoupi, recognising the evils of absentee landlordism,
was specially conciliatory towards the Moslem subjects of
the Greek crown, and the general population of Greeks,
Turks, and Jews (there are still about 30,000 Moham-
medans in Thessaly) lived together on most amicable
terms, though occupying distinct quarters in the towns.
But most of the landlords had persisted in departing,
content to draw their rents and spend them in the
Turkish capital. How matters may stand since the
Turkish invasion of 1897 I do not know.

The town of Larissa itself has, as yet, lost little of its
oriental character. The Demarch, the Nomarch, and
other officials are, of course, Greek, and look back with
some regret to the time when, in greater ease and with

30 MIDWINTER IN THESSALY

less responsibility, they lived in their native provinces.
But I found them proud of their fine territory and con-
fident in the future of their town, which they considered
certain, when the resources of the country should be
further opened up, to become an important trading centre.
Already the railway unites it to Volo on the east, where
there is a splendid natural harbour (the British squadron
of five war-ships was anchored there at the time of our
visit), and to Trikala and Kalabak on the west ; and there
is a movement on foot to carry the line further to the
west, across the Turkish frontier through Albania by
Janina to the coast opposite Corfu — a route at present
wholly closed to travellers on account of Turkish
brigandage.

//

From two points of view this ancient town presents a
striking appearance. One of these is at the far end of the
bridge which here spans the Peneus, or, as the Turks call
it, the Salamvrias. The natives credit the Romans with
having built this bridge ; but, if that be so, its nine pointed
arches indicate a late period of the Byzantine empire for
its construction. Viewed from the river-bank, a little
below the bridge, the town looks its best, rising from a
girdle of lofty poplars with tier upon tier of warm-toned
walls, crowned by the cupola and minarets of the principal
mosque, and all mirrored in the glassy flood.

To reach the other point of view we must recross the
bridge, pausing to watch the town water-carriers labori-
ously scooping water out of the river, and pouring it into
cowhides borne pannier-wise upon half-starved ponies.
The apertures of the hides are kept open by bunches of
brush, and half the contents of each jarful is spilt over

JANUARY 31

the patient animal's quarters, as he stands haunch- deep
in the river. It takes about half an hour to fill each pair
of hides in this archaic way : the loaded beast then climbs
painfully up to the town — the water squirting freely from
rents and seams in the leather. It is on this primitive
method of supply that the entire town of some 10,000 in-
habitants depends, for the wells attached to private houses
have become deservedly suspect. The water of the Peneus
is said to be wholesome; but when, as we saw it, it is
swollen with winter floods and as yellow as the Tiber, it
was a comfort to reflect that Larissa has store of sound,
if not particularly palatable, wine. Moreover, it is hardly
reassuring to observe that a gigantic muck-heap, where
all the refuse of the town is cast — the happy hunting-
ground of innumerable dogs, poultry, magpies, and pert
little Eastern jackdaws — occupies about an acre and a half
of the river-bank immediately above where the water-skins
are filled.

Pursue we then our way up the principal street, past
the bazaar and Turkish cafe, where dozens of wide-
breeched, be-fezzed, and be-slippered citizens are drinking
coffee, bolting sweetmeats, and sucking away at huge
hubble-bubbles. Once into the Turkish quarter and you
are back in the middle ages. No wheeled carriage may
venture on that fearsome pavement, for Turks always go
on horseback ; and though the roadway suffices for their
quick-footed barbs, you, on foot, must hop from pro-
montory to island, and from island to isthmus in the
ocean of filth. Still, you will be tempted to linger here
and there ; for although the house- walls facing the street
are, after oriental fashion, mostly without windows, here
and there an open door gives a glimpse into a sunny

32 MIDWINTER IN TIIESSALY

court, where ripe oranges and lemons gleam among their
rich verdure, and palm-fronds cast nickering shadows
across paved garden-paths, and you pass on, wondering
what manner of life the men, and most of all, the rarely
seen women, pass in these old-world abodes.

Entrance to the mosques is rarely refused to Christians,
except on festivals, and it is to the top of the highest
minaret in the town that we are bound. The narrow
spiral staircase affords no more than head-and-shoulder
room ; the steps are foul with summer-blown dust, with
bones brought in by owls and kites, besides other vener-
able rubbish ; and, after what seems interminable gyration,
we emerge upon the airy gallery which encircles the top
of the slender tower. It is a crazy perch, for the whole
structure sways sensibly in the strong wind, and it seems
as if a moderate kick would send the frail parapet clatter-
ing down on the tile-roof far below ; but, if your head is
steady, the view well repays the labour of the ascent.
Beneath your feet cluster the flat-roofed houses ; here and
there a chimney rises, crowned with an immense stork's
nest, making one wonder how the domestic economy of
the bipeds within the house can be reconciled with that
of the bipeds without. From the dusky labyrinth of
streets spring twenty-six minarets, like silvery bodkins,
besides the one to which we are clinging. Then let your
eye travel over the splendid prospect lying beyond the
town. Full forty miles the fat plain is spread east and
west, and five-and-twenty north and south, with hardly a
tree to break the level, save where the peasants' cots
cluster round the fortified granges of the landowners.
The northern horizon is closed by the massive rampart of
mountains which marks the latest shrinkage of Ottoman

JANUARY 33

rule. It is a magnificent barrier, though it may not
serve to bar the eternal aspirations of the Hellenes;
for many impatient eyes turn continually towards the
land of promise, where the dozing Porte still holds its
sway.

As we stand, Pelion is far to the right ; in front of us
is Ossa ; and to the left the domes and cusps of mightier
Olympus tower over all, sagaciously assigned of old as the
abode of shadowy deities, whose priests found these in-
accessible heights as convenient to their cult as modern
ecclesiastics have sometimes proved the labyrinths of con-
troversial theology to be to theirs. Farther again to the
west stretches in long perspective a range of snowy peaks,
till the faint outlines of Epirus and Albania close the view.
There is something in the breadth of this horizon, the
rich plain and royal sweep of mountain-crests, that recalls
the panorama of Alps and level Lombardy, viewed from
the towers of Turin.

After all this brilliancy and breadth, how strangely
narrow and dim the interior of the mosque seems when
we descend ! We stand a while on the threshold of the
inner court, corresponding to the choir or chancel of a
Christian church. Worshippers enter one by one, kick
off their slippers, pay their devotions, and so depart ; and
all the time a muezzin, kneeling on a carpet and leaning
his back against a wall, chants monotonously and dis-
cordantly from the Koran.

There is not much winter shooting in the immediate

environs of Larissa. The great fenceless, almost treeless,

plain, with its monotonous tracts alternately of ploughed

land, dead stubble, or withered weeds, seems to harbour

c

34 MIDWINTER IN THESSALY

little winged game after the quails have left. Bustard,
it is true, are tolerably plentiful; but they are keenly
looked after by local gunners, who may be seen bringing
them in for sale, slung on the saddles of their mules or
ponies.

But our kind friends in Larissa were determined to
provide us amusement of the kind dear to Englishmen,
and the Demarch arranged for us an expedition to the
preserves of a Turkish landowner, distant about ten
miles from the city, on the southern spurs of Mount

It was a glorious morning when we set out. Not a
cloud floated in the sky, the gale had subsided, there was
a delicious freshness in the air, and to the north Mount
Olympus rose clear and glistering, betokening steady
weather. As above mentioned, there is only one street
in Larissa over which a carriage can be driven, and as
this does not lead in the direction we wished to go, a long
detour had to be made after leaving the eastern gate of
the city ; here axle-deep in ploughed fields, there bump-
ing through Moslem cemeteries, and wholly over ways
which any London cab-driver would pronounce impass-
able. However, after a couple of miles of this work, we
gained the new Greek road running straight and fair to
Hagyia, and the procession of three carriages rattled on
at a good pace. A diversion was caused in crossing a
stream some five miles from the start, where two small
grebes were sighted on the water. A great loading of
guns took place. The English chasseiws were invited to
descend and open the sport ; but they waived the privilege,
declaring the birds not to be ducks, but only plongeurs,
and therefore not worth powder and shot. It was clear

JANUARY 35

that their motives were misunderstood, and that they
were suspected of having misgivings of their ability to
hit such small objects. To the Demarch therefore fell
the lot to approach and fire, which he did with great
eagerness, but without effect.

Progress was resumed. In the distance appeared our
rendezvous, a large wood at the foot of the mountains,
just under the hill- village of Marmagnano, and the ground
began to look more gamey. Three wild geese rose far out
of shot from a swampy meadow, and a hare moved out
of some rushes after we had left the highroad and were
driving across the open plain.

The first ceremony on arriving was an excellent dejeuner
a la fourchette, spread on the short turf in the bright warm
sunshine. There were six regular guns — two Turkish
gentlemen, two Greeks, and two Englishmen; but in
addition nearly all the beaters, of whom there were a
score or more, were armed with fowling-pieces of sorts.
It was a pretty scene: the bivouac, the groups of
romantically dressed peasants, the excited dogs, the
picketed horses. The wood was very thick copse, of
great extent, and containing some magnificent plane-
trees, oaks, and black poplars. The defect of Greek
scenery, as a rule, is the want of trees : those that are
allowed to stand are cruelly maltreated — the hard-wood
being lopped and hacked for fuel, the firs being gashed
and bled to the verge of death for resin, with which the
Greeks love to spoil their excellent wine. It is therefore
a great treat to get into a bit of real woodland, and the
russet oaks and silvery poplar stems towered nobly against
the blue mountain background.

It was not, let it be confessed, without some qualms of

36 MIDWINTER IN THESSALY

misgiving that we surveyed the dense jungle before us
and took anxious note of the number of guns — nearly
twenty in all — with which the battue was to be conducted.
What was the plan of operations ? we asked ; were we to
walk in line, or were we to be stationed round the covert ?
'D'abord, il faut aller partout,' replied our host, waving
both hands airily in the direction of the wood, ' et quand
vous entendrez aboyer les chiens — alors, vous chercherez
une bonne place ' '

This was not very reassuring ; however, the party soon
scattered through the copse, and operations began. Once
more the unskilmlness of the English sportsmen became
too manifest. A blackbird was observed sitting on a
bramble-bush ; a native chasseur pointed him out to the
foreigner, who refused to shoot. Ah ! it was too small a
mark for him, so down went the Greek, stooping low,
stalked the quarry, obtained a safe sitting shot, and, with
a prodigious report, laid the unlucky songster low.

But there is bigger game on foot. It is time for each
to seek ' une bonne place,' for the dogs are barking wildly.
The pack, by the bye, is a mixed one ; there is one English
fox-hound, three pointers, and six or seven nondescripts.
They are tearing through the underwood, throwing their
tongues merrily — pointers and all. A grey object darts
shadow-like across a glade— stay ! don't shoot ! it is one of
the pack : no, by the chaste huntress ! it is a jackal, and
we should earn effusive gratitude from the shepherds if
we could secure his skin. But it is too late now, he is
away to the hill, and we shall see him no more. A fine
old red dog-fox is not so lucky ; he is bowled over by one
of the beaters, who falls upon him and flays him on the
spot— thereby putting himself two clear days' wages to

JANUARY 37

the good, for a fox-skin commands five drachmas in
Larissa market. Had the woodcocks been in, there
would have been one in every bush, we were assured ; the
hard weather had driven them to the coast, and only four
or five couple were bagged.

One of the prettiest sights of the day was afforded by
a pair of white-tailed eagles which had their eyrie, a huge
agglomeration of sticks, in the fork of an immense poplar
not more than thirty feet above the ground. They were
very bold, and it was not till several shots had been fired
that they left their stronghold, and rising slowly on broad
pinions to a great height, they continued soaring far
above our heads for the rest of the day. Birds of prey,
indeed, were much more conspicuous in this preserve
than game, and better opportunity could not be had of
watching the habits of buzzards (both the rough-legged
and common kind), kites, harriers, kestrels, sparrow and
other hawks.

As it wore to afternoon the heat became oppressive :
the party was scattered far and wide : game was scarce,
and two of us made our way back to the carriages to
rejoin a member of the Greek government who had accom-
panied us from Athens. Not being a sportsman, he had
not joined in the chase : none the less, however, had he
met with his adventure. Visitors to Thessaly are alwa}Ts
cautioned about the ferocity of the sheep-dogs. These
strong Molossian hounds are prized by the shepherds as
the guardians of their flocks against jackals : if a stranger
is attacked he may defend himself with a knife; but —
such is the custom of the country — if he shoots one of
them in self-defence, the shepherds shoot him, and there
is not much chance of redress. Our contemplative friend

38 MIDWINTER IN THESSALY

was strolling along the wood-side, when he was suddenly
set upon by two of these ferocious animals. A long black
overcoat which he wore was instantaneously bereft of one
of its tails — torn off by their powerful fangs ; and then,
with admirable presence of mind, he bethought him of
Ulysses' tactics when, on his return to Ithaca, he was
attacked by his own dogs — he sat down.

It is an infallible recipe : the dogs accept the surrender :
they are content with setting the trespasser at bay, and
they keep him there till their master comes to call him
to account. The lesson is worth bearing in mind by
visitors in these lands; for the conduct of the sheep-
dog is the single exception to the hospitality shown to
travellers in the interior of Greece.

As this day of memorable brilliancy drew to a close,
a remarkable display of bird-life presented itself. The
great fresh- water lake of Karle, producing vast shoals of
carp, and attracting large flights of wild-fowl, lies between
the mountain-groups of Pelion and Ossa. It seems to be
the remains of the inland sea which once flowed over the
plains of Larissa and Trikala, the waters of which found
an escape through the beautiful vale of Tempe. Immense
flights of cormorants, coming from the direction of the
Karl6 lake, but possibly travelling from the Gulf of
Salonike, farther to the east, appeared in the sky, moving
steadily towards the nor'-nor'-west. The first and largest
of these flights, formed in the shape of a huge <, could
not have contained less than 1500 or 2000 birds. From
point to point of the < appeared to measure about two
miles. This great flight was followed by others, number-
ing from 150 to 500 in each. In all there could not have
been less than 4000 or 5000 birds passing over our heads

JANUARY 39

in the space of half an hour, out of gunshot, but so near
that we could hear the sound of their wings in the
still air. The number of fish consumed by such a
multitude of these destructive birds must be prodigious.

Ill

It was among the rank fallows of Thessaly that the
plague of field voles took its rise, and, growing The Plague
to uncontrollable dimensions, desolated the ofVoles
harvests of 1891 and 1892. Simultaneously, a wide
pastoral area in southern Scotland was infested by
swarms of voles.

The Thessalian vole (Arvicola Guntheri), though nearly
akin to, differs specifically from, the vole with which
Scottish farmers are only too well acquainted (Arvicola
agrestis). It differs also in habits; for whereas the
British vole lives on the surface, and does not burrow, or,
at most, scrapes out shallow runs, its Greek congener
riddles the banks and fields with innumerable deep holes.
At the time of our visit — mid-winter — the little animals
were underground : winter in that country, though short,
is a period of much more absolute repose in vegetation
than in our long dripping seasons; there is no grass to
tempt the voles abroad, and the presence of innumerable
buzzards, kites, and kestrels, soaring and hovering over
the plain from ' the rising of the morning till the stars
appear,' seems to ensure the summary fate of any over-
venturesome individual that should emerge.

The fact that birds of prey exist unmolested in such
large numbers over the vole-infected districts of Thessaly
has a distinct bearing upon the theory put forward in

40 THE PLAGUE OF VOLES

our own country that the excessive multiplication of mice
and voles has been due to the destruction of hawks and
owls in the interests of game-preserving. No such proposi-
tion can be maintained in view of the plain facts of the
case. Not only do the English chroniclers record recurrent
visitations of this pest centuries before game-preserving,
in the strict sense, was dreamt of in England, but here in
Thessaly it never occurs to anybody to shoot the natural
enemies of mice. They are always present in great
numbers. In 1866, under the dominion of the Turks,
there was an outbreak similar to that of this year and
last. The Mohammedans are very kind to wild animals,
and protect all that an English gamekeeper classes as
vermin ; but in spite of this the plague of mice comes
(as it did in the days of Apollo Smintheus, the Mouse-
destroyer), waxes and wanes, according to the character
of the seasons.

It must not be inferred from this that there is any
doubt as to the useful work done by buzzards, kestrels,
and all kinds of owls, against which gamekeepers have
hitherto been allowed, and even encouraged by those who
ought to know better, to wage indiscriminate war. These
birds do little harm to game; their presence may miti-
gate, sometimes even avert, a plague of mice ; but mild
seasons with abundant herbage will ever tend to encourage
extraordinary swarms of small rodents, and the only
chance of arresting the mischief under such circumstances
lies in prompt and combined action by men and with dogs
on the first symptoms of undue increase.

JANUARY 41

IV

Somebody — probably that indefatigable interviewer Lord
Mahon — once asked the Duke of Wellington why mejitum
Souham did not press him more closely in that versus
terrible retreat from Bourgos in 1812, during
which, out of a total of about 31,000 men, he lost 7000 by
disease, straggling, and desertion. 'Because,' he replied,
' the French had learned that our bullets were not made
of butter ! ' No doubt they were very awkward ' pats,'
those terrible leaden spheres, weighing twelve to the
pound, which Brown Bess spread with such deadly result
up to her effective range of a little over one hundred yards,
and the lesson had been read to French conscripts upon
many a bloody field. What would have been the bill of
mortality had these bullets really been made of butter ?
An idle question, it may seem, yet one upon which I was
set cogitating the other day by a singular incident.

Returning one evening to my own house, I noticed a
large round hole in the plate-glass window of the library,
as if a football had been driven through it. There were
no boys about, or the cause might have been such as
saute aux yeux. Upon reaching the library I found the
floor covered with shattered glass, showing that the impact
had been from the outside, but nothing was visible within
to account for it. The hole in the plate-glass was round
and clean; the remainder of the sheet was firm in the
windoAv-frame.

More puzzled than ever, I summoned my better half to
discuss the problem. She, being of a practical turn,
began looking under the furniture for the agent of de-
struction; while I stood idle, considering such search

42 MOMENTUM FJERSUS MATTER

superfluous, mutely speculating how the deuce a plate-
glass window was to be replaced in a remote corner of
western Scotland. For, mark ye, it was in a time of
frost, and a keen north wind was blowing through the
orifice. Presently my wife exclaimed: 'Here it is, poor
thing!' Between a large armchair and the fire-place
crouched a hen pheasant, which I caught. It showed no
wound or sign of damage, and struggled vigorously to
get free. When it was released upon the terrace it flew
a short distance, alighted, ran away strongly, and was
seen no more. It seems to me very remarkable that a
bird should fly uninjured through plate-glass as simply
as a circus rider jumps through a paper hoop. One has
always been told that any man of ordinary strength can
drive his fist through a door panel. The omy one whom
I ever knew to attempt it succeeded, indeed, but at the
cost of a dislocated little finger knuckle. It was explained
to him that if he had aimed at a point a foot behind the
panel, instead of at the panel itself, his hand would have
passed through without a scratch. But who is there of
fortitude to put that to the test ? How often has one not
cause to wonder at the thickness and strength of an
oaken rail through which the slender cannon-bone of a
horse may be driven, often without even an abrasion
of the skin. The horse is aiming at the field beyond
the fence. Reverse the process ; let the horse's leg be
stationary, and the oaken rail be driven against it at high
velocity, and who can doubt which would be shattered ?

A signal example of the imperious nature of momentum
was given a few years ago, when a horse ran off with its
rider in the Mall or Constitution Hill (I forget which),
charged the high iron railings in front of Buckingham

JANUARY 43

Palace, made a clean breach in them, and both landed
unhurt within the enclosure. Force is undoubtedly one
of the most intangible, inexplicable, of mysteries. One
is warned against the use of anthropomorphic terms in
discussing it, which tend to divert the intellect from
precise analysis, and we are bidden to regard it as no
more than the rate per unit of length at which energy
is transferred or transformed. But this carries the
ordinary mind not very far, in fact no distance at all,
in apprehending what avails in the transference of energy
from a soft substance to a hard one, to protect from injury
such vulnerable surfaces as the skin on a horse's leg
against oak or iron, or a hen pheasant's head against
plate-glass.

MOST birds, like other vertebrate animals, snatch intervals
The Gold of rest durm& tne dav> if daytime be their period
crested of activity. Even such nocturnal animals as
ren the fox and the owl do not spend the hours of
darkness in perpetual motion. The albatross itself, which
remains on the wing in the wake of a ship for many days
without alighting, is credited by Tom Moore, probably
correctly, with ' cloud-rocked slumberings.' The flight of
that great bird is mainly automatic ; its own weight acts
like the string of a kite, and the creature is propelled by
the air passing under the rigid ' fore-leach ' of the wing,
and pressing upwards the pliant 'after-leach.' Swifts
and swallows, most aerial of British birds, may occasionally
be seen in brief repose ; not so the tiniest of all our
feathered fowls, the gold-crested wren. I doubt whether
the most vigilant observer has ever detected one of these
little creatures otherwise than in rapid motion, if it was
not the hen bird sitting close on her eggs in that delicate
shrine which she and her mate have the hereditary craft
to construct.

During the present winter (1901), a solitary goldcrest
has been a frequent morning visitor to a large holly-tree
before my dining-room windows. It is not the gleaming

FEBRUARY 45

berries that attract him ; you might as well set a football
before a hungry schoolboy and bid him break his fast
upon it. No : like a typical Englishman, this tiny fowl
ejaculates ' A fine morning ! What shall we kill to-day ? '
He lives by slaughter; wherefore his favourite haunt is
the pine wood, for there, among the warm green needle-
clusters, he is most sure to find the diminutive flying
insects, larvse, and eggs upon which he feeds. That is
the secret of his preference for evergreens, and he con-
descends to visit my holly-tree because of the harbour
it affords to insect life.

The activity of our Regulus is bewildering. The holly-
tree is over thirty feet high, and bulky withal, yet within
half an hour this indefatigable atom has run over every
branch of it to its tip, half on foot and half on wing,
swinging round, heels uppermost, to examine the under
surfaces of the leaves, and occasionally darting out after
small fluttering moths dislodged from shelter. I was
fairly baffled in attempting to compute the distance
travelled by the bird in beating the single tree before
he went on to the next. Montagu, the ornithologist,
however, has left on record an observation which affords
some basis for calculations. He was lucky enough to
transfer to his own study a nest with eight young gold-
crests, without detaching them from the care of their
parents. He noted carefully how often the little
mother visited the brood, and found that she did so
on an average of once in every minute and a half
or two minutes, practically thirty-six visits in every
hour during a summer day of sixteen hours, or 546
visits a day. Now, let us suppose that each of these
journeys extended to no more than a hundred yards — a

46 THE GOLD-CRESTED WREN

very modest computation— the daily aggregate amounted
to thirty-one miles, being a distance 622,614 times greater
than the traveller's stature, 3| inches, measured from
tip of bill to tip of tail. To equal this performance, a
six-foot man would have to travel 707| miles in a single
day without assistance to his natural means of locomotion,
or, say, from Land's End to John o' Groats, and to repeat
the journey daily for ten days, besides catching live
animals and personally distributing them among his
family 546 times in each day.

The gold-crested wren (by the bye, it is not a wren,
Troglodytes, but belongs to a separate genus Regulus,
little distinct from the warblers, Silvia) is one of those
pretty birds which it is gratifying to note are increasing
in numbers in this country, owing to the increase of
woodland, especially in the north of Scotland. Moreover,
it is a creature against which no human being can bear
a grudge, for its pursuits are not only harmless, but
wholly beneficial, seeing that it preys diligently upon
insects infesting trees. A still larger increase, and from
a similar cause, has taken place of late years in the cross-
bill— a brilliant denizen of the pine woods of the Scottish
Highlands. But the crossbill — more's the pity! — finds
ill favour from those ambitious persons who have set
scientific forestry on foot for the first time in Britain.
The crossbill makes his staple diet on the seeds of pine
and fir, sheering asunder the cones with his powerful bill,
and thereby seriously interfering with the process of
natural regeneration from self-sown seeds which form
such an important part in the economy of Continental
foresters. The crossbill, therefore, has been proscribed
on certain Highland estates as ruthlessly as ever were

FEBEUARY 47

the Macgregors — ' the clan that is nameless by day ' —
and many scores of them have found their way lately to
the bird stuffers of Inverness. There is no such dis-
appointing booty to the taxidermist. The glory of the
crossbill's carmine hood and mantle is almost as transient
as that of ' Sharon's dewy rose,' fading after death to a
dull greenish olive.

If the daily normal output of energy from the diminu-
tive carcase of the goldcrest astonishes us, as well it
may, much more amazing is the sustained effort of
migration twice a year over thousands of miles ; the more
so because the wings of this pigmy appear very ill adapted
for long night. In masters of wingmanship, such as the
falcon and the swift, the wing is long and pointed,
the second pen-feather being the longest; but in the
goldcrest the spread of whig is not equal to that of a
well - grown death's - head moth, the wing itself being
rounded, with the fifth pen-feather longer than the first
four. This serves well enough for the creature to flit
from bough to bough, as we are accustomed to see it,
but it baffles all understanding to explain how this
mechanism enables the goldcrest to take his part in
the strange drama enacted every spring and autumn in
Heligoland, the immemorial resting-place of birds of
passage. Herr Gatke, that splendid islander who, for
more than fifty years, took careful note — ay, and heavy
toll too — of the passing flocks, has well described the
arrival of the goldcrest — goldhdhnchen, little gold hen
as they have it in German.

'Their migration is performed with perfect regularity year
after year, and conducts them not only in hundreds, but at
times in many hundreds of thousands, in one night to this

48 THE GOLD-CRESTED WEEN

island. On the following morning their merry call-note
resounds from the bushes and shrubs of all the gardens, and
even the grassy plain of the upper plateau teems with them
from one end to the other. ... In 1882 the earliest individuals
appeared on September 8, and the migration proceeded, with
occasional interruptions, in moderate numbers throughout the
month. With the approach of October a considerable increase
in the number took place, and on the night of the 28th the
migration assumed such vast dimensions that even an approxi-
mate computation of their numbers was quite out of the
question. Perhaps the simile of a snow-storm may help to
convey an idea of the scene. From ten at night till daybreak
the birds sped steadily from east to west, past the lighthouse,
appearing under the glare of the lantern like so many real
snowflakes driven by the wind. At daybreak the whole island
was literally covered with the birds, but by ten o'clock in the
morning the majority had again proceeded on their journey.'

Breakfastless, no doubt, for even were Heligoland
covered with forests, instead of being a treeless tabular
island scarcely exceeding a mile in its greatest length,
it must long ago have been ' brosiered ' — to use an
ancient term in Oxford slang — its resources exhausted,
by successive multitudes of passengers.

No doubt 1882 must have been an unusually favourable
year for the reproduction of goldcrests, and very great
was the consequent autumnal exodus from their breeding-
grounds, which extend from the British Isles through
central and northern Europe and Asia, along the limits
of the pines as far as Japan. Be it noted that the
multitudes witnessed by Gatke were but a single column
in the grand army on its southward inarch. Heligoland,
from its insular position, attracts countless multitudes
of migrant birds who alight there, but in the autumn
of 1882 unusual numbers of goldcrests were observed

FEBRUARY 49

also at stations all along the eastern coast of Britain,
and these birds would not go near Heligoland. Though
greatly diminished in numbers, the northward migration
in spring is equally well marked.

'Imagine (says Herr Gatke) a mild and clear evening in
Spring, the sun has set long since . . . the last soft note of
the redbreast has died away, and for a considerable time no
sound has disturbed the scented stillness of the air. Suddenly,
through the silence, the clear, fine note of our little wren is
heard ; and soon afterwards the bird is seen rising from the
neighbouring bushes against the luminous evening sky. At
measured intervals its call-note " hiit, hiit, hiit " is heard as it
flies off in slightly ascending spirals over the neighbouring
gardens; then from every bush — here, there, near and far —
the cry is answered, and from all sides his travelling companions
mount upwards in the wake of the earliest starter. Assured
by the answering voices that all the sleepers are aroused, he
ceases circling about, and rises almost vertically with brief and
rapid strokes. Soon all assemble in a somewhat loose swarm ;
the call-notes are silenced when the last straggler has joined
the departing flock, and the tiny wanderers vanish from sight.'

VI

Few subjects provide more perplexing conundrums to
the reflective loafer in the country than the Tne problem
distribution of certain fresh- water fishes on the of Dispersal,
surface of the globe. Having regard to the variability of
most families of fish, which is far greater than that of
other and higher vertebrates, and to the striking changes
wrought in the appearance of species, and even of
individuals, by differing conditions of climate, soil, food,
and general physical environment, it is startling to find
that, although in countless instances these agencies have
D

50 THE PKOBLEM OF DISPERSAL

brought about such permanent structural changes as con-
stitute distinct species, there are also instances of organic
constancy having prevailed to preserve the species un-
changed through vast periods of time, in regions widely
and impassably separated from each other. Separated,
that is, not only by thousands of miles in space, but by
the barrier of salt water, in which fish of these species
cannot exist for five minutes.

Consider, for example, the suggestions offered by the
genus Oalaxias, consisting of about fourteen species of
small fresh-water fishes confined to the southern hemi-
sphere. In New Zealand they were dubbed trout by the
early settlers, and certainly in their spotted skins and
general outline they bear a superficial resemblance to our
own brook trout, but they have no scales, and are closely
related, not to the salmonidce, but to the pike family.
They are, in fact, as Dr. Gtmther puts it, the pikes of the
southern hemisphere. Of this genus six species have
been identified in Tasmania and south-eastern Australia,
five in New Zealand and the Auckland Islands, and four
in the Patagonian region of South America. Now there
would be nothing surprising in the occurrence of different
species of the same genus Galaxias in different parts of
this enormous area, for there is a close general affinity
between the fresh-water fishes of Australasia and South
America, accounted for partly by similarity of physical
environment. But the important fact is that one species,
Oalaxias attenuates, is identical in Tasmania, New
Zealand, the Falkland Islands, and the Fuegian region of
South America. Great is the significance enveloped in
this apparently insignificant creature of three or four
inches long. It almost amounts to an axiom of evolution

FEBRUARY 51

that the same species does not take independent rise in
areas remote from each other. Yet this little Galaxias
cannot be an immigrant into South America from
Australasia, nor vice versa. Thousands of miles of salt
water bar the way. The suggestion is obvious that in
the Tertiary epoch terrestrial connection existed between
South America and Australasia, and that Galaxias pre-
serves unchanged the features of ancestors which existed
anterior to the severance of the two continents, and long
before the appearance of man upon the earth. Even so,
it would be remarkable that individuals of so very plastic
a class should have undergone no specific modification in
the course of tens of thousands of years of isolation ; and
in any case it would be rash, in the absence of geological
evidence, to assume a former different distribution of land
and ocean in order to account for the presence of Galaxias
in lands so widely separated.

Coming now to the northern hemisphere, there is to
be noticed the presence of several identical species in
Europe and North America. The Atlantic salmon, the
sturgeon, and the common stickleback have no particular
relation to the problem of dispersal, for the first two are
regular sea-going species, and the stickleback accom-
modates himself readily to salt water. The perch, also,
has no aversion for brackish water, though it is not so
simple to account for the presence in American waters of
the European pike (Esox lucius) alongside of distinctively
American and closely allied species such as the mascalonge
(Esox estore). But in the burbot (Lota vulgaris) we
come to a fish singular in many respects, among others,
that it is the only fish of the cod family inhabiting fresh
water, and not only so, but absolutely impatient of salt

52 THE PROBLEM OF DISPERSAL

water. Practically it is a hake, and at a remote period
probably was a marine fish. But at the time when it
acquired the exclusively fresh-water habit there must
have been terrestrial connection between Europe and
America, for the burbot is now the same in both these
continents, though it does not extend into Asia. It is
everywhere very local, but in England its distribution
points distinctly to an arrangement of sea and land very
different to that now prevailing. The burbot is found
only in the Trent, the Ouse, and certain other eastward-
flowing rivers and their tributaries. It was formerly
abundant in the Thames, but it is doubtful whether it
still survives in that river, and it never was in the Severn
or Wye. When this fresh- water cod first found a home
in these waters the German Ocean was a plain, through
which ran northwards a mighty river, known in its present
truncated condition as the Rhine, but then receiving
affluents from the eastern English watershed. Hence it
is easy to trace the connection between the burbots of
the Rhine and those of our Staffordshire brooks.

Obvious as the identity is between some American and
European species, there are some remarkable discrepancies
in the fresh- water fauna of the two continents. The great
carp family is numerously represented in both, but of this
the genera of barbel and loach are entirely absent from
the New World. Europe and Asia together number about
two hundred species of barbel and fifty species of loach.
Of the last, the modest little fish that lurks under stones
in English woods and Scottish burns, never exceeding and
seldom attaining a stature of five inches, has a romantic
family history, could it only communicate the same.
Briefly, it is found in Japan, has not been recorded from

FEBRUARY 53

continental Asia, is plentiful almost everywhere in Europe
except Denmark and Scandinavia — although Linnseus says
that King Frederick of Sweden endeavoured to establish
it in his dominions — and does not exist in America. I
write these lines beside a small burn flowing independently
into the sea on the west coast of Scotland. It abounds
with loaches, greatly to the profit of certain pink-fleshed
trout which inhabit the said water. What I should like
to know is: How did the loaches get into this isolated
burn ? and how have they managed to maintain their
identity with their kindred in Japan ? For the loaches
belong to the carps — a family noted for variability.

VII

IT is satisfactory to note (1903) a very important discovery
in relation to the salmon disease, whereof the

The true . .

salmon origin and nature have been keeping scientific
Disease mquirv at bay for more than a quarter of a
century. The disease first attracted attention in the year
1877, when large numbers of salmon perished in the
rivers of the Solway. The fish affected showed at first
whitish patches on such parts of the skin as were not
protected by scales — the head, the adipose fin, and the
bases of other fins. These patches appeared to be caused
by a fungoid growth; they spread, became confluent,
formed deep ulcers eating into the muscle, until the fish
became weak and stupid, drifting into the shallows, and
wallowing languidly till it died. The disease, which has
reappeared at uncertain intervals in nearly all British
salmon rivers since 1877, probably existed as an epizootic
before that date, although no previous record of its ravages
has been preserved.

The late Thomas Huxley, being appointed Inspector
of Fisheries in 1881, had his attention drawn to it.
Recognising the vegetable growth upon the ulcers as
Saprolegnia ferax, a mould or fungus closely related to
that to which is attributed the potato disease, he came to

MARCH 55

the conclusion that this fungus was ' the sole cause of the
disease, whatever circumstances may, in a secondary
manner, assist its operations ' ; and this was confirmed by
the experiments of Mr. G. Murray, who succeeded in
transplanting the fungus to the bodies of dead flies, and
thence inoculating healthy fish, which died in consequence
of salmon disease. The chain of evidence seemed com-
plete : Saprolegnia was pronounced to be the direct agent
in salmon disease, and efforts to mitigate or avert the
latter must be directed to extirpating the fungus, and, as
far as possible, excluding it from our rivers.

It has been reserved for Mr. J. Hume Patterson,
assistant bacteriologist to the Corporation of Glasgow, to
disclose the real nature of this destructive pest. Puzzled
to understand how Saprolegnia, which normally thrives
upon dead animal tissue, should find a congenial soil in
the living flesh of one of the most vigorous of fishes,
Mr. Patterson prepared cultures from the diseased parts
of salmon, in which was revealed the presence of a micro-
organism previously unrecognised, and totally distinct
from the Saprolegnia. By a series of scrupulously care-
ful experiments, which are fully explained and illustrated
with photographs in a Blue-book just published by the
Fishery Board for Scotland — ' The Cause of the Salmon
Disease ; by J. Hume Patterson. (H.M. Stationery Office)
— Mr. Patterson proved that this bacillus, which he has
named Bacillus Salmonis Pestis, is constantly present in
diseased fish, that it obtains access to the tissues through
wounds or abrasion of the skin, multiplies with exceeding
rapidity, and by causing necrosis or death of the muscular
tissue, forms a suitable nidus for the growth of Saprolegnia,
the spores of which abound in ordinary river water, ready to

56 THE TRUE SALMON DISEASE

germinate upon any dead animal substance. Thus it has
now been shown that the fungus which hitherto has been
regarded as the disease itself is not pathogenic; it only
takes advantage of the morbid condition brought about
by the more subtle bacillus.

Then, it may be asked, how is this to be reconciled
with Mr. Murray's success in producing salmon disease in
healthy fish by inoculating them with the fungus ? It is
explained by the invariable presence of numerous and
rapidly multiplying colonies of the real pathogenic
bacillus in Saprolegnia growing upon diseased salmon.
It is an operation of the greatest delicacy to obtain a
culture of the one without including any of the other ;
and this operation, of course, could not be even attempted
until the true micro-organism of the plague had been
identified. Mr. Murray believed that he had transplanted
the disease from salmon to dead Hies, and from dead flies
to live fish, by a process of inoculation with the pure
culture of Saprolegnia. What he really did was to
inoculate with a culture of Saprolegnia, plus a culture
of Bacillus Salmonis Pestis.

But Mr. Patterson obtained absolutely pure and distinct
cultures of both these organisms. Healthy fish inoculated
with Saprolegnia only suffered no whit, for that growth
can only be established on dead tissue ; but healthy fish
inoculated with the new bacillus speedily perished with
the usual symptoms of disease, including the growth of
Saprolegnia in the diseased areas.

Having thus arrived at a precise knowledge of the
cause and nature of the salmon disease, we are so far on
the right road to contrive means to check or prevent
it. Much of the supposed advance hitherto made has

MARCH 57

proved illusory. It used to be supposed that those fish
which could reach the sea before the disease ended fatally
met with a natural cure, because the fungus disappeared
under the influence of salt water. But the fungus is now
shown to be only the outward and visible sign of the
inward and deadly morbus, and it is discouraging to find
that the new bacillus thrives well in a salt medium, and
best under a low temperature. Mr. Patterson ascertained
that it multiplied apace in a freezing mixture of ice and
salt, whereas a temperature of 100 deg. Fahrenheit is fatal
to it. One precaution he recommends to be observed by
owners of fisheries. The bacillus is easily transmitted
from dead diseased fish to living healthy ones in the
same water; wherefore it is obviously expedient that
dead and dying fish should be removed from the river
as speedily as possible and destroyed by burning. The
common practice of burying them within the water-
shed is futile, for the germs are preserved alive in the
earth till the next flood carries them back into the
stream.

There is a widespread fallacy among fishermen that
outbreaks of salmon disease are the result of an over-
stock of fish. This belief has already been the cause of
a lot of mischief. Owners of rivers have been positively
afraid of so regulating nets, etc., as to increase the
abundance of fish. There is absolutely no ground for
this arbitrary and misleading hypothesis. Of course a
given percentage of diseased salmon will attract more
attention when the stock of fish is large than when it
is small ; and people unaccustomed to sound inductive
process jump to the conclusion that the disease arises
from overcrowding.

58 THE HABIT OF HOLLIES

VIII

The task which Mr. G. F. Scott Elliot has undertaken
The nabit in his excellent little manual, Nature Studies,
of Hollies is a praiseworthy one. It is an attempt to
condense the botanical lore of which he is so competent
a master, and to present it to his readers stripped
of that deterrent envelope of technical phraseology
wherein such lore is usually entombed. That he
has only partially succeeded is no fault of Mr. Elliot.
Any language in colloquial use — most of all one like
English, in world-wide use — must be deficient in that
rigid precision which is one of the postulates of scientific
discourse : —

'That I have been obliged to say chlorophyll instead of "leaf-
green," or cambium instead of " building-ring," is not my fault.
These terms have been fastened on the English language, and
it would be hypercritical to displace them. I have gone as
far as I dared, not as far as I would like, in the direction of
suppression.'

In truth, one cannot go very far in that direction
without encountering ambiguity. Scientific phraseology
is not a luxury or a vanity — nomenclature and classi-
fication must be expressed in a dead language — one
that has passed beyond all change. Consider an instance
in ornithology. Among all English bird-names perhaps
there is not one that conveys to us islanders such a
familiar image as that of 'robin.' Even town-bred
children, for whom the greenwood, alas ! is too often an
unmeaning phrase, recognise in that title the little red-

MARCH 59

breasted bird which spends Christmas with us. But
there are English-speaking millions oversea for whom
the word ' robin ' has a widely different significance. The
Pilgrim Fathers and their followers applied this name to
a kind of thrush (Merula migratoria), and that is now
the robin of the United States. Nevertheless, the fact
remains that many persons, especially girls and women,
who might find solace in amateur science, are frightened
away by long-tailed terms. Mr. Scott Elliot deserves well
of the public for smoothing away such of these difficulties
as may be removed.

In his chapter on ' Defence ' this writer deals briefly,
and as I venture to think, unsatisfactorily, with a certain
characteristic of the holly ; and, having been myself taken
to task for some obiter scriptum upon this point, perhaps
I may be allowed to say a word thereon.

' In the common holly (says Mr. Elliot) the leaf-teeth are
spiny, and similar spines are found on the evergreen oak. It
has been stated that, in both, the lower branches and those
plants that have been especially cropped and pruned have much
more spiny leaves than the higher branches, or specimens which
have been allowed to grow freely. This would go to show
that the injury done by grazing animals directly promotes the
growth of prickles. But the fact is a little doubtful.'

Yes, it is a little doubtful, but only because people
have been apt to direct their observations upon cultivated
hollies, and upon some of the innumerable varieties that
are to be found in gardens and nurseries. If you want
to ascertain the normal behaviour of hollies, you must
not content yourself with a survey from your library
window or shrubbery walk; you must go afield, to the
hedgerows, or to some wood where the accursed rabbit

60 THE HABIT OF HOLLIES

has not destroyed the indigenous hollies. When I read
the above-quoted passage on this fine Sunday morning
I strolled out along the banks of Tay in that noble
woodland which is continuous from Dunkeld to Murthly.
Here there are many fine hollies, some on the river banks
and cliffs, others on level ground, planted by no hand of
man. There was not one of these which did not confirm
my observations first made many years ago, and hardly
one which did not bear evidence of special growth — not
merely as a reaction against pruning or cropping, but as a
precaution against any such contingency — so regular and
deliberate as to suggest that these trees are something
more than unconscious automata.

Many of these hollies are thirty feet high, /with foliage
down to the ground. They carry spinous leaves up to a
height of three or four feet; above that level all the
foliage is absolutely smooth and spineless. One tree rose
from the ground in two bare stems, and the lower branches
did not reach below the browsing level. But from between
the two old stems rose a young shoot about four feet
long, clothed throughout its entire length with intensely
prickly leaves. This tree was growing in an enclosed
wood where cattle could not come ; still, roedeer might be
about, and the holly armed its young growth at the low
level, although the leaders of the old stems, not less
vigorous in growth, bore leaves as smooth as a camellia's.
I noted one particularly suggestive tree, an unhealthy
one. The growth had died back along most of the
branches, which stood out bare and dry ; but a recupera-
tive effort was in progress; fresh and luxuriant growth
was bursting along nearly the whole height of the stem,
and the foliage of this was vigorously prickly up to about

MARCH 61

four feet, and smooth above that height. I noticed many
instances of localised prickly growth where boughs,
originally above the browsing level, and clothed with
spineless leaves, had been weighed down and cropped by
cattle. But this is merely a vigorous reaction against
external injury, such as makes a clipped holly hedge
bear spinous foliage from base to summit. The interest-
ing question is whether the influence which directs the
precautionary armature against a problematic foe be
esoteric or exoteric ? Are we to suppose that the holly
has a subliminal conscience? or are we landed in teleology
pure and simple ?

Other prickly trees besides the holly exhibit similar
behaviour. The common Osmanthus, the evergreen oak,
and most of the junipers are among those to which I can
testify. It will be interesting to note whether the prickly-
leaved species of Olearia, etc., from Australasia have
acquired the habit ; and, if so, whether the protected line
corresponds to the browsing height of a kangaroo.

IX

It is just one hundred and sixty-five years ago since
the second Duke of Athole, a passionate lover Birnam
of trees, received from Mr. Menzies of Culdares Wood
a few young trees from the Tyrol of a species hitherto
unknown in Great Britain. It was deemed doubtful
whether natives of a region so southerly as the Tyrol
would endure the rigours of a Highland winter, so the
seedlings were committed to the care of the gardener
at Dunkeld House, who bestowed them tenderly in a
greenhouse. Moist warmth and close atmosphere were

62 BIRNAM WOOD

conditions least favourable to the little mountaineers;
spindling sadly, most of them died, and the whole were
cast out on the waste heap. Two of them retained
enough vitality to revive in the clear, sharp air; they
struck their rootlets into the sandy soil ; and the Duke
probably had forgotten all about Mr. Menzies's gift, when,
one April morning, his eye fell upon a couple of dainty
saplings, feathered with tender green, and studded with
crimson bosses. Such was the haphazard introduction
of the larch into Great Britain. The pair of outcasts may
still be viewed near the west end of Dunkeld Cathedral,
mighty columns clothed with deeply sculptured bark,
towering to the height of one hundred feet, with far-
spreading limbs casting dappled shade upon the green-
sward.

The incident above described marked a notable era in
British forestry. The Duke was so well pleased with the
grace and vigour of the foreigners that, before his death
in 1764, he had planted twenty square miles of his land
with larches. For better or for worse, an element had
been imported into Highland landscape which, more than
any other, has wrought a change upon the aspect of our
hillsides and glens. There are but three coniferous trees
indigenous to Britain, the Scots pine, the yew, and the
lowly juniper, all of them evergreen. The larch invasion
cannot be reckoned an enrichment of the native woodland,
because, lovely as this tree is in spring, when it puts forth
its exquisite foliage of malachite green, in winter a larch
wood is cold and bare, and the eye draws little solace
from the expanse of ashen yellow, which has been made
to replace the rich velvet mantle of Scots pine, relieved
by gleaming, ruddy boughs.

MAKCH 63

' As I did stand my watch^upon the hill,

I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, niethought,

The wood began to move.'

Birnam wood has long since been felled, and has either
come up again in the form of stool-grown oaks, never so
free as the original trees from seed, or has been replanted
with spruce and larch. But still there stands between
Birnam Hotel and the river a giant oak, reputed to be
the last survivor of Macbeth's ' moving grove.' It girths
22 feet at 4 feet from the ground, giving a diameter of
7 feet 4 inches. Hard by stands a formidable rival to the
native, in the shape of a huge sycamore, which is not a
tree indigenous to Britain. This monster has swelled to a
girth of 24 feet at 4 feet from the ground ; while, measured
round the exposed part of the trunk at the ground level,
it gives a dimension of upwards of 50 feet. Birnam Hill
itself is still clothed in part with forest, but the trees are
nearly all exotic — larch and spruce — save where the birch
has sprung up thickly in the glades rent by storms.

This pass of Birnam, of old the main portal to the
Highlands of Breadalbane and Blair Athole, is the choicest
ground in all Scotland for the lover of trees. For many
centuries the forest wealth of North Britain received
ruthless, spendthrift handling. Generation after genera-
tion cut and came again for their hand-to-mouth wants,
without a thought, apparently, for those who should come
after them; until, at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, Scotland had assumed that dispiriting nakedness
which was to justify Dr. Johnson in his gibe that, in all
his Scottish travels he never saw but three trees big
enough to hang a man upon. Dunkeld and Birnam
got a good start in reafforestation through the rare

64 BIRNAM WOOD

prescience of the aforesaid Duke of Athole. Much of the
ground about Dunkeld is so steep as to be quite inaccess-
ible for ordinary planting operations ; so that one wonders
how exotic trees like larch, spruce, and silver fir obtained
their foothold on these cliffs which they do so greatly
adorn. The tradition runs that Napier the engineer,
being on a visit to the planting Duke, and sympathising
with his host's desire to restore the woodland, caused
tin canisters to be filled with tree seeds and fired out
of cannon against the heights. The canisters bursting
against the rocks, scattered the seeds bravely, so that
now every ledge, every cranny on Craig-y-Barns and
Craig Vinean bears noble timber.

One cannot realise the size of some of ttyese trees until
one stands beside and lays a hand on them. One day
of late I stepped ashore from my boat in a grove of
splendid Scots pines to land a good salmon I had hooked.
That operation having been happily effected, on looking
round me I was struck by the gigantic dimensions of
the tree stems. On measuring the Scots pine nearest to
me I found its girth to be fifteen feet at the height of my
shoulders. Not far off was a Weyrnouth pine (Pinus
strobus) with a girth of thirteen feet three inches; a Spanish
chestnut, fifteen feet ; and a spruce fir, thirteen feet. The
spruce fir, by the bye, is not usually a desirable addition to
our woodlands, except on economic grounds. It is impatient
of sea winds, its foliage has a tendency to rustiness, and
scragginess generally befalls it in middle life. But the
spruce forest of Dunkeld is simply glorious; silvery
columns supporting dense towering spires of rifle-green to
the height of more than one hundred feet. Here, too,
may be seen the common silver fir, grown as it should be,

IN Bl RNAM WOOD.

MARCH 65

in large companies of its own kind, not as we usually
have it, scattered specimens over-topping deciduous trees
around. Grown in masses, the silver fir, loftiest of all
European trees, exchanges shelter with its brethren.
There is something peculiarly rich and solemn in its
massive obelisks of foliage.

X

ON 2nd March 1888 the following telegram was handed in
Names of ^or Delivery at the post-office of Chepstow : —

' Going to Llanf airpwllgungwllgogerhwllclydiligo-
gogoch; shall be home by 4.30.'

The postmaster, thinking that there was m'ore than a fair
penn'orth of consonants in the name, referred it to his
surveyor, who wrote back : —

' It is an attempt at the name [of a village in Anglesey], but
is evidently not written by a Welshman; the spelling is in-
correct, and, but for the joke of the thing, the ordinary
abbreviation — Llanfairpwll l— would have been better. The
full name correctly written I give below — Llanfairpwllgwyn-
gyllgogerchwyrnydrobwillandisilliogogogoch.'

Now it is easy to share with the surveyor of Chepstow
the humour of a name like this occurring in a modern
telegram, and to join in the chuckle of the sender, who
was within his rights in claiming it as a single word;
but originally it must have been framed, like all other
place-names, with sober indicative purpose. Distinct and
permanent natural features in a country are generally
distinguished by very simple titles. Thus, to take an

1 It is often called Sillygogo by the natives.

APRIL 67

example of a Celtic people dwelling near a river, they
acquire the habit of referring to it simply as amhuinn
(avun), the river, or uisc, the water ; and successive races
adopt the convenient term as saving them the trouble of
finding a new designation.

A curious example once came to my notice of the
modern use of the generic term for a stream. I was
fishing the river at Cassiobury in Hertfordshire, and in
the course of the day I asked the keeper what was its
name.

'Well, sir,' he replied, 'it has a name to be zure, but
dang me if I can remember un. We just calls it " the
river." '

Presently a respectable-looking man came along —
apparently a bailiff or some state official — who, the keeper
said, would be sure to recollect the name of the river.
But no — he, too, had forgotten it, though he remembered
having heard it ; and it was not until after he had made
inquiry in the village that he returned with the infor-
mation that the river rejoiced in the name of the Gade.
Well, suppose this country were to fall under the dominion
of Russia, and English speech to be proscribed or to
become obsolete, the new rulers would assuredly adopt
the title most commonly current in the locality, and the
Gade would be known henceforth as ' the River.' Even
so, when Celtic ceased to be spoken in England the
conquering race made use of the generic titles they found
in use: hence, from amkuinn, the innumerable Avons,
Evans, and Owens among English, Scottish, and Irish
river-names, and, from uisc, Esk, Exe, Usk, Isis (latinised),
and Ouse. Uiscc bagh — the water of life — eau-de-vie —
has been shorn of its specific suffix, and has taken its

68 NAMES OF PLACES

place in our dictionaries— perhaps too important a place
in our habits— as ' whisky.'

So much for the establishment of the generic term in
a district where one river predominates. But in a land
abounding with rivers, specific titles become necessary
for indicative purposes; and when the language of the
inhabitants changes, as in England and most of Scotland
Gaelic has been replaced by another speech, such specific
titles often remain as the appellatives of different streams.
This affords a fine opportunity for your imaginative
guesser, and all kinds of fanciful theories are started to
account for such names. Take, for instance, ' the Tarf ' —
a name borne by five rivers in as many counties of
Scotland — to which may be added a sixth, the Tarth in
Peeblesshire, all representing the Gaelic word tarbh
(tarriv), a bull. Here is the way clear to a picturesque
etymology, which has been given repeatedly in sober
print. These streams are explained to have been called
' the bull ' because of their loud roaring. It may be safely
assumed that no such flight of imagination would ever be
attempted by the natural man. How do the colonists of our
own and other nations set about distinguishing between
rivers in new lands ? Do they call this one a bull because it
roars, or a parrot because it chatters, or a serpent because it
hisses ? Not they. They either perpetuate the native name,
when they can pronounce it with tolerable ease, as they did
for the Mississippi, which means in the Cree dialect ' the
great river ' ; or they express the same idea in their own
language, as Rio Grande, a name applied of old by Spanish
explorers and retained to this day by no less than seven
rivers in the New World ; or they call it after the name
of its discoverer, or the first settler on its banks, a natural

APRIL 69

means of designation, to which M'Kenzie river, Fraser
river, and hundreds of others in all languages and all parts
of the world owe their names. Or they call it after some
natural feature or product of the country through which
it flows, as in the instances of the Yellowstone river, a
tributary of the Missouri, or the Rio de la Plata — river of
the silver. Again, when they fail to pick up the native
name, or when its pronunciation involves a conscious
effort, or when there are no particular features to dis-
tinguish one river from another and no special person
or incident to commemorate, recourse is had to the simple
plan of numbering the rivers as they occur in their line
of march. Thus when the Spaniards overran what is
now the Argentine province of Cordova, they crossed
five rivers which bear now in succession from the north,
whence the invaders advanced, the names Rio Primero,
Rio Secundo, Rio Tercero, Rio Quarto, and Rio Quinto.

Returning to the example first cited, if the river-name
Tarf represents the Gaelic tarbh, a bull, how is its frequent
occurrence to be accounted for ? The simplest way is the
surest. If you look at Blaeu's Atlas — a masterpiece of
industry and skill — you will find in the maps of Scottish
counties surveyed by Timothy Pont between the years
1595 and 1605 that nearly all the Highland river-names
we now use have the word amhuinn (avon) prefixed to
them. Amhuinn tarbh means the river of the bulls ; and
now there is legitimate scope for imagination in assigning
the origin of such a title as Tarf to some incident either
of primitive pastoral life or in the chase of the wild
Caledonian cattle.

Enough, perhaps, has been said to indicate how simple,
direct, and obvious is the meaning of the original place-

70 NAMES OP PLACES

name, before it has become obscured by use in a foreign
tongue and by more or less successful attempts at phonetic
transcription, and how remote from the elaborate and
artificial significance often sought to be read into it. In
the old days of guesswork the explanation of the name
Exeter found ready currency to the effect that it was the
hail of the look-out on a Roman ship— Ecce terra!—
'Land-ho!' To this day there are numbers of worthy
citizens of Exeter who would indignantly repudiate any
other interpretation. Nevertheless it only requires a
reference to the oldest written form of the name in
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle — namely, Exaceaster — to be
certain that the significance is perfectly commonplace,
the ceaster or camp beside the Exe, the Saxon population
having already adopted the Celtic word uisc, the water,
which they found attached to their river. Analogy is
easily found in Doncaster, the camp on the Don, which
is probably a contraction of the Celtic dubh amkuinn,
black water, and in Lancaster, the camp on the Alauna,
the latinised form of the Celtic amhuinn leamhean (avon
lawn), river of the elms, which we now speak of as the
Lune.

The simplicity of place-names, the absence of inventive
effort in framing them, are what impress every one who
devotes study to them. If it is not beyond the power
of man to sit down and arrange a number of unmeaning
syllables to denote a given locality, at all events, it is
totally opposed to human behaviour. We have all heard
of the invalid lady who begged the clergyman to read a
certain chapter of the Acts of the Apostles that she might
derive consolation from that blessed word Mesopotamia.
Well, Mesopotamia was applied to a physical configuration

APRIL 71

which occurs in every country, and must find expression
in every language under the sun — the tract ' between the
rivers' Tigris and Euphrates, called by the Arabs El
Gezira, which signifies much the same thing. In English
we have the exact equivalent in Twining in Gloucester-
shire and Twynholm in Galloway, which represent the
Anglo-Saxon tweon, between, and eaurti or edn, the dative
(or locative) plural of ed, a river. Gaelic has its Eddra-
chillis in Sutherlandshire — eadar chaolas, between the
firths, and Ed era von in Dunbartonshire — eadar a/m-
huinn, between the rivers ; German, its Interlacken and
Coblentz (from the Latin Confluentes) ; Italian, Terni and
Teramo, contracted forms of inter amnes; and Spanish
its Entre Rios, the district in Argentina between the
rivers Parana and Uruguay.

The first thing, then, to bear in mind in any attempt
to study place-names is their uniform simplicity. Most
people not fluent in Welsh would recoil from the en-
deavour to construe Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerchwyrny.
drobwilliandisilliogogogoch ; nevertheless we may rest
assured that it is an attempt in perfectly good faith to
describe a certain place so that it shall not be mistaken
for another. The next thing to note is the remarkable
permanence of some of these names. Most of the habit-
able parts of the globe have been tenanted in succession
by waves of different races, each speaking a different
language from its predecessors, yet each adopting for
convenience some of the names they found attached to
hills, streams, woods, and fields. Diodorus Siculus, writing
in the last century before Christ, has preserved two place-
names apparently in the language of the small dark-haired
folk who occupied Britain before it was overrun by the

72 NAMES OF PLACES

Celts. He tells us that they called the Land's End
Belerion, and that they conveyed the tin which they
worked in Cornish mines 'to a certain island lying off
Britain called Ictis.' Belerion is lost, but Ictis seems to
be the same as Vectis, so rendered by the Romans, and
handed down to us as the Isle of Wight. Now the lan-
guage of these primitive Silurians has disappeared, and,
forasmuch as it never was written, it is hopeless to attempt
any solution of the meaning of names framed in it. But
probably we use a good many of them unconsciously,
seeing how many place-names fail to receive any light
even when traced back to their oldest written forms.

The occupation by the Celts was doubtless far more
effective and implied a higher degree of civilisation than
that of the Silurians. It is no matter for surprise,
therefore, that they impressed many names in their own
language upon the land, which succeeding waves of
Roman, Saxon, and Norseman have not prevailed to
obliterate. There is a substratum of Gaelic in the topo-
graphy of the most thoroughly English counties, and
one stumbles unexpectedly at times upon names almost
unchanged. Fishing one summer on the Test, near
Wherwell, I was allotted a dark, deep stretch of water as
my beat. I was startled to hear it spoken of as 'the
Dublin' — the black 'linn' or water — the same feature
that gives its title to the capital of Ireland.

After the Celts came the Romans, whose rule over a great
part of Britain endured for nearly four centuries. But
their conquest differed from that of the Celts ; it was not
a national migration — not the movement of a race seeking
relief from pressure — but a military invasion and occupa-
tion by troops recruited largely from the Continental Celts

APRIL 73

— the Gauls of France and Belgium — speaking the same
mother- tongue as the people they came to conquer.
Hence, although Latin was undoubtedly the official lan-
guage, as French was in England under the Norman and
Plantagenet kings, it never became the vernacular, and,
in consequence, Latin place-names are as rare as French
in this country. The Latin castrum appears, after the
departure of the Romans, in the Anglo-Saxon form of
ceaster or Chester, representing the same difference in the
Teutonic dialects as is preserved in the forms ' kirk ' and
' church ' ; but the prefix in such names as Winchester,
Manchester, Gloucester, generally are contractions of the
original Celtic name. Thus the Roman name for Win-
chester was Venta Belgarum — venta being their rendering
of the Celtic gvent, downs or open country ; for it was at
Winchester that the great forest of Andred ended and the
Hampshire downs began.

In fact, the Romans found how much easier it is to
conquer a country than to alter the names of the rivers,
hills, and towns thereof, and the solitary instance on
record of their attempting to impose an official name
ended in complete failure. London is a Celtic name,
meaning, perhaps, the dun, fort, on the lynn, pool (we
still hear talk about the Pool of London). This name
the Roman governors were content at first to latinise into
Londinium, but when it had grown to importance as a
seaport and military base they deemed it worthy of some-
thing more high-sounding. A decree went forth, accord-
ingly, that the town was to be called Augusta, and that,
or Londinium Augusta, was for a while its official name.
But the ancient name, conferred nobody knows how long
ago by nobody cares what barbarous tribe, reasserted

74 NAMES OF PLACES

itself, and Parliament, let it alter the government of
London as it will, is now powerless to change its name.

Having got thus far, it may occur to some reader to
ask what possible use there can be in worrying over the
meanings of names. If they serve their purpose, why
waste time over analysing them? That is a question
nearly as disconcerting as the inquiry of the Little Dog
in ' Reineke Fuchs.' ' Of what are you thinking so hard ? '
quoth he to the Owl.

' I am speculating,' answered the Owl, ' whether the first
owl came out of an egg, or the first egg came out of an
owl.'

' But that,' urged the Little Dog, ' can surely never be
known now.'

'You fool!' retorted the Owl, 'that is precisely what
makes it such an interesting subject of meditation.'

Some attempt must be made to supply a better answer
than the Owl's; perhaps no more satisfactory plea can
be put forward than the fascination which attaches to
glimpses into the dim past. In a densely trodden, steam-
racked, smoke-laden land like ours, it is refreshing to
pick up intelligence that here, where the slag -heaps
smoulder, the royal hart once couched; there, where
the stream, whence all life has been expelled by pollution,
winds its dreary, greasy course, the beaver once piled its
cunning dome ; or again, on yonder hillside, where comes
nothing fiercer now than a skulking fox, the bold wolf-
brood was reared of yore. One cannot help, at times,
speculating on the kind of life our forerunners led, the
landscape they viewed, the prizes they strove for. It stirs
some of us with more than idle curiosity to stand on the
roaring Brooinielaw of Glasgow — the brae where the

APRIL 75

yellow broom waved not so very long ago — and note
the mighty change that has swept over that estuary
since Kentigern built his lonely cell in the green wood-
land glade beside the teeming salmon-river. That glade
is now clangorous with unceasing industry; its verdure
exchanged for whisky-shops, music-halls, and other less
obtrusive concomitants of progress; but still its name
Strathbungo1 recalls the mission work of the holy
Kentigern — which work, had it come to naught, into
what different channels might not the history of Glasgow
have run ? In short, forasmuch as it is admitted that all
place-names have meanings, and seeing that people will
continue to guess and speculate about their meanings,
it is natural, and in some degree useful, to proceed on
sound rules, so as to arrive at their right interpretation.
The intrinsic worth of your fox may not repay all the
trouble you take to catch him, but at all events you are
likely to ensure better sport by hunting him on scientific
principles.

To return to the Romans. Unconsciously that people,
though leaving behind them few names in their own
language, contributed much to the stability of British
names by introducing the art of writing. Unwritten
speech changes far more swiftly than we are inclined to
remember: directly names or words are written down
they become, as it were, crystallised and more or less
permanent. Little attention is paid at first to spelling :
letters were invented merely as symbols of sound — use-
ful drudges which modern refinement has elevated into
tyrants. In ancient documents you shall find the same

1 Strath-Mungo, Mungo's meadow, the endearing appellative of St.
Kentigern.

76 NAMES OF PLACES

name perhaps written in half a dozen different forms on
the same parchment — all attempts to represent the same
sound. It is only quite lately that we have come to
attach importance to orthography, and to regard un-
certain spelling as one of the chief bars to obtaining a
commission in the Army or an appointment in the Civil
Service. And it is curious to note how soon letters
assumed sway beyond what it was ever intended they
should have. No sooner is a name written down than
it is liable to have a false meaning read into it. One of
the earliest examples of this in Britain is offered by the
name York, which the Roman subjects of Severus rendered
Eboracum, a latinised form of the Celtic Eburach, which
was the name of several places in Western Europe. Now,
whatever Eburach — Eboracum — meant originally, it never
can have borne the sense which the Anglo-Saxon chroni-
cler suggested when he wrote it Eofer-wic, the wild boar's
town. He forgot, or wilfully ignored, the fact that the
settlement on the Ure had received the name of Eburach
many centuries before a syllable of Saxon was spoken on
the banks of that river. Eofer, the wild boar, has lent
its name to many places, such as Yearsley in Yorkshire-
written Everslage in Domesday— Eversley in Hants, and
Everleigh in Wilts, all meaning ' the boar's field ' ; but it
was a pure shot, and a shocking bad one to boot, to
construe Eboracum as 'wild boar's town.' The blunder
has permanently affected the aspect of the name, for
although it would have been difficult to trace the evolu-
tion of York out of Eboracum, it is easily connected with
Jorvik, which was the Norseman's rendering of the Saxon
Eofer-wic. The latinised Celtic form is still preserved in
the archbishop's signature — Ebor.

APKIL 77

Another effect of letters upon our place-names before
the invention of printing must be taken into account. A
copyist's blunder sometimes takes the place of the real
name. None of the Western Isles bears a more musical
or better-known name than lona, but its creation was a
mere fluke. The original Gaelic name of that island was
a sound variously represented in early Irish manuscripts
as I or Hy. After St. Columba had made it famous by
his sanctity and by the religious house he founded upon it,
it became known as Icolmkil — / Coluim cille — I of Colum
of the church. But Adamnan, writing Coluinba's life in
Latin, coined an adjectival form of I, and referred to it
as loua insula — the louan island, just as we speak now
of the Ionian Islands.1 Some copyist mistook u for
n, and there you have the pretty and permanent name
lona.

The familiar name of Hebrides had a similar origin.
Ptolemy, in the second century of our era, wrote of the
Ebudee, Solinus of the Hebudes (the aspirate was a snare
long before the evolution of Cockneys). Now the small i
(the Greek iota} carried no dot over it till the eleventh
century; it was a venial offence, therefore, in an early
transcriber to mistake Ptolemy's u for ri, and so turn his
Ebudse into Ebrida?.2

No sooner had the Romans evacuated Britain early in
the fifth century than the land began to be overrun by
people of another speech, which was destined ultimately
to obliterate, at all events in Southern Britain, nearly all
trace of the languages which went before it. It will be

1 Of the seven MSS. of Adamnan 's work examined by Dr. Reeves, four
give the correct form loua, and two later ones have lona.

2 Curiously enough, another instance of this confusion occurred in this
very paragraph, Solinus having been rendered by the printer Solirius.

78 NAMES OF PLACES

borne in mind, of course, that nothing approaching
English, or any other branch of Teutonic speech, was
spoken in any part of these islands up to the end of the
fourth century; but the fifth was not half run before
Prosper Aquitanus wrote in his chronicle for the year
441 that 'Britain up to this time is brought widely
under dominion of the Saxons by various conflicts and
transactions.' The Angles, it is true, did not settle in
Northumbria under Ida until the year 547; but long
before that the warlike Frisians had infested the Firth
of Forth till it was known to geographers as Mare
Fresicum, and had established several settlements, of
which one is tentatively identified with Dumfries — dun
Fris — the Frisian's fort, mentioned by Nennius as Caer
Pheris, just as he mentioned Dunbarton as Caer Bretain,
the fort of the Britons or Welsh Celts. Down to the
coming of these colonists, the language of the natives
of the British Isles, from the Land's End to Cape Wrath,
was Celtic in one or other of its forms — Gaelic or Welsh
— and all the names of dwellings and natural features
were in that language, except those that had been handed
down from Pre-Celtic days and the very few which the
Romans had succeeded in fixing upon the lands they had
conquered.

The coming of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians
— branches of that great Teutonic family of nations which
had overthrown the civilisation of Rome — brought to pass
the extermination, or at least the expulsion and partial
absorption, of the Celts or Britons, except in the mountain-
ous regions of Wales and Scotland— our ' Celtic fringe '
at this day. Not less industrious than warlike, these
Germanic colonists soon settled to Avork in their new

APRIL 79

possessions. The tribe or sept of the restless Celt yielded
place to the family and village system of the more
business-like Teuton. Around the original tun or en-
closure of the Saxon farmer a number of dwellings arose.
In proportion as he prospered in agriculture he employed
more hands or ceorls, for whom cottages were built within
another tun; wherefore the name Carlton, Charlton, or
Chorlton occurs more than one hundred times on our
maps. The Carlton Club has more or less pretension
to be aristocratic: a less complimentary name for it
than Carlton — the home of churls — could hardly have
been devised by the committee of the Reform itself.
Charlcote, also, is met with in most English counties,
but the Anglo-Saxon cota was most often used in the
dative or locative plural cotum or cotan — at the cottages ;
hence such deceptive forms as Coatham and Cottam in
Yorkshire and Cotton in Derbyshire.

A group of cottages clustering round the original
settler's tun — the defensive enclosure against natives,
neighbours, and wild beasts— soon developed into a
village within its own tun. There is no better marked
class of names than those of English villages, and none,
thanks to the invaluable record of Domesday, of which
the original form may be ascertained with so much
certainty.

When the Saxons had been in possession of our land
for about four centuries, a new race of invaders and
settlers appeared on the scene, Danish pirates known as
Vikings, because they came from the great vik, now
called the Skager Rack, and Norsemen from the fiords
of Norway. The most unmistakable signs of Scandinavian
place-names are the suffixes -by, -thwait, -thorp, -bster,

80 NAMES OF PLACES

and -setter. The tirst three are considered to indicate
Danish rather than Norse occupation. The terminal -by
represents bu, a dwelling — Whitby, the white house ;
Kirby, the house near the kirk ; Grimsby, the abode of
Grimr, a common personal name. Thwait is from thveit,
humbler than bu, meaning a cottage and paddock, and
familiar in such names as Applethwaite, Ormsthwaite,
and Langthwaite; while thorp expressed the hamlet or
collection of cottages within a common enclosure, and
occurs frequently in certain districts. Langthorpe and
Milnthorpe carry their meaning on the faces of them,
while in Kettlethorpe is preserved the well-known
personal name of Ketyl. The Dutch form dorp has
been pretty well rubbed into our national remembrance
of late in the name Krugersdorp in the Transvaal — the
scene of the surrender of Jameson's raiders in 1896.
Norwegian rather than Danish are the terms bolstadr,
a homestead, and setr, a dwelling, also a hill pasture,
equivalent to the Scottish ' shieling.' The first remains
entire in the name of Belster, in the parish of Bower,
Caithness, and in various stages of attrition in Lybster,
Scrabster, Bimbuster, and Gorabus; while the second is
easily recognised in Kirkasetter near Lerwick, and
Melsetter in Hoy. Very often these Danes and Norsemen
drove out or killed out the Saxon or Celtic population ;
but where there happened to be room for both, they
seem to have lived amicably side by side. The late
Canon Isaac Taylor pointed out curious evidence of this
in some place-names in the north of England. Many
parishes there contain two or more townships, the parish
bearing the older name, with the characteristic Saxon
suffix -ton or -ham, while the townships included in it

APRIL 81

have the Scandinavian termination -by or -thorp. For
instance, the parish of Settrington in the East Riding
contains the separate townships of Settringfcm and
Scaggle^orpe ; the parish of Cayton contains three town-
ships — Cayton, Killaby, and Osgodfo/ ; Brantingham
parish has the townships of Brantingham and Thorpe;
and so on, in innumerable cases. In these instances the
parish name seems to indicate the older Saxon colony,
while the township of Scandinavian designation shows
a later settlement of Danes, the two having maintained
themselves as separate communities, with independent
rating and local government powers.

How vain is the attempt to interpret names from the
worn shapes to which ages of oral use have brought
them, and how essential it is to hunt up the oldest
written forms, a couple of instances must suffice to show.
Owesthorpe is the name of a Yorkshire manor: in the
fourteenth century this was written Ulvesthorpe, a cor-
ruption of the original form given in Domesday —
Janulfstorp, the hamlet of Janulf.

Again, the last syllable of Durham has nothing to do
with the suffix -ham, so common among Saxon place-
names. The precipitous peninsula chosen by Bishop
Ealdhune at the beginning of the eleventh century as
the site of his church was Dunholme, the holm or island
of the dun, so called by Saxon or Norse invaders, either
from the British fort they found there, or from the hill
itself, that being the primary meaning of dtin, which
came to mean a fortress because such was generally built
on a hill. Then came a Norman garrison to whom the
name conveyed no meaning, and who found it easier to
pronounce as Duresme. Lastly, the Celtic, Norse, and
F

82 NAMES OF PLACES

Norman-French languages having passed clean away, and
English literature and speech having become common to
all ranks of the people, clerks wrote it Durham, in mis-
leading analogy to other English names.

Touching this suffix -ham, it is not quite so simple as
it appears at first sight. It conveys another warning that
the real meaning of a name must be sought in the earliest
extant documents. In nine cases out of ten it represents
the Anglo-Saxon hdm, a house, the place where a man
is 'at home/ and is employed in the same sense as
the German suffix -heim in names like Rudesheim and
Mannheim. It is, in fact, that peculiarly Teutonic term
'home,' for which there is no equivalent in the Latin
languages, and which must be expressed in French by
periphrasis. Canon Taylor, however, was the first to
draw attention to the existence of another Anglo-Saxon
word which assumed as a suffix the same shape as hdm,
but with a different meaning— to wit, ham, an enclosure.
Between these two monosyllables distinction can only be
drawn by consulting documents written before people
had dropped the troublesome habit of declining nouns.
In such ancient writings place-names usually occur in
the dative or locative case, inasmuch as a place is
seldom mentioned except in the sense of at or to.
The declension in the singular of these two words was
as follows : —

Nom. Ham, a home. Ham, an enclosure.
Gen. Hames. Hammes.

Locative. Hame. Hamme.

Therefore when you find Farnham written as ' at Fearn-
hainme ' and Cheltenham as ' Celtenhomme,' it is pretty

APRIL 83

safe to assume that the names meant respectively 'the
enclosure among the ferns' and 'the enclosure on the
Celt.' On the other hand, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
gives Snotingaham and Bocingaham as the current forms
of Nottingham and Buckingham, there can be little doubt
that the homes of the families of Snoting and Buccing
were indicated.

This suffix -ing is a very significant one in Anglo-Saxon.
It generally denotes ' the family of,' as Buckingham means
the home of the family of Bucca; at least that is more
probable than the etymology offered by Camden — becen
hdm, the beechen home, from the number of beeches
there in his day. When it is remembered that the
evidence is very imperfect in support of the beech being
indigenous to Britain, his explanation, though consistent
with phonetic laws, appears very dubious. Often the
patronymic -ing appears without the further suffix -ham
or -ton, as in Reading, the home of the family of Readda,
and Godalming, that of the family of Godhelm ; just as
one would be perfectly understood now in talking of
Smith's or Brown's, instead of Smith's farm or Brown's
shop.

Canon Taylor suggested that the suffix -ing, besides its
patronymic sense, sometimes bears a topographic one,
and instances Leamington, meaning the ttin — town — of
the dwellers on the river Learn, just as the Vikings were
the people of the great vik. He did not mention upon what
evidence he was going, and the analogy of Cheltenham —
the place on the Celt — seems preferable. Notice, how-
ever, must be made of a class of village names in which
the syllable -ing occurs which we should go very far
astray in considering to be patronymic. Two very familiar

84 NAMES OF PLACES

examples may suffice. Nobody can mistake the meaning
of Upham and Newton — the up or high dwelling and
the niwe or new homestead. Uppingham and Newington
are not so clear. They have nothing to do with children
of an imaginary Uppa or Niwe; they are simply the
nominatives Upham and Newton put in the locative case
— upan and niwan. So Upton, Highbury, Heeley are
in the nominative, of which Uppington, Hanbury, and
Henley are the locative form. Heeley means 'the high
lea or field,' Henley ' at or in the high field.'

It would be very easy to multiply examples of mis-
takes arising out of the survival of Anglo-Saxon de-
clensions suggesting false etymologies. In the East
Riding of Yorkshire is a place called Kilham, where the
river Hull wells out of the limestone. Here, as in
Durham, the suffix -ham is altogether deceptive. The
name stands in Domesday Book Killom, representing
cyllum, ' at the sources,' the locative plural of the Anglo-
Saxon cyl. Similarly Askham, also in Yorkshire, is ascum,
at the ash-trees, just as Acomb is dcum, at the oaks.
Hallam, from which the district round Sheffield takes
the name of Hallamshire, appears in Domesday as Hallun,
probably for Healun, on the slopes.

This locative case, which serves so often in modern
use as a nominative, appears in many languages. Most
of the very numerous names in Scotland and Ireland
beginning with Kit are compounds of till, the locative
case of ceall, a cell or chapel. So Kilmorey is till Muiri,
' at Mary's chapel ' ; Killantringan is till shant Ringain,
' at St. Ninian's chapel,' the s being silenced by so-called
aspiration. Sometimes the two cases supply alternative
forms of the same name : thus in Gaelic Cantyre repre-

APRIL 85

sents the nominative ceann tir, 'land's end/ while
Kin tyre is the locative cinn tir, ' at the land's end.'

Stress has been laid on the principle that place-names
are primarily utilitarian even among the Celts, who are
much more poetical than the Germanic race, and that
imaginative or sentimental explanations ought to be
viewed with extreme suspicion. But exception must be
made in regard both to superstition and religion, by one
of which always, by both often, human intelligence is
largely swayed. So it comes that fairies, devils, witches,
and ghosts figure pretty frequently in the topography,
especially of lands occupied by the Celt. Shakespeare's
Puck — 'merry wanderer of the night' — was feared in
primitive Ireland as Puca, and is commemorated in many
names such as Pollaphuca, Boheraphuca, and Carriga-
phuca — Puck's pool, road, and crag. Those who have
followed the chase in that paradise of fox-hunters, county
Meath, may remember a line of moderate uplands to the
south of Trim called the Shee Hills, 'shee' being the
correct pronunciation of the Gaelic sidh, a fairy, a word
which appears in countless place-names, among others
the well-known Glenshee in Perthshire. Herein the
terminal syllable is the same as in banshee — bean sidhe —
the female sprite that foretells death in a family by
wailing under the window.

Religion may be traced by its imprint upon the
whole circuit of the globe. The Spaniards used their
once tremendous sea-power not only in sweeping up
treasure and annexing continents but in driving the
heathen, on pain of death and worse than death, into
the fold of Holy Church; and they filled their charts
with the names of saints and articles of belief. On

86 NAMES OF PLACES

31st July 1498 Columbus sighted three mountains, which
he afterwards found to be united in one island. Recog-
nising in this a symbol of the Trinity, he named the
new land Ilha de la Trinidad, and Trinidad it has
remained after passing into British possession. The year
previous, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama had
discovered South Africa on Christmas Day, so he called
it Costa do Natal — Christmas Coast — and here again
British colonists are quite content with the name Natal.
In like manner a vast number of places bear the name
of Vera Cruz or Santa Cruz — True or Holy Cross; and
our own Captain Cook followed suit by calling places
discovered on Trinity Sunday by the names of Trinity
Bay (Queensland) and Trinity Island (Alaska). Other
British captains named new lands after the ships in
which they sailed, like ' Adventure ' Bay in Tasmania
and ' Fury ' beach in the Arctic seas.

The last name brings to mind a name on the Scottish
coast. Cape Wrath is usually associated in our minds
with the angry winds and violent seas which rage round
our northern shores ; but the name Cape Wrath bears no
reference to them, however appropriately it might do so.
' Wrath ' merely represents the Norse hvarf — a turning-
point — for it was there that Norse mariners used to put
their helms a-starboard, to run down to their possessions
in the Hebrides, which they, coming from the north,
called the Sudreyar or southern islands. Even this name
Sudreyar, though it became thoroughly inappropriate as
soon as the seat of rule shifted from north to south, has
not passed wholly into disuse. The diocese of Sodor and
Man was once wholly under Norse dominion — the title
Sodor is the ancient Sudreyar or Hebrides; but it is

APRIL 87

perhaps lucky for the prelate that he is not now expected
to conduct visitations throughout the whole of his nominal
diocese.

Names of Norse origin seem peculiarly liable to receive
a totally erroneous interpretation by assimilation with
English vocables. Encountering the name Fairfield in
the environs of a modern town, one may safely assign
their literal English value to the syllables, but it is far
different when you come upon it as the title of the hill
next to Helvellyn. The Norsemen had long sway over
the Lake Country, and Fairfield here is a corruption of
their name far fjall, sheep-fell, just as Faroe (without
the pleonastic 'Islands') represents Fcer-eyjar, sheep-
islands. Again, the title Biggar conferred on a town
in Lanarkshire conveys no hint of comparison in size
with its rivals, but is plain Norse by gg -garth, barley-
field, as may be easily seen by noticing the better pre-
served forms Biggarts in Dumfriesshire and Biggart in
Ayrshire.

To go further into the origin of place-names — to follow
the glimpses they afford of bygone races and their habits,
of wild animals, now rare or extinct, which once peopled
the forests carved by civilisation into farms — would lead
me to intolerable length. Let me wind up with three
cardinal principles to which he who embarks on a
somewhat fascinating study should ever hold fast.

First, let the simplicity of origin be assumed before
taking up the wild and poetical explanations which have
so much attraction for some minds, but which generally
have no foundation. When primitive, or at least im-
perfectly civilised, people settle in a new country, they
don't sit down and invent names for the different

88 NAMES OF PLACES

localities it becomes necessary to indicate. The names
suggest themselves from some characteristic of the place,
some incident or occupation, or some individual who
dwells in or takes possession of a tract. They come
without conscious mental effort, such as all men in-
stinctively avoid ; they alter under use in compliance with
well-known phonetic laws arising out of the unconscious
avoidance of physical effort in pronunciation, to which all
of us unwittingly yield.

Second, in nine cases out of ten place-names are
compound — made up, that is, of a substantive and a
qualitative. The first denotes the generic object — a hill,
a house, a river, a what not; the second some specific
attribute, indicated by a man's name or perhaps a beast's,
or by an adjective denoting position, colour, contour, or
some other characteristic. When the distinction between
these two parts has been settled, the first obstacle to
understanding the name has been overcome. Well, the
stress invariably remains on the qualitative syllable,
which, in English names, usually precedes the other.
Thus you say 6xford, Milnthorpe, Hanbury— not Oxford,
Milnthorpe, or Hanbury. You may rely on the fidelity
with which this pronunciation has been handed down in
each locality from generation to generation : it is a sure
key to the construction of the name, though railways are
apt to import obscurity into it. Thus Carlisle— coer
Llewellyd— being a Celtic name, has the qualitative last.
The natives call it correctly Carlisle, but railway-people
and southerners may be heard talking of it as Carlisle—
which is wrong.

As has been said, according to a general rule, the Celtic
qualitative follows the substantive; but there are ex-

APRIL 89

ceptions, and one of these may be cited to show how
faithful an index of the qualitative is afforded by the
stress. Morven and Benmore both signify the great hill
— mor Wieinn and beinti mor, and in either position the
qualitative mor, great, carries the stress. A misplacement
of stress may not seem to involve very serious conse-
quences, but here is a case in which not only is the old
meaning destroyed thereby, but a false one imported.
Kilmacolm, a village in Renfrewshire, with the stress
emphatically on the last syllable, is clearly cill mo
Coluim, the chapel of dear Colum[ba]. The railway com-
pany, having cause to erect a station there, choose to
print the name Kilmalcolm, and forthwith their servants
shift the stress to the penultimate — Kilmalcolm. Im-
mediately the sense alters ; it becomes cill maoil Coluim,
the chapel of the servant of Colum[ba].

Lastly, in pursuit of the origin of place-names let no
man be cocksure. Not long ago I rushed into print to
explain the much-disputed name of Torvalvin in Knoy-
dart. I had been to the place, a conspicuous rocky knoll
on the flank of a bare mountain. What could be clearer ?
— torr mhaoil bheinn, the knoll of the bare hill.1 See
what a plain word put me down ! It seems the name is
by no means ancient. It is not many years since a dumb
crofter lived under this knoll, named, like our old friend
Balbus of the walls, in Gaelic speech balbhan, and com-
memorated in Torvalvin, torr bhalbhain, the dumb man's
hill!

1 Mh and bh represent in Gaelic the sound of the English v.

90 HOW SALMON-POOLS AKE NAMED

XI

The contemplative man in pursuing his special recrea-
tion— angling — must often fall to speculating
salmon- uPon ^e origin of the names attached to
pools are salmon pools in a river. Often they consist
simply of the name of the adjacent land or farm,
as the far-famed Birgham Dub on the Tweed, associated
for all time with the treaty of Birgham, source of three
centuries of war between England and Scotland. Others
bear descriptive titles, such as, a mile or so below Birgham,
that excellent cast the Kirkend, where the river chafes
against the rocks on the English banks which support the
west end of Carhain church. But who shall unravel the
secret hidden in the names of other salmon -pools on
Tweed— Bloody Breeks, Flummie, The Webs, Jock Sure,
The Hen's Leg, and so on ? They are indelible ; so long
as men shall continue to cast angle in these waters they
will continue to use these names and never seek to invent
others.

Occasionally, at very long intervals, the need arises for
a name to distinguish a new pool from its fellows, and the
commonest, because the simplest, expedient is to associate
it with the lucky angler who first lands a salmon from its
depths. It is a sure road to immortality for that indi-
vidual, but not an easy one. Non cuivis contingit — new
salmon-pools resemble the pool of Bethesda in this, that
some other fellow generally gets there before you, and
that fellow's name will remain a household word for un-
numbered centuries. Just opposite Dryburgh Abbey is
a cast known as Jockie's Hole ; who this particular Jockie
was, none now may know or tell ; but Jockie's name is as

APRIL 91

sure of immortality as that of Walter Scott, whose last
resting-place is within a couple of hundred yards of
Jockie's Hole. Jockie earned fame, perhaps, by one of
those flukes which impart so much of its fascination to
the angler's craft, and perhaps I may be permitted space
to chortle mildly over a happy accident which has lately
brought similar distinction upon me.

Well, this narrative, at all events, begins with a blank
day. We had fished all one April day — a friend and
myself — without stirring anything on two of the best
beats of the river. The water was in perfect trim, we
knew there were fish in it — at least I felt sure they were
there — but the sun blazed fiercely from its rising to its
setting, and kept them down. Thinks I to myself these
are Norwegian symptoms — a full river and a blazing sun ;
why don't we adopt Norwegian precautions, fishing early
and late, and do our sleeping in the day-time ? My friend
would not hearken. He vowed the fish had not come up.
So next morning I sallied forth alone before 6 A.M. It
was the 20th of April (1901), so it was full light, but the
sun was still behind the shoulder of Lamarkan. The grass
was white and crisp with frost, and the water had fallen a
foot in the night.

A couple of hours later, by which time the sun was
high in the heavens, I was returning to breakfast with a
couple of lovely spring salmon in the bast basket, when
my path took me along the verge of a cliff overhanging a
rough stream which I had often eyed curiously, thinking
it a likely harbour for fish. But at the foot of the cliff
the water was thickly overhung with big alders, leafless
as yet, but presenting an almost absolute veto to any
attempt at fishing the place. No human being, I firmly

92 HOW SALMON-POOLS ARE NAMED

believed, was ever so foolish as to attempt to put a fly
over it ; even had he succeeded in doing so it was obvious
that he could not hope to secure a fish, supposing one
should hook himself, for the trees grew close and bent
low over the current, which sweeps deep and strong
along the near bank.

However, the devil is always at one's ear to suggest
easy roads to ruin, and albeit past experience has made
one very shy of listening to his suggestions, on this
occasion I lent him a willing ear. It would be a grand
thing even to raise a salmon where no man had done the
like. As to landing him time enough to think of that
later.

Gelui qui ria jamais eu ses moments de folie est
moins sage qu'il ne le pense. I felt I was doing a
very silly thing. Visions of a good breakfast awaiting
me at home presented themselves in glowing colours.
The utmost that could result from such a harebrained
attempt was to hook a fish and let him break the line,
and every angler must answer for himself whether it is
better to have hooked and lost than never to have hooked
at all. Salmon are probably unanimous against the
proposition. But the sun had not yet struck this part of
the stream ; it looked uncommonly ' fishy.' I descended
the cliff and found myself among the alder stems. By
clambering about twenty yards upstream I discovered a
grassy ledge in the rock face, about six feet by two,
opposite which was an opening in the screen of alders
some six yards wide. To cast was impossible, but I
managed to flop out enough line to let the current do the
rest, and the Black Ranger, which had done much good
work already that morning, was presently swimming twenty

O 2

APRIL 93

yards below me. Through the network of drooping
branches I saw a slight commotion. ' That 's him ! ' quoth
I, with better emphasis than syntax, and sure enough
a very vigorous fish was fast. Then I realised the full
hopelessness of my plight. Behind me was the cliff', a
sheer rock forty feet high ; to the right and left stood the
alders, making movement impossible in all directions save
one — namely, into the roaring stream. Meanwhile, the
salmon had made free with my predicament, and was
careering about in the pool fifty yards below. Twice,
thrice, I reeled him up into the strong water, and each
time he dashed away down stream. External help was
out of the reckoning ; the loudest halloo, even if it were
heard above the roar of the waters, could only fall on the
unsympathetic tympana of curlews and cock grouse ; and
as for landing that fish unaided, it was not to be done, for
I was standing on the only foothold between the top of the
cliff and the margin, and that was ten feet above the
water. Not a human soul was likely to pass that way
till the angler whose beat was there on the morrow. . . .
By Jove ! To-morrow 's Sunday ! I was faint with hunger
already. I should die of exhaustion before Monday. No,
bitter as it was to part with such a pretty fish, there was
nothing else for it, and I braced myself for the inevitable.
At least I tried to do so, and utterly failed. Never but
once have I had to pull deliberately on a fish till the line
broke, and that ' once ' has permanently tinged my char-
acter with melancholy. There was another way, but it
was not a seductive one. This was to try and cross the
water, which was of doubtful depth, undoubtedly cold,
very strong, and so rough that it seemed improbable a
man could keep his feet in such a torrent. The further

94 THE MAGNOLIA

bank was fairly open ; once over there and the fish was
mine, if the hook held. To attempt to land a fish on the
opposite side of a stream to where he is hooked is some-
times a risky experiment. The strain on the hook is
changed to the opposite direction to that in which it was
embedded, and often pulls it out. However, by this time
the salmon had tired himself, and was lying still in the
quieter water below me. I slipped cautiously down the
rock into the river, and straddling wide, the best way of
resisting a strong current, slowly felt my way into mid-
stream. The water turned out no deeper than /waist-high,
but it was mighty strong, very cold, and the bottom very
rough. I shall not easily forget the sense of triumph
with which I stood at last on the far bank. Hitherto the
balance of odds had been enormously in favour of the
fish ; now it was not less so on my side. In a few seconds
I had the gaff in him, a pretty twelve-pounder, and then
set out on the return journey through the stream to
regain the property left on the other bank.

That anonymous pool must henceforth bear a name, and
if there be justice in the affairs of men, that should surely
be his who killed the first salmon therein. Sic itur ad
astra !

XII

Bicycling one charming morning in April (1902) be-
tween Woking and Pirbright, I saw afar off
what I took to be a lofty white-washed gable
gleaming in the sunlight. A turn of the road shut it out
of sight; a few hundred yards further another turn
brought me close in front of this object. I dismounted
with a feeling akin to awe. Here was no gable built with

APRIL 95

hands, but a pyramidal tree loaded with great lily-white
blossoms, one of the fairest that ever eye of man beheld.
It is difficult to describe what I felt without seeming to
exaggerate ; doubtless it was enhanced by surprise from
the suddenness with which the winding road brought me
into the presence of such dazzling beauty. It had been
no cause for wonder had I found a crowd collected from
far and near ; the surprising thing was that not a soul
seemed to care to step a few yards out of the way in
order to enjoy the marvellous display. We spend lavishly
in tawdry street decoration on occasions of rejoicing;
quite right too, though the effect obtained is often no
more than so-so ; but here was a scheme of decoration,
costing nobody a penny, but exquisite in effect, and
attracting no more attention than a common haystack.

Well, I was alone with this splendid tree. Solitude lent
an air of unreality to the scene. The cattle browsed
unconscious beyond the hedge; the birds were busy in
musical discussion about household affairs; not a living
creature had any attention to spare except myself.
Musing, I began to wonder why we do not ensure greater
regularity and frequency in such floral treats. The tree
was the common Magnolia conspicua — the Chinese species
which puts forth its large, fragrant chalices of ivory white
before the leaves develop. It is almost as hardy as a
horse chestnut ; for, although the gardening books recom-
mend it for the south of England, it succeeds perfectly
well north of the Tweed, and, where it grows, it never
fails to flower abundantly. Why is it not more commonly
seen? Our new allies, the Japanese, are intensely prac-
tical and business-like, yet they have their annual feast of
semi-religious thanksgiving when the cherry-trees come

96 THE MAGNOLIA

into flower. We need scarcely feel ashamed to take some
pains in securing better effects than are usually attained
in arboriculture.

If you ever visit Orleans on a bicycle, and extricate
yourself from the excruciating combination of tram-rails
and cobble-stones which render that historic town a petty
purgatory, you can run three or four miles north-east on a
fair highway to the Chateau de la Source. It is a country-
house of no particular architectural merit, but is greatly
to be admired for its exquisite situation. A high, steep
terrace separates the mansion from a lake, crystal clear,
source of a tributary of the Loire. Calling one spring
morning — voild des annees — at the lodge of this chateau,
we left our bicycles within the gate and committed our-
selves to the custody of a park-keeper of misanthropic
aspect. Evidently he had experience of the race of 'Arry
and 'Arriet, for, as he marched us in dead silence round
the demesne, he kept a sidelong eye upon our movements,
as though expecting one of these ' goddams ' to whip out
a knife and deface a smooth-rinded beech with cockney
initials. Not a word said he until, at the appointed place,
he stopped short and broke silence. ' Miroir du chateau ! '
quoth he, extending his hand over the lake, wherein, true
enough, the building was reflected with faultless fidelity.
The chateau, as I have said, is not imposing, neither does
it greatly gain by reduplication; but the scene was re-
deemed from commonplace, and given a lasting place in
remembrance, by reason of a noble magnolia on the narrow
terrace between the house and the lake. It was loaded
with snowy blossoms, and gave the miroir its principal
charm.

XIII

NEVER was the ' blackthorn winter ' better illustrated than
it has been this season (1902). The blackthorns T^ BIack.
began to deck themselves in their frosty splen- thorn
dour in the third week of April; the chilly nights and
cold winds, in which they seem to revel, have prolonged
their period of bloom almost to encounter the greater
glory of the hawthorn, so that, returning to the southern
Scottish uplands at Whitsuntide, I find the snow which
still whitens the higher crests reflected in the valley, and
along the rocky river-banks from the sloe bushes which
there do greatly abound. Moreover, the blossom is more
abundant than I remember to have seen it before ; to be
followed, doubtless, by myriads of sloes — ' buckies,' as the
country folk call them hereabouts — an unkindly fruit,
rejected alike by beast and bird. I doubt whether even
pigs, with their philosophic indifference to quality in
diet, could be induced to partake of sloes ; only man, the
omnivorous, indefatigable in search of novel sensation for
his palate, and reckless as to the ruin that may be wrought
in his digestive apparatus, has invented an astringent
abomination known as ' sloe-gin,' in which certain persons
profess to perceive delicacy of flavour. In my opinion it
were more rightly named ' slow-poison '—slow, but very
sure.

G

98 WHY CERTAIN BIRDS MOB OTHERS

XIV

Cuckoos are much in evidence on the moors just now.
certain * watclied a Pair yesterday flying in circles after
Birds mob a somewhat unusual manner, apparently the
male pursuing his mate, or (as the unprincipled
habits of the cuckoo render rather more probable) some-
body else's mate. Ever and anon as they flew some little
bird or other — here a lark, there a yellow bunting — rose
out of the heather or the thorn bushes, and pursued the
cuckoos till they were clear of that quarter of the ground.
What is the impulse or fascination which makes small
birds act in this way ? If they recognise the cuckoo as
the enemy which furtively deposits in an alien nest an
egg containing a creature which will ultimately destroy
the legitimate brood, why do they betray the neighbour-
hood of their own nests by flying out in such vociferous
flurry ? If, on the other hand, they are deceived by the
hawk-like mien and flight of the cuckoo (I have myself
shot a cuckoo in mistake for a sparrow-hawk), surely the
instinct of self-preservation should prompt them to lie
low, but neither for cuckoo nor hawk will they do so. On
the contrary, they hang upon the enemy's skirts so long
as their power of flight enables them to do so. Their
hatred seems to overcome their discretion ; they are will-
ing to risk the sparrow-hawk's swoop for the gratification
of uttering their execration so near that he cannot fail to
hear it, and to be annoyed.

I never could think of an explanation of the similar
manifestation of feeling by rooks towards herons, until
it occurred to me that possibly herons, in times when fish
and frogs are hard to come by, may conceive an un-

MAY 99

hallowed hankering for newly hatched rooklets. I have
not been able to verify the suspicion, but some such
ground probably exists for the inveterate antipathy enter-
tained by the population of the rookery for that of the
heronry. It is a common thing at this season to see a
heron closely pursued and evidently much annoyed, if not
alarmed, by one pair or several pairs of rooks. The rook,
although his wing is round and the primaries are set very
open at the points, is very powerful and active in flight,
and when excited by the presence of a heron performs
daring feats of wingmanship.

XV

Some authorities have pronounced that long, pointed
wings are essential to great powers of flight, but
there is another bird, the lapwing, whose wing
is designed on the same plan as the rook, and is no mean
aeronaut. Not only can lapwings, like rooks, undertake
exceedingly long flights, but they often remain at great
heights for a long period — an hour or more — for no con-
ceivable reason but for the pleasurable exercise of their
pinions. The lapwing, too, a gentle, inoffensive creature
by nature, carries a warlike front against creatures which
it suspects of designs upon its eggs or young. Arms it
has none, for its soft bill and feeble feet are impotent to
wound ; yet have I seen a pair of lapwings drive a pair of
marauding black-backed gulls clean off the bit of moor-
land where the lapwings had their nest. The gulls, six
times the bulk of the lapwings (a full-grown blackback
covers six feet in span of wing), can have had nothing to
fear; their powerful beaks would have made very short

100 LAPWINGS

work of their assailants could they have caught them;
but the lapwings were too nimble for them; shrieking
wildly, they dashed headlong at them, whirled away, and
returned to the charge with such bewildering rapidity
that the great birds sullenly relinquished their hungry
quest.

More than once in these notes I have expressed appre-
hension lest the increasing practice of killing lapwings and
sending them to market, added to the greatly increased
demand for their eggs, should seriously diminish the
number of these most useful birds frequenting' our arable
land. I have always maintained that taking their eggs
was legitimate and harmless, because the birds, having
lost their first laying, produce another which has a better
chance of protection from the growth of young corn and
other herbage. An interesting corroboration of this
comes from a correspondent in Lanarkshire, who testifies
to the extraordinary diligence in taking plovers' eggs
which has been shown of recent years owing to the good
price offered by poulterers. At first, he says, he felt
concerned lest the birds should become less numerous in
consequence, and he was as much puzzled as pleased to
find that the reverse has been the case. Careful observa-
tion has convinced him that, so far from diminishing in
number, the spring flights of lapwings — that is, the lap-
wings which arrive in Lanarkshire to breed — are steadily
becoming larger. The solution which he offers of this
apparent paradox seems a reasonable one. He suggests
that in days when nobody sought for plovers' eggs the
birds were at liberty to sit upon their first laying, which
is generally in the latter half of March. Many of these
early eggs were destroyed by frost ; the parent continued

MAY 101

to sit upon them so late that her power of producing a
second clutch of eggs was gone ; whereas, nowadays, when
nearly all the first laid eggs are taken, the birds go off and
lay again under more propitious circumstances. If this
be so, we may eat our plovers' eggs with a clear con-
science ; but still, not only in mercy but in self-interest,
county councils would do well to prohibit the slaughter of
lapwings, because it is the winter flight, the birds which
are now breeding in more northern latitudes, that confer
most benefit upon our farmers by the destruction of grubs
and mischievous insects.

XVI

Talking of lapwings, has it occurred to many people to
notice the strange indifference with which the plovers,
peasantry of most parts of the British Isles Eggs and
regard some of the articles which find a ready
sale in cities as delicacies ? This is the more remarkable
in the case of things like plovers' eggs, which any country
boy may collect for himself. Of course, the high price
which plovers' eggs now command, and the numerous
agencies throughout the land where the price may be
obtained, suggest to the said boy to sell rather than to eat
the eggs. But the high price is an affair of recent years
— at least in certain remote parts of Scotland with which
I am well acquainted; and I think I may affirm with
certainty, that at no time within the last half-century did
plovers' eggs form any part of the cottagers' diet, nor, for
that matter, of the farmers'.

Plovers' eggs are followed by the later and richer
luxury of the eggs of the black-headed gull (Larus
ridibundus). This bird breeds in dense colonies on the

102 PLOVERS' EGGS AND OTHERS

shores and islands of certain lakes, and sometimes, where
no lake now remains, upon a moss which has grown up
in the bed of some primeval sheet of water. Thousands
of years may have passed since the ancestors of these
gulls, attracted to such a spot by the expanse of sparkling
waters, chose its banks as their breeding-ground. Now,
it is well known how conservative most birds are in
haunting the same locality, even after its physical
features have undergone sweeping change. Professor
Newton has recorded an instance of this characteristic
in the stone-curlew (Odicnemus scolopax), perhaps of all
British birds the one that most affects bare and open
wastes. From immemorial times they had bred upon a
heath at Elveden, in Suffolk, whereof many years ago
some three hundred acres were planted. A pair of stone-
curlews continued to nest on the traditional spot long
after it had become the centre of a flourishing woodland.
Even so, these black-headed gulls continue to lay their
eggs in sociable communities upon what were once the
shores of and islands in a lake, notwithstanding that the
formation of peat has filled up that lake, and dry heather
now covers the expanse where once the wavelets glittered
and tinkled.

Nothing is easier than to collect the eggs of these gulls,
for they are laid closely over a limited space of ground,
and have not to be painfully hunted for like those of the
less sociable lapwing. The yolk is larger and of a richer
orange than in the plover's egg ; the flavour is much the
same : yet have I seldom heard of shepherds and moor-
land cottars supplementing their monotonous fare with
these seasonable delicacies. Nevertheless, the eggs of
black-headed gulls are finding their way to the market in

MAY 103

increasing numbers. There has been a regular trade in
them from Norfolk for many years. Mr. Stevenson, in
the fourth edition of Yarrell's Birds, describes the pro-
cess of collecting them at Scoulton : —

' Two men are employed to collect three days a week, pick-
ing up every egg they can find, and generally at the rate from
1500 to 2000 a day; but when in full laying and left undis-
turbed for two clear days, between 3000 and 4000 have been
taken in one day. From 10,000 to 20,000 eggs have been
obtained in this manner in different seasons. In 1870 the eggs
sold on the spot at 9d. to Is. the score.'

In some northern counties the eggs of black-headed
gulls have received protection from county councils, under
the Wild Birds Preservation Act ; but in one instance, at
least, this protection has been withdrawn this year, owing
to the excessive increase of the species.

XVII

The melting of May into June, especially if accom-
plished under weeping skies, was Christopher ,Twi3rt

North's idea of the angler's halcyon. But spring and

. i Summer

Christopher had trout-fishing in view: the

salmon-fisher has cause to regard these weeks as a kind
of interregnum between the run of early fish and the
coming of grilse. In most rivers the survivors of the
spring fish have become worldly wise, wagging their tails
softly and derisively winking (so far as creatures without
eyelids can be understood to wink) as Jock Scotts, Silver
Grays, Dun Turkeys, and Blue Doctors continue to float
and skim, jerk and wobble overhead. Not a few of these
fish have twinges of toothache as they behold the well-

104 'TWIXT SPEING AND SUMMER

remembered frauds; wind, sky, and water may all be of
aspect most auspicious, yet the angler often returns at
night with a burden on his shoulder less by the weight
of a vanished luncheon and a drained flask.

Howbeit, some rivers are exceptionally favoured, into
which salmon continue to run all through May and June,
and it was on the last day of the former month thac I
set out betimes to tempt fortune on the upper waters of
the Cree. This river, recently purged of all netting, and
reserved by an association of six members entirely for
angling, flows into the Sol way Firth through a tidal
channel eight miles in length, and is formed by the con-
fluence of the Minnick with the Cree proper eight miles
or thereby above high-water mark. The Minnick, flowing
from a group of deep lochs in the folds of the forests of
Buchan, is the larger of the two confluents, and runs
with a current as clear as any chalk stream ; the Cree, on
the other hand, strained from a vast expanse of peat
moss and moorland in south Ayrshire, is clear also, but
with the clearness of strong tea — golden brown in the
shallows, dark as onyx in the rocky linns. For some
occult reason, ten fish ascended the smaller confluent in
the spring of 1900 for every one that entered the nobler
Minnick. The course of the Cree for several miles above
the junction is exceedingly troubled ; the river flows
between precipitous cliffs, tumbles over huge boulders,
and sleeps for brief intervals in profound, black abysses
locally known as linns. At the top of about three miles
of such a channel a formidable fall opposes itself to
ascending fish, only to be negotiated by them under cer-
tain conditions of water through an imperfect pass carved
in the solid silurian rock under direction of Frank Buck-

MAY 105

land of happy memory. Immediately under this fall, and
for some hundreds of yards below it, salmon collect in
great numbers ; you may see them lying on the bottom
like motionless shadows, or roving restlessly about, dis-
contented with their quarters, and pining to get to their
beloved birthplace above the barrier. Why they should
so desire is one of the inscrutable traits of salmon nature.
True, there are good spawning-grounds up there, but this
is but the month of May, and there is no business to be
done on the shallow ' redds ' before the end of October at
earliest. The fact is, salmon are like human beings and
every other creature ; they have an unconquerable long-
ing to get ' home,' and home is the place one remembers in
childhood. It might be supposed that to a cold-blooded
animal the sparkling blue sea were preferable to narrow,
tepid pools during the summer heats ; anyhow, that more
comfortable lodgings might be found in the ample lower
reaches of the main river. Not so. The salmon resorts to
the sea because there alone can he find provender to sate
his prodigious appetite ; so long as that appetite is in
good repair he suffers the inconvenience of salt water, and
is content to run hazard of porpoises, seals, and other
formidable oppressors ; but no sooner has he eaten his
fill of herrings and other fine fare, and his skin is
stretched to its utmost limit, his muscles crammed
with enough nutriment to carry him through a long
physiological fast, than his thoughts turn homewards, the
salt becomes intolerable to him, and he craves the pure
fresh volume of [his native river. That seems to be his
motive in leaving the sea; but why he should run
through the great river pools and hurry impetuously into
the small head-waters, often ludicrously disproportionate

106 'TWIXT SPRING AND SUMMER

to his own bulk, is one of those problems which still
await solution.

It may be safely predicated of the salmon that he has
no eye for the picturesque. That salmon-pools of good
repute are often part of a lovely prospect is a mere
accident, arising out of the beauties which running water
carves out of the solid earth. Just as often as not the
favourite lodge is known to the angler by some such land-
mark as a barbed-wire fence of evil aspect separating a
vulgar turnip-field from a flat, uninteresting pasture. But
here, in the upper waters of the Cree, no fish could find an
unlovely lodging if he would. Of all Scottish salmon-
rivers known to me, if it be not the Findhorn, none
excels these half-dozen miles of water in romantic beauty
and charming association of rocks and trees, ferns and
flowers. We are scarcely one hundred and thirty feet
above the sea, nor a dozen miles from a railway, yet the
solitude is perfect; no plough has profaned the virgin
moor; of houses, after passing the little kirkyard and
manse of Bargrennan, deeply cushioned in a coppice of
native oak, there are none to be seen, save a farmhouse
on the distant sky-line and a far-off shepherd's cot or
two. The very flowers are different from those of the
lower ground ; here no marsh-marigold gilds the marges
of the burns; its place is taken by the globe-flower
(Trollius), prized by tasteful gardeners among the choicest
alpines. Its blossoms are of pure, true gold, without the
ruddy alloy which tinges the sovereigns of our mint and
the flowers of marigold. Primroses and blue hyacinth
sheet the banks here, as on the plain, but it is the little
mountain cudweed that stars the rocks with snowy
plumelets, closely resembling in miniature its near

MAY 107

relative, the Swiss edelweiss. It is the last day of May,
yet the oaks have no more than a thin veil of golden
olive foliage ; ill betide the fugitive monarch who should
trust to one of them for hiding in this backward season.
As for the ash, it stands naked and wintry still; posi-
tively the only visible change it has made consists in the
strong sunshine of the past week having mellowed its
black buds into olive green. What a true eye Tennyson
had for the aspects of nature, and what dainty use he
made of his knowledge of them ! Thus of the Princess —

' Why lingereth she to clothe herself in love ?
Delaying, as the tender ash delays,
To clothe herself when all the woods are green.'

All this is very fine, no doubt, but, quoth the reader, it
has nothing to do with salmon-fishing. No, but he must
be either more or less than human who can cross the
moor this glorious morning, when spring is making a last
surrender to summer, and pay no heed to all the loveli-
ness around. Indeed, one may talk or scribble about
salmon-fishing to-day ; but fishing for salmon might seem
to one who has no experience of the Cree an enterprise
as bootless as might be. For the weather has been for a
week in the mood which meteorologists are pleased to
term anticyclonic : not a drop of rain has fallen, it has
been intensely hot, and the river has shrunk to summer
level. Cattle are collected ostentatiously on the tops of
all accessible knolls — sure symptom of settled weather —
and the morning haze gives token of speedily yielding to
an imperious sun.

Nevertheless, there is known to be good store of fish
in these deep, rocky pools, and there are certain throats

108 'TWIXT SPUING AND SUMMER

and channels where the current is always brisk, even in
the most prolonged drought; therefore a small double-
hooked Black Ranger, on fine but strong gut, directed
by a light fifteen-foot rod, is soon swimming where the
water flows swift and dark between two precipitous cliffs.
Before following it in its fortunes, let me pause to notice
two points in the salmon-fisher's equipment about which
professional opinion is deeply divided.

First, as to the aforesaid double hooks. There are men
of experience and skill who have given them fair trial,
yet have discarded and decry them. They distrust
them, alleging that one of the hooks often forces the
other from its hold. It is not easy to perceive what
evidence could be had to bring them to that understand-
ing, but they are quite convinced about it; and the
tackle-makers tell me that, except for the Tweed, double-
hooked flies are seldom ordered.

Well, to me this is wholly incomprehensible. It is very
many years since I first used double hooks, and as I used
to dress all my own flies in those far-off days, I had every
reason for prejudice against the novelty, because as every
fly-dresser knows, it is much easier to turn out a tasteful
article upon a single iron than upon a double one. But
I soon became convinced of their merits, and remain so
to that degree that I never feel happy in using a single
hook of less than an inch and a half in length. Short of
that, a double hook of the square Fennel bend anchors
itself so securely in the fish's mouth, that in playing him
one is absolved from that gnawing anxiety about the
single steel cutting its way out, which embitters some of
the most exciting passages in the sport. In this season
down to the present date (1st June), I have landed thirty-

MAY 109

five clean salmon with the fly, besides very many kelts ;
only in one single instance, that of a small kelt, has a fish
escaped from double irons after being hooked and held.
On the other hand, I must be just to single hooks by
mentioning that half of these fish were taken early in
the season upon large single hooks. It serves no good
purpose to use double hooks when the fly exceeds an
inch and a quarter in length.

As to the other point, the particular pattern of fly, I
have mentioned that I mounted a Black Ranger, but
that was not from any predilection for that special lure,
but because it happened to be the first that came to hand
of what seemed an appropriate size. It is no exaggeration
to declare that any other fly of similar proportions would
have been put on duty with exactly the same degree of
confidence. The greater the number of fishing seasons
behind me, the less credence can I yield to the supposed
preference of salmon for one fly to another. Why, what
is the lesson to be learned from this very river Cree?
Just this — that it is fishers, not fish, that are discerning
in dubbing, silk, and feathers. When I first fished this
river, thirty years ago, I was warned against displaying
anything but ' Cree flies ' — sober-hued articles, with bodies
of black or brown mohair and wings of gray mallard or
dun turkey. At the utmost, a blue- throat hackle was the
extreme limit of brilliancy which could be sanctioned.
Time went on ; gradually the spirit of innovation crept
even into this remote corner of Scotland ; some restless
and headstrong reformer, setting at naught the warning
of local wiseacres, caught salmon, first with a Poynder,
next with a Childers, and forthwith Poynder and
Childers were found in every fly-book by the water- side.

110 'TWIXT SPEING AND SUMMER

Neither of these flies are very startling combinations, but
the matter did not stop there. The leaven spread until
at the present writing not the oldest gillie on the river
would utter a murmur though you should choose to
attach to your line a Parson, a Wilkinson, or whatso-
ever hath more gaudiness and glitter than these ; nay, he
would be exceedingly apt to suggest a Jock Scott off his
own bat. In fact, Tweed flies are all the fashion on the
Cree now, although the time was — in the days of William
Scrope, for example — when boatmen upon the Tweed
accounted for the decline in the salmon-angling by the
hypothesis that the use of bright Irish flies terrified the
fish and drove them back to the sea. Who is there that,
reflecting rationally as an intelligent man (no synonym
for angler), can seriously doubt, if the Tweed or the Cree
were fished again with the infallible dun-turkey wing of
our grandsires, to the exclusion of all modern meretricious
wares, that the number of salmon taken by the fly would
be exactly the same as if all the resources of Messrs.
Wright and Forrest were put in action ? Not I, i'faith !
for here is the secret of local patterns. They took their
rise in far-off days, when locomotion was difficult and
fishers were few. The man who took most fish was generally
in humble circumstances, living by the water-side. His
flies were fashioned out of the material at his hand — the
gray drake or the 'bubblyjock' at his door furnished the
wing ; chanticleer on the dungstead yielded hackle ; and
as for the body — why, a few strands from a piece of old
carpet gave one that could not be beat. As salmon-fishing
became more and more a rich man's fancy, these homely
patterns rose into fame and were considered indispensable
to success ; even to this day the very first question asked

MAY 111

by nineteen out of every twenty anglers upon visiting a
new river is ' What are the right flies ? '

Meanwhile, should the fancy ever revert to the ancient
type of fly, one at least of the old patterns will be very
hard to supply— to wit, the dun-turkey with light tips.
The bird which gave the feathers is wellnigh extinct.
Five-and-twenty years ago the chances were in favour of
the 'bubblyjock ' in a Scottish farmyard being of a sandy
brown, with the edge of each feather upon his back
passing into whitish fawn. Nowadays one never, or
hardly ever, sees such a bird. All turkeys show the dark
metallic tints of the wild American strain. It is interest-
ing, by the bye, to note that Ireland was the birthplace of
brilliant salmon flies. To this day one hears them spoken
of in Scotland as ' Irish patterns," which may be taken as
evidence that the artistic sense of the Celt is not yet ex-
tinct, and that the delight and skill which he displayed of
yore in beje welling the pages of the ' Book of Kells ' now
find gratification in dainty designs for salmon flies.

Well, I have wandered unpardonably from my text ; let
me hark back to the Linn of Bargrennan, where I made
great parade of preparation for business. It is an
awkward place to fish, for the cliffs are high and perpen-
dicular, and stand-points are few and far between. How-
ever, I clambered down to a secure foothold, and began
flinging the little Ranger, gradually lengthening the line
till the power of the fifteen footer was about at its limit.
Then something happened: the line stopped — a sunken
rock, was it ? No ! There was a delightful sensation of
kicking — gentle at first, then more vigorous. In him!
and the next question was how to get him out of that
swift, deep water. Well, the fish must tire himself first ;

112 THE BLACK-BACKED GULL

and he did his utmost in that respect, for he buzzed away
forty yards down the canon, and round a bend out of sight,
where he set up a prodigious splutter that I could hear,
but could not see. It was an anxious quarter of a minute,
for I was a fixed point, unable to stir from the ledge
where I stood, and if the single gut happened to catch on
a rock angle, all would be over for the day, seeing that
the sun was on the point of coming out strong.

It is well to bear in mind that if you want to coax a
salmon up-stream when he is pushing into a dangerous
neighbourhood, the surest way to do so is to keep a very
light pressure upon him. Where there is notiiing to fear,
never spare him ; from the first moment he is hooked put
every ounce of strain upon the tackle that you safely can.
But if a fish threatens to leave a pool whence you cannot
follow him, just feel him and no more, till he returns to
the place where you rose him, which he will usually do if
he does not catch sight of you. These tactics answered
in this instance. Foot by foot my fish moved upwards
again ; then there was a scurry and a tussle on a short
line. There was no shallow to tow him into, but he gave
a chance as he lay for a moment exhausted on the surface:
stooping down, I put the gaff gently over his back, drew
it firmly home, and scrambled up the rocks, dragging with
me as pretty a little fish of eight pounds, fresh from the
sea, as a man might wish for.

XVIII
Gulls are very busy on the shallows during the drought,

The Black- chiefly the pirate black-back and the black-
backed GUII headed< The latter bearg a fairly good charac_

ter minnows are his delight, though he may not be

MAY 113

scrupulous to a scale in a matter of young salmon fry,
and floating flies provide a great deal of his daily diet. But
the black-back's character is beyond redemption, and he
takes a heavy toll of salmon smolts on their way to the
sea. The migration is at its height just now, and yester-
day I watched a pair of these handsome rascals busy at
work on a convenient ford. Presently, through the glass,
I saw one of them had seized something bigger than a
smolt. A lively struggle went on in the shallow water ;
then up came Sir Black-back's head, his powerful yellow
bill firmly clasped upon an eel about six or eight inches
long. Firmly, but not firmly enough; the eel twisted
itself round the bill, then round the bird's snowy neck,
which gave it a fulcrum, so that it drew itself out of the
vice and dropped into the water. Up went the gull on
the wing and pounced on its quarry afresh; the same
thing was repeated again and again. At last the luckless
eel was pinched into comparative weakness ; still wriggling
vehemently it was swallowed whole ; the gull flapped off"
heavily to a rock hard by, and sat there enjoying, no
doubt, ecstasies of gourmandise unknown to those who
have never swallowed an eel alive.

June

XIX

STRICTLY speaking, a city of one water only; but so in-
A cit of Seni°usly nas ^i13 compliant river been dammed
many here, sluiced there, coaxed into a hew channel
on that side, and wheedled into a dozen conduits
on this, that one cannot go far in the streets without hear-
ing a gurgle or a rush, and, peering over the brick parapet
beside the way, beholding a limpid current, wherein great,
pale trout lie fanning themselves among the waving
water- weeds the livelong summer day. . It is well for
Winchester that the Itchen has its reservoirs so deep in
the chalk ridges that the rain falling on them in winter
does not find its way into the channel till the following
summer. The destructive floods which scarify the land
and scare the dwellers therein only come after reckless,
greedy man has stripped the uplands of wood, placed
there to arrest the sudden glut of water. The mighty
sponges of the chalk he cannot spoil — only nibble them
into pits here and there, or scratch them with railway
cuttings. So the Itchen flows on now with much the
same current, liberal through all summer drought and
committing no excesses in winter, as it did when the
Roman galleys first swarmed into its estuary.
Advancing up the river, the practised eye of the

JUNE 115

tribune of the Legion fixed on a bare chalk down, marking
the verge of the Andredesweald — the primeval forest,
stretching eastward a hundred and twenty miles — as the
best strategic position in the valley. This down men now
speak of as St. Catherine's Hill ; but the intrenchments
thereon were knoAvn to their Celtic garrison as Caer Gwent
— the white stronghold — and the invaders appropriated
both the fortress and its name. Thus Winchester owes its
present name to its native chalk, for when the Romans
marked out a fresh camp in the vale below the hill, they
found, as so many explorers have done, that it was much
easier to keep the old name than invent a new one, and
on their lips Gwent naturally became Venta — Venta Bel-
garum. Then, when these had run their day, came the
Saxons, who transformed it into Winte-csester — the camp
of Venta — Winchester.

It is a curious reflection that this quiet little cathedral
town, nestled so snugly in its leafy valley, was within an
ace, or two two's, or whatsoever most forcibly expresses
' all but,' becoming the capital of all England. It was the
royal city of Wessex : here Alfred the Great held his
Court; though of his palace of Wolvesey hardly any
traces remain at this day, for it was dismantled in 1155
by Henry IL, when he set himself to humble the pride
and cripple the power of Henry de Blois, brother of King
Stephen and Bishop of Winchester. But it was in Wol-
vesey that the 'Liber de Winton' was compiled by
Alfred's order— the origin of Domesday Book, remaining
the official statistical record till, as is said, it was destroyed
as useless on being superseded by the Conqueror's more
comprehensive survey.

Of Alfred's doings at Winchester the records are tolerably

116 A CITY OF MANY WATERS

ample, from the annals which he caused the monks of St.
Swithun's to compile. Of these, the original manuscript,
now in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,
was chained to a desk in Wolvesey Castle : tradition
affirms that the great king himself used to write in it
down to the year 891 ; and the book ever lay open, so
that all men who could read might trace therein the annual
register as it grew. This warrior king had a great rever-
ence for letters, and the fame of Winchester as a seat of
learning was heard afar. The Christian communities of
Ireland had got a long start in literature over those in
Britain ; they were not slow to take notice cf the favour
shown to scholars by Alfred. The voyage across St.
George's Channel was hazardous, by reason of the northern
pirates who swarmed there; nevertheless, in 891 came
three Scots— i.e. Irish— in a boat 'made of two skins and
a half,' with provisions for a week, who. landing in Corn-
wall, made their way to Alfred's Court at Winchester.
Their good Gaelic names stand in the chronicle to this
day — Dubslane, Maccbetha, and Maelinnum.

Doubts have been thrown on the story of King Alfred
and the burnt cakes, but it is as well authenticated as
anything in his reign, and Asser, the king's intimate
friend, is the chief authority for it. He adds (and both
Florence of Worcester and William of Malmesbury confirm
the strange story) that the swineherd Denulf, in whose
house the incident happened, was remembered by the
king after his restoration. Alfred having been struck by
the fellow's intelligence, directed that he should be edu-
cated for the priesthood, and in the end appointed him
Bishop of Winchester. But none of the deponents men-
tion how it fared with Denulf s wife, the chief personage

JUNE 117

in the burnt-cake episode. It is to be hoped she shared
her husband's elevation — for the Church had not departed
in those early days from the Pauline precept, that 'a
bishop be the husband of one wife.'

Alfred was a puissant soldier as well as a scribe, and a
good sailor to boot, as it behoved one who should hold
Wessex against the amphibious Dane. His crowning
victory over Guthorm or Godrun at Chippenhain in 878
resulted in the treaty of Waedmor, which established him
as King of Wessex, and of as much of Mercia as lay to the
west of the Danelaw — namely, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cam-
bridgeshire, Essex, Herts, and parts of the shires of
Bedford and Huntingdon. And thus was the kingdom
of England founded, with Winchester as the capital In
that city the Witenagemot continued to assemble ; thence
Alfred issued the Domboc, or code of Wessex law; and
thither, in 897, were brought to him the prisoners captured
from the fleet of the Danish usurper Hasting, to be
hanged on the walls of Wolvesey Castle. In this union of
Wessex and Mercia, London, the chief town of the latter
realm, was too busy a seaport to be overlooked ; but the
real day of London did not dawn till long afterwards.

The bones of the founder of the English monarchy have
been lost. They laid Alfred the Great in the Old Minster
of St. Swithun, where the Cathedral now stands ; but the
monks vowed that his ghost walked and gave them no
rest, so the remains were moved to the half-finished New
Minster, which had been founded just behind the old one.
As time went on, the proximity of these two minsters was
found to be too great a strain on the Christian love of the
brethren ; so the monks of the newer foundation migrated
in 1110 to a spot outside the city walls, where they built

118 A CITY OF MANY WATERS

Hyde Abbey and Monastery. Alfred's bones they carried
with them, and laid in a neAv tomb ; but it is our mournful
part to record, with what patience God may grant us, that
towards the close of last century the corporation of Win-
chester— Alfred's own city — being fired with the modern
craze for improvement, caused the ruins of Hyde Abbey
to be swept away, and used the material thereof for
building a new jail. Worst of all, they suffered a wayfar-
ing antiquary to carry off a certain stone of memory to
Corby Castle in Cumberland, where it may still be seen,
and the inscription thereon read — J

ALFRED REX: DCCCLXXXI.1

Thus the ashes of the great king were scattered, as well as
those of his doughty son Edward. But he still lives in
his writings, and space may be found to quote one of the
numerous interpolations he made in his translation of
Boethius ; for albeit it contains no more than a well-worn
reflection on a trite subject, such as thoughtful men have
ejaculated through all the ages, it throws some light on
the intellectual degree of the first King of England :—

' True friends ! I say that this is the most precious of all the
riches of the world. They are not even to be reckoned among
the goods of the world, but as divine ones ; because false
fortune can neither bring them nor take them away. Nature
attracts and limes men together with inseparable love. But
with the riches of this world, and by our present prosperity,
men more often make an enemy than a friend.'

The kingdom founded by Alfred endured for a century
and a half, and owed its destruction to one of the first
acts in the long struggle for civil supremacy between

1 Tlua on the authority of Dean Kitchin [ Winchester, 1893]; but the
date does not tally with that of Alfred's death, which took place in 901.

JUNE 119

Church and State. Winchester was then, as it remained
for centuries afterwards, the richest see in England; so
that in later years, when William of Edington was made
to exchange it for the metropolitan dignity of Canterbury,
he murmured with a sigh, ' Though Canterbury is the
higher rack, Winchester is the richer manger.' Yet
Dunstan, the leader of the monastic reformation of the
tenth century, proudly refused to become Bishop of Win-
chester, having a far loftier ambition to serve when King
Edred died. Edwy, his successor, was but a lad of sixteen
wh<n he ascended the throne, and Dunstan did not lose
a diy in asserting his authority over the new king.
Edw had made a love-match with his beautiful cousin
Elgr& ; but churchmen would not recognise the marriage,
whicl was within the forbidden degrees. No terms are
too h;rsh for the monkish chronicler Osberne to pour on
the grl — mulieris animum instigat Diabolus. On the
day oihis coronation at Winchester, the poor young king,
wearie with the long ceremony, refused to sit and drink
all niglt with the nobles and clergy, and, thinking it high
time tof join the ladies/ withdrew to his wife's apartments
in Wolesey Castle. Now a king that would not get
royally runk at his own coronation was no king for the
Saxons ;the guests were furious at this affront to their
Iceta coiuivia. Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury, was
present, nd ordered Dunstan and Bishop Cynesius to
bring thcr monarch back to the board. These, hurrying
off, burst ito the room where Edwy was sitting with his
queen ancmother-in-law, his golden crown lying on the
ground atSlgiva's feet. Dunstan delivered his summons,
with whic. the king flatly refused to comply ; whereupon
Dunstan, to probably had drunk already quite as much

120 A CITY OF MANY WATERS

as he could conveniently carry, made a most offensive
harangue to the ladies, seized hold on the king, rammed
the crown on his head, and, assisted by Cynesius, forcibly
carried him back into the banqueting-hall. Edwy had
plenty of spirit ; he chastised Dunstan for this outrage by-
stripping him of his abbotcy, and sent him into banish-
ment. But he was not strong enough to fight the Church .
all his kingdom north of the Thames slipped from his
grasp, and the virulent Odo pronounced a divorce betweer
him and his queen.

Ill-starred Elgiva! not content with thus ruining ler
fame, Odo caused her to be seized in her palace of W>1-
vesey, branded in her beautiful face, and banished to
Ireland. Worse was in store for her. ' After a whuV as
Osberne, with redundance of vituperation, ungallffitly
describes, 'her wounds being healed, but with the defomity
of her shameless mind still gaping, she left Irelanc and
came to Gloucester, steeped in the obstinacy of a tfack
heart.' Homo homini lupus: the vengeance a the
Church which she had incurred was wreaked with d/vilish
atrocity. Elgiva was seized ab hominibus servis ]n — by
men in the service of God — acting, that is, undeiorders
from Odo and Dunstan — and the sinews of her l^s were
severed, so that she might wander no more. Incrdible as
it might seem, were it not testified by the wrings of
Osberne, who was briefed by the clerical party, w young-
queen was actually hamstrung by these fiends. <r course,
to palliate such severity, Elgiva is made to appJr a dis-
solute, unworthy female ; but the testimony of pen who
could carry out such abominations as their owl annalist
describes is not worth much against the character of their
victim. She died under her torments ; and Edy himself

JUNE 121

— pro suis criminibus eliminate et misera morte damnato
— perished in a mysterious way, doubtless by assassination,
near Gloucester, where he had gone to meet his beloved
wife. It is a singular illustration of the prejudice which
besets ecclesiastical historians in dealing with affairs
involving the reputation of churchmen, that Dr. Milner,
Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District, an able, and, in
lay matters, an impartial chronicler, writing in 1798,
described Elgiva as ' a wicked woman, of great beauty
and high birth ' ; repeated (though he did not dare to trans-
late) the abominable gossip about the scene in Elgiva's
room, and vehemently vindicated the actions of Odo and
St. Dunstan.1 The whole passage is one of lamentable
insincerity, suppressing Osberne's statement that the final
punishment of the Queen was inflicted by 'men in the
service of God,' and throwing the blame on the thanes
' then in arms against Edwy.'

Dunstan, after holding the sees of Worcester and
London simultaneously, became Archbishop of Canterbury
in 960, and died in 988, having seen five kings on the
throne of England, and assisted in the removal of at least
one of them. One of the most formidable and unscrupu-
lous characters connected with the history of Winchester,
he was, with all his dark faults, a courageous and powerful
statesman— powerful because courageous. Had he lived
a few years longer, he might have averted or deferred the
ruin of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy; for it is certain he
never would have allowed ^Ethelred the Unready to enter
in 991 on the fatal policy of buying off Danish invasions,
which ended in the surrender of sixteen counties in 1010.

One other picture of Anglo-Saxon Winchester may be

1 History of Winchester, pp. 115, 116, and notes.

122 A CITY OF MANY WATERS

presented, showing the straits to which statecraft may be
reduced under feeble rulers. Good Bishop ^Ifeah,
scandalised by the nightly orgies of his liege lord, and
trembling for the disasters which such debauchery was
bringing on his country, used to steal out of the palace of
Wolvesey on winter nights, creep past the sentries, and,
plunging into the icy Itchen, stand up to his middle
singing penitential psalms till sunrise.

It availed not. The kingdom passed to lords of a
sterner race, and Cnut, to whose name we were taught
in youth to give the Latinised form of Canute, ruled
the whole Danish dominions from the ancient Saxon
capital. It is said that he returned thither after the
famous wave-compelling experiment on the sea-shore,
and, vowing never again to wear an earthly crown, hung
it on the cross above the high altar in the cathedral,
where it remained till the great cross itself, a marvel of
silver work, disappeared in the convulsions of the Refor-
mation. Cnut was a good friend to Winchester, ' having
decorated,' says Roger of Wendover, 'the Old Minster
with such munificence that the minds of strangers were
confounded at the sight of the gold and silver and the
splendour of the jewels.'

The coming of the Norman Conqueror found Win-
chester divided against itself, and the two minsters took
opposite sides, with very important results on their sub-
sequent fortunes. Queen Emma, having vindicated her
character against the charges of immorality in general
and complicity in the murder of her son Alfred in par-
ticular, by walking unscathed over nine red-hot plough-
shares laid in a row on the pavement of the cathedral,
died in 1052 in her own house at the top of the High

JUNE 123

Street. She was the widow of two kings, JEthelred and
Cnut, and the mother of two more, Harthacnut and
Edward the Confessor. The benefactions of that clever
woman to the Old Minster of St. Swithun had secured
the goodwill of many of the clergy to her Norman kins-
folk ; though Bishop Stigand, the friend of Earl Godwin,
remained stoutly English. King Edward, too, though he
hated his mother, and avoided Winchester as much as
possible during her lifetime, had encouraged the Norman
idea consistently, and had hospitably received Duke
William, entertaining him in his chief castles. There
was, besides, a strong feeling among the clerics of
Winchester in favour of the race whose culture, as shown
by their literature and architecture, was far ahead of
anything hitherto attained in Anglo-Saxon England.

But the New Minster espoused the national cause
against the foreigner. Under their stout abbot JElfwig,
uncle of the new King Harold, twelve monks and
twenty men-at-arms, well armed, well drilled, and with
suitable attendants, marched across the downs to join
their king at Hastings. After the decisive battle there,
when the victors came to strip the slain, they recognised
the monks of the New Minster by their Benedictine dress
under the mail — a circumstance by no means overlooked
by William of Normandy when, amid the plaudits of the
brethren of St. Swithun, he set up his Court at ' Guin-
cestre.' Not only did he cause his new palace to be
built within the precincts of the New Minster, but he
deprived the monastery of 20,000 acres of good land.

The next act of the Conqueror, however, put a severe
strain on the loyalty of his adherents in the capital.
This was the order for a severe inquisition into the extent

124 A CITY OF MANY WATERS

and value of all lands within the kingdom, to be en-
grossed in the ' Rotulus Wintonise '—the Winchester
Roll. ' So narrowly was it spied out,' whines the chroni-
cler Ingulph, ' as it is shameful to say, though the king
thought it no shame to do — that never a hide nor a rood
of land escaped mention, nor ox, nor cow, nor swine ; all
was set down in writing and laid before him.' So odious
and inconvenient was this proceeding to the commonalty,
by reason of the facility it afforded for purposes of taxa-
tion, that the register was never referred to under its
official title, but men nicknamed it the 'Domesday Book.'
Brave Stigand was deprived of his bishopric in 1072,
and imprisoned in Winchester Castle, where he died.
Walkelin, a relative of King William, was appointed in
his place, and seven years later began to build a new
cathedral — for the Normans despised the homely Roman-
esque of the Saxon architects. In 1086, the great structure
being ready for the roof, the bishop besought his royal
kinsman to supply him with timber from the forest of
Hempage, which then flourished about three miles from
Winchester on the Alresford road. The king gave him
leave to take as many oaks as his carpenters could cut in
four days ; whereupon the wily bishop enlisted a whole
army of carpenters, who, working day and night, hewed
down every oak in the forest. Now King William set
great store by his woods, and, riding that way not long
after, exclaimed 'Am I bewitched? am I out of my
senses? had I not once a most delectable wood here?'
When he heard of the trick played on him by the bishop,
straightway he fell into a great rage, such as it took all
Walkelin's tact and courage to assuage. The original
timbers of the oaks so craftily obtained without payment

JUNE 125

still remain above the stone groining added to the roof at
a later day.

In 1093 the new cathedral was finished, being the long-
est in England except St. Albans, and the relics of St.
Swithun and a host of other saints were stored within it.
William of Malmesbury describes how, in the year 1100,
some countrymen were seen coming from the west,
driving a frail cart towards the new church ; and ever as
they went blood dripped from it by the way, for it held
the body of the slaughtered King of England. Him the
monks huddled into the earth below Walkelin's great
tower, with much shame and little sorrow, for William
Rufus had died unshriven of his violence, profanity, and
sensuality. The horror of him was so profound that
nobody greatly marvelled when, seven years later, the
tower fell in with a crash upon the tyrant's tomb. The
beautiful gray tower — the same that gives Winchester
at this day its crown of glory — was built immediately,
with greatly strengthened piers of which the foundations
are no longer endangered by the ashes of the Red King.
The eye of one visiting the cathedral for the first time is
sure to be attracted by a row of large painted chests, set
on the top of the screen built round the presbytery in
the sixteenth century. These contain the bones of many
kings, queens, saints, and distinguished persons. In one
of them repose in strange companionship the remains of
Cnut and his Queen Emma, of William Rufus and the
Bishops Wina and Alwin. So the inscription on one
side of the chest informs us; on the other side is the
explanation of such a curious arrangement — namely
that 'sacrilegious barbarism' having mingled the dust
of princes and prelates in the year 1642, all that could

126 A CITY OF MANY WATERS

be collected was put promiscuously into a common
repository.

The hand of the Norman government had lain heavily
from the first on the monks of the New Minster, because
of the part they played at the battle of Hastings. In-
deed, what between the millers in the Soke and the king's
engineers making moats for the castle, the ecclesiastics
had been nearly drowned out of their quarters, and, as
mentioned above, they sought out a fresh site for their
monastery in 1110. William Giffard was then bishop,
and, as behoved any one who held that office ijn the royal
capital, was a discreet courtier. But the necessities of
Henry i. were frequent and exorbitant : to keep pace with
his exactions, Bishop William had to tax his episcopal
tenants so sorely that at last even the docile monks of
the Old Minster rebelled. For years they continued on
the worst of terms with their spiritual head ; but in 1124,
the king having exerted himself to bring it about, a re-
conciliation was effected in a scene worthy of the brush
of the late Mr. Calderon. The bishops sat enthroned in the
chapter-house; two by two the monks, stripped to the
waist as if for scourging, filed before him and besought
his forgiveness.

Bishop Giffard came to find his Court duties irksome
with increasing years, so he turned monk in 1128, and
was succeeded in the see by Henry of Blois, brother of
Stephen of Boulogne, who was afterwards King of
England. An astute, worldly prelate, he headed the
party of Stephen against that of Empress Maud, and
in the civil war which ensued most of Winchester,
including twenty-two churches, was reduced to ashes.
The luckless monks of the New Minster, having again

JUNE 127

espoused the losing side, had their new monastery of
Hyde burnt about their ears, and their great cross, the
gift of Cnut, was melted to a shapeless alloy of gold and
silver. But Henry of Blois befriended the Old Minster.
A great collector of works of art, he laid up vast treasure
in the cathedral, and richly enshrined there the relics of
many saints. But all these are scattered now, save the
great font of black stone, carved with figures illustrating
the miracles of St. Nicholas, still to be seen in the nave,
and a gold ring set with a sapphire, found when Henry's
tomb was opened not many years ago. A nobler and more
enduring monument he founded — the Hospital of St.
Cross — over the meadows to the south of the town, where
to this day the brethren refuse to no wayfarer a dole of
bread and a draught of ale.

With the death of Henry I. in 1135 the sun of Win-
chester turned towards its setting. Hitherto the ancient
city had remained the practical capital of the realm, the
favourite abode of the Court, the repository of the public
records, the chief seat of justice and learning. Also it
could boast of the chief State prison, and no less than
eight carnifices or executioners — a large percentage in a
town of some 10,000 or 12,000 inhabitants. Yet these
officials never enjoyed a sinecure : and the bishop had his
separate prison also, with its appropriate staff. In spite
of this there came a time when no free Wintonian could
be found to do a certain act of bloody injustice. Win-
chester was ever faithful to her kings, no matter how
bad they might be ; so it came to pass that her citizens
warmly supported the cause of Edward IL, even through
the evil days of his imprisonment and death ; wherefore,

128 A CITY OF MANY WATERS

Queen Isabella and Mortimer resolved to strike terror into
their hearts. Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, the
king's own uncle, lay a prisoner in Winchester Castle : him
they condemned to death. Early one morning he was led
upon the scaffold outside his prison, but not one of the
eight executioners could be induced to raise a hand
against a person so deeply beloved. All day the earl
stood there waiting till some one should release him from
his misery, till at last, in the evening (ad horam vesper-
tinam), they found a wretch in the Marshalsea who, to
save his own neck, struck off the head of the condemned
man.

But this is anticipating. In the meanwhile Winchester,
though still a royal residence, fell steadily behind in the
struggle for supremacy with the Mercian capital. In
importance, she had to own herself surpassed by London,
but hi precedence of dignity, not just yet. As late as
1269 her citizens vindicated their rights, though in rather
ambiguous fashion. Henry in. was to wear his crown at
a State banquet in Westminster ; the men of Winchester
claimed their ancient office as cupbearers, which the men
of London disputed. The easy-going king, to avoid
worry, decided to dispense with the ceremony of cup-
bearing altogether, on which the Londoners withdrew
in dudgeon, leaving the Wintonians to enjoy their
dinner.

But that was the last spark. A few years later and
the position to which Winchester had receded was
accentuated by an ignoble squabble for the second place.
When David, the brother of Llewellyn of Wales, was
executed at Shrewsbury in 1283, his head and quarters
were assigned for exposure in the principal towns of the

JUNE 129

realm. To London, as matter of course, went the head,
but the portion of next highest honour was the right
upper quarter. For this there was sharp competition
between Winchester and York. Edward I. decided the
question in favour of the southern town, whither accord-
ingly the grisly token was conveyed.

It was hard on the old city to yield her pre-eminence,
even though her double allegiance to Crown and Mitre
had sometimes brought the burgesses into dilemma. For
example, in 1243, when Henry in. was quarrelling with
Bishop Raley, he ordered the mayor to shut the town
gates in his face. The mayor obeyed, and afterwards was
heavily fined by the angry prelate for resistance to his
spiritual lord. Yet Winchester, though reft of its glory
as the metropolis, long continued the favourite residence
of the Court. The greatest of the Plantagenets set out
thence on his crusade in 1270, and revisited it immedi-
ately on his return in 1276, and was constantly there
until the year before his death. In February of that
year, 1306, he was hunting at Itchen Stoke, a few miles
up the river. His mind was well at ease, for the dream
of his ambition — the unification of Great Britain under
one crown — had been satisfactorily accomplished. John
Balliol was giving no trouble ; Wallace had been disposed
of the previous summer ; Edward himself had just held a
council in Westminster and assigned their posts to the
various Scottish magnates, including Robert de Brus, all
duly and doubly sworn to fealty ; the old king was well
entitled to take his pleasure in the chase. But messen-
gers brought startling news to him at Itchen Stoke.
Robert de Brus had slain John Comyn in the church of
Dumfries, and Scotland was arming. From that moment
i

13o A CITY OF MANY WATERS

Edward never knew another hour of tranquillity, nor ever
did he see his beloved Hampshire valley again.

In the thirteenth century pilgrims nocked in such
hordes to St. Swithun's shrine that Bishop Lucy, to
protect the regular worshippers in the cathedral from
annoyance, and even contagion, from the malodorous
throng, enlarged the church by an addition, with a separ-
ate entrance from the north transept, and closed on the
south side by the fine gates of wrought iron, supposed to
be the oldest specimens of that craft in England. Against
William de Wykeham, the greatest of Winchester's prelates,
who shall breathe a word of disparagement'? Had he
done no more than found and endow St. Mary's College
of Winchester, he had earned the blessing of us all, for on
that model have been moulded all our other great public
schools. William surely has proved not the least among
the prophets, else what inspired him to choose the simple
motto — Jftanners makjjth Jftan — as if he had foreseen how
the gentle ordeal of the public school was to supply the
hall-mark of courtliness, even in days when rapid money-
making raises of a sudden many above their birth level.
Yet is one sorely tempted to irritation because of the
disastrous activity of this excellent man. Would that in
his ardour for designing new buildings he had been con-
tent to leave the old ones alone ! Then had Winchester
Cathedral remained in the south what Kirkwall is in the
far north— a magnificent and perfect example of Norman
architecture at its best. But William of Wykeham had
begun his career as Chief Commissioner of Works to
Edward in., and, being an ambitious sedile, must needs
cut and slash at the Old Minster, obliterating Walkelin's
noble triforium, and ripping out the round-headed clere-

JUNE 131

story windows to make way for broad, shallow lights in
the modish Perpendicular style. It is true that Bishop
Edington had begun the mischief; for he had pulled down
the massive west front, and left ample funds, which he
directed his successor to apply to 'perfecting the nave.'
But the heartless transformation is indelibly associated
with the name of Wykeham, and it is ours to deplore the
thoroughness with which he carried it out. Luckily the
transepts remain undeformed, with their fine ashlar- work
and massive piers, although those supporting the central
tower have been cut away to an alarming extent.

It is cold comfort to read Dr. Kitchin's opinion that
' the result is that the nave is the finest, and perhaps the
most simple, specimen of Perpendicular work extant/1 Of
all the phases through which Gothic building passed in its
decline the Perpendicular is the most monotonous, and, so
Mr. Ruskin has declared, the most vicious. It is unknown
except in England, or as copied from England ; for Scottish
architects, save in the instance of Melrose, followed the
Dutch Flamboyant model. The effect of these great stone
gratings thrust in the place of the grave, round-headed
Norman arches, must have been excruciating when they
were new and glaring white. Now we suffer them gladly, in
their silvery, time-worn tones, and even Edington's paltry
west front, viewed down the paved avenue of lofty limes,
looms solemn and grand. But still we repine at the craze
for novelty which altered the older and nobler design.

Sadly as the Old Minster was marred by Wykeham, it
was to suffer far worse things under Bishop Home in the
sixteenth century. Not that he meddled with the archi-
tecture : he was not going to spend more than would keep

1 Winchester. By G. W. Kitchin, D.D.

132 A CITY OF MANY WATERS

the fabric weather-tight ; indeed to avoid the expense of
repairs he barbarously pulled down the fine Norman
cloister and chapter-house. But the day of doom had
come for images and relics and all pleasant pictures.
What was not of costly material was burnt, and what was
precious (and there was very much of that) was turned to
money. Even the great silvern cross over the high altar,
perhaps with Cnut's crown still on it, was torn down, and
to this day you may see the space it once covered, bare
and cold amid the rich tracery and carving of the reredos.
Probably upon no town in the realm was a greater out-
ward change effected by the suppression of the monasteries
in 1547 than upon Winchester, because no other town
could show such a large proportion of ecclesiastics in her
population. The Priory of St. Swithun, perhaps the most
ancient in England, the Abbey of Hyde, the houses of the
Grey Friars and Black Friars within the walls, and those
of the White Friars and Augustinians outside them in the
Soke, all were swept away, together with St. Mary's Abbey
of Benedictine nuns. And the spoliation went on briskly
after Henry VIIL had gone to rest, for Winchester was still
far the richest see in England. Innumerable mortuary
chapels in the cathedral and other churches in the town1
were disendowed, and their revenues either appropriated
to the Crown or bestowed on laymen. But Winchester
was loyal first and Catholic afterwards; she remained
faithful to the hand that smote her so sorely, and her
people thought that their reward had come when in their
cathedral Queen Mary was wedded, with splendid pageant,
to Philip of Spain. The days of Wintonian glory surely
would return with the old religion. They even went so

1 Dr. Milner enumerates ninety-two churches and separate chapels
existing in Winchester and its suburbs in the fourteenth century.

JUNE 133

far as to burn a single poor heretic, one Bembridge, as
became the citizens of a courtly town, just to show Philip
that he had not come to a barbarous, unfashionable land.
But the restoration went no further, and the only relic
remaining of Queen Mary's sombre presence is the carved
chair in which she sat at her wedding, still preserved in
the Lady Chapel.

Crafty, silly King Jamie proved too much for the Win-
tonian conception of royalty. Feeling nervous about the
plague in London, James had moved his Court to Win-
chester in 1603, and the eleven prisoners implicated in
the ' Main ' and ' Bye ' conspiracies were brought hither
for trial. They were condemned to die — among them the
gentle Raleigh — and one by one they were led out for
execution in front of Winchester Castle. Brooke, as head
of the ' Bye ' plot, actually was decapitated ; then on the
following days came the Lords Cobham and Grey, Sir
Griffin Markham and Sir Walter Raleigh. The king had
arranged a scandalous farce. He hoped to extract con-
fession from them under fear of death, and as each one
was about to lay his head on the scaffold, the groom of
the bedchamber stopped the proceeding in name of the
king. Raleigh's poem, the ' Pilgrimage,' was written at
Winchester on this occasion, when he was preparing for
what he believed to be certain death. It is as remarkable
for the beauty of the first stanza as for the mediocrity of
the other two : —

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation.
My gown of glory (hope's true gage !)
And thus I '11 take my pilgrimage.'

134 A CITY OF MANY WATERS

The shabby transparency of the stratagem was a rude
shock to the reverence of Winchester towards royalty, nor
had she in later years much opportunity of reviving it.

In 1632 Bishop Curie resolved to put a stop to the
custom which had established a thoroughfare through
the cathedral between the northern and southern parts
of the town. But he did so in a dignified and scholarly
fashion, not without some antique pedantry. Instead of
putting up a rude notice, 'No thoroughfare: trespassers
will be prosecuted,' he caused the huge buttress on the
south side of the church to be perforated by a footway
giving access through the close from one part of the town
to the other, and two curious Latin inscriptions to be carved
near its entrance. And, as if Latin should not be puzzling
enough to the townspeople, he cast the inscriptions in the
form of anagrams, thus : —

'^^ ILL PREC

\ \

AC ATOR

/ /

H VI

AMBULA KF3

— that is, ' Worshipper, walk this way ; traveller, that ' :
and again —

CESSIT COMMUNI PROPRIUM : JAM PERGITE QUA FAS

ACR S ILL CH

/ \ \ \ \

S A H A ORO

\ / / / /

ERV F 1ST F

—that is, ' Public right ceases : now go the proper way :

JUNE 135

let this way be consecrated to the choir ; let that one lead
to the market.'

In 1644, when King Charles's cause in the south was
broken at the battle of Cheriton, near Alresford, Waller
drove the fugitives right up to the walls of Winchester.
Six months later Oliver Cromwell battered the town and
took it, and his troopers wrought irreparable havoc among
the archives and other manuscripts in the cathedral
library. Four years later, in 1648, the city magnates
assembled to receive their king, when, on his melancholy
journey from Hurst Castle to Windsor, he arrived, as a
prisoner, to spend the night in the old town. The neigh-
bouring squires, too, rode in from the country, and the
people assembled in crowds, but the officer commanding
the escort sternly repressed the warm expressions of loyal
welcome they were burning to make.

The sun shone on Winchester once more at the Restora-
tion, and its forfeited bishopric was restored to it, for
Charles n. was often there, and his sinister brother, the
Duke of York, to boot. Livelier company, too, he brought
with him, and such as vastly helped to revive the local
trade. Men still show the spot in the garden behind the
canons' house where unflinching Prebendary Ken spoke
his mind about Nell Gwynne. Charles well loved the
quiet town, with its gray buildings and green alleys, so
fitting for flirtation, and gave command to Sir Christopher
Wren to build him a fine palace, after the fashion of Ver-
sailles. But he never lived to see it finished, the works
were stopped at his death in 1685, and there stands to
this day the ' King's House '—monument of the last act of
royal favour to Winchester.

Two years before the king's death, in December 1683,

136 A CITY OF MANY WATERS

there passed away in Dr. Hawkins's house at Winchester
the gentle spirit of one who has done far more than many
writers of loftier pretensions to throw a charm over the
scenes he knew and loved so well. Izaak Walton, Royalist
in sympathy, had yet managed to wend a peaceful course
through the manifold troubles he had witnessed, and
dying, as he wrote in his will, ' in the neintyeth year of
my age, and in perfect memory, for which praised be
God,' was laid to rest in the cathedral, where his grave is
not the least revered among the company of kings and
spiritual rulers housed in that ancient fane.

With Charles u. and Izaak Walton let me bring this
rambling survey of the story of Winchester to a close. It
were impossible within reasonable limits to do more than
touch here and there a salient point in it, to call over
more than a handful of the great names which crowd the
record, to mention more than a few of the buildings which
have resisted time and fire and — most destructive of all —
improvement. In this last respect Winchester may not
have suffered more in proportion than other ancient towns,
but then she had infinitely more to lose than most others.
Of her two castles and ninety-two churches, her bishop's
palace, her walls and gates, how comparatively little is left
to us ! The municipality has been as conspicuously active
of late times as they were negligent in the years when
their streets afforded a favourite playground for pestilence ;
when 'dyvers Stretes and Lanes of the sayd cyty, by
castynge of donge, duste, and other filthy thynges, are
very filthy and noyfull to all such as shall passe by the
same.' The black death in the fourteenth century and
the plague in 1666 raged with appalling malignity, as is
testified to this day by sundry green mounds over the

JUNE 137

grave-pits on the downs. Indubitably there were heavy
arrears in the matter of sanitation, and the town council
set about wiping them off with a will. But also they
wiped away a great deal that would be reckoned priceless
now. Besides the wreck of Hyde Abbey above mentioned,
and the loss of King Alfred's gravestone, we have to
lament the destruction in 1778 of the Hospital of St. Mary
Magdalene on Morne Hill, because vagrants used to
harbour there. Then the ruins of Norman Wolvesey,
where Saxon landowners used to deliver their annual tale
of wolves' heads, were broken up for road-metal, and these
hard-hearted reformers spared not even the city gate
towers, whereof three out of five were demolished between
1789 and 1791. By good luck two of them escaped — the
Westgate, dating from 1266, at the instance of some
citizens whose houses had been built against it; and
Kingsgate, because it bears over its archway the little
church of St. Swithun. One other monument was in even
greater peril — the Butter Cross, namely — a fine example
of fifteenth-century work, and a conspicuous ornament
of the High Street, adorned with a small statue of St.
Laurence. This had actually been sold by the commis-
sioners; but popular feeling was in arms against the
removal of such a familiar landmark, and the bargain was
cancelled. It is difficult to understand the callousness
which prevailed a hundred years ago in respect of the
preservation of historic monuments, and to reflect without
impatience on the vast number that were needlessly
swept away.

Still, heavily as Winchester has been plundered, sorely
as war has wasted her buildings, and not less sorely the
acts of ambitious prelates and energetic councilmen, much

138 A CITY OF MANY WATERS

— very much — remains. English holiday-makers, trooping
off to Continental towns, find no slum too foul to be
ransacked in search of architectural remains. That is
very well ; but it is also well to bear in mind that there
is a great deal to explore at home. Winchester perhaps is
less changed internally and in her surroundings from the
city that used to be the 'morning gift' of the kings of
England to their brides, than any other English town in a
similar time. No manufactures have sprung up to sully
her bright air or soil her brighter stream ; even the South-
western Railway approaches her reverently under screen
of deep cuttings in the chalk, and passes, scarcely seen,
outside her ancient walls.

Standing in the old Roman roadway at the Westgate,
and looking down the High Street across the Soke to St.
Giles's Hill, one sees few things, except the dress of the
citizens, that would have startled the understanding of
Philip of Spain's grandees, or Sir William Waller's Iron-
sides. Some of the shops have sported plate-glass, and
nearly all the roofs, alas ! are covered with Welsh slate,
that provokingly cheap and excellent material which is
swiftly ruining so many landscapes by superseding red
tiles ; but besides these novel features, the old town basks
in the summer haze with much the same aspect of leisurely
occupation and decorous quiet as it must have worn, but
for exceptional episodes, for centuries. The eight execu-
tioners provide no spectacle now, so people stroll up to
the station to watch the passengers in the London train ;
the bishop's proclamations are no longer of pressing
moment, but there are the evening papers to con over and
discuss ; and the old military feeling is kept astir, as befits
a city built on the lines of a former Roman camp, by the

JUNE 139

blare of bugles from the barracks, and the measured
tramp of troops passing to the drill-ground.

It has been shown how nearly the old capital of Wessex
became that of all England, and how it certainly would
have continued the capital if the Anglo-Saxon monarchy
had endured. Professor Skeat has indulged in some
curious speculations as to one result, at least, which
certainly would have followed had Winchester not yielded
the first place to London.1 'English as she is spoke'
would have been but a dialect, and the literary language
imposed by the capital would have been the speech of
Wessex, instead of, as now, that of Mercia with a dash of
Northumbrian. John of Trevisa, who wrote good Southern
English in 1387, had a poor opinion of Mercian and
Northern English.

'Also Englishmen,' runs one passage, rendered into modern
English, ' though they had from the beginning three manners of
speech, Southern, Northern, and Middle speech (in the middle
of the land), as they came of three manners of people of Germany
— none the less, by commixture, first with Danes and afterward
with Normans, in many of them the country language is im-
paired; and some use strange babbling, chattering, growling,
snarling, and gnashing of teeth. . . . All the language of the
Northumbrians, and especially at York, is so sharp, slitting,
grating, and unshapen, that we Southerners can scarcely under-
stand that language. I believe it is because they are nigh to
strangers and aliens that speak strangely, and also because the
kings of England always dwell far from that country. For they
turn rather towards the south country ; and if they go north-
wards, go with a great army. The reasons why they live more
in the south than the north may be, that there is better corn-
land there, and more people ; also nobler cities and more
profitable havens.'

1 Principles of English Etymology, 1887, p. 29 et seq.

140 A CITY OF MANY WATERS

One effect on our language, had the capital of England
been fixed on the southern instead of the northern side of
the Thames, would have been that we should have had a
much more elaborate system of grammatical inflexions
than at present, and instead of boasting of ourselves as
' fine fellows who dwell in their island,' we should have
said ' vine vellows that woneth in her iland.' Chaucer, as
a Londoner, had much to do with establishing the Midland
or Mercian dialect as literary English; but even his
influence has not expunged all the Southern forms : thus,
though we say ' fox ' instead of ' vox,' the female fox is
still known as ' vixen,' not ' fixen.'

Would you view Winchester aright ? go visit it in May
or early June. It is a fair city at all seasons, and the
wells of Itchen keep its valley green and fresh right
through the hottest summer. But it is in the early season,
before the uplands are parched, or the wealth of blossom
faded from wayside hedge and meadow, that it is fairest.
If you bicycle, it is well ; the roads generally are admirable,
though those who keep them delight in spreading an
excruciating coating of sharp flints over the ways across
the downs, such as no tyre yet devised by man can resist.
Almost better to hie to one of those excellent hostelries the
'Royal' or the 'George' (Winchester has never been without
its 'George' tavern for five hundred years) and hire a
hack ; for if the down roads are harsh, the turf beside
them is free and velvety. Rise early, when the birds are
singing in the cathedral gardens and the swifts are
wheeling in endless circles round the gray towers, and
ride out, before the dew is off, along the Alresford road,
between masses of lilac and laburnum tossed over the
wayside walls, past Headbourne Worthy, King's Worthy,

JUNE 141

Martyr's Worthy, Easton, Itchen Abbas, and so to Stoke
Charity and Bishop's Sutton. Each of these little villages
has its interesting church: St. Martin's of Headbourne
Worthy contains some rude work of Edward the Confessor's
reign; Martyr's Worthy and Easton have some good
Norman details, and so had Itchen Abbas till the hand
of the restorer overtook it.

And ever, as you ride, the sweet river will approach
and retire from the roadside, reminding you, if you are
an angler, that of all the trout that do swim in English
waters, those of Itchen are the most difficult to catch and
among the fairest when caught. But you can postpone
consideration of these till your return to the old shop
behind the Butter Cross, where Gossip Holland will dis-
play such delicate duns, such cunning quills, such irre-
sistible iron-blues as may hardly be matched by other
tyers, tie they never so wisely, and discuss with you the
season and sky most suitable for each. And while you
are in the saddle let your thoughts wander through the
long story of the past, for the name of each hamlet in
your way may be found far back in the chronicle of the
making of England.

XX

The prevailing 'chapparal' or scrub on the Pacific
coast of North America is chiefly composed of

* Ceanothus

several species of Ceanothus, a shrub all too
sparingly cultivated in our gardens. Most of the genus
suffer from winter cold in our midland districts, but they
are quite at home under the mild influence of the western
seaboard. They are nearly all autumn flowerers ; but one
kind, Ceanothus rigidus, comes to perfection before mid-

142 MIDSUMMER WEEDS

summer. A fine specimen formed the chief ornament of
Whitchurch in Hampshire when I passed through that
sequestered village ten days ago (1902). It covers half the
front of a house, from the ground to the eaves, with a
beautiful mantle of deep blue.

XXI

The food of the dipper or water-ousel has been a frequent
The Food of subject of controversy. Anglers suspect this
the Dipper lively bird of a partiality for trout and salmon
spawn. Professor Newton, if I remember aright, repels the
accusation. Lately (1902) I was a witness of the dipper's
expertness in catching fish. I was trying, with notably ill
success, to inveigle a salmon out of a certain pool. On the
opposite bank a hill burn flows into the river, rippling over
gravelly shallows, a favourite gathering-ground for min-
nows. My friend the dipper was just as busy fishing as I
was, and with better luck. He dashed repeatedly through
the shoal, using his wings as fins (this power, also, has been
called in question), now under water, now on the surface.
At last, after many failures, he caught a minnow, went
ashore with it, and having, I suppose, pinched the wriggle
out of the wretch, winged his flight to a cascade high in
the oak copse on the hill, where, no doubt, a little hungry
circle of Masters and Misses Dippers were awaiting their
fish course.

XXII

One need not be a disappointed angler to murmur

Midsummer against some of the normal phenomena of

summer in a country so thoroughly drained as

ours. The ground gapes ; pastures exchange their verdure

JUNE 143

for khaki-tinted tinder; delicate wild-flowers, such as
stitch wort and speedwell, vanish before the great heat;
more robust ones, like foxgloves and wild roses, rush at
tantalising speed through their period of bloom, hastening
to pack their seeds safely into non-conducting capsules or
juicy berries before the sap supply shall fail. That repro-
duction and perpetuation of the species is the almost
whole concern of that nebulous impersonality which we
term Nature must be the conviction of every dispassionate
observer. Our prerogative as Lords of Creation has
never been seriously challenged; but the cold light of
science has dispelled long ago the pleasing illusion that
flowers were gifted with beauty and incense for the grati-
fication of human senses. Let us give ourselves what airs
we will, Nature bestows a blush upon the rose and fragrance
upon the meadow-sweet to attract flying and creeping
things, that so profitable fertilisation may be ensured.

In southern England the prime of floral display is past
before midsummer-day, but it is different in the ' caller '
west and north. This year(1902) the drought — the shortage
of rain, at least — has been greater in Scotland than south
of the Trent ; the state of the rivers is a heartache to all
honest fishers ; yet it is well worth filching a holiday from
what, in defiance of all Nature's coaxing, we choose to
make the busy season, were it only to revel for a couple of
summer evenings in the wealth of wild-flowers which the
later tourist never sees and may not imagine. As I jot
these notes I am resting on a dusty wayside skirting the
southern uplands. My bike and I repose on a bank of
tall grasses and bright green bracken, splashed with blue
and yellow vetches and red sorrel. In another month,
when southerners shall come this way in scores, the vetches

144 MIDSUMMER WEEDS

will be gone, the grasses will be ripe and withered, and the
bracken will be dark and dull. True, on the moorland
behind the heather will be in bloom, but it cannot match
the crimson of the bell heath which now mantles the
rocky knowes, nor the perfume of that exquisite little
upland orchis, Habenaria conopsea, whereof there is now
such abundance on the dry ground, while its pale and
statelier cousin, the butterfly orchis, abounds in the lush
hollows.

Along the side of this road runs a truly brilliant selvage
— a filagree of golden lady's bedstraw, favourite food for
the caterpillars of many of our choicest butterflies ; showers
of Scottish bluebells, which you English are never done
disputing whether they should be written harebells or
hairbells; lobes of crimson clover and brassy bezants of
hawkweed; drifts of white galiuin and yellow birdsfoot
trefoil : behind them all, along a gray stone wall, crowned
with creamy honeysuckle, spires of foxglove singly and in
groups. All, or nearly all, this illumination will be ex-
tinguished before the hunter's moon rises.

Beyond the wall the ground falls sharply through an
oaken coppice, sprinkled with dainty cow-wheat, to a
meadow ; but into that meadow and to the lily-margined
river beyond I must not stray, else should I babble of
flowering weeds over half a dozen pages. Only one
plant let me mention out of the myriads in that moister
ground, for it is a quaint one, uncommon withal, and a
singular instance of adaptation to unpromising conditions.
Most of the large family of St. John's wort are fastidious
about drainage, loving dry knolls and banks; but this
poor relation, Hypericum elodes, puts up with bogs that
will sustain little except the buckbean. The beautiful

JUNE 145

buckbean has now gone, fading with the last days of
spring, and in its room this lowly St. John's wort has
spread its prostrate tresses of glaucous green studded with
modest yellow flowers. Truly it is a wonder that it main-
tains the struggle for life among such a crowd of stronger
herbs, for its blossoms can attract few insect visitants where
such abundance of choice is spread. It is content to grow
in slime that finer growths disdain ; therefore, so long as
there are a few acres of bog left in the land, Hypericum
elodes may gladden these uncoveted places.

XXIII

One sees some unexpected things at times, sitting
quietly by oneself. As I am musing upon the A 8tray
beauty of these wayside weeds, a tiny little nedgiing
creature runs out of the herbage into the road, a dark
brown fluffy ball on the white dust in the strong sunshine.
A biped, I perceive, and therefore a bird, but for the life
of me I cannot name it. It moves leisurely, and seems
quite at ease ; it requires but moderate stealth to secure
it, and lo ! it is a young snipe. Why thus alone, and why
in the middle of a dusty high-road, deponent sayeth
not. Released from a considerate hand, the little baggage
bundles off and conceals itself in the tall grass.

XXIV

A friend has furnished me with a pretty illustration on
the theme of 'All's well that ends well' from An intrepid
the Lambourne. That limpid stream is the Kingfisher
haunt of many kingfishers, source of much joy to un-
feathered bipeds on its banks. Among them dwells a
K

146 AN INTREPID KINGFISHER

lady who tries to reconcile affection for the race of Gray-
malkin with sedulous care for birds. Hard it is to keep
the interests of her favourites from clashing. At the foot
of this lady's lawn runs the Lambourne, its nearer bank
bound by a rough stone scarp, wherein last spring a pair
of kingfishers built their nest of the customary unsavoury
materials, laid their lovely alabaster eggs, and hatched a
thriving brood of princelets. It were difficult to say
which took the greater interest in the flittings to and fro
of the parent birds, the lady or her cat. Sitting one day
at her writing-table the former saw the latter (pace Dr.
Johnson !) pass the window with something blue in its
mouth. ' A kingfisher ! ' flashed the first thought, for
there is no tint in British wild nature to rival that of ' the
sea-blue bird of March.' ' Rescue ! ' was the word ; but the
lady reached the front door only in time to see the cat
half way up a magnolia trained against the house, whence
the creature made its way into the open window of a
chamber where her kittens were harboured. To reach the
room took the rescue party but a minute or two; it
arrived in time to witness a spirited little drama. The
cat had laid her quarry unharmed before four pairs of
round admiring eyes, evidently intending to show her off-
springs how living game was to be dealt with. But beneath
the tawny vest of Halcyon there beats a stout heart ; life
and liberty were dear to the brave bird, which was
standing at bay, armed with a single weapon against the
captor's teeth and claws— a beak, to wit, in proportion to
its diminutive stature as a two-handed sword to a fifteenth-
century man-at-arms. Whether the cat was really per-
plexed and frightened by the little tartar she had caught,
or whether she was merely posing before her kittens,

JUNE 147

certainly she seemed inclined to avoid the encounter.
The kingfisher was rescued, and set at liberty once more
in its paradise of tinkling shallows and bending willows.

XXV

Cats are all very well in a town, for those who like

them, whereof I am not one. You may lavish

Cata
unstinted affection upon your cat, pamper it

with cream, and fish, and what not, besides wasting good
time in conferring infinite delight upon the brute by
stroking its back, but you will get no frank requital of
love such as is won so easily from a dog. Dr. Louis
Robinson has explained the reason why. Cats and their
kind, lions and tigers, are solitary hunters ; they neither
give nor brook co-operation; they have their lairs and
haunts, but they seek no society, and value human patrons
only as purveyors of delicacies or as amateur masseurs.
It is far otherwise with dogs and their congeners, the
wolves. The whole canine scheme is social ; a dog alone
is a dog at a loss. Who ever saw a cat in distress for the
absence of her mistress ? but there are few more wistful
countenances than that of a dog who has missed his
master in the streets. A solitary dog is helpless : it is
only sad dogs, bad dogs, dogs untrue to their nature, that
go a-hunting without company. Honest dogs are only
happy in concert with the rest of the pack, or with a
human companion. Set a dog to scrape at a rabbit-
burrow, and he will work as if his life depended upon it.
But he expects you to do your share, giving you explicit
instructions, all but articulate, how you are to watch the
bolt hole, while he works the front door. Whether he

148 CATS

gets his rabbit or not, he is perfectly happy in fulfilling
his office as partner. To a cat the very notion of a
partnership is distasteful. Go to one, as I did this
morning, watching a mousehole in the hayfield, and offer
assistance ; all the thanks you will get is a peevish glare,
expressing, as plain as any words could put it, ' I wish to
Heaven you would mind your own business and let me
attend to mine ! '

When I say that cats are only tolerable in a town, I
mean that they cannot indulge their evil propensities
there as they do in the country. Hear me while I reveal
how evil those propensities are. There is a pretty silver-
gray cat with nice black mittens and four half-grown
kittens in this hill farmhouse, where I have been waiting
a week for the long-wished-for spate that is to set us
a-fishing. I began with the gentlest intentions towards
that cat. I purloined dainties from the breakfast-table
for her ; I sat in the sun stroking her back for a quarter
of an hour at a time. I told her how much I regretted
that meteorological conditions were unfavourable to my
providing her with fish. She purred so softly that I was
almost beguiled into the belief that I had her sympathy,
whereas all the time I might have known that all she
said was 'Go on; that's rather jolly. A little quicker —
quicker, d' ye hear ? Now my ears— that 's it. Now you
may do my back again.'

A little further acquaintance has made me understand
better the nature of this domestic tiger. Every day she
brings something to the grass plot before the house and
instructs her offspring how to tear it to pieces. One day
it is a mouse, which she brings alive, and tortures for ten
minutes or a quarter of an hour. When the tiny frame

JUNE 149

has almost yielded up the ghost from mingled fatigue and
terror, she stings it into convulsive runs with her sharp
claws. Again it is a thrush or a lark, and one morning
last week she roused my ire by weighing in with a full-
grown snipe. Those who keep cats in the country to keep
down mice in the house should reflect what an infinite
amount of various iniquity they perpetrate out of doors.
Yesterday a neighbour (as we count neighbours in the
hill country — this one lives fourteen miles away) told me
that the only hawfinch he ever saw in Galloway was
brought in by the minister's cat.

XXVI

NOT so vehement nor so persistent as of yore has been of

late the declamation of philanthropists, political
Summer- -, • t •

tide in a economists, and demagogues against the crying

Highland crime of deer-forests. The crofters would in-
deed be hard to please if they had derived no
measure of content from the redress, by successive Com-
missions, of their grievances, and the settlement whereby
each of them has been created the dominant partner in his
holding. At no time were the informed and thoughtful
classes in Scotland — the lawyers, traders, and farmers —
induced to join the agitation against the exercise of a
privilege supposed, or at least alleged, to be implied in
clearing ground for deer. So far as they gave any ear to
the denunciations which, a few years ago, were hurled
from hundreds of platforms, they were perfectly well aware
that no 'clearances' whatever had taken place in the
interests of mere sport: whatever had been done took
place many, many years ago in the sacred cause of money-
getting, when it was found that sheep would pay better
than grazing let to crofters for their black cattle. Many
pathetic scenes might have been witnessed during the
first half of the last century: the memory of wholesale
eviction and deportation lingers still among the descen-

JULY 151

dants of the clansmen in many a glen and beside many a
loch. Deeds were done then on behalf of proprietors who
thought it no crime to turn their lands to the best account
—nay, whose action helped to raise Scottish agriculture to
its present honourable eminence — which the public con-
science would not tolerate now. Such deeds it is no
concern or purpose of mine to justify at this day: all
that I wish to bring to mind is that they were not, as has
been too commonly believed, wrought with the slightest
reference to field-sports. The forests described sixty years
ago in William Scrope's glowing pages did not extend to
half the area now to be reckoned as deer ground, neither
did they equal in extent the ancient royal and baronial
forests which had been reserved as chase from time im-
memorial. Much of this ancient forest had been given
over to sheep before Scrope's day ; the Black Mount itself,
which his pen rendered perhaps the most famous of all, is
shown by the venerable Black Book of Taymouth to have
been reserved for deer from very early times, was put
under sheep when that wonderful source of profit was
first tapped, and was not cleared again for deer till
1820.

The recent increase, therefore, in the extent of deer
ground is directly owing to the failure of sheep-farming
as a profitable industry in the Highlands. Large sheep-
farms are usually let on terms peculiarly hazardous to the
proprietor's pocket in the event of unprosperous times.
He is held bound to purchase at valuation the entire stock
of his tenant at the close of the lease. When sheep-farm-
ing is profitable, of course the tenant is willing to renew,
or another tenant is easily found ; but when the industry
ceases to pay, the land is thrown on the owner's hands;

152 SUMMER-TIDE IN A HIGHLAND FOREST

he has to pay several thousands in cash for stock which
has ceased to be saleable at a profit, and he has to decide
between carrying on the farm himself at a loss, or turning
the land to other account. Then it is that the sporting
value of ground suitable for deer comes into prominence.
I have listened to honourable gentlemen in the House of
Commons (some of them, I am certain, with their tongues
in their cheeks) holding up Highland proprietors to oblo-
quy, because, instead of persevering in losing money by
attempting to grow mutton for the million, , they had
adopted the more business-like course of letting their
mountains as playgrounds for millionaires.

Of all the instances of misdirected energy by a good
man, there never was a clearer instance than Professor
Bryce's Access to Mountains Bill. Of all the countries on
the face of God's earth there was less occasion in Scotland
for such a law than in almost any other, because in no
other civilised country is there so little defence against
trespass. People in that land may go where they please
out of doors with impunity, provided they do not inflict
damage, and the only defence a landowner has is his
power of obtaining interdict. Why then object to Pro-
fessor Bryce's bill, if it only enables people to do what
they have a right to do without it? Nay, but the
boot is on the other leg: the right is not with the
intruder, but with the owner, if he chooses to exert it. It
is rarely exercised ; but it is becoming valuable in propor-
tion as the most solitary districts are being opened up by
railways. An excursion agent may, under the existing
law, be interdicted from dumping down a horde of
exuberant trippers in the heart, say, of Glenartney or
Braemar forest ; but pass Professor Bryce's bill, and the

JULY 153

protection against such an infringement of private right
disappears.

Not only has the Scottish law of trespass always been
more indulgent than that in other countries, but the
ancient forest laws were singularly mild in contrast to
the ferocious statutes of the Norman kings of England.
There is a statute of William the Conqueror (it exists in
manuscript, I believe, at Savernake) under which any
man taken in the king's forest is condemned to choose
between three penalties — to have his eyes put out, to be
emasculated, or to be put to death. Compared with this,
the Scottish statute of William the Lion (1165-1214) reads
like clemency itself: —

' Gif anie stranger be found within anie forbiddin place of the
forest, & wil sweir vpon his wapons that he knew nocht that
way to haue bene forbiddin, and that he knew nocht the richt
way, the forestar sail convoy him to the common way, and there
sail suffer him to passe away without anie trouble. But gif he
be ane knawin man, he sail be taken and convoyed to the king's
castell, and there, without the ports [outside the gates] of the
castell, the forestar sail take before witnes his vpmaist claith [top
coat] ; and all quhilk is in his purse sail perteine to the forestar ;
and his bodie sail be delivered to the Constabill or Porter, to be
keiped at the king's will.'

In fact, the Scottish forest laws dealt more severely
with the wood-stealer than the poacher — ne quis secet aut
venetur — the lamentable denudation of its timber which
Scotland suffered after the recovery of her independence
being exactly what the legislature of her early kings strove
to avert. The wiridiers or verderers had special instruc-
tions for dealing with any man found ' heueand dune ane
aik tree ' (hewing down an oak). Note, by the way, the
old form of participle ' heueand.' In Scots of 1609 (the

154 SUMMER-TIDE IN A HIGHLAND FOREST

date of the translation of the ancient laws from which
I am quoting) the distinction had not been lost between
the present participle in -and and the gerund or noun of
action in -ing. The two forms may be seen together in
the following sentence from the same volume : ' congre-
gation of men dwelland together ... for the better
establishing of their estate.'

I am conscious of some signs of impatience on the part
of the reader who has got thus far. ' The fellow under-
took,' he is muttering, 'to describe summer in a forest,
and he can't get away from his dusty old bookshelves.
These antiquaries really ought to be put down.' A timely
rebuke : let us get to the forest with all speed we may ;
only be it understood that I have nothing to tell
about deer-stalking this time, but about some of those
pleasures which a deer-forest affords to those who will
resort to it at unfashionable seasons while the velvet is
still on the horn, who value its mighty solitude as the
asylum of the golden eagle, buzzard, and osprey, the wild
cat, marten, otter, and seal, as well as of the red-deer.
Few of those who rent these hunting-grounds ever see
them in their prime. They defer moving north till the
evenings are getting short and chill, till the growth of
herbage is stayed and the wealth of blossom past. The
wild roses alone, which deepen in hue the farther you
leave London behind, are worth a seven-hundred-mile trip
to enjoy, but these come to an end with July. There is,
also, a lovely little plant, the bog asphodel (Narthecium
ossifragum), of which the blooming season exactly corre-
sponds with the sweet o' the year. It is scattered all over
the wet hillsides and bogs, gathering here and there into

JULY 155

little swarms, brightening the dark peat and heather with
its spikes of fragrant golden flowers tipped with scarlet
stamens. People arriving about the 12th of August see
nothing of this plant but its seed-vessels and rush-like
leaves, both of which turn with the earliest frost to glow-
ing orange and carmine, and are the chief element in the
rich colouring of autumn moorland.

This delicate little lily contains a mystery in its modest
frame. It is a native of the northern parts of both Europe
and America, yet it does not occur in Asia, as almost every
other plant does which is found wild in the other two
continents; nor does it extend into the Arctic Circle,
whence such plants as bearberry, common ling or heather,
bracken, wintergreen, Loiseleuria (our only British rhodo-
dendron), and the lovely Linncva, have descended from a
common centre into all three segments of the northern
hemisphere. Neither is the Narthecium one of those
hangers-on of civilisation, like the nettle and coltsfoot,
which follow man's footsteps to the uttermost parts of the
earth, and thrive at the expense of his labours. No ; the
bog asphodel detests improvement, and shrivels into
extinction at the very ghost of a drain. How, then, is its
existence to be accounted for on both sides of the Atlantic
Ocean ? Shall it be subpoenaed some day as a witness for
the lost continent Atlantis, like that apparently insignifi-
cant, but, as we are now informed, highly significant little
fish, the so-called Australian trout (Galaxias) ?

But we really must get back to that forest. To be
frank, it was neither wild roses nor asphodels nor any
zoological problem which I had in view when, one stifling
evening last July, I rattled through the dingy approaches
to Euston, in which the perennial odour of fried fish takes

156 SUMMER-TIDE IN A HIGHLAND FOREST

the place of the more aristocratic, but not less pungent,
reek of wood pavement. (There are zones in London —
and the environs of Euston form one of them — where at
all hours of the day and night fish seems to be a-frying.)
No ; my purpose was a very material one, and connected
immediately with fish. As ' the stork in the heaven
knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the
crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming,'
so not less faithfully do the great sea-trout — advanced
guard of the annual host of their smaller fellows — keep
their unwritten tryst and move up the streams shortly
after midsummer. He who squanders July in London
forfeits his prospect of prime sport with the gamest of all
fish, for the trout that follow in the wake of the first run
seldom attain more than two pounds in weight, being mostly
' herlings ' or ' finnocks ' of less than a pound each. Indus-
trious netting has sadly impaired the angler's chances
with big sea-trout in most rivers — has destroyed it alto-
gether in some — for the legal mesh allows nothing above
two pounds to escape. It is only here and there in the
great playgrounds of the North that streams, mostly
small, are still kept sacred to the mystery of angling, and
that the fish still move up each summer from the tide in
almost incredible throngs.

Well, within two-and- twenty hours of leaving Euston —
so aptly does modern transport pander to our pleasures
by facilitating sharpness of contrast — we were steaming
smoothly between the mountain buttresses which shut
off the winding fjord from the Atlantic. Drought was six
hundred miles in our rear. It was a hot evening, but
deliciously fresh ; the green mountain slopes and dark
crags were seamed with milky veins, for every burn was

JULY 157

brimming with the gracious rain. So impossible was it
before leaving thirsty London to imagine the materials
for a spate, that I had made up my mind that the first
morning of liberty should be devoted to exploring a
certain hill tarn, reputed to hold good store of ponderable
trouts. Now this was my third visit to Knoydart forest.
Forty years ago — an Eton boy not yet ' in tails ' — I made
the same resolve, and again last year ; but this loch lies
fifteen hundred feet up the steep breast of Creagan-
Dochdair ; to ascend that hill involves crossing the river ;
at each attempt the spell of running water has prevailed,
for what man, when the river naiads beckon, cares to
court the kelpie of the loch ? and so it has come to pass
that never to this day has my eye beheld, or my angle
been cast upon, that lonely tarn.

Up the glen, then — up early, for the mist is down upon
the hill, the rain clouds are lowering on the sound, the
triple crest of Rum is blotted from view, the ash-trees
round the lodge are moaning in their heavy verdure —
everything bodes the coming of another spate.

The most impatient angler, if he would enjoy all the
resources of his craft and take his fill of the delights of
such a paradise as this, will have eyes and ears even for
creatures that have no scales.

My eyes are about me, therefore, as I step it up the
strath. The absence of birds is curious. The lofty ridge,
some two thousand feet high, bordering the river closely
on the south side, is dark and shaggy with natural wood,
but the north side, along which the bridle-path runs, is
open and lies fair to the sun. The track leads across
several ferny, stony little glens, just the very place where
one should hear the warning note of that true mountaineer,

158 SUMMER-TIDE IN A HIGHLAND FOREST

the ring-ousel. Nevertheless no feathered thing is stirring
save the all-pervading titlark, as faithful to the waste as
the sparrow to the house-top, and two or three pairs of
the amiable, elegant wheatear. The corrupt form of this
name is a good illustration of the tendency, well known
to philologers, of people of every language to twist words
of which the meaning has been forgotten, so as to repre-
sent some other meaning, however irrelevant. Why,
otherwise, should a bird which has no visible ear-covert,
and certainly does not eat wheat, become known as the
wheat-ear ? The most conspicuous thing about the little
creature is its dazzling white rump, which it displays
continually as it flits from stone to stone before the
traveller. What more natural, then, than that the country-
man should give it in Anglo-Saxon the name of hwit cers
— white-rump ?

But hark ! the hanging wood beyond the river resounds
with a shrill cry. Out with the Zeiss lens, and, following
the gillie's brown forefinger, I can detect the crag where
a pair of golden eagles have their eyrie. Their solitary
offspring is still on the nest, and it is he whose voice
sounds shrill above the rising wind. Suddenly from the
mist on the top out sails a dark form on broad pinions.
One of the parent birds swoops in narrowing circles
towards the eyrie. The cry of the nestling is stayed, but,
so far as the glass reveals the secrets of this household,
the queen-mother brought nothing in her talons. Queen !
yes, but a discrowned one. These men of science are
terrible revolutionaries — not republicans, mark ye, for
they must have a monarch ; but they have dethroned the
eagle — the very emblem of empire, and we are told now
to reverence the crows as the legitimate royal family,

JULY 159

in virtue of their higher organisation and intellectual
powers.

But the wind is beginning to boom in stronger gusts up
the pass ; the sky has stooped to join the mist-skirts on
the hills ; already heavy drops are flying, and seeing what

a ' kittle ' stream is the Amhuin Aoidh — Hugh's River

it behoves us to push on to Linfad if we would make sure
of a few hours' fishing before the coming of the great
spate.

For the greater part of its course this stream is a rapid
water, chafing through rocky gorges, battling over gravelly
fords, or slipping swiftly among bending meadows; but
about three miles above the lodge it slumbers for half a
mile in a deep, canal-like channel. The best pool on
the river, this, for holding fish — whether salmon or sea-
trout — which make leisurely pause there in their annual
journey to the loch, whence the river issues; albeit a pool
like that which was called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda,
whereof a man must await the troubling of the water
before he can derive any profit therefrom. Bravely the
breeze buffeted it to-day, and the sky was of the kind
preferred by crafty Richard Franck — 'promiscuous and
dark, occasioned by smooty and discoloured clouds ' ; the
reach lay steel-gray in the green strath ; no Jewish cripple
was ever more tremulously keen than I to reach the
water's edge.

With a twelve-foot rod you can cover every place where
a fish lies in Amhuin Aoidh ; l but the water is as clear as
gin, and you must stand well back, which a light fifteen-
footer enables you to do easily. There is a good chance
of hooking a salmon in Linfad, but nothing of the dignity

1 Pronounced Avon &.

160 SUMMER-TIDE IN A HIGHLAND FOREST

of a salmon-fly must be displayed — only smallest grilse,
or medium sea-trout sizes, on fine gut. Such was the
gear I was rigging when a clean-run grilse sprang high
above the wave to encourage me, and in three minutes
more a tiny Dunkeld — a fairy-like creature with golden
body, masking a couple of keenly barbed points — was
dancing over his lair. What a brave dash it was that
bent the supple greenheart, and sent the reel spinning !
Habet ! he is fast, and fiercely resents the knowledge
thereof, tearing down to the very brink of the cascade,
where the water leaves Linfad. It flashed across my
thought what a rare lesson this would have been for that
dear old bottom -fisher, Izaak Walton, whom his irrever-
ent contemporary and rival, Franck, denounced as a
fumbler and plagiary, ' scribbling and transcribing other
men's notions,' and who never saw a fishing-reel in his
life, only had it on report that ' some use a wheel about
the middle of their rod, or near their hand, which is to be
observed better by seeing one of them than by a large
demonstration of words.' This would have been the
moment for him to put in practice the manoeuvre he
prescribed to trustful Venator : —

' It may be that by giving that very great trout the rod —
that is, by casting it to him into the water — I might have caught
him at the long run ; for so I use always to do when I meet
with an overgrown fish.'

But it is seldom that a fish will run of his free will out
of a good holding pool where he has been hooked, and
just as I am getting apprehensive of grief in the gorge
below, this one turns sharp, races up again, and throws
himself high in the air.

JULY 161

Basta ! it is not a salmon at all : nothing nobler than a
two-pound sea-trout, than which, however, no fish that
swims makes a fight so headlong, so disproportionate to
its size. This one has disturbed a good piece of water,
dashing into every lair and scaring fish four times his
own size. I must rest the tail of the pool, and try higher
up. The rain is falling in sheets now —

' How should I the shower forget ?
'Twas so pleasant to get wet ' —

and the gusts are so heavy, it is no easy matter to
straighten fine gut across them ; but it is a proper day for
Linfad. At the sixth or seventh cast a long silver gleam
shines through the water below the fly, the line tightens,
and this time I feel I am fixed in something better. It
swims deep and slow, not realising its predicament, for it
cannot see its foe standing far from the bank. But as the
line shortens, this new customer catches sight of me, and
then the fun begins ; for it is the fear of man, not the
pain of the hook, that makes a fish fight.

No creature so incorrigibly prosy as a fisherman, even
when he confines his narrative within the limits of fact,
and the worst part of angling yarns is that they are so
much alike. I persevered at Linfad till there were
stretched on the bank three lovely grilse, weighing close
on seventeen pounds, and five sea-trout which made ten
pounds more. Then the flood was upon us, and I trudged
happily homewards down the seething strath.

Now any reasonable being should be well content with
summer sport like this. So pleasant and profitable had
been the looting of Linfad that nothing better could be
desired than to renew it on the morrow, when fresh store
of sea-fish would assuredly have run up. But man— of
L

162 SUMMEE-TIDE IN A HIGHLAND FOREST

the sub-species Piscator, at least— cannot always be
reckoned reasonable. The ' last infirmity of noble minds '
must always be taken into account as a disturbing
element; and, just as it landed the great Napoleon in
Longwood, so it brought discomfiture on me this day.
Four or five miles across the hills behind the lodge, and
parallel with Amhuin Aoidh, lies Strath Guseran, through
which flows — or rather flies — the Guseran, a torrent only
to be fished successfully in a few hours of falling flood.
It is not always easy to sift history out of myth : perhaps
the records of great fishings in this stream are open
to be impugned. Nevertheless, they exist, and are of the
kind to fire every latent spark of ambition. On the
morrow, therefore, rejecting the wiser gillie's counsel, I
was off betimes to the Guseran. It had rained all night,
but was now clear — the very concatenation of conditions
most favourable for that fickle stream. It was tumbling
about in fine style among its grand rocks, and the delusion
was well sustained for some time. A salmon slipped up
and missed the fly from the slack water beside a rushing
stream ; nothing would induce him to return. Precisely
the same thing happened in the next resting-place : rather
provoking, but not discouraging, for the day was still very
young. In a third lodge things went better : the fly was
seized close to the foot of a cliff, and the tug-of-war
began. There was not much scope for tactics : the pool
was no more than a pot, and the current was tremendous.
Twice or thrice the fish ran perilously near the rapids :
once let him get into them, and he was free, for the tackle
was far too fine to hold him. Ah ! I thought so ; losing
his balance, he topples over the verge and rolls away down
the rapids far faster than I can scramble after him.

JULY 163

Labouring heavily over the rocks, I come to an impasse :
a big alder stands well out in the water, and unless I can
get round it there must be a smash. Nothing for it but
to take the water. Luckily it is not more than waist-
deep; the obstacle is circumvented, and once more fish
and fisher are on terms. Fifty yards more and we reach
a pool where the issue must be fought out : Angus makes
clever use of a chance with the gaff', and draws up on the
heather — not a salmon after all, but, much to my surprise
and chagrin, a sea-trout. A good one, it is true, scaling
5| lb., but still only a sea-trout, which, as every angler
will admit, is inferior quarry to Salmo solar, and not
worthy of being recorded by a notch on the gaff handle.

At spes infracta! There was plenty of good water
before me — one pool, especially, called par excellence the
Salmon Pool. Here the Guseran gathers all its dignity
to form a fitting theatre for the angler's triumph.
Between cliffs thirty feet high the water pours through a
narrow gorge for fifty yards, then spreads into a smooth,
foam-flecked pool, with a steady current through it — the
very ideal of a salmon cast. It was in perfect order this day,
and the only anxiety which haunted me was lest the fish
which I was about to hook should disturb the whole
premises; for it is an awkward place to work, casting
being only possible from the top of the cliffs. In the
very choicest bit of the water a salmon of 10 lb. or there-
by made a pretty rise, not at my fly ; but I cast over him
in perfect confidence. Nothing happened! no thrill of
tightening line, no flash of turning fish : there was a spell
on the river ; clearly it was bewitched. Not only in this
pool, but in every other for the rest of that day, was the
result the same. The midores came out in their millions

164 SUMMER-TIDE IN A HIGHLAND FOREST

— still I persevered, and towards sundown retreated, a
beaten man, vowing that never more should line of mine
be straightened over the Guseran till its waters had been
soundly exorcised.

Salmon are intensely conservative : year after year the
great fish return to the same pools and streams which
sheltered their forefathers a thousand years ago. Often
the only favoured lodging in a mile of water consists of a
few square yards, the shelter of a submerged boulder, or
the shelf of a bank of glacial clay. Such fish haunts
invariably get specific names, some of them being ex-
ceedingly ancient with a pleasant measure of mystery
about them. Sometimes the meaning is quite obvious :
for example, there are very few Scottish salmon-rivers
without a cast called the Corbies or the Gled's Nest
(there are at least three ' Corbies ' on the Tweed, although
it is many, many years since the raven was suffered to
breed on that fair stream). More often the meaning is
more obscure — the Cradle, for instance, of which there are
two on the Tweed, and many elsewhere. Often these
names commemorate animals, and even races of men, long
since passed away.

It is not always that one can read the riddle of
these ancient water-names. In Scotland, at least, where
Gaelic was not a written speech before the sixteenth
century, all that remains of them is their sound on the
lips of the peasantry and the rude attempts at phonetic
rendering thereof in Latin or English charters. But
Ireland had a copious Gaelic literature in very early
times, by means whereof one is sometimes able to detect
a different significance in names which have received
identical spelling at the hands of modern scribes. Thus

JULY 165

Lough Derg denotes two sheets of water in Ireland, one
in Donegal, the other that great overflow of the Shannon
between Killaloe and Portumna. Of the first, one may
assume that it received its epithet dearg, red, from some
local colour either in the water or on the banks, and that
it is the Red Lough on a similar principle to countless
others in Ireland named Lough Doo, Glaslough, Finloch
— black, green, or white loughs. But of the second, the
Celtic literature of Ireland, which is never so graphic as
in recording deeds of violence and cruelty, has preserved
the story, showing a different origin of the name.

It is not for nothing that the arms of Ireland display
a golden harp, seeing how powerfully the bards of old
swayed both the people and their rulers. So we read in
Talland Etair, an ancient chronicle of the siege of Howth,
how one Aithirne, a most accomplished harper and bard
of Ulster, travelled throughout the land of Erin, making
sojourn with every king in whose territory he arrived.
He was a proud man, this Aithirne, and would brook
hospitality only from royal hands ; but he had plenty of
entertainment, for the kingdoms in Erin were numerous
in those days of difficult locomotion. It was his practice,
on leaving each royal palace, to demand a present from
his host as a reward for his minstrelsy, and none was so
daring as to refuse whatever he chose to ask.

It came to pass that, during his visit to Eochy mac
Luchta, King of Connaught, Aithirne took serious
umbrage at some details in cookery or what not ; so when
the time came for him to take his leave, he expressed a
desire to take also the king's eye with him. Unluckily,
King Eochy had but one eye, the other having been
knocked out in battle ; nevertheless, whether he dreaded

166 SUMMER-TIDE IN A HIGHLAND FOREST

lest a refusal should bring some worse evil than blindness
upon him, or whether he thought even blindness not too
high a price to pay for riddance from his terrible guest,
he tore out his eye, and handed it to Aithirne. Then,
leaning on an attendant's arm, he bade him lead him down
to the lake, where he stooped and washed his gory face.

' Lo and alas ! ' exclaimed the servant, ' the very waters
of the lake are reddened with the blood of a royal line.'

' Then,' said the king, ' let its name be Loch-deairg-dherc
— the Lake of the Red Eye — for evermore.' '

Other waters there are in Ireland named from their
colourless transparency, such as Finisk, a tributary of the
Blackwater. The name is a compound of fionn uisc,
white water, and has undergone strange metamorphosis
in the metropolis of Ireland. Where the great pillar
stands outside the grounds of the Vice-regal Lodge there
springs a clear, bubbling source, which flows as a rivulet
through the Zoological Gardens. Fionn uisc [feen isk]
the Erse called it of old — the clear water — which, when
the English conquerors set up their pale and decreed that
the sound of the ancient language should no more be
heard within it, became easily corrupted to Phcenix.
Lord Chesterfield confirmed the illusion in 1745, when he
set up the pillar aforesaid, crowning it with the figure of
the mythical bird rising from its own embers ; and now,
most people will tell you gravely that the Phcenix Park
took its name from the pillar !

Thus, on the Cree (the crioch, or boundary, between
eastern and western Galloway) you may still see the
marsh which gave its name to Linloskin, the pool of the
frogs. The heather has all been ploughed away from
Linree (linn fhraoick), and no badgers may now be

JULY 167

found near Carse-na-brock ; but still, on the neighbouring
Luce, Lincom runs in the sharp sweep which earned for
it the name of the crooked pool, and local history con-
firms the justice of the title borne by the Bloody Wiel,
where the Linns of Larg and the Hays of Park once
settled their differences.

More than one salmon-pool has earned historic distinc-
tion from its name being adopted as a personal one.
Thus, if in passing south from Ayr you will look out on
the right side at Dalrymple station, you shall see how the
bonnie Doon makes a sudden circular sweep round three
sides of a flat and fertile piece of ground — crom pol — the
crooked pool — whence the level ground became known as
dal-chruim-puill, the land portion of the crooked pool.
In time, when the need arose for surnames, the possessor
of this land became known as Dalrymple, whose descend-
ants have carried the name to glory as statesmen, soldiers,
and lawyers.

But I have said enough already in another of these
random papers — too much, the reader may think — on
this subject. Perhaps my best excuse for maundering over
what Porthos denounced as un plaisir roturier — angling
and its pertinents — may be found in the fact that my own
name is derived from a salmon-pool. Maccus the son of
Undwin, and great-grandson of that other Maccus who
thought it no shame in 973 to attest a charter of Edgar
King of England as ' Archipirata ' — arch-pirate — obtained
from David i. of Scotland certain lands adjacent to Kelso,
comprising a productive salmon-pool, which soon became
known as Maccus' or Max's wiel. The lands took their
name from the pool ; the descendants of Maccus became,
in the feudal manner, De Maccuswell or Maxwell, and

168 SUMMER-TIDE IN A HIGHLAND FOKEST

still the Tweed angler holds in high repute Maxwheel, an
excellent salmon cast just below Kelso bridge.

We have heard a good deal of late about the cruelty of
field-sports in general and of fishing in particular: the
charge is made by people entitled to respect, and is alto-
gether too serious to be disregarded. It is well to have a
clear understanding on the ethics of the contemplative
man's recreation. Fish, if they are to be taken at all, and
not left to devour one another, must be captured either
by nets or by hook and line, and I am prepared to defend
the opinion that no more actual suffering to tht> fish is in-
volved by Che one method than by the other. It has been
observed above that it is the fear of man, not the pain of
the hook, that makes a fish fight for freedom. I can
testify that the pain of a large salmon-hook fixed in the
human lip, far more sensitive than a fish's, is very trifling,
even though it was necessary to strip off the dressing
and bring the hook out the reverse way. But, the spate
in the forest having run down, I was witness of a scene
which convinced me that capture by the net is not one
whit more merciful than by rod and line. Besides the
Amhuin Aoidh and the Guseran, there is a third river
in Knoydart forest, flowing through a glen so remote
and so difficult of access, and subsiding so rapidly after
a flood, that it is very seldom fished by any angler. Once
a year, therefore, the owner causes a net to be drawn
through a couple of pools in it, which is made the
occasion of a little festival, for it is fine fun in hot
weather, and the spoils are greatly appreciated by the
crofters and villagers among whom they are shared. It
was a glorious morning when the yacht left her moorings
and steamed ten miles up the loch to the mouth of the

JULY 169

Carnach. Ponies had been sent round by land overnight
to carry the net, and for the transport of such ladies as
did not fancy a tramp over three miles of rough moorland
lying between the shore and the scene of operations.
The deer on the tops gazed from afar at the motley
cavalcade invading their special domain, and a pair of
ravens croaked execration on us as they soared far aloft
in the azure. The first pool to be drawn was a rocky
basin less than forty yards long, with a shelving gravelly
bank on one side of the lower end. It was very deep —
so deep that although the river elsewhere was reduced
to a mere trickle among acres of shingle, and although
the water was exceedingly clear, without the faintest stain
of peat, the eye could not pierce to the bottom. A guard
was set to prevent the fish escaping down stream, the
net was quietly slipped in at the top, and as it moved
slowly down the greenish depths became agitated by a
great multitude of fish rushing about in terror. Presently
the net stopped : some obstacle, a great stone, had caught
the leads, and failure was imminent. An Etonian present
offered to dive to its release ; the ladies withdrew out of
sight, and presently, with a magnificent header from the
rocks, he was down among the fishes and freed the
bottom line. The net was then drawn ashore, with
the humiliating result of half a dozen sea-trout. It had
been damaged, and all the other fish had escaped through
a large hole. They were still in the pool of course, and
as I lay on the rocks I could perceive them coursing up
and down. Three of four salmon in particular I watched,
never still an instant, now sailing up to the shallows at
the top, then, catching sight of an enemy, dashing away
in hopeless search of shelter. Thinks I to myself, each

170 SUMMER-TIDE IN A HIGHLAND FOEEST

one of these fish is suffering just as much through fear
as it would if hooked by an angler: the presence of a
tiny barb in its gristly jaw would be but an imperceptible
addition to its tribulation. And then consider how much
prolonged was the persecution. From the first immersion
of the net to its final bringing ashore, after the necessary
repairs, full of fish — half a dozen salmon and several
scores of sea-trout from 2 Ib. up to 5 Ib. — was not much
under two hours; whereas any capable angler would
have backed himself to land the biggest of ,the salmon
in ten or fifteen minutes at most. If, therefore, I am
right in my contention that the suffering inflicted on a
fish in its capture consists solely of the agony of fear,
then it must be conceded that the balance of mercy is
not on the side of the netsman as against the fair angler.
Note, also, that the draft used on this occasion is the
most expeditious of nets : the trammel, whammel, or
hang-net, now prohibited by law in Scotland, but still
in general use by Irish fishermen, kills salmon by slow
strangulation; the stake and bag-nets keep them im-
prisoned for many hours ; but the salmon's tussle with
the angler is reckoned by minutes. With clear conscience,
then, may every fair fisher echo Tom Stoddart's stave —

' A birr ! a whirr ! the salmon 's up,
Give lino, give line and measure ;
But now he turns ! keep down ahead,
And lead him as a child is led,
And land him at your leisure.
Hark to the music of the reel !
'Tis welcome, it is glorious ;
It wanders through the winding wheel
Returning and victorious.'

JULY 171

XXVII

If the Romsdal has any European rival in stupendous,
reckless grandeur, such is not known to
me. Probably nowhere else, except in the ofEnchant-
Yosemite Valley, or in the gorges of the ment
Indus above Khalsi in Ladak, shall you find opposing
precipices of such height so near together. In Romsdal
at its narrowest there is little question of gradient : there
is scarcely room for anything but a sheer plunge of
6000 feet from the towering crests of the Troldtinder —
the Witch Crags — on the west of the chasm, and from
the pinnacle of Romsdalhorn on the east side thereof,
if space is to be left for the imperious Rauma to roll its
volume to the slumbering fiord. Far aloft, wherever
there is a breach in the leagues of battlement, you may
catch sight of the selvage of the great snowfield, parent
of a thousand cascades : even at midsummer, snow loops
every ledge and curtains every slope, down as far as
the wooded river-banks ; for if summer be bright here,
it is passing brief, and one is not suffered to forget the
long dark months when neither sun nor moon shines
into Romsdal, only the cold stars.

Here and there, recessed between mountain bastions,
is space of level meadow-land, deep with cool verdure,
fringed with alder and rowan, birch and bird-cherry,
and broidered with crimson orchis, russet sorrel, snowy
buckbean, bluebells, purple geranium, lavender scabious,
golden ranunculus, and hawkweed. Elsewhere, slopes of
debris run as a kind of fausse braie along the mighty
rock curtain, clad with a gracious woodland, through
which avalanches have driven many an avenue. Here

172 THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT

is stored all manner of treasure for the botanist. Even
if you have no patience for genera and species, you cannot
fail to be struck by the contrast between the fragile and
delicate beauty of the northern flora and the massive,
gigantic features of the landscape which it adorns. You
may revel here in profusion of such fastidious flowers as
anxious amateurs at home coddle through a precarious
existence among the grosser growths of the herbaceous
border. Here are stately groups of purple larkspur and
rosy willow-herb, close battalions of lily of the /valley, with
skirmishing companies of its modest cousin Smilacina.
Here, too, the dainty Trientalis poises its solitary white
star upon a thread-like stem above a girdle of wan leaves,
and the winter-green (Pyrola) rears sturdy little columns
of waxy bells and pearly buds. The stonier places are
spangled with the quaint blossoms of the dwarf cornel,
each of them composed of four showy white bracts
encircling a cushion of deep purple or puce florets. Pure
white also, but with golden centres, are the blossoms of
that true forest nymph Dryas octopetala, which drapes
the rocks with abundant foliage like miniature oak-
leaves, but of deeper, glossier green. Here, also, a real
thrill lies in store for him who cares for the green things
of the earth, yet who, like myself, has never before seen
the tiny, trailing honeysuckle in its native sub-arctic
haunts — the exquisite Linncea borealis. It abounds in
nooks among huge fallen boulders, rearing its twin
roseate bells and twining its fairy garlands among juniper,
bear-berries, blaeberries, and oak and beech ferns. Its
own loveliness apart, it commands a meed of special
reverence from every disciple of the great Master, Linnaeus,
for upon this lowly herb he bestowed his own name, this

JULY 173

he chose as his own emblem and united for ever with his
own motto, Tantus amor florum—' So deep is my love
of flowers.' All these plants, it is true, save the larkspur,
and many more that might be named, were not the
patience of readers to be reckoned with, are still to be
found in Britain ; but they are children of solitude, and
sorrier are the strips into which, year after year, British
solitudes are gnawed by all-conquering industry and all-
devouring tillage.

But I have not crossed the North Sea merely to prate
of botany, nor yet with the loftier aim of one of my
fellow-passengers in the steamer from Newcastle, who
had come all the way from Australia to study astronomy
in the land of the midnight sun. A certain wooden case,
narrow, indeed, but more than six feet long, having
caught his attention among my baggage, this gentleman
took an early opportunity of expressing his delight that
I had brought my telescope. ' Telescope,' quoth I ; ' I have
nothing but these,' showing him a pair of Zeiss lenses.
His countenance fell. 'Is not that a telescope in your
long box ? ' he asked. I must have dropped leagues in
his esteem when I had to confess it contained nothing
more creditable than fishing-rods ; for salmon-fishing was
the grossly material object which was luring me into the
Valley of Enchantment, and perhaps nowhere else can
it be had of a higher quality.

Yet the best of it is confined to a very limited stretch
in this fine river. For some six miles above the sea the
Rauma sweeps in a series of majestic reaches having all
outward semblance of noble salmon casts, in volume some-
what equal to the Tay at the famed Linn o' Campsie.
But for some occult reason the fish will not rest in these

174 THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT

lordly lodges, or, resting, will not rise freely to the fly.
They hurry up to the neighbourhood of the foss of
Aarnhoe, which is placed exactly where the mountains
upon either side of the valley approach each other most
nearly. Scenery cannot be set forth in figures of measure-
ment, yet some idea of the grandeur of this gorge may
be conveyed by repeating that, whereas each side thereof
is formed by bare cliffs 6000 feet — i.e. one mile and
240 yards — in height, and absolutely vertical in places for
1500 feet, the space separating their bases is less than
half a mile. The foss itself is the result of the fall of a
huge slice of the Troldtinder right across the valley, and
the river roars and rages in white fury through and over
the ruins of the mountain. It passes human lore to
assign even a probable date to this cataclysm; but still
you may see the vast chasm whence the mountain was
torn from its roots, leaving a scar far lighter in colour to
this day than the storm-stained surface of the remainder.
Who knows whether of peaceful homesteads is here the
sepulchre, or whether the fall happened before man had
seized the lordship of the dale. Even now, hardly a day
passes that the valley is not startled by a din, sharper
than the roar of artillery, and followed by a prolonged
rattle as of musketry, as some mass of rock or cliff face
topples over and falls for thousands of feet, leaving a dense
column of dust in its track.

The aforesaid foss of Aarnhoe offers an effective barrier
to the ascent of salmon until well on in summer, when
most of the snow has melted and the river has fallen low ;
consequently the cream of the fishing in June and July
is found in a couple of miles of water below the foss. It
was a very late season when the busy little steamer from

JULY 175

Molde set me down on a June afternoon at Veblungsnses.
The river was still rather too high for good sport, and,
on arriving at my destination, a charming wooden house
within sight of the foss of Aarnhoe, my host and hostess
met me with the discouraging announcement that they
had nor stirred a fin that day. Now it was Saturday, and
the Norseman's Sunday begins at 6 P.M. Already the
hour-hand pointed to 5 o'clock; but, when offered the
alternative of the tea-table or the riverside, who can
doubt which I chose ? It was my first visit to Norway,
and every moment of a brief holiday should be well spent.

Striving, but surely in vain, to keep an appearance of
polite indifference, I said I would like to have a look at
the river, and forthwith began with trembling fingers and
throbbing heart to unpack my kit. A river of renown in
Norway is to the angler what High Leicestershire is to
him who has never hunted save with provincial packs:
to command success in either demands faultless equip-
ment, for the odds are heavy that every point thereof
will be tested to the utmost it will bear.

It boots not to describe the famous Rauma. Happy
those, and they are many, who have seen and fished it :
of those who have not done so, many must have drawn
delight from the late Mr. Bromley Davenport's narrative
of encounters with mighty salmon therein. His book,
tersely entitled Sport, has long since been numbered
among the choicest classics on the sportsman's shelves.
Suffice it to say that the first thing which struck me on
embarking upon this stream was that Mr. Davenport had
by no means overcharged his picture. Fishermen and
poets enjoy this in common, that they claim, and are
universally accorded, exemption from the rigid shackles

176 THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT

of mere veracity. ' The angler,' quoth an American cynic,
' goeth forth in the morning, and returneth at night ; the
smell of whisky is upon him, but the truth is not in him.'
True it is that if one unacquainted with the craft were to
form his estimate of salmon-fishing from the description
thereof in sporting journals, he would pronounce it a
pursuit fraught with extreme hazard of a watery grave,
and to be accomplished only with almost superhuman
exertion. The salmon must appear to him a creature
endowed with the energy of a torpedo, leaping at times
twelve feet into the air and running out such prodigious
lengths of line with such exceeding swiftness that an
incautious finger might easily be cut to the bone. But
those who have fished much in British waters wot well
that, although the noblest of fishes often exhibits an
agreeable degree of violence, it is exceedingly seldom
that he takes out a hundred yards of line or leaves the
pool in which he is hooked. In a river like the Rauma
it is different. There he is not only described as doing
such things, but he is pretty sure to do them] for the
angler has to reckon with more than the strength, spirit,
and dead- weight of his quarry : the volume and swiftness
of the current count for a full half of the chances of
combat, and occasions will arise when nothing less than
200 yards of line will serve to ensure success. This I was
about to realise in the few minutes remaining before
Sunday.

I have said that my first feeling was to acquit Mr. Daven-
port of the amiable exaggeration which I had thought
discernible in his description of the stream.

'The field of battle is before me,' he wrote, 'white and
tumultuous at the head, smooth and black in the middle,

JULY m

full of surging bubbles like the ebullitions of millions of soda-
water bottles from the bottom, clear, swift, and transparent
at the tail.'

Here Mr. Davenport was writing of the great pool below
Aarnlioe foss, but only one epithet was amiss if applied
to the pool of Tofte before me— 'black.' There was
nothing approaching blackness: all was colour, delicate
or intense. The deepest hues came from submerged
rocks in mid-channel, which showed a soft purple through
the superb sea-green depths. Clear, swift, and cold, the
mighty river swept round the base of the towering Roms-
dalhorn — so clear, that in the comparatively smooth water
near the sides you might see every boulder, nay, every
pebble and sand-rib, on the bottom, fifteen feet below —
so swift, that it seemed scarcely fit resting-ground for
any living creature — so cold, that, even on this sultry
June evening, one could not envy the animal whose nose
should be exposed to such a torrent flowing directly out
of glaciers and off snow-fields. Yes, it was indeed a
melting evening in this high- walled gorge, whither, at
midsummer, night cometh not at all and into which the
sun pours for eight hours with radiance and heat intensi-
fied many-fold by radiation from leagues of bare cliff.
It was only the approach of the Sabbath which justified
putting a fly over the stream so early on such a broiling
afternoon; for although the envious Troldtinder had
shut the orb of day from sight at four o'clock, his radiance
was still reflected with intense power from the upper half
of the Horn, and angling is usually suspended till such
time as 40,000 cabs and 10,000 carriages are bearing their
freight to the myriad dinner- tables of London, and the
Government Whips are exhausting all the arts of blan-

178 THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT

dishment and menace to preserve a majority during the
critical dinner-hour.1 From eight o'clock till midnight,
and again from any hour you please till eight in the
morning, is the usual fisherman's day in these latitudes ;
and, although the great height and nearness of the
mountains east and west of the Rauina afford a more
liberal margin of time, it is wise to take advantage in
this very clear water of all the gloom you can get. By
the bye, when is cockcrow during summer in Norway?
Eggs appear on the breakfast- table with exemplary
punctuality — at this moment I can hear the cackle of
a successful hen; yet have I never heard chanticleer
proclaim the morn, although I have been abroad at
all hours.

But let me get on with my yarn. Norse fishermen show
a philosophic indifference about the particular pattern of
fly which may be used. About size they are reasonably
solicitous: the lure must be large enough to be visible
from great depths, yet not 'very much big' to excite
suspicion. In this respect they are laudably superior to
our own gillies, and especially to Tweed boatmen, who
tyrannise unmercifully and quite irresistibly in the matter
of colour and material, prescribing silver for a cold day,
black for a hot one, a Wilkinson for frost, and a Kelly
for sunshine, with as confident dogma as if, like many
another dogma, it were not a mere mask of ignorance
and a priori speculation. So I was left entirely free to
decide with what pattern I should essay my first enter-
prise in Norwegian waters. Happy are those whom, like

1 Since these notes were written that new and excellent rule of the
House of Commons has been framed, providing for adjournment from
7.30 till 9 P.M.

JULY 179

myself, a profound scepticism delivers from the anguish
of hesitancy and misgiving, and enables them to attach
to the line a crimson and gold Manchester Swell with
exactly the same degree of confidence as they would
put up a sable and silver Mar Lodge or a polychrome
Popham. Indeed, if there be any guiding principle in
this matter — if salmon are gifted with the powers of
discrimination with which some people credit them —
surely the aim of the angler should be to present them
with something as different as possible from the lures
with which they may have become familiar. Certainly
upon this occasion I could reckon upon no proved par-
tiality on the part of the salmon I hoped to catch for
the particular pattern which, coming first to hand, was
chosen for the task, inasmuch as the like of it had never
been seen upon the Rauma before. It was a purely
local fly from the Cumberland Eden, reckoned there as
' great medicine,' and known as the Bulldog — though the
reason is not exactly on the surface why a creature with
a bright blue body, a silver tail, red hindlegs, and black
and yellow wings, should bear that title. The only one
that suggests itself is that it resembles a bulldog quite
as closely as it does any known species in the insect
world. What, after all, is there in a name ? Those who
have enacted the part of lovers tell me that at times their
feeling toward the object of their flame is so intense that
it can only find expression in the ejaculation 'Well, you
are a duck ! '—an assertion which, taken literally, cannot
be considered complimentary either to the figure, features,
or mental attributes of any nymph.

By the time the Bulldog was ready for business it
was half-past five ; yet, just as Wellington defeated 40,000

180 THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT

Frenchmen in forty minutes at Salamanca, so, I felt,
might laurels be won, or at least a fish landed, in half
an hour. Presently the cock-nosed skiff bore me dancing
over the waves ; the boatman bid me cast into a rattling
stream and bring the fly round into the comparative calm.
I did so until six times; the seventh, or thereby, there
was a slight commotion behind the Bulldog — so slight
as might have escaped attention in the tumult, had I not
caught sight of a fin above the surface, anc). felt a tiny
twitch on the line. Nothing more. That fish may have
been the 40-pounder in quest of which I have vainly
squandered so many days, or he may have been but an
impertinent grilse of 5 Ib. A couple of inches of fin
thirty yards away afford a very slender basis for com-
putation. Vain were all attempts to wheedle him into a
closer intimacy ; a sunk fly and a jigging one, a fast fly
and a slow one, all proved ineffective, and we floated on.
Twenty yards lower down the line suddenly stopped ; up
went the rod, and I was fast in something solid. A rock ?
no, a delicious wobble gave assurance that the obstacle
was alive, and presently the reel began to revolve, slowly
at first— more swiftly— wildly at last, as the fish tore
away to the distant shore. My reel held a hundred and
twenty yards of trusty line, but, as I stepped out of the
boat, there was parlously little left upon the drum. Once
ashore, however, I could exert the utmost pressure. It is
not always present to the angler's mind what that utmost
amounts to. Good treble gut will stand a strain, say, of
8 or 10 Ib. Pulling with a rod of eighteen feet, held at
an angle of forty-five degrees, you cannot break such gut.
How then does it happen that such gut sometimes is
broken by a fish ? Indubitably because one of two things

JULY 181

has happened : either the rod has been dragged or allowed
to fall into something approaching straight with the line ;
or the fish has succeeded in getting a pull or making a
leap against a fixed point between him and his would-be
captor. Such a fixed point may be caused by the line
getting foul of an obstacle under water, or by getting
' drowned ' — i.e. when a great length of it bags deep and
down-stream, and the fish runs up-stream and jumps.

The thing is easily proved. Hook your fly to a spring-
balance in the hand of another : 1 11 give you a guinea if
you can pull the index down to 4 Ib. with your rod, and
keep it there. Sandow himself could do no more; the
law of dynamics (of which, s'entend, I am profoundly
ignorant) is against it. Three or four pounds, therefore,
is the maximum pressure any man can put on a fish with
his rod, even though he feels that his own muscles are
strained to their utmost; but 3 Ib. rightly applied to a
20 or 30 Ib. fish must win in the end, if the hook hold.
But the pressure must be rightly applied. Stand with
a fish down- stream and pull straight at him — you may
spend half a day and be no nearer landing him; but
make the pressure lateral — get opposite or below him —
and you pull him off his balance: he must leave his
lodge and run for his life.

These tactics soon brought me on better terms with my
maritime friend. The thin backing was all recovered;
just as the first of the fifty yards of head-line was coming
on the reel, a sudden thought seemed to strike him — ' I '11
be off to sea again.' Away he went, this time not across
but down stream : I could not follow him on foot, for the
bank was fringed with alders; before I could take ship
again he was in the swift water at the tail of the pool.

182 THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT

Tostern bent to his oars and shot after him ; then, poising
his craft with her nose to the stream, allowed her to glide
swiftly down after the fleeting fish through a hundred and
fifty yards of tossing rapids, till we floated upon the even
surface of the next pool, Langholmen.

The battle was nearly won now: I could see my fish
under the lucid wave — a pale-bluish phantom — and now
the pale-blue turned to gleaming silver as he floated upon
his side on the surface, beaten, and allowed/ me to tow
him within reach of a sharp point and a steady hand,
and at five minutes to six we weighed my first Norway
salmon — 21 Ib.

Let not the fisher fagged with unfruitful toil in some
Scottish stream imagine that it is always this simple venio
— video — vinco business in Norwegian waters. Salmon in
Scandinavia, as in Scotia, are just the same capricious,
inconstant, unaccountable creatures; subject to similar
simultaneous moods of inertness, of indifference to all
lures, or, again, of watchful curiosity, ready to seize the
first thing moving near them. As a rule, the fisherman
is like the sun-dial — Jioras non numerat nisi serenas.
He is discreetly silent about the countless hours he
squanders vainly flogging the flood.

Let me give as examples my experience of two typical
days in the present year of grace 1900. The first was on
the last day of February, in that region of Scotland which
partakes more of Scandinavian character that any other,
and was actually part of the kingdom of Norway till the
end of the twelfth century — the counties of Caithness and
Sutherland. There the people, though infused with a
measure of Celtic recklessness and Saxon gruffness, are
mainly of Scandinavian blood and temperament; there

JULY 183

the land-names are chiefly in the old Norse language;
there, too, the sun of summer succeeds in banishing night
almost as effectively as in Norway itself. Brief in pro-
portion are the winter days ; even at the end of February,
withfn a month of the equinox, a full hour of daylight is
niched by the envious shades more than in the latitude of
London. Wherefore it behoves him who would do justice
to his luck to be astir betimes, and it was that feeling
which took me to my beat that morning on the Helms-
dale before a forbidding rime-frost had risen off the land.
The Helmsdale has much the character of a Norse river,
rolling swift and strong so long as the snow-field lasts;
dwindling to insignificance when that is exhausted. It
bears the name given to its strath by the Norse con-
querors— Helmsdale — the old Gaelic title being Amhuin
and Strath Ullie.

Well, I began operations in the frost, and in the first
passage down the pool three fish came to the fly, but not
one would take hold. About ten o'clock the sun came
over the shoulder of the Ord; the unkindly cold fled
before it, and straightway ensued a phenomenon, the like
of which I have never seen before. Eleven spring-salmon
rose in succession, each one went as near swallowing a
large ' snow-fly ' as he could, and each one paid the penalty
of death for his curiosity.

Now set against that the experience of this very day on
which I scribble these desultory lines. It is in Romsdal,
at the very cream of the season— the first week in July.
A week of cold wet weather, accounted very unfavourable
for sport, has just passed away, during which we got fish
daily, and good ones too. The oracle of the river— the
excellent old boatman Tostern— bade us wait till the river

184 THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT

fell within certain marks and the weather became ' a little
much warm.' Well, yesterday the wind went to the
south, the sun shone forth, salmon were plunging in
every stream, the river was pronounced to be in perfect
trim, all boded for the best; yet last night from six
o'clock till ten, this morning from six o'clock till nine,
three rods have been plied, and all the choicest confec-
tions of Farlow and Jamie Wright displayed in vain ; and
not a single fish hangs in the larder. Great salmon rolled
and bounced and rose in that seductive ' head-and-tail'
fashion close round our flies, but sorry a one could we
induce to lay hold.

While, then, the flavour of Scandinavian sport is
heightened by a due seasoning of uncertainty — an ele-
ment so essential to excitement — assuredly there is no
lack of the salt of danger. Not risk of life or limb : after
a man's tenth lustre has been added to the irrevocable, he
ceases to hanker much after that; but hazard of losing
a good fish after .hooking it. There are places in the
Rauma, seductive lodges in the foss of Fiva (a couple of
miles lower down than the foss of Aarnhoe), where you
may easily tempt a heavy salmon to the fly, thereby only
courting almost inevitable disaster. Other places there
are — the stream of Lsernesset, for example, just above the
said foss— where, at a certain height of water, the odds
are about three to two in favour of raising and hooking
a fish, and about five to three against landing him. The
river, reuniting at this point after dalliance round some
islands, swoops in a swift curve upon a sharp incline, and
shoots down into the roaring foss. Once fast in a fish,
there is only one chance of bringing him to the gaff —
namely, to steer him into a bay or back-water by sidelong

JULY 185

pressure of strong tackle : if he runs or is swept past that
haven, then there is nothing else for it but to hold on
and wait till something breaks, either the weakest link in
the gear or the hold of the hook, because follow him you
cannot down these rapids, rocks and trees barring the
way. Certainly the amateur in adventure cannot do
better than cast his angle in such a place as Laernesset,
but mishap may befall the least ambitious in other
pools.

The river had fallen fully eighteen inches since my
arrival a week before, when, one evening lately, I em-
barked upon the pool below the foss of Aarnhoe — the
same wherein Mr. Davenport hooked his 43-pounder,
which yielded not its life till it had run down more than
a mile of river. Classic ground, yet not of the sort to
daunt the hopes of facile conquest, for there is ample sea-
room within this splendid pool to exhaust the most
powerful salmon. Several times during the week I had
seen a fish rise here of very stately proportions, anywhere
between 30 and 40 Ib. in weight, but hitherto he had
refused all invitations to closer acquaintance. A strong
tug beside the ' soda-water ' near the top sent my heart
into my mouth ; yet this was not the big fellow, but a
lively one of 14 Ib., which in ten minutes lay safely on
the silver strand, and we pushed off on a second venture.
Half-way down the tossing stream, which circles swiftly
under the left bank, a fine bold rise tightened the line
with a snap, and was followed by a dogged series of digs,
as the salmon sailed deep and slow right up into the very
neck of the strong water. He felt like something big;
but all I had seen was half a yard of arched back when
he rose — the rest was pure speculation of the sort which

186 THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT

experience comes so often to dispel. My fish spent the
first five minutes marking time ; not sulking, but dodging
in a leisurely way among the submerged boulders at the
foot of the foss, resisting all the strain I could put upon
fine treble gut. Suddenly he changed his tactics: I
could almost hear him exclaim in horror ' By Thor and
Odin ! this must be a hook.' Turning sharp, he fled past
me, down, down, down, at great speed, to the very foot of
the pool, whence turning again he dashed at a^ tangent to
the far bank, and walloped on the surface. Still I could
not make out his proportions, though the boatman
muttered ' Big fish.'

Thus the battle wore on, so long that I hoped his force
would not avail to let him seek another field; but the
hope was vain. Several times in his rushes he had
scoured round the very verge where the pool rolls out
into a long rough rapid; a last excursion carried him
over the verge, and down I felt he must go. Landing
with all speed, I prepared for the crisis of the struggle.
Fully a hundred yards of line were off the reel already,
but I had taken the precaution to add enough backing
to give me two hundred yards. Fast as I could follow
over a waste of boulders, the current bore the fish still
faster, and the line was running out by leaps and bounds.
The extreme danger at this place consists in the nature
of the channel. The bulk of water, leaping and tumbling
in grand breakers, rushes down under the cliffs on the
left bank. I was on the right bank, separated from my
fish by a labyrinth of side-channels, winding among huge
rocks. If the line could be lifted clear of all these, safety
might be gained in the great pool of Langhol, a hundred
yards below; but it is not easy so to handle a great

JULY 187

length of line. One hundred and fifty yards were out by
this time; but I had got abreast of the fish, and the
worst dangers were past. Deep was the sigh of relief I
breathed as we reached the neck of Langhol and began
recovering line. A rolling and kicking movement pro-
claimed that my communications had not been cut, and
now all was plain sailing. ' Really,' methought, ' I man-
aged that difficult passage rather nicely. There is some
credit in killing a fish of this kind. It is not every duffer
who '

' WHAT 's THAT ? what the deuce is that ? '

The line had stopped. I tried to persuade myself it
had not ; there — I feel the fish ! No, it was but the rush
of the stream on the bight of the line. It had stopped,
and no mistake, wrapped round a hateful boulder in the
very portals of success. I pulled up — down — across — all
to no purpose. Finally a boat had to be brought up, the
line was freed, and wound sadly in, minus the fly and a
yard of treble gut.

' What size do you put him at ? ' Oh, don't ask me ! I
saw nothing of him but the half-yard of back in the rise :
he may have been as big as they make them ; but, on
the other hand, he may have been but an 18-pounder
hooked foul. We only learned by meeting, that fish and I,
how bitter it was to part (to one of us, at least) ; but the
remembrance would be incomparably unbearable were I
certain that he was a really big fish, for such chances
come not every season to any angler— to many anglers
not once in a lifetime.

What makes the tussle with a Norwegian salmon so
much fiercer and longer than one in Scottish waters?
Some will tell you that the nearer you approach the Pole,

188 THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT

the greater you will find the vigour of all Salmonidcv.
Certainly this is borne out within the limits of our own
little island, as those will testify who have compared the
strength of a 2-lb. trout in a Hampshire stream with one
of like weight hooked from the shore of a Highland loch.
Have you nerve and delicacy of touch to control the first
rush of the English fish ? the rest is child's play ; but the
Highlander will fight hard to the last gasp. But the chief
advantage enjoyed by the Norwegian salmon in his fight
with man lies in the force of the stream. You can fish
these clear Scandinavian torrents when they are in such
spate as would render most Scottish rivers quite unfish-
able. Hook a log in such a stream, and you will realise
that a big salmon has only to turn his side against the
current to become nearly unmanageable. Your art con-
sists in pulling him off his balance over and over again
till he is beaten.

Rude must have been the schooling of the pioneers of
salmon-angling in Norway. Frightful must have been
the disasters encountered by him who first cast a fly in
such a river as this, using a shallow, long-barrelled reel,
such as Scrope depicts in his inimitable Days and Nights
of Tweed Fishing; when trees grew thickly along the
banks, and no friendly hand ha$ as yet cast foot-bridges
over yawning rock-chasms !

For salmon-fishing above other field-sports, one im-
mense, one signal merit may be claimed — it inflicts no
unnecessary suffering and leaves no sting of remorse. A
salmon taken by the fly, wounded only in the gristle or
membranes of the mouth, feels no more pain than one
taken in a net — the pain inseparable from terror. If he
escapes from the hook, or even with the hook, he is none

JULY 189

the worse, or at all events suffers no more than trifling
discomfort. I possess to this day a certain double-hooked
fly of which a salmon deprived me many, many years ago
in the North Tyne. Two days later, a friend of mine,
fishing half a mile higher up the river, proved how little
inconvenience I had caused this fish by recovering my fly
in the breast of a 17-pounder which he landed on a fly of
much the same character. I attached my own fly at once
to the line, and caught a couple of salmon with it on the
same evening.

Other field-sports do not always leave the conscience
cloudless. ' The place where the old horse died ' is per-
haps one of more than merely tender association. Well
for you if you have not to reproach yourself with hav-
ing exacted too much from your generous comrade and
servant, who never measured his effort by his powers.
Fine, too, are the trophies of the big-game hunter; but,
in winning them, how many noble creatures has he dis-
missed to a lingering death in the wilderness. I have
never had to lament the death of a horse under me ; but
in all rny memories of moor and river, mountain and vale,
there is none I care so little to revive as that of a certain
afternoon on the steep above Loch Treig. We were stalk-
ing, on very difficult ground, a small herd of deer which
got our wind and moved off before we were so near as
we had wished. Among them were two good stags, one of
which fell to my first barrel, apparently stone-dead ; his
comrade was heavily struck with the second. I felt some
satisfaction with the performance, for they were both long-
ish running shots; but just as I was starting in pursuit
of the cripple, the first stag rose to his feet and began
hobbling away in the opposite direction. Handing my

190 THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT

rilie to the stalker, I bade him go and finish off the second
beast, while I kept watch upon the first. Donald took
longer over the job than we had expected : he was absent
more than an hour, during which time through my glass
I watched the first stag, desperately wounded in the body,
creeping along the hillside, lying down from time to time
to ease his agony. At last he passed round the flank of
the hill out of my sight. Still, I felt sure of getting him ;
and when at last Donald returned, his dog w/ith alacrity
took up the trail, which was marked, besides, with blood.
How many miles we followed it, I cannot tell ; but in the
end a storm came on with thick mist, and we lost the
trail altogether on a wind-swept waste of stones. This
happened several seasons ago, yet still my heart aches
when I shut my eyes and see that lonely beast on the
great brown hillside, dismissed to a slow, solitary death.
To the salmon-fisher can come no such bitter after-
thoughts.

Of such sort are the meditations which pass through
my mind in this Valley of Enchantment as I bask in the
glorious sunshine between the early and late fishing.
There is no sound, save the roar of the foss, never-ceasing
for thousands of years, and the shrill scolding of a pair of
fieldfares trying to drive off a marauding magpie from
their brood among the alders. Of the lives of the simple,
kindly folk who dwell in the wide-scattered wooden houses
in this dale I have said no word, for how much can we
realise of their lives, we holiday-makers, who come later
than the cuckoo and fritillary and are gone before the
goatsuckers ? How do they pass those months of darkness
when the snow piles deeper and deeper under the cold

JULY 191

stars ? The men, it is said, go to the North Sea fishing,
a dreadful toil which may well serve as their excuse for
dawdling through the sweet o' the year. Substantial
yeomen, many of them, they own land which might be
better tilled. Especially do they neglect the pleasure
and profit to be had from gardens. Here no carnations
toss from window-boxes their perfume, so grateful to the
traveller in the Alps; no roses cluster round the doors
nor pansies in the plots. The culture of pot-herbs and
small fruits is almost entirely neglected, albeit these grow
abundantly and ripen fast under the long sunlit hours and
refreshing showers, and would be eagerly bought by those
English visitors who are at pains to import bottled pease
and asparagus. Wild strawberries of exquisite flavour
positively redden while you wait. There are plenty of wild
bees, and good clover in the meadows, yet have I not seen
a single beehive in Romsdal. The farmers seem to have
no ambition beyond scratching up an annual break in
amateurish fashion with rude wooden ploughs, drawn
by the sleek khaki-coloured ponies which they treat so
tenderly; but on some of these patches the corn does
not promise to return more than the seed, with a little
over for the poultry. Haymaking, indeed, is a more
serious matter, begun, continued, and ended in feverish
haste, before the sun deserts the dale. The grass is sub-
jected to a kind of 'kippering' process on hurdles, but
nobody seems to have suggested the application of the
silo system, peculiarly adapted for dealing with abundant
lush herbage.

Poor and hard although their lives may be, these sweet-
tempered folk seem entirely contented with them as they
are. It is difficult to realise that they are the children of

192 THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT

that race which, for three centuries, was chiefly dreaded
by the people of Britain — of those restless, ruthless
Vikings who cut the throats of Columba's monks, harried
our coasts from Chichester to Caithness, from Chester to
the Clyde, and drove with dripping swords and flaming
brands through the Christian settlements of Ireland. In
one virtue these modern Norsemen excel almost every
other Christian race. Only among Mohammedans can
be found such gentle consideration for, such ^affectionate
treatment of, beasts of burden and of draught. The
stages are often long and steep ; but it adds vastly to
the traveller's enjoyment that the mild, intelligent eyes
of the good dun ponies, disfigured by no blinkers, are
never strained in distress or terror. No blows, no sore
backs, no harsh tones, disturb the perfect confidence
between man and beast. Even the lazy ones respond
generously to a cheering cry or a signal from the hand,
and the high-spirited ones obey a warning that conveys no
suggestion of rebuke. Chiefly this is owing to the good-
nature and sweet-temper of the drivers and horse-owners ;
it may be left to speculation how far these qualities, here,
as in Mohammedan lands, are owing to the absence of
public-houses and the universal sobriety of the people.
Certainly, fifty per cent, of the abuse of horses in our own
country may be traced to bad liquor and too much of it.

One thing let me beg the angler bound for Norway not
to forget. In these far-winding dales there are many
children, but no sweet-shops. Let him therefore reserve
an ample corner in his tackle-box for toothsome delicacies :
he will find his reward in watching the effect upon
palates which have never before experienced the exquisite
sensation caused by chocolate and butter-scotch, and

JULY 193

every little gift of this nature will be acknowledged by
a diminutive brown paw held out, not for more, but to
shake hands in gratitude to the donor.

Adieu! terrible, beautiful Romsdal. Though I should
never visit you again, often shall I see your towering
crests, your mountain-walls, your hanging pine-woods,
glimmering birch-glades, and flower-spangled meads —
often hear your falling floods and roar of avalanche —
often muse upon your gentle, warm-hearted people and
solitary homes. Often, too, in my dreams shall I feel the
masterful snatch of a great salmon at the fly, hear the
screeching reel as he turns his silver side to the torrent,
and fancy myself returning through the dewy glades at
midnight, what time the woodcocks flit darkling to their
favourite swamp.

august

XXVIII

THE present craze for gardening, nurtured as it is upon
much delightful, and perhaps more insipid,
ny literature, is surely one of the most commend-
able of fashion's freaks. Long may it continue, and greatly
may it grow. Meanwhile, it is rather amusing to one who
inelled in garden mould before some of the most eloquent
authorities on the craft were born, and who remembers
the first introduction to this country of herbs which are
now reckoned among the old-fashioned flowers — it is
rather amusing, I say, to be told as a novelty about some
quality in one of the real old favourites. On the other
hand, it sometimes happens that these experts are
unacquainted with the behaviour of certain plants with
which our grandmothers were quite familiar. One sees,
for instance, in many gardens at the present day, a plant
which twenty years ago was hardly to be found save in
cottage plots. This is a dittany (Dictamnus fraxinella),
which our forefathers named the burning bush. An
unmeet name, one might suppose, to confer on a herb
which, though graceful, boasts none but modest hues,
and I have found that many who possess it are unaware
of the significance of the title. This becomes apparent
if, on some still, hot day, or, preferably, in the evening,

AUGUST 195

you apply a match to the flowering branches or quaint
quadrangular seed-vessels. An inflammable gas given off
by the plants at once blazes out with a slight explosion,
leaving behind it a deliciously aromatic fragrance.

XXIX

He who fusses himself about natural history encounters
some comical incidents. It was verging on The Death's.
midnight, and I fancied that all the household hea* M°<*
were in bed, when my butler, who lives at the lodge,
appeared in the room carrying a box done up in brown
paper, which he set down on the table with some signs of
trepidation. ' This has just been left at the lodge/ said
he ; ' there is something alive in it, so I thought I had
better bring it in at once.' Sure enough there was some-
thing alive, for a continuous noise — half click, half buzz,
— proceeded from within. Or was it clockwork ? Visions
of infernal machines flitted through my mind, but, recol-
lecting that my own importance was not on a scale to
attract the malevolence of any anarchist, I cut the string
and opened a chink of the box. A black head, with two
hooked black horns, appeared in the orifice, and two
substantial black claws. Ex ungue leonein — I recognised
my nocturnal visitor as the death's-head moth — (Ache-
rontia atropos), noblest of all the British hawk-moths.
The clicking, buzzing noise went on, proceeding from
the powerful wings, in rapid, tremulous motion.

Desiring to obtain a full view of the creature's funebral
beauty, I opened the box a bit wider. He was out in a
moment, dashing indignantly round the library, taking a
couple of turns under the lamps, and then flinging him-

196 THE DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH

self violently on the carpet like a passionate child. In-
tending to release him out o' window, I tried to throw my
handkerchief over him ; but he mistrusted rny motive,
and took refuge under the sofa. Upon the said sofa was
a crisp chintz cover, reaching to the floor ; the noise the
great moth made, flouncing about under it and rattling
his wings against the chintz, was prodigious ; the cunning
creature seemed to enjoy the game, perching on the least
accessible parts of the under side of the sofa/ and dashing
off again with an audible squeak each time my hand
approached him. Really, we must have presented a very
funny group — an elderly and, I hope, fairly respectable,
country gentleman diving under the furniture at mid-
night, making frantic dashes in the uncertain light after
an illusive object in black and gold. In the end I secured
the animal, and, after causing him to gratify me by a few
of his petulant squeals, I set him free in the darkness,
hoping that he might find a mate and leave a numerous
progeny behind.

Although Acherontia is certainly more frequent in
appearance in Scotland than it was a quarter of a century
ago, rare it must always remain in Britain by reason of
the habits of the creature. The caterpillar, which is
yellowish-green, beautifully banded with violet edged
with yellow, is said to have been found feeding on
jasmine, sweet-peas, elder, vegetable- marrow, and other
plants, but its usual pasture is the foliage of the potato.
Before entering the chrysalis stage it buries itself deep in
the ground, and by far the larger number of pupae must
be disturbed and destroyed when the crop is lifted, or in
the ordinary operations of agriculture which follow.

Truly, the perfect moth is an impressive insect, and it

AUGUST 197

is not difficult to understand the superstitious dread
wherewith it used to be regarded by country people, and
despite Board Schools, perhaps still is. It is not every-
body, even in these enlightened days, who will care to
take in his naked hand a winged creature as big as a
small bat (the death's-head sometimes measures six
inches from tip to tip of the wings), marked on its back
with the accredited emblem of mortality, and wearing a
funebral livery of steely black and dusky brown, slashed
and barred with flame colour. Moreover, the faculty
possessed by this moth of giving audible expression to
irritation imparts a shock to untrained nerves, and the
captor's instinct is to fling the creature away.

XXX

Naturalists are not agreed about the mechanism pro-
ducing the sound which the insect is able to n9 Voice
utter as a caterpillar and a chrysalis, as well as of Atropos
a perfect moth. Most of them assign the sound as a
function of the blunt proboscis protruding between the
two great eyes, which have been calculated to contain
upward of 12,000 lenses. But about the object of the
sound there is greater difference of opinion. Some
consider that it serves as a love-call between the sexes ;
but then the caterpillars can utter it, albeit their mouths
are always full, and a caterpillar that understands his or
her business, has no time for ogling or flirting, only for
eating. If it is intended for conversation, then one would
say that a caterpillar's small talk must be the reverse of
entertaining, consisting almost exclusively of remarks
upon the quality of the potato crop. Besides, these great

198 THE VOICE OF ATROPOS

worms are not gregarious ; if they were so, there would be
precious little profit to farmers in growing potatoes. One
caterpillar can seldom be within earshot of another, and
it takes two to make a conversation or a quarrel. No ;
without denying that Acherontia may be gifted in this
peculiar way for purposes of communication with his
own kind, I cannot help thinking that the faculty is
mainly protective. It adds to the uncanny character of
the creature, inducing possible aggressors to give it a
wide berth, and serving a like purpose to the curious horn
which the caterpillars of all the Sphingidce, or hawk-moths,
whereof the death's-head is the chief, bear on their
posterior extremity. This horn, absolutely futile as a
weapon of offence, looks like one, and thus serves as an
instrument of defence.

Doubtless there be many sounds uttered by humble
creatures inaudible to human ears, but easily heard by
other animals. Many people cannot hear the squeak of a
bat; there is no chord in their cochlea which responds
to such a high note. A friend of mine, quick in hearing
ordinary sounds, sits quite unconscious though the air
resounds with the incessant chirping of cicadas, and he
cannot hear the call of a partridge. I have a hazy recol-
lection of one of Grimm's fairy-tales, in which a boy is
described as being suddenly endowed with the power of
hearing and understanding the language of all living
creatures. If I remember right, he found the conversa-
tion in an ant-hill peculiarly intellectual. Even so ; every
flying, creeping, or swimming thing might have its
message for us had we but ears to hear. The hearing of
few persons is so gross as to miss the accents of the
death's-head moth ; as to the meaning thereof, I have an

AUGUST 199

impression that it is something of the nature of Lord
Melbourne's favourite exclamation — prefaced too, like his,
with an exceedingly forcible monosyllable: 'Damn it!
why can't ye leave me alone ? '

I regret very much that, before releasing the subject
of this long prose, I did not test the insect in respect of
another property which it is said to share with some
other hawk-moths — namely, that of emitting an agreeable
perfume like musk or jasmine. This, most probably,
is intended for the delectation or attraction of the
opposite sex ; just as it is well known men burn tobacco
only because women like the smell.

Since jotting down the above speculation upon minute
sound vibrations I have become possessed of a little
instrument, the Galton whistle, devised for testing the
power of perceiving very high notes. A movable index,
showing in millimetres the number of sound vibrations
per second, indicates every alteration in the height of
the note. Personally, I prove insensible to anything
above 12,000 vibrations per second, but I found two
young ladies who could receive the impression of a note
caused by 40,000 vibrations. What a lot some people
miss, and yet never miss !

September

XXXI

You may throw open your bedroom window, and if you
A Scottish are so material as to indulge in a morning
Blood-feud CUp of £ea^ you can fling the biscuit which
accompanies it two hundred feet down into the blue
sea, for it flows round three sides of the rock on which
this fairy castle stands. It is a modern one, having been
built some hundred and twenty years ago by one Adam
of whom we wot, whose genius, it must be confessed, lay
rather in classical or Palladian piles than in this mimic
Gothic. Yet is Culzean Castle an impressive mass of
masonry, in spite of the many large rectangular windows,
and has been invested with a military character by a
former Lord of Ailsa, who, impressed with the imminence
of foreign invasion, set about creating bastions and earth-
works on a formidable scale. The entrance-hall reminds
one of the armoury of the Tower of London ; a thousand
stand of arms, of an archaic type it is true, but carefully
oiled and burnished, garnish its walls; brass carronades
defend the circular staircase, and outside, on the terraces,
pieces of heavier calibre grin defiance across the Firth.
It is said that the designer of these defences, the first
Marquess, took grave umbrage at a relative in the Navy
who offered to wager that he would capture the castle on

SEPTEMBER 201

any given night with a dozen gamekeepers armed with
dog-whips.

Nevertheless Culzean (you must pronounce it Cullane,
please, with the stress on the last syllable) was well
placed as a stronghold in the days when artillery was
more remarkable for terrific nomenclature than for
strength or precision in shooting. The castle stands on
a bold headland of the coast of Ayrshire ; its walls are
built to the very verge of a precipitous crag, and the
waves roll in upon three sides of it. The landward access
is interrupted by a deep ravine, across which the roadway
is carried level on a causeway of masonry, while the
chasm itself is formed into terraces and flower gardens.

From the windows there is a noble prospect seaward.
The long line of Cantyre bounds the western horizon ; on
the north the fantastic outline of Arran, with many
loops and crests, ends abruptly in the beehive mound
of Lamlash; and towards the south, beyond where
Turnberry lighthouse marks the birthplace of Robert
the Bruce, the granite dome of Ailsa heaves itself in mid-
channel, interrupting the fainter blue contour of the
coast of Ulster. And lest one should weary of vacancy
in the middle distance, there is the never-ending pro-
cession of ships, outward or homeward bound, which the
great Sidon of the north, Glasgow, and the lesser ports of
the Clyde attract to these waters; the gannets for ever
wheel and plunge, and the sea-parrots and razor-bills
hurry along the wave- tops in little dark-clad companies.

One may turn from the rampart of the wild coast, and,
passing a couple of hundred yards inland, find himself
among great trees; for, by a peculiar ground contour,
the park is sheltered from Atlantic gales, and hardly

202 A SCOTTISH BLOOD-FEUD

anywhere else can such fine timber be found so near an
exposed seaboard. Silver firs, with a girth of fifteen feet
at five feet from the ground, run up to a height of one
hundred and twenty feet — a long start over some of the
newer Californian species, which, however, are making a
good stern chase of it — while oak and beech and other
deciduous trees furnish greenwood glades like those of
Berkshire, yet within sound of the thunder of the tide.

The terraces are rich with those flowers and shrubs
which revel in the moist warmth of the west coast, and
the walls are thickly clothed with myrtles, camellia,
lemon-verbena, fuchsia, and escallonia — a garniture not
more strangely in contrast with the warlike armament
of the place than social life of this day is at variance
with the times recalled by the name of Kennedy in the
south-west of Scotland. For this castle of Culzean, at
one time but the tower of a scion of that family, has
been for two centuries the principal seat of a race whose
sway was at one time far more dreaded in Carrick and
Western Galloway than that of the monarch himself.
One has only to turn to the records of the Kennedys,
Lords of Cassilis, to realise through what troubles the
people of Scotland have passed to present security.

The family of Kennedy, like many other great Scottish
houses, first came into prominence when Robert Bruce
established himself on the throne and rewarded with
broad lands and feudal rank those who had been faithful
to his cause. Unlike most of these, the Kennedys were
not of Norman descent, but of Celtic blood, descendants
of the Pictish or Scottish Cinaedh. Nevertheless, this
honourable outset might not have availed to preserve
a heritage to the name, for royal favour of old was as

SEPTEMBER 203

fickle as popular applause nowadays, and there is to be
observed this difference in the loss of the two — beaten in
a general election, a modern minister may amuse himself
unmolested in private life by the study of anything, from
Homer to hymenoptera; but the monarch's displeasure
was generally the passport to a dungeon and the heading
hill, accompanied by forfeiture of titles and land. The ban
lay upon the children to the third and fourth generation.

The age of the early Jameses was one that witnessed
the reversal of many a fair fortune, but Dan Cupid came
timeously to the aid of the Kennedys. To the second
Lord Kennedy his wife bore a beautiful daughter, Janet,
who was to have a notable influence on the history of
her time. She was betrothed to Archibald ' Bell-the-Cat,'
Earl of Angus, with whom to trifle required a cool head
and a stout heart. The girl seems to have been wanting
in neither ; for, although matters went so far that Angus,
in terms of great affection, actually made over to her the
lands of Braidwood and Crawford-Lindsay, she continued
to receive the addresses of that flower of chivalry King
James the Fourth, and became his mistress. He was, it
will be remembered, an exceedingly devout individual,
and in his minutely detailed personal accounts articles
for the use of ' the lady,' as the fair Janet is decorously
called, appear side by side with expenses on pilgrimages
to St. Ninian's shrine and other religious exercises, as
well as those incurred at golf and ' the tables.'

She bore a son to the king ; thus in 1501-2 is noted in
the royal accounts : —

{ Item. — ye xx day of December for viii elne small quhit
(white) to be blancatis and wylycottis (petticoats) to ye barne
(child) in Doun, ilk elne iis. viii^., summa xxiis. viiirf.'

204 A SCOTTISH BLOOD-FEUD

The child thus born in Doun Castle became James, Earl
of Moray, and his mother was splendidly endowed by her
royal paramour with the lands and castle of Darnaway.
The ethics of this transaction will not bear very close
analysis, perhaps, but here comes the least creditable part
of it. The king quietly annexed the lands of Crawford-
Lindsay, the gift of Bell- the- Cat to his betrothed, on
the plea that they had been conveyed without the royal
licence, and when the proud Douglas presumed to claim
the hand of his bride he was promptly clapped into prison
in Dunbarton Castle. That, at least, is the only reason
that can be surmised for his sudden imprisonment at
this time.

Now the bearing of all this on the fortunes of the house
of Kennedy is not difficult to trace. David, the brother
of Janet, was created first Earl of Cassilis, and, like almost
every other man of note in Scotland, fell with his king
on Flodden Field.

Even misfortunes seem to serve the interests of fortune's
favourites. In 1527, Gilbert, the second earl, was waylaid
on the sands of Prestwick and slain by Hugh Campbell
of Loudoun, Sheriff of Ayr. In atonement for this murder
Campbell's lands were forfeited and bestowed upon Gilbert,
the third earl: thus extending and strengthening the
influence of a family already very powerful.

But it was in the person of Gilbert, the fourth earl, that
the power of this puissant house culminated. The extent
of his lands and fiefs was succinctly described in a popular
rhyme of the day.

"Twixt Wigtoun and the toun o' Ayr

Portpatrick and the Cruives o' Cree,
Nae man need think for to byde there
Unless he ride wi' Kennedy.'

SEPTEMBER 205

He was a trusted councillor of Mary Queen of Scots, and
was present with her at the battle of Langside. There
are preserved in the Culzean charter-room many interest-
ing letters to him from the queen, written by an amanu-
ensis, but signed by herself, and sometimes an autograph
postscript was added. It is rather interesting to note
how much more fluently the queen wrote in French than
in English; indeed, her spelling in the latter language
exceeds even the liberal latitude of orthography in the
sixteenth century.

'Ze schal be asuried (she wrote in 1568) that I schal be as
kerful off zour well and of zour hous as zou shal wuische mi, as
ze shal hir by zour awn man wuam tu I hef spokne my mynd.'

And again in the same year :

' ie vous prie en labsance de mi lord boyd, que ie retiens pour vn
temps pour mon seruise, suporter et meintenir son fils & ser-
viteurs en leur actions. Mi lord heris (Herries) vous informera
de lestat de mes affayres; ie vous pri aussi vser de son bon
conseil comme celui qui scet lestast des choses issi.'

But this ' richt gud cusigne and trustye frind,' as Mary
was wont to call him, sometimes played a role less amiable
than the champion of beauty in distress, and of the
extraordinary proceedings in which he bore a leading
part a minute chronicle by a contemporary but anony-
mous writer has been preserved.1 This has been care-
fully edited by Mr. Robert Pitcairn, who said that at one
time he believed it to have been the work of Mure of
Auchendrayne when confined in the Tolbooth of Edin-
burgh, awaiting his trial for the series of atrocious crimes

1 Historic of the Kennedyis, with notes, etc., by Robert Pitcairn.
Edinburgh, 1830.

206 A SCOTTISH BLOOD-FEUD

which Sir Walter Scott embodied in ' Auchendrane, or
the Ayrshire Tragedy.' Certain it is that this narrative
was composed by one who took an active and interested
part in the events described ; that he is able, or professes
to be able, to repeat what was said in most secret con-
ferences, and that the manuscript comes to an abrupt
end at the very time when the Mures were arraigned on
the charge of murder. It is known that Mure, unlike
most Scottish lairds of that day, was an accomplished
scholar, having composed a history of Scotland, which
remains in manuscript in the Advocates' Library, Edin-
burgh, but it might be supposed that, were he indeed the
author of the Historic of the Kennedyis, he had drawn
on his imagination for the details of almost incredible
violence which marked the course of family feuds in
Ayrshire three hundred years ago. There is, however,
ample confirmation to be found in the Records of the
Court of Justiciary, and the interest of this vivid though
anonymous history consists in the fact that it was
written by an eye-witness of the closing scenes of feu-
dalism in Scotland, and, if Mure was the real author, by
one who was blood-stained more deeply than any of his
fellows.

The first letting-out of waters seems to have been
the treatment by this Gilbert, Earl of Cassilis, of Allan
Stewart, Commendator of the Abbey of Crossraguel. The
office of commendator was created on the secularisation
of Church property at the Scottish Reformation, and was
held by a layman appointed by the crown. Cassilis
obtained this appointment from his uncle, Quentin
Kennedy, the last Abbot of Crossraguel; but this was

SEPTEMBER 207

not confirmed by the king, who appointed Stewart com-
mendator. Cassilis, whom men called the King of
Carrick, was not of the temper to brook this sort of thing.
' He was/ runs the Historie,

' ane particuler manne, and ane werry greidy marine, and cairitt
nocht how he gatt land, sa that he culd cum be the samein,
and thinking himself gritter than ony king in these quarteris,
determined to have the whole benifice.'

So, having first tried soft means to obtain from Stewart
the surrender of the Abbey lands, and failed, he had
recourse to cruelty of a blood-curdling sort.

To read the story aright, with all its horrible reality,
one should follow the unhappy commendator's own words,
as set forth in his supplication to the Privy Council ; but
it is lengthy, and the gist of it is that the earl carried
his victim to the 'black vault' in Dunure, one of his
many castles, and there caused the cook, the pantryman,
and one Sir Thomas Tode. who, it is shrewdly suspected,
was none other than his domestic chaplain, to strip
Stewart, tie him to a spit, and deliberately roast him
into compliance before a huge fire. Richard Bannatyne,
in his Memoriales, gives a vivid description of the
scene :

' And that the rost suld not burne, but that it might rost in
soppe, they spared not flambing with oyle (Lord luik thou to
sic crueltie !).... In that torment they held the poore man,
whill that oftymes he cryed for Godis saik to dispatche him ;
for he had alsmeikle gold in his awin purse as wald bye poulder
(gunpowder) aneugh to schorten his paine.'

At last, in sheer agony, Stewart consented to sign the

208 A SCOTTISH BLOOD-FEUD

renunciation of the lands. This took place on the 1st
of September 1570. Apparently Cassilis found a flaw in
the conveyance, for on the 7th of the same month he
brought another paper for signature by the miserable
commendator, who boldly replied that he would rather
die than obey. On this the ferocious monster ordered
the fire to be rekindled and the torture repeated.
' Then,' runs Stewart's supplication,

' being in so grit paine, as I truste never man was in. ...
I cried, " Fye vpon you ! will ye ding whingaris (drive swords)
in me and put me out of this world 1 or elis put a barrell of
poulder vnder me, rather nor to be demaned (treated) in this
vnmercifull maner?" The said Erie, hearing me' cry, bade his
servant Alexander Ritchard put ane serviat (napkin) in my
throat, which he obeyed . . . wha then seing that I was in
danger of my life, my flesch consumed and brunt to the bones,
and that I wald not condescend to thair purpose, I was releivit
of that paine : whairthrow I will never be able nor weill in
my lifetime.'

The Privy Council could not refuse to administer justice
in such a heinous case, even against such a powerful sub-
ject as Cassilis, and he was punished by being ordered to
find security for £2000 Scots (about £100 sterling) to
keep the peace towards the half-roasted commendator,
who, as the chronicler testifies, ' was ewer theirafter onabill
of his leggis.' They would have been more than mortal
' leggis ' had it been otherwise.

Thus the criminal may be held to have got off cheap ;
but there was retribution in store, though not for himself
(seeing that he died five years later, before events had
developed themselves), but for his posterity, who were to
see their great house rent by faction and deprived of its
despotic sway. Certain powerful lairds of the clan and

SEPTEMBER 209

name, were disgusted with their chief's brutality in this affair.
Kennedy, laird of Bargany, espoused the commendator's
cause, stormed the house of Dunure, and bore off Stewart,
' brunt as he was,' to Ayr. Thereupon broke out a feud
between the two branches of the Kennedys, so bloody
and so long-continued as if the whole fury of expiring
feudalism had concentrated itself in this corner of Scot-
land. It is brought very near to these our times by the
observation that the laird of Bargany's 'neise was laich
(nose flattened) be ane straik of ane goiff ball on the hills
of Air in reklesnes.' They were strong drivers, it would
seem, the golfers of Queen Mary's reign, and they played
not with a plain 'gutty' or Haskell ball, but with one
made of wood.

Bargany had such a strong force of his own in Carrick,
besides contingents of his friends from Kyle and Cuning-
ham, that he was able to bid defiance to his chief, and
eventually the earl, who was probably thoroughly ashamed
of himself, consented to allow the commendator a hand-
some pension for life. The chronicler makes use of a
curiously modern bit of slang in bringing his account of
this transaction to a close. ' And this way,' he says, ' wes
my Lordis conqueise of Corsragall; quhilk wes bot ane
bad forme.'

The ' King of Carrick ' came to a violent death not long
after this peace had been patched up, for in riding to
Edinburgh his horse fell, and he died of his injuries.
He left Lord Glamis, Lord Chancellor of Scotland, as
tutor or guardian to his son and heir, the fifth earl ; and
herein was matter for rekindling the flames of feud, which
were presently roaring more fiercely than ever. For the
uncle of the young earl, Sir Thomas Kennedy of Culzean,

210 A SCOTTISH BLOOD-FEUD

brother of the late ' King of Carrick,' took grievous offence
at not being appointed guardian. There was, indeed, good
cause why he should not be chosen for that trust, seeing
that some years before he had brought a company under
cloud of night and fusilladed the house of Dunure, intend-
ing that this should be deemed an assault by the laird of
Carse, with whom the earl was at feud. Cassilis, however,
was duly informed how it was his own brother who had
done this, and also how the benevolent intention was to
cause his countess, at that time enceinte, to miscarry,
in order, of course, to secure the succession to Sir
Thomas.

Lord Glamis found his office of guardian no sinecure,
for, on arriving in Ayrshire to take up his duties, the
lairds of Culzean and Bargany took up arms against him.
Thereafter, having to attend a convention of peers at
Stirling, Lord Glamis was slain by the Earl of Crawford's
men, the shot, it was alleged, coming from the laird of
Bargany's stair. This cleared the path for Sir Thomas,
the laird of Culzean, who immediately assumed authority
over the ward.

There are so many side currents of feud, involving
slaughter and raids between Kennedys, Crawfords of
Carse, Gordons of Lochinvar, Macdowalls of Garthland,
and other families, that it is difficult to keep to the main
conflict which, arising from a dispute about land, now
broke out between the lairds of Bargany and Culzean.
In order to obtain a clear impression of the state of parties
in 1596, it is necessary to marshal the chief combatants on
paper as on more than one occasion they met on the field
of battle.

SEPTEMBEK

211

THE EARL'S SIDE.

John, fifth Earl of Cassilis.
Sir Thomas Kennedy of Cul-

zean.

Baird, Laird of Kilquhenzie.
Cuningham, Laird of Poch-

quharne.
Mclwean, Laird of Gremmat.

THE MASTER'S SIDE.

Hew, Master of Cassilis (the

Earl's brother).
Kennedy, Laird of Bargany.
Thomas Kennedy of Drummur-

chie (Bargany's brother).
Kennedy, Laird of Girvanmains.
Kennedy, Laird of Blairquhan.
Kennedy, Laird of Bennan.
Kennedy, Laird of Knockdaw.
Mure, Laird of Cloncaird.
Mure, Laird of Auchendrayne.
Stewart, Lord Ochiltree.
Stewart, Laird of Dunduff.
Cathcart, Laird of Carleton.

The old laird of Bargany died just as the war was
breaking out. He was a fine old Scottish cavalier, and ' had
ewer in his houshald xxiiij galland gentilmenne, doubill
horssitt and gallantly cled with sik ane repair [so many
guests] to his house that it was ane wonder quhair the
samin wes gottin that he spendit.' His mantle fell upon
a fine young man, his son, Avho entered upon the feud with
spirit.

On New Year's Day, 1597, Mure of Auchendrayne and
Stewart of Dunduff led their followers to attack Culzean
as he was leaving Sir Thomas Nesbitt's house, where he
had supped. Culzean escaped, the ' nycht being mirk,' and
prosecuted his assailants before the Privy Council. Mure
and Stewart were declared outlaws, and Culzean, getting
possession of Auchendrayne tower, dismantled it. Fresh
fuel to the fire ! for Mure and Stewart had henceforward
but one object — to compass the death of Culzean.

Affairs were getting so serious in Ayrshire that King

212 A SCOTTISH BLOOD-FEUD

James summoned the Earl of Cassilis and the laird of
Bargany to his presence and

'gart thame schaik handis; and also the laird of Colzeone in
sum missour : bot not with thair hairttis, because thair particu-
lar wes not sett doun at the agreanse [agreement].'

This ceremony was without the slightest effect, as was
straightway seen. The Earl of Cassilis, at the request of
Culzean, had let a farm to one McEwen, which farm the
Master of Cassilis had previously promised to his foster-
brother, Patrick Richard. The master sent over to the
farm and told the new tenant to clear out, which he,
being ' ane prowd cairll,' flatly refused to do, 5n which the
master set out and slew him with his own hand. The
earl was not in a posture to avenge this outrage at the
moment, being closely besieged in his house of Inch in
Wigtonshire by his Galloway vassals, with whom he had
fallen at grave issue. However, bitter as was young Bar-
gany's personal feud with the earl, he was not going to
sit idle while his chief was beset by a parcel of Galloway
lairds. He led his men to the rescue, and by skilful
diplomacy, backed by a display of force, induced the
gentlemen of Galloway to raise the siege. The earl was
eloquently grateful, and profuse in promises of the favours
he intended to shower upon Bargany when he got back to
Ayrshire. Matters having been amicably arranged,

' my Lord drew on his bwittis [boots] and raid with the Laird to
Ardstinchar, being convoyit be the Galloway menne to Glenapp,
quhair the Laird of Barganyis frendis and seruandis mett him.'

He was hospitably entertained that night by Bargany in
his house of Ardstinchar ; but ten or twelve days after,
when the laird called on him to fulfil some of his pro-

SEPTEMBER 213

mises, 'me lord,' being under the influence of Culzean,
' geff na ansuer, bot lat the samin pass ouer with sylense.'

And so ended this strange and brief armistice, and the
laird of Bargany set about equipping and drilling his
forces. It was harvest-time, and the earl and the laird
both claimed the teinds — that is, the tithe crop — on the
lands of Girvanmains. Bargany was first on the ground,
with no fewer than seven hundred horsemen (including
one hundred of Lord Ochiltree's) and two hundred mus-
keteers. Cassilis arrived soon after, with nearly a thousand
men ; but, finding his adversary strongly posted, declined
battle.

He must have been preux chevalier, this lawless laird
of Bargany, and the chronicler waxes enthusiastic in
describing him :

' He was the bra west manne that was to be gottin in ony land ;
of hiche statour and weill maid ; his hair blak, bott of ane cum-
lie face ; the brawest horsmanne and the ebest [champion] of
mony at all pastymis, for he was feirse and feirry [sturdy] and
winder nembill.'

All these fine qualities did not prevent him engaging
in a detestable plot with the laird of Blairquhan to
take Culzean's life, for whom they laid an ambush in
Glentressock to intercept him on a journey to Galloway.
Auchendrayne, however, who was in Bargany 's confidence,
warned Culzean of what was in store for him, and Culzean
sent forward his squire, Lancelot, to spring the ambush.
Lancelot was taken prisoner, and Culzean appealed for
protection to the king ; the misdemeanants were sent for,
and the old farce was repeated: 'the King gart thaim
drink togidder and schaik handis.'

Matters might have gone on simmering for a long time

214 A SCOTTISH BLOOD-FEUD

but for Bargany's listening to the laird of Blairquhan's
evil counsel. It happened on a day that Lady Bargany
and her sister were riding, with a small following, into
Ayr. The earl spied the party, and, recognising their
white-and-red liveries, sent a clump of twenty spears to
reconnoitre them. Bargany himself not being there, the
party was suffered to proceed unmolested. The incident
was not lost on Blairquhan, who hied to Bargany, and,
assuring him that it had been the earl's intention to have
his life, finished by taunting him with cowardice in not
giving him, Blairquhan, leave to put an end to the trouble
at once. ' How could you do that ? ' asked Bargany. ' To-
morrow,' whispered the tempter, ' he is to ride to Maybole
from Craigneill, and on his return we may all do as we
please.' ' Even as you please,' quoth Bargany, shrugging
his shoulders and turning away from his kinsman.

Blairquhan was not slow to act on the permission. An
ambuscade was prepared by the wayside, and holes were
cut in the hedge ' to schutt me lord in the by-ganging.'
But even as the ambush laid for Culzean had miscarried,
so did this one, by timely warning conveyed to the in-
tended victim.

The time had come for Cassilis to act in earnest, for it
was clear that the same country would not contain him
and his kinsman, Bargany. One snowy morning in De-
cember 1601, Bargany having been for some days in Ayr
on business, with a small following of a dozen spears, the
earl determined to attack him on his return, and to that
end assembled a body of two hundred horse and pike-men,
with twenty musketeers, at Maybole. Auchendrayne, who
seems to have been constantly in the confidence of both
parties, galloped to Ayr and warned Bargany of what was

SEPTEMBER 215

in store for him. He begged him to remain in the town,
' for/ said he, ' your friends are not with you, and you have
to do with men this day. I take God to witness, that if
you ride forward, I have no will for this day's work, for
I see not the men who will do your turn.'

The gallant young laird (he was but five-and-twenty
years of age) laughed scornfully, and persisted in setting
out, having first, however, collected reinforcements among
his adherents in Ayr. Halting the party on the Brig of
Doun, he addressed them thus : ' Sirs, I am here to protest
before God that I seek not the blood of my lord, nor his
dishonour in any sort. I shall ride home to my own
house, if he will let me ; but if he molest me, I trust you
will all do your duties, as behoves men. He that is
unwilling to do this for love and kindness to me, let him
declare that he will see me through it, or turn back at
once.' They all declared their readiness to die in his
defence, and the troop moved on in two companies, one
led by Bargany, the other by Cathcart, the young laird of
Carleton. It was a severe storm ; the snow was falling so
fast that ' nane cud seine the lenthe of ane lanse befoir
him.' But as they neared Maybole the sky lightened a
little, and they beheld the enemy, a dark mass against the
white ground, defiling out of the town gate and drawing
up across the road before the Lady Cross.

The men of Ayr deployed, and began blowing their
matches, but Bargany would not allow them to begin the
fight. ' I will nocht persew me lord,' said he, ' bot I will
eschew all cummer, alse far as I may.' In order to ' eschew
cummer ' it behoved him to leave the highway, and this
he did, seeking to make his way home through some
boggy meadows, without entering the town of Maybole.

216 A SCOTTISH BLOOD-FEUD

Lord Cassilis gave the word to his men to attack Bargany's
force in flank : his musketeers and mounted hackbut-men
dashed down the hill, lined the turf dykes, and opened
fire. Bargany rode foremost, with six other gentlemen,
but in crossing a stream Knockdaw's horse was shot under
him, the bridle was shot out of the hand of Bargany's
brother, Drummurchie, who fell, dislocating his shoulder.
Three other lairds and a page, Edward Irving, rode on
with Bargany, but the men of Ayr turned and fled.

' Good God ! ' exclaimed Bargany, ' we are too few ' ;
and, drawing rein, these five turned and charged the
earl's cavalry, lances in rest, 'in sik sortt as the young
laird of Grinak [Gremmat] was strukin throw the chin,
and he and horse baith strukin to the eird [earth],
and Row Cuninghame, Pochquhairnis broder, was strukin
in at the knie with ane lanse and out at the buttok.'
Cassilis's major-domo was killed outright.

Bargany was frightfully outnumbered. His page had
been killed, Auchendrayne lay grievously wounded in the
snow, two others of his five followers were unhorsed, yet
he fought on, crying 'Where is my lord himself? Let
him keep his promise and break a tree with me.' They
were his last words ; for while he was engaged with two
spearmen in front, a third, ' ane fellow callitt Johne Dik,'
thrust a lance into his throat, severing the windpipe.

They carried this gallant young gentleman to a barn
hard by, to which the earl rode up intending, it is said,
to finish him ; but those with him persuaded him to let
him die of his wound, or, if he recovered, to put him
judicially to death, he (Cassilis) being Judge- Ordinary of
the County. Bargany lived some days: his wound was
so swelled with the frost that the true nature of it could

SEPTEMBER 217

not be ascertained till he was taken to Ayr, where, aided
by the chirurgery of ' Doctour Low/ he breathed his last.
It is clear that Cassilis was the assailant in this fray, and
that Bargany tried to avoid the encounter: nevertheless
the earl can hardly be blamed if, according to all the
rules of warfare, he chose his own time to attack a
hostile force threatening his territory. Anyhow, he escaped
punishment on the plea that he was doing the king
service, seeing that Thomas Kennedy, who rode with
his brother, Bargany, on that fatal day, was an outlaw
at the time. It might have followed that, his principal
enemy being laid low, the earl might have resumed
peaceful sway over his dominions, had not a deadly
quarrel ensued between him and his lieutenant, Sir
Thomas of Culzean, about an appointment made by the
former to the Provostship of Maybole College. Sir
Thomas was assured by the omnipresent Auchendrayne
that he went in danger of his life, at least so says our
anonymous chronicler; but if the authorship of the
Historic be justly suspected to be Auchendrayne's own,
then, as will be seen, there is good reason to doubt this
statement.

Howbeit, what was subsequently established on oath
is this: that on the llth of May, 1602, Culzean sent his
squire, Lancelot, to find Auchendrayne in Maybole, inform
him that he, Culzean, was to set out for Edinburgh next
day, and desire him to meet him for a conference at the
Duppil near Ayr, as he should pass that way. Mure had
left Maybole before Lancelot's arrival, so Lancelot got the
schoolmaster to embody the message in a letter, which
was sent to Mure at his own house of Auchendrayne,
distant some six or seven miles, by the hand of 'ane

218 A SCOTTISH BLOOD-FEUD

puir schollar, quha beggit his leirning, callit William
Dalrumpill.' The lad returned with the letter, and
declared that Mure was away from home. The im-
portance of getting at the true history of this letter
will be seen hereafter; meanwhile we may accept the
chronicler's statement of what preceded the events of the
12th of May. Culzean had sent word to Hew Kennedy
of Chapel to meet him at Auchendrayne, which lies on
the high road to Edinburgh, about four miles south of
Ayr. This Hew acquainted Mure of Cloncaird and
Thomas Wallace, sworn foes of Culzean, of Culzean's
coming, and they sent for Drummurchie. Assuredly
our chronicler was also with them, for he inadvertently
says ' quhatt wordis was amangis thame, I will not
repeitt itt.' Culzean did not tarry, it would appear, at
Auchendrayne, but rode on to Greenan Castle, now a
conspicuous ruin on the sea-cliff south of Ayr. He
remained there a space in conference with Kennedy of
Baltersan, and then resumed his journey. Apparently
he had taken no heed to Auchendrayne's warning, if
indeed he ever received it, for he rode ' ane small
haiknay,' and Lancelot Kennedy was his only companion.
As he was passing St. Leonard's Chapel, which stood
upon what is now the south-west corner of Ayr race-
course, he was set upon by Drummurchie, Cloncaird, and
four others, and done to death among the sandhills.
Obviously, the motive was revenge for Bargany's death,
and there is not the remotest suspicion attaching to the
Earl of Cassilis, though he happened to be at the time
in feud with his old ally, Sir Thomas.

Mure of Auchendrayne's hand was in this affair, as was
subsequently proved, though he was not one of the actual

SEPTEMBER 219

assassins, and we seem to read his sentiments in the cold
reference to the dead man's character :

' He was ane werry potenteous man, and werry wyise ... be
ane moyane and wther [by one means and another] had con-
quessit ane gude leiwing [amassed a good fortune].'

The immediate effect of this murder was the reconciliation
of Cassilis and his brother, the master, who united their
efforts to bring the assassins to justice. To do this, how-
ever, took some years, while the hounds were puzzling
over a false scent, and there were stirring deeds enacted
after the old sort, enough to make men slow to go abroad
without their harness. It is almost incredible that, in
a district so well settled and cultivated as that lying
round the town of Ayr, a miscreant like Thomas Kennedy
of Drummurchie, who had been an outlaw for years,
should have been able to maintain himself at large. But
so it was ; and one evening in May 1602 the Countess
of Cassilis was returning from Galloway, escorted by
the master and a retinue of fifteen horsemen, when
they suddenly found themselves confronted with a body
of nine horsemen and twenty-four musketeers, led by
Drummurchie. Among the countess's men rode John
Dick, who had slain Bargany, and his life Drummurchie
was resolved to have. Seeing that his party was out-
numbered, the master seized the bridle of Lady Cassilis's
horse, and, giving the word to his men, galloped off to
Auchensoul, a small house belonging to one Crauford.
Drummurchie's party, consisting chiefly of infantry,
were slow in pursuit but sure, for they surrounded the
house and set it on fire. Thereupon a parley ensued.
Drummurchie's conditions being the surrender of John
Dick, that worthy wisely took the hint and escaped under

220 A SCOTTISH BLOOD-FEUD

cover of the smoke from the burning thatch. Only one
man of Lady Cassilis's following was killed, she herself
was released, and afterwards, at the intercession of the
wives of the country gentlemen of Ayr, with whom
Drummurchie was on the best of personal terms, the
master and the other prisoners were also set at liberty
after some days' confinement.

A grisly episode is here recorded, wherein a member
of a family shortly to become famous came to a violent
end. Thomas Dalrymple, brother of the laird of Stair,
had been one of Bargany's men at the battle of Maybole,
and Cassilis had obtained letters of horning [outlawry]
against all his opponents in that affair. Him the earl,
as he was riding to Galloway, met by accident on the
bridge of Girvan, seized, and hung him on the dule tree
' besyd the yett [gate] of Craigneill.' The chronicler
feelingly observes that he was ' ane pretty little manne,
and werry kynd. He was ane manne that had never
offendit manne.' It was unwise of him to go about
unattended ; and doubtless a similar fate would have
overtaken the other adherents of Bargany had they laid
aside their arms and dismissed their attendants.

The usual consequence was not lacking. To avenge
Dalrymple, Mure of Cloncaird rode to Cassilis's house of
the Inch1 in Galloway, and there slew his lordship's
master of the works.

Drummurchie was now persuaded by the lady of
Bargany and others that the country was too hot to
hold him, so he went to France, and thence to Ireland,
'quhair he was wondir weill interteynit, and sindry of
thais that wes at the slachter of Oulzean.' The men who

1 Now Lochinch, the seat of the Earl of Stair.

SEPTEMBER 221

had served Drummurchie so faithfully took his desertion
of them terribly to heart, especially Cloncaird, who ' tuik
sik heaffie malancolly ' that he died thereof.

Before coming to the closing scene of this long story
of horrors, notice must be taken of one feature in the
magnificent obsequies which, at this time, five years after
the death of Bargany, were performed in honour of him
and his lady, she having lately died. It was a great
feudal demonstration, whereat the partisans of Bargany
mustered in force; the special feature referred to being
the Banner of Revenge, borne in the procession through
the country, from Bargany to Ayr, some twenty miles,
by young Mure of Auchendrayne, whereon was painted
the likeness of the late laird, with his son sitting at his
knees, and the legend ' JUDGE AND REWENDGE MY CAUS, o
LORD!' One would give something handsome for this
relic now.

All this time ugly stories had been afloat about the
elder and younger Mures of Auchendrayne, whereby their
names were brought into sinister connection with the
murder of Sir Thomas Kennedy of Culzean. The affair
of the letter informing Auchendrayne of Culzean's journey
to Edinburgh became of momentous importance. This
letter; it appeared, which Mure had been supposed never
to have received, had been duly delivered into his own
hands and read by him. He had then closed it up again
and given it back to the boy, charging him to return
with it to Maybole, and to declare to the schoolmaster
and Culzean's messenger that he had been unable to find
him to whom it was addressed. He had then sent to
Drummurchie and showed him how Culzean might be
waylaid on the morrow and Bargany 's death avenged.

222 A SCOTTISH BLOOD-FEUD

After the deed was done, Auchendrayne realised that his
safety lay in the silence of the lad Dalrymple ; he
therefore had him kidnapped, and shut him up in
Auchendrayne tower for nine or ten weeks. Thence he
sent him to a friend in Arran, the laird of Skelmorlie;
but the boy, being treated with harshness there, made
his escape back to Ayrshire, where Auchendrayne captured
him once more, and, after some further weeks of imprison-
ment, took him to Leith and shipped him off as a
recruit for the regiment of Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch,
devoutly trusting, no doubt, that he would there be
knocked on the head. All this, of course, was a device
to conceal the fact that Culzean's intended journey to
Edinburgh had been made known to Auchendrayne.

Nothing was heard of Dalrymple for some years, when,
to Mure's horror, he reappeared in Ayr at his mother's
house, and straightway came to ask employment from
him. Young Mure, who had been as deeply concerned
in the plot against Culzean as his father, was called into
counsel, and this worthy pair were of one mind that
Dalrymple must be silenced for ever. On some pretence
or other they induced him to accompany them to Girvan,
where he was lodged with Auchendrayne's tenant, James
Bannatyne, in Chapeldonald. It was a light matter in
those days for a laird to exact service from a tenant,
and a very serious matter for a tenant to refuse. The
service Auchendrayne now asked of Bannatyne was that
he should assist him and his son to murder Dalrymple.
To this end the elder Mure and Bannatyne led the
victim upon the sands of Girvan at ten o'clock at night.
Bannatyne, who seems to have been of 'milder mood,'
had qualms, declaring it was a cruel purpose when it

SEPTEMBEE 223

would be as effective to send the youth to safe keeping
in Ireland. Auchendrayne seemed to incline to this
proposal also, but his son settled the question by rushing
suddenly upon Dalrymple, throwing him down, and,
assisted by his father, strangling him. Thereafter they
waded out to sea with the corpse and committed it to
the waves, which washed it up on the same spot seven
days later.

Bannatyne was straightway sent to that convenient
receptacle for inconvenient individuals, Ireland, and it
was sworn by witnesses at the trial that Auchendrayne
had afterwards hired one James Pennicuik to go to
Ireland to murder Bannatyne. It is difficult to see where
this chain of crime would have finished had it not come
to a fitting conclusion in the trial and execution of both
the Mures and James Bannatyne.

The trial has become celebrated, not because of the
atrocity of the crimes committed, nor because one of
the accused, the younger Mure, was put to the torture
of theiboots to extract evidence against himself — there
was nothing unusual in either of these circumstances —
but because the ordeal of touch was employed to find
the murderer. The Earl of Cassilis caused Dalrymple's
corpse to be exhumed, and, finding that he had died by
violence, ordered all the people of the neighbourhood to
attend and touch the corpse. The order was obeyed by
all except the elder and younger Mure, who were not so
simple as to trust themselves in the clutches of Cassilis.
But Mure's daughter was one of the throng, and it was
alleged that so soon as she drew near the body blood
spouted upon her therefrom, in consequence of which
the Mures were apprehended and put upon trial.

224 AN UNSUCCESSFUL STALK

There are no scenes in Scotland more peaceful than the
green vales of south Ayrshire, the banks of bonny Doun,
and the richly wooded Girvan. The dwellings of those
who enacted the bloody deeds told in this long history
of violence are standing to this day, some still inhabited
by lairds of the old families ; others, roofless and storm-
beaten, have been deserted for roomier modern mansions.
The traveller may find himself wistfully musing on the
dulness of the reign of security, sighing for jingle of
plate-armour and bray of the trumpet to waken the
sleeping woodlands — for gleam of steel and flutter of
pennons to brighten the brown hillside. Ifat, on second
thoughts, he will probably reflect how much pleasanter
it is, on the whole, that a country gentleman should be
able to move about at his pleasure, without a clump of
spears behind him and with no weightier defence than
a tweed suit ; and better for the tenants that they should
not be liable to be compelled to assist their landlords in
every enterprise, whether ' boden in ff'eir of war ' or
equipped conveniently for 'privat murther/ on pain of
forfeiture of all their goods, not to mention their lives,
as was the case with James Bannatyne.

XXXII

I am three thousand feet above the sea, seeking such
An unsuccess- repose after violent exertion as may be found
fui stalk on a surface Of wet moss thickly strewn with
harsh stones, varying from the size of a cocoanut to that
of a writing-table. Slashing rain slants across this dreary
plateau, driven before a keen north-easter. The lines of
some eighteenth-century tourist in the Highlands keep
running in my head :

SEPTEMBER 225

' Bleak mountains and desolate rocks

Were the wretched result of our pains,

The swains greater brutes than their flocks,

The nymphs as polite as their swains.'

No nymphs are within many miles, and the only swain at
hand is my stalker, in whose esteem I do not rank very
high for the moment, seeing that I have just missed a
stag. Scarcely the moment, you will say, to provide copy
for the printer, but fountain pens run as smoothly in foul
weather as in fair, and there is never any time like the pre-
sent. Besides, it is only sun-dials that have the privilege
of recording none but serene hours. I should like to go
home, for I am soaked through and very cold, but that
would be at the expense of every shred of self-respect.

It is about four hours since we descried the beast I
have just missed. We were then at the foot of the hill,
a couple of thousand feet below this inhospitable summit.
The stag, a goodly switch-horn, was half-way up, in com-
pany with five-and- twenty other animals of less note.
The sun beat into that glen with a vehemence to which
we have been strangers all summer ; the wind was very
light in shifting flaws ; let it but remain fairly steady and
there was an easy approach to the deer up the course of
a shallow ravine. We started to climb. The heat was
tremendous ; the midges rose in clouds from the steaming
heather, and simply tore at every exposed piece of skin ;
but we arrived without mishap at the appointed place.
The rifle was out of its cover and I was chortling over the
easy victory I was on the point of scoring, when I felt a
draught of air on my left cheek, blowing thence straight
on the deer.

Surely Nature has shown mercy to man in making him
insensible to the odour of his own kind ; to judge from
P

226 AN UNSUCCESSFUL STALK

its effect upon wild creatures, it must indeed be an
appalling stench. One can detect the shudder which
precedes their instant flight. Our deer were off in the
twinkling of an eye, but they did not cross the hill.
They pulled up on the shoulder about a mile and a half
from us, and the stalker decreed that we must cross the
top, and come back upon them from the other side. How
simple it all sounds, but what a variety of suffering it
entailed upon one who will never see his half hundred
again, and who, it must be assumed, had come out only
to take his pleasure. First, there was the steep ascent,
still under burning sunshine, and among devouring
midges ; then, on the summit was dark mist, driving rain,
and searching blast. Next came the crawl, when cold
water from without mingled with perspiration from with-
in, till not a dry thread remained. Afterwards there was
half an hour of lying flat in the wet till the deer should
feed into sight ; and finally, the supreme moment, when
teeth must be restrained from chattering, numb limbs
wakened into sudden action, and a bead, as steady as may
be, drawn upon the dark carcase of the switch-horn, full
in view at not more than eighty yards.

'Over him!' was all the stalker's comment after the shot;
i ut no wealth of vocabulary could have lent poignancy to
the reproach. And here am I, having munched a bundle
of sandwiches, flabby with rain, speculating what greater
folly I could have committed than to expose myself to
such exceeding discomfort, in order to shed the blood of
a creature which never did me an injury, and would not
be my property if I slew it. How justly he might grumble
who should be paid to do this kind of thing.

The deer having fled, the vast area of this mountain

SEPTEMBER 227

top seems totally devoid of life. Not a sign of living
creature punctuates its emptiness; even midges cannot
face this cold, wet wind. But the skirts of the storm are
drawn swiftly aside; the sun bursts out with dramatic
suddenness, and in a moment earth and air are astir with
moving things. Black heather-flies rise to their dance ;
they must number a million to the acre, and tens of
thousands of acres are in sight around me; wan moths
flutter among the scant grasses, and a frog creeps
stealthily over the gray moss. Froggie does not seem in
training for mountaineering, his muscle, one would say,
being all too flabby for alpine work ; nevertheless you are
sure to meet him anywhere up to four thousand feet,
tempted to these high levels by the abundance of flies.
There is no bird of ravin aloft, except a scald crow of
forbidding voice, so the ptarmigan begins to croon and
chuckle among the rocks, and from far down the hill
rises the cheerful crow of our only exclusive British bird,
the red grouse. The sunshine has restored every creature
to busy life: Even I, bedraggled and discredited, assume
a buoyant air, and fall in with the stalker's proposal to
approach some deer he has spied on the opposite hill,
albeit this implies a descent of two thousand feet, and a
corresponding climb on the other side at a gradient like
that of the dome of St. Paul's.

XXXIII

Even to the man of mildest nature there arrives a

moment when he is forced to seek relief in

The growing

execration. Be he alone, his curses are audible evil of coi-
and deep ; if he is with others, habit and ec ors
reverence for his company keep him silent, but not less

228 THE GROWING EVIL OF COLLECTORS

profound in imprecation: At such times one may well
envy the richness of objurgation at the command of a
certain Irishwoman, who was heard shrilling across the
wet street of Loughrea against another who had earned
her displeasure — ' May the divil defile yer lintel, ye Mame-
luke o' the worruld ! ' Many a deed of violence has been
averted by such harmless necessary swear-words, which
afford solace — experto crede — no whit less comfortable,
although the object against which they are directed be
unknown. This I put to the proof only yesterday, the
relief being instant, although temporary. The occasion,
it will be admitted, was a trying one. Only two places
are known to me in my native county where the dusky
geranium (Geranium phceum) is to be found. It is not
a showy plant, but it is a choice one, haunting the banks
of woodland streams, and expanding satiny petals of the
colour of darkest burgundy, on slender branching stems,
about a foot and a half high. It is doubtfully indigenous
to Britain, but it has established itself as an unobtrusive
colonist in certain parts of northern England and Scot-
land. Summer after summer, from distant childhood,
until last year, I have known a single tuft of this modest
flower beside a shady streamlet flowing into the lake in
my park. Yesterday, when I went to bid it good-morrow,
the place thereof knew it no more. There was a bare
scrape on the bank whence it had been torn by some
' Mameluke of the worruld ' — in plain English, some pil-
fering botanist unknown. Evil repose must he have had
that night, if but two or three of the wishes that I winged
after him found their billet. Would that I could have
served him as Gargantua did the pilgrims of Saint Sebas-
tian ! For is it not a crying shame that these creatures

SEPTEMBER 229

should creep into all the secret places of the country and
rob them of their rarest treasures ? The veneer of science
with which they gloze their crime only deepens the guilt.
A child or a maiden passing that way might pluck the
blossoms to fling them by the wayside in five minutes,
and no harm done ; but the mischief wrought by these
wretched botanical prigs is irreparable. They prey, not
on flowers, but on specimens for some beastly herbarium,
and a specimen must include the whole plant, root and
branch, flower and fruit, wherefore it comes to pass that
never more must the eye of one faring through this wood
of mine be pleased by lighting on the dusky geranium,
because the solitary plant thereof, known to and beloved
by me for half a century, now lies sapless and faded,
pressed and gummed between sheets of paper, where may
the worms speedily attack and destroy it ! May the thief
himself forget all about botany, and become possessed by
the most acute form of philately, and be for ever baffled
in obtaining the specimens upon which the victims of that
form of mania set the highest value !

In all seriousness, the evil wrought by plant-collectors
is a very real and growing one. The real man of science
lighting upon some rare plant knows better than to dig
it up. He notes its occurrence furtively, and studiously
avoids publishing the exact locality, bearing in mind the
disappearance of the blue alpine sowthistle and the blue
menziesia from their only haunts in Britain — the first
from Lochnagar, the other from the Sow of Athole. For
thirty years and more there has been known to me a
heathy crag, far up in the southern uplands, where, among
the heather, between the stems of scattered birch and
stunted oak, there are some plants of wintergreen (Pyrola

230 THE GROWING EVIL OF COLLECTORS

minor). This is a lovely thing of the heath family, with
round fleshy bright green leaves the size of a halfpenny,
sending up after midsummer a column five inches high
of white, sweet-scented bells. It is one of our rarer plants,
very local, growing only where the plough has never come ;
wherefore, needless to say, it is greatly sought after by
collectors. But, although I generally manage to visit the
spot in July, to enjoy the fragrance and beauty of this
choice herb, to none but the most discreet dare I ever
reveal the secret of its presence. For aught anybody
knows, this colony of wintergreen may be older than the
Christian religion. Betray it, and its lustrous leaves would
gleam there nevermore. It is the student and the amateur,
not the master, who work the mischief. The first is too
often encouraged by school and college prizes offered for
' collections ' ; the second, having a true love for nature,
perhaps learns too late how much mischief he has done.
But there is another class who carry on wholesale opera-
tions ; digging up wild roots by the hundred and bringing
them into great towns to be retailed to householders who
delight in all that reminds them of the country. Ferns
are especially the quest of such depredators. It is aston-
ishing the appetite that townspeople have for ferns, yet
of all green things these are the most impatient of the
smoke, radiated heat, and dry air of cities. The incident
of the dusky geranium took place four hundred miles
from London, whither, as yet, the wholesale spoiler has
not penetrated ; but the woodlands and lanes of Surrey,
Herts, and Essex are despoiled each spring of every kind
of herb that tempts the buyer. The legislature has been
invoked to put an end to this nefarious traffic. I think
a bill to that effect was before Parliament not long ago ;

SEPTEMBER 231

but one might as well pass an Act for the prevention of
midges. So long as ferns and roots of wild-flowers find
purchasers, there will be legions of pilferers. It is in the
power of every lover of nature in some infinitesimal degree
to discourage the traffic by refusing henceforward to buy
any roots of ferns or wild -flowers offered for sale either in
Covent Garden or the streets. The legitimate purveyors
of plants are the nurserymen who propagate them.

XXXIV

Once, in the course of these very desultory notes, I
described the beautiful mechanism whereby ^^g^^^
cross-fertilisation is secured in the great blue intelligence
sage (Salvia patens}, which we in the west are
able to grow as a hardy herbaceous plant. If a stem of
grass is pushed down the throat of one of the blossoms,
two long stamens, their anthers charged with ripe golden
pollen, move down from their concealment in the upper
lobe of the corolla, and, in Mexico, the native country of
this plant, would deposit part of their burden upon the
head or back of some winged visitor, which, flying off to
the neighbouring blossoms, would effect the desired
exchange of pollen. Whatever the creature be, it has
not accompanied the blue sage to these latitudes. It
must be of slender build, or, at all events, have a long
trunk or tongue, such as a humming-bird's or hawk-
moth's ; for although there is a good store of honey in
the azure blooms, it lies deep down the narrow tube at
the base of the pistils, and none of our native winged
insects seem to be of a build to reach it in the legitimate
way. I described also how I had found in certain gardens,

232 PROGRESSIVE INTELLIGENCE IN BEES

not in all, that the throats of every sage blossom had
been bitten across, and the honey burglariously abstracted.
I said that I suspected the bumble-bees, having observed
that they treated the long spurs of yellow toadflax in this
way ; and this suspicion has now been carried to convic-
tion. Last week, for the first time, I detected a bumble-
bee flagrante delicto. She was most business-like at her
work, hurrying from flower to flower, wasted no time
fooling about the front door, but went straight to the
same place in each, just where the blue becomes paler
at its insertion in the calyx. A hole was ^bitten at the
side of the throat, and the honey extracted in less time
than it takes to write about it.

One particular remains to be noted. Cut across the
tube of a salvia, and you get, not a circular section, but
an oblong one, slightly compressed at the sides. When I
first noticed the throat-cutting, several years ago, it was
always performed across the front of the tube, at its
greatest diameter, leaving a gaping wound. Now I can
find no flowers treated in this way. The incision is always
effected at the side, where the diameter is smallest, and
so close to the calyx that it is not visible on the corolla
after the bee has left it. This looks as if the bumble-bees
had improved upon their earlier practice. The blue
salvia, a somewhat uncommon exotic, must have come
upon former generations of British bumbles as a surprise,
and he must have gained considerable kudos who first
devised the knack of getting at the honey. But invention
is progressive ; it seems to have been only within the last
few years that the bees have discovered that it saves
trouble to bite through the tube at its smallest diameter
instead of its greatest, thereby getting nearer to the honey

SEPTEMBER 233

glands. If bees are the most intelligent of insects (Lord
Avebury gives the palm to the ants), so they have usually
been considered the most inveterate Tories, as shown by
enduring political constitution of the social species and
their immemorial styles of architecture. But here is
evidence of the progressive leaven in these ancient com-
munities.

XXXV

One is sometimes asked whether our bumble-bees are
solitary or social insects. Of course there are Bumbic-
many kinds of solitary bees, and these not the ****
least intellectual of their kind; but the whole race of
Bombus is social, forming communities of males, females,
and sexless workers, acting under the direction of a queen.
Perhaps colony would be a better term than community,
seeing that there exist peculiar causes to prevent the
inhabitants of a bumble's nest ever approaching in number
to a hive of honey-bees. In the first place, the frosts of
autumn destroy the whole population, except a few
females. Each of these survivors sets about in spring
the foundation of the new colony over which she is to
reign. Hard work she has at first, building a nest of
moss in a hole in the ground or in some wall. Under
the moss she builds a cell of wax— not a very neat one,
indeed, but capacious enough to be lined with a paste
made of honey and pollen, and in this she lays several
eggs. If this cell is taken away, Hoffer found that the
queen died of a broken heart, or, as a bee has no heart, let
us say of the ruptured mesothoracic ganglion. After the
first cell is finished and sealed, her majesty takes a few
days' rest upon it ; then she begins a second cell, and, if

234 BUMBLE-BEES

time permits, a third. But presently the cares of mater-
nity become almost overpowering. The eggs in the first
cell have hatched rapidly; the larvae make short work
of the slender store of honey-soaked pollen provided for
them, and begin crying out for more. Mother Bee has
to give up egg-laying and architecture, and goes abroad
to collect more food, which she pokes into the cell through
a tiny hole cut in the top. The babies grow fast and
become obstreperous, dinting and bulging the waxen sides
of their nursery in their struggles to get out ; when lo !
some fine morning all is still. Every one of them has
spun itself a separate cocoon of fine silk and fallen fast
asleep. Then the queen knows it is safe to open the cell,
because when the sleepers wake they will be perfect worker
bumbles. Out they come, with gauzy wings and velvety
tails — jolly, hearty little chaps, who set to work at once
to relieve their royal mother of the labour of feeding the
other lame. This is now a matter of increasing urgency,
because, although the queen laid up food for the young
workers, she put none in the cells of the males and females
upon whom the future of the race depends.

But the queen-mother has plenty of willing workers at
her bidding now, and takes her leisure, devoting it entirely
to the luxury of egg-laying. Meantime, her subjects
labour incessantly, collecting honey and pollen for the
rising generations, storing it in the misshapen cells as
they are vacated by successive hatches. Country school-
boys, rats, weasels, and foxes all know these honey-tubs,
which are piled in disorderly masses, very different from
the faultless regularity of the honey-bees' comb.

By midsummer the colony is in full swing, and, seeing
that some of the young females are allowed to share the

SEPTEMBER 235

queen's labours of egg-laying, might become exceedingly
populous, but for an extraordinary blindness on the part
of these clever insects. Every species of Bombus is
shadowed by a corresponding species of Psithyrus, bees
of another genus, and of most reprehensible habits.
Yellow-tailed bumbles attract yellow-tailed Psithyrus,
red- tailed bumbles have to entertain red-tailed Psithyrus ;
and so closely do the two genera resemble each other that
the older naturalists failed to distinguish the difference
between them. Bombus is the most industrious of all
bees, working far longer hours than the honey-bee ; Psi-
thyrus works not at all. Late in the day, hours after the
exemplary Bombus has been at work, he may buzz forth
among the sunny flowers for a short tune ; but most of
his time he spends among his host's honey-tubs, stuffing
himself with sweets which don't belong to him, and
encouraging his wives to lay as many eggs as possible
in the house and among the good things of Bombus. He
grows more portly than Bombus, who can only rear a
fraction of its Iarva3, because Psithyrus eats all the food
intended for them. Hoffer found that a nest of Bombus,
if protected from Psithyrus, increased to two hundred
souls — I mean bumbles — whereas in another, not so pro-
tected, he counted on the first of September only a queen
Bombus with fifteen workers and eighteen gluttonous
Psithyrus, whereof eight were females.

The strangest part of the story is that the hosts live on
the friendliest terms with their ignoble guests, working as
heartily to provide delicacies for them as for their own
young. So true is the verse, though in a sense never
suspected by the author :

' Sic vos non vobis mellifieatis apes.'

©crober

XXXVI

OF all the creatures that inhabit the heavens above or

the earth beneath, or the waters under the

earth, there are none whereof I am conscious of

more profound ignorance than the Arachnida, or Spiders.

Yet these are animals of so much character and so varied,

their ingenuity is so versatile and so consummate, that I

can conceive no more fascinating and absorbing branch of

study than concentrated research into their structure and

habits.

The sub-class Arachnida forms but a link in the vast
group Arthropoda, connecting the Myriapods or Centipedes
with the Crustaceans ; yet each of the seven orders com-
posing that link would suffice for the entire life-work of
any student, no matter how diligent. To realise this it is
only necessary to call to mind that these seven orders
embrace such a diversity of creatures as the Acarids or
Mites, including some of the most odious human parasites,
such as the too-familiar harvest bug and Sarcoptes scabiei,
the cause of the loathsome itch, as well as the dreaded
scorpions, the true spiders, and the curious whale-ticks
and other marine parasites. The labours of Dujardin,
Claparede, and Siebold upon the mites, of Dr. Dohrn upon
the Pycnogonidea or sea-lice, and of Hermann, Latreille,

OCTOBER 237

Dufour, Simon, and a host of other specialists, have by no
means exhausted the field — a fact which might easily dis-
courage more superficial observers.

Nevertheless, it is impossible for anybody who gives
more than the most careless attention to animated nature
to fail to take note of some incidents in spider life. There
is no commoner object than a spider's web, yet what is
there in nature that more completely baffles human con-
jecture than the nature and degree of the intellect re-
quisite for the construction of such an admirable snare ?
What is more puzzling than the union in one tiny
organism of mental characteristics so divergent as tender
solicitude for offspring and bloodthirst almost without
parallel towards creatures of the same or different species?

XXXVII

Some of the most complex and delicate performances
of the lower animals appear to be unconscious
and automatic. The silk- worm, once only, and
that during an immature stage of existence, spins an
elaborate cocoon, which no amount of practice could
improve. The evidence of design is unmistakable; but
who shall pronounce the builder to be also the architect?
At a certain period of its growth the motor nerves of this
sluggish worm set in action specialised machinery to work
up material automatically stored ; but the action must be
wholly independent of the creature's volition. It must
spin, whether it would or no, and it can exercise no dis-
cretion in the style or shape of its cocoon.

In the case of spiders, one has to consider the action of
a mature adult instead of a larva ; yet the process seems

238 THE WEB

to be none the less independent of volition. The design
is so much more ambitious than the silk-worm's, the
structure so much more elaborate and beautiful, and so
closely in accord with the principles of human engineering
and cabinet work, that one finds more difficulty in dis-
sociating it from the independent ingenuity and conscious
skill of the performer. Yet the common garden spider
(Epeira diadema) probably acts unconsciously in setting
about web-spinning. It does not reflect before putting
into operation the spinning mechanism and material
which it has inherited from an unseen ancestry. She
(for it is the female only that concerns herself with
architecture) does not gaze with hungry longing upon the
flies disporting themselves in the sunshine, or speculate
how, being herself wingless, she can capture those tooth-
some flying creatures. Indeed it is almost certain she
cannot see them, for the visual powers of most spiders are
very feeble, being compensated for by an extraordinary
refinement of the sense of touch. She simply sets to
work to apply the [specialised mechanism and material
wherewith she is endowed to the purpose with which they
are co-ordinate. Although cut off by the period spent as
an egg in a cocoon from all parental instruction or ex-
ample, she is at no loss for a plan. Innate functional
impulse, which is probably the right definition of that
which we term 'instinct,' co-ordinate with certain
specialised organs, directs the creature to the unconscious
performance of certain definite acts without previous
practice or experience. First, the foundations are laid, in
the shape of lines enclosing the area to be occupied by
the web. From this circumference the radii or stays
are drawn to the centre, whence the spider works out-

OCTOBER 239

wards, stepping from stay to stay, and laying down a
thread in a wide spiral to act as a scaffolding for the
finished structure. Finally, having arrived at the limits
of the operative net, she retraces her steps, working in-
wards in a much closer spiral, laying the transverse threads
at the proper distance, and devouring, as she goes, the
original scaffolding threads which enabled her to perform
the work.

If it is difficult to dissociate such a consummate piece
of engineering from the operation of a keen intellect, still
more so is it to regard the far greater complexity of snares
produced by certain other spiders as the mere outcome
of functional automatism. Nevertheless, that seems to
be the true explanation. If the spider's web were the
outcome of the creature's individual ingenuity and intel-
ligence, there certainly would be manifest some variation
in design among millions of webs by different individuals
of the same species — some shortcomings in first attempts.
No such variation — no such shortcoming — can be de-
tected. There is no ''prentice hand' among spiders.
The first web of each spider is of normal design and
perfect construction. Destroy it, and the creature will
execute another exactly the same, no whit better adapted
for the capture of passing flies.

But to recognise this performance as the effect of
unconscious automatism is by no means to deny the
probability of an external directing power. On the con-
trary, it would be easier for most of us to homologate the
most exacting dogma of scholiasts and theologians than
to conform to the demands of ultra-materialists and
refuse to admit the necessity of recognising some agency
beyond, above, and more powerful than matter.

240 MESSALINA OF THE MESHES

How different from the spider's would be human per-
formance directed by personal intelligence. Suppose that
a Cockney from Spitalfields found himself so situated
as to be forced to make a living as a herring-fisher or a
rabbit-catcher. Motor or functional co-ordination would
not help him much, for he can neither swim like a fish
nor run like a rodent. He must first seek instruction
from experts or consult suitable literature; and then,
even if he may dispense with a laborious apprenticeship
in these comparatively simple crafts, he must obtain or
construct special instruments, in the use whereof he will
prove deplorably unskilful at first. Even so, he would
be availing himself of the accumulated experience and
manifold devices of past generations. Deprive him of
these, and he must die of starvation on the shore of a sea
teeming with herrings or in the best stocked warren in
the realm, before his intelligence should enable him to
supply himself with food.

XXXVIII

Of the spider's ferocious attributes an instance was
Messaiina of lately brought to my observation by a friend,
the Meshes so revolting as almost to obliterate the tradi-
tional reverence which all true Scotsmen owe to the whole
race of spiders. In the corner of his gunroom one of the
long-legged race of spiders (I am quite unable to define
the species) had spread her net. The place was badly
lighted, and altogether an extremely unlikely one for
sport with flies. ' Fool,' thought my friend, ' you '11 catch
nothing there. Your best chance would be in a sunny
place ; here you are like to die of starvation.'

Little did he understand the demoniac purposes of the

OCTOBER 241

Lady of the Net, or anticipate the hideous drama of which
that gloomy corner was about to be the scene. On the
morning following that on which he first noticed the web,
he observed that its architect, as he had expected, had
caught no flies ; but apparently she possessed some secret
power of attraction, such as Armida wove into her girdle,
for, as he watched, he beheld a stranger spider approach
— knight-errant and suitor for the lady's affections. She
received him graciously. There followed in due course —

' Of mild delays, of tender scorn, of sweet
Repulses, war, peace, hope, despair, joy, fear ;
Of smiles, jests, mirth, woe, grief, and sad regret ;
Sighs, sorrows, tears, embracements, kisses dear,
That, mixed first by weight and measures meet,
Then, at an easy fire, attemper'd were.'

Happy lover ! nor less credulous than others of his kind.
Well for him if he had laid to heart (a spider's heart is
a much more obvious organ than his brain) some of the
innumerable lessons of the fickleness of the sex. Instead
of lingering in dalliance, ogling the adored object with
his eight foolish eyes, he would have departed straight
away upon his proper business of fly-catching. But he felt
secure ; he knew of no returning husband to hasten his
departure, so he loitered on in the scene of his brief
joys.

Presently the lady's mood changed; the languor left
her lids (or would have done if there had been any lids),
a lurid light glowed in her orbs, the lover started from
her in terror; too late— with the swiftness and violence
of a tiger she sprang upon him, fixed her sharp fangs m
his throat, and poured in the numbing poison stored at
their roots. After a few futile struggles, the luckless
Q

242 MESSALINA OF THE MESHES

visitor's limbs relaxed, and his murderess, disposing her-
self luxuriously to the feast, proceeded to suck his juices
until his remains hung in the net a phantom of his former
nimble self.

On many days after a similar tragedy was enacted,
until, when I visited the scene, the domestic apartment
presented the following appearance. At one angle of the
web lay this most dissolute of females, closely guarding
the fruit of her amours enclosed in three round brown
cocoons, while in her full view hung in different parts of
the net the withered corpses of no fewer /than thirteen
husbands or paramours, all of whom had fallen victims
to her insatiate hunger. It was a truly sickening sight,
affording one more example of that most perplexing
fact — the absolute heartlessness of the scheme of Nature.
One object, and one alone, seems to be kept constantly
in view — namely, the perpetuation of the species. Let
that be secured, and all other considerations are thrown
to the winds. We human vertebrates have come to
regard life as a sacred thing, not to be wantonly wasted —
nay, as a thing to be reverently protected, and protracted
to its utmost span. But Nature, in ten thousand normal
instances, inculcates the doctrine that the life of the
individual is nothing — the endurance of an aggregate of
individuals everything. In the wonderful synopsis of
animated nature given in Psalm civ., King David, who
never lost the true shepherd's eye for wild creatures,
notes not only the Creator's care to provide ' meat in due
season' for them, but also the stern indifference with
which He takes away their breath and allows them to
die and return to their dust. What chiefly strikes the
inquirer into the habits of the smaller and more multi-

OCTOBER 243

tudinous creatures, is the apparently needless amount of
slaughter and cruelty inseparable from their mode of
life. Why should such an abominable menage as that
described above have been planned, seeing that other
creeping things, leading far more exemplary lives, enjoy
quite as fair a prospect of perpetuating their species?
The further problem remains, seeing that spiders evince
signs of intelligence out of all proportion to their size and
position in life, why do the males not learn to avoid the
ghastly fate which has overtaken countless generations
of their hapless sex ?

XXXIX

Well, there is still justice under Heaven, and it has
overtaken the Lady of the Net. I left her
twelve months ago (1900), ensconced in her den,
with three round brown bundles of eggs behind her, and
the wasted skeletons of her thirteen husbands dangling
in the web under her eyes. Last summer she spun a
brand-new web, and began the old game. Five more
husbands, one after another, were tempted in, and, after
a brief love season, were devoured by this Messalina of
the Meshes.

Then befell judgment. A younger and sprightlier
spider spun a web below the other, whereunto the males
resorted, to the neglect of the other house. The two
ladies met ; words passed (at least that may be assumed) ;
from words they went to worse; a fierce battle ensued;
Messalina i. was beaten and eaten up by her rival, who
may very well have been one of her own daughters.

Such be some of the less admirable passages in nature.

244 SOME LEPIDOPTERA

XL

Among the most memorable features of the autumn
some now passing (1901) has been the extraordinary

Lepidoptera number of Red Admiral butterflies. Mr. Robert
Service, the well-known naturalist, mentions in the
current number of the Annals of Scottish Natural His-
tory that he counted upwards of two hundred of
these brilliant creatures in a walled garden near
Southerness. I cannot record anything approaching
that from personal observation, but one su,nny morning
in September I saw seventeen busy upon a single plant
of Sedum spectabile.

Another of the Lepidoptera which has appeared in
unusual force in the North this season is the Death's-
Head nioth (Acherontia atropos). It has been found in
south-west Scotland, not only, as heretofore, in the perfect
state, but also as larva and pupa, which seems evidence
that this fine exotic species is now completely acclimatised
with us. The same seems to be the case with the Clouded
Yellow butterfly (Colias edusa), until lately supposed to
be recruited in Britain only by wind-blown individuals
from the Continent. ' Clouded Yellow ' years used to be
marked by entomologists at long intervals, but of late the
appearance of this swift-flying insect has been so frequent
as to indicate that some of the pupse survive British
winters. The cockroach, the bed-bug, and other uncleanly
outlanders have long ago established their rights as natur-
alised British subjects: in days when we have to deplore
the extermination or diminution of many of our native
creatures, we hail with welcome the spontaneous immigra-
tion of desirable foreigners.

OCTOBER 245

XLI

The advocate of an unpopular cause must be prepared
to suffer for righteousness' sake, and I am not
surprised that the plea which I have made
from time to time in favour of an oppressed class of my
fellow-creatures — the owls, to wit (no pun intended) —
should have earned for me some uncomplimentary epithets
from the disciples of use and wont. Next to the Agnus
Dei, the most moving appeal in the Litany is that which
recites what ' we have heard with our ears and our fathers
have declared unto us.' Nevertheless, with due reverence
be it spoken, in lay matters our fathers have shown a
culpable recklessness in what they have told us. They
enjoined, for instance, the duty of burning witches, and
set us a spirited example in that line of public duty.
They prescribed profuse bleeding as the surest remedy for
almost every ailment, and held it to be expedient to drink
a bottle of strong port daily. Subsequent experience,
submitted to reflection, has led us to regard the state-
ments of our fathers with a good deal of suspicion, and to
apply to them the ordinary rules of evidence. What really
distresses me in this matter of how to deal with owls, is
the apparent incapacity of certain expensively educated
persons to understand the nature of evidence, or, at least,
to admit that it is respectable to require evidence before
condemning beautiful animals to the penalty of death.

The charge against owls is that they destroy young
game, especially young pheasants, hand-reared at the
coops. Now, of the many persons who have written to
me to say that they wish with all their hearts they could
agree with me as to the innocence of owls in this respect,

246 OWLS

but that they have lost numbers of young pheasants from
the depredations of owls — of all these persons, I say, not
one has been able to speak from personal observation.
Every one cites his gamekeeper's testimony. Obviously,
then, this is mere hearsay evidence, such as would not be
permitted in any court of justice. Let me recite once
more the facts which seem to make it impossible for owls
to prey regularly on young game birds in this country.

Of the nine or ten species of owl found in the British
Isles, three only are able to hunt by day. Of these the
two largest — the eagle owl and the snowy owl — no doubt
are formidable birds of prey, which, were they numerous,
it would certainly be justifiable to destroy in the interest
of more valuable animals ; but both these noble creatures
are among our very rarest visitors, and only stoop to our
shores under stress of weather. Therefore, these do not
come under consideration in the present question. The
third British day-hunting species is the short-eared owl
(Asio accipitrinus). Undoubtedly, this bird would work
mischief among young pheasants and partridges but for
the circumstance that it is a winter visitor to this country.
It is one of our most regular seasonal migrants, arriving
and departing simultaneously with the northern-bred
woodcocks, hence popularly known as the woodcock owl.
Thus it never sees our pheasants except as full-fledged
rocketers, each more than twice the weight of an adult
short-eared owl. It is true that a few pairs of these owls
do remain to breed in Orkney, Shetland, and on the
Scottish and Northumbrian moors; but the main body
departs each spring, except when, at intervals of many
years, a certain cogent and peculiar circumstance induces
them to remain. That circumstance is the outbreak of a

OCTOBER 247

plague of field- voles, such as desolated great tracts of hill
pasture in southern Scotland in 1891 and 1892. In those
years the short-eared owls not only assembled in unusual
numbers upon the ground affected, but remained to breed
there. Nay, more. Not content with a single setting each
of four or five eggs, the females reared two and three
broods in a season, sometimes laying eight or nine eggs in
each setting. As chairman of a Departmental Committee
appointed to devise means of mitigating the vole plague,
it became my duty to visit several farms where the little
rodents were most numerous, and witnessed the owls doing
excellent service hawking about over the heather in the
month of June, and pouncing upon the darting voles.
When the vole plague abated in the third season, the owls
took to preying upon young grouse, but only as a make-
shift. They resumed their normal migratory habits, and
in the fourth season a man might have hunted Eskdale
moor the whole summer through and failed to see a
short-eared owl. The short-eared owl, therefore, must be
acquitted on the plea of alibi of destroying young game in
Britain. As for the night-hunting species— the long-eared
owl, the barn owl, the tawny owl, etc.— their defence is
complete. Young winged game is not abroad in the hours
of darkness, when they seek their prey.

But now comes a totally different charge against one of
the most respected members of this ancient family. A
friend writes me from North Wales (1902) that the game-
keepers where he has been shooting attribute the unusual
scarcity of snipes this season to the malfeasance of long-
eared owls (Asio otus), and that in consequence the decree
has gone out for the utter destruction of these beautiful
birds. Now this charge is such a novel one that it

248 OWLS

deserves attention. Unlike its cousin the short-eared owl,
the long-eared owl does not hunt by day, and it remains
in this country all the year round. Its misdeeds, if any,
are performed under cloud of night, which makes it pro-
portionately difficult to catch it flagrante delicto. What
is the evidence upon which these Welsh gamekeepers have
condemned it to death? Purely circumstantial, and as
slender as that which might be produced to account for
the prevalence of appendicitis by the number of omnibuses
in Piccadilly. It amounts to no more than this, that
during the present season in North Wales there are fewer
snipe than usual, and as many, or more, long-eared owls.
Have you a woodland beside a snipe bog ? It is certain
to contain long-eared owls, by reason of the abundance of
small rodents in marshy ground.

I now come to my point — the point which it is dis-
creditable to the intelligence of any person professing to a
knowledge of wild creatures to evade. So far from circum-
stantial evidence only being available as to the diet of
owls, it happens to be impossible for these birds to disguise
or conceal the nature thereof. Like the falcons, all owls
eject from the mouth the indigestible parts of their food
such as the bones, fur, feathers, wing-cases of insects, and,
so on, in the form of ' pelts,' or elongated pellets. These
pelts may be collected under the roosting-places of the
owls, and when placed in warm water disclose precisely
what the bird has captured and eaten during the four-and-
twenty hours preceding ejection. I shall never forget
the state of the floor of a young fir-wood on Eskdale
moor during the vole plague in 1892. It was thickly
covered with the pelts of both long and short-eared owls,
and these pelts consisted exclusively of the debris of voles.

OCTOBER 249

Has it occurred to one of these Welsh wiseacres to examine
the pelts of the owls in support of their accusation ? and
if so, have the remains of snipe been found in them ? If
not, then I claim for the accused a verdict of not guilty.

Meanwhile, let me suggest a more probable cause for
the scarcity of snipes. It so happens that the present
season is marked by an extraordinary scarcity of golden
plover. There are certain fields in my neighbourhood
which are regularly frequented by these pretty birds. In
ordinary years I would bet that on any winter day I could
show flights there varying in number from a dozen to two
or three hundred. These fields lie between my house
and the nearest railway station, so I have to pass them on
an average at least twice a week. This year I have not
seen a single golden plover on them, though curlews
are as numerous as usual and lapwings far more so. On
the sea-coast there seems to be not one golden plover for
twenty that may usually be seen there. Now for the
reason. We depend for our winter flights of golden plover
upon birds bred near or within the Arctic Circle. Those
that were hatched upon our own moorlands are at present
far to the south— in Spain, Africa, on the Danube, etc.
One of the chief breeding-grounds of the northern con-
tingent is Iceland, although the lapwing does not resort
there to breed ; and I am informed by a friend well ac-
quainted with that country of a heavy calamity which
overtook the birds there last spring. Three days after the
arrival of the main body at the end of April a terrible
snow-storm swept across the island. Tens of thousands
of golden plover perished. One farmer collected twelve
hundred dead on his farm alone. There is no mention of
snipes, but it is highly probable that they suffered in

260 OWLS

equal measure. Note that, like the plovers, all British-
bred snipe, which are those which would have suffered
from long-eared owls, left the country for southern lati-
tudes in October, and had the owls killed every one of
them before they started on their journey, that could not
have affected the numbers in the winter flight.

XLII

CAN any of us, by taking thought, reckon what his coal
costs him? Not merely in cash; that con-
sideration could scarcely figure under the head-
ing of this paper. Neither do I mean the grosser and
more patent effects of the coal industry, especially where
concomitant iron-ore has brought blast furnaces, with ruin
of all that is sweet and fair in landscape, sullied streams,
asphyxiated trees, rows of bleak, featureless cottages. It
was in the forest of Arden, upon the skirts of what is now
the Black Country, that Amiens once could not refrain
from singing :

' Under the greenwood tree, Who lores to lie with me,
And tune his merry note Unto the sweet bird's throat.

Come hither, coine hither, come hither !
Here shall he see no enemy

But winter and rough weather.1

Even if your lines lie not exactly where Mammon with
murky thumb has squeezed all beauty off the face of the
land, but have fallen on the outskirts of some great in-
dustrial centre, where green things still abound and wild
creatures come to rear their young— even there you have
to pay something for your coal which is not settled with
the chandler's bill. Your stream may run as clear as others,

252 LICHENS

but the braes round which it circles wear a sophisticated
aspect ; the fern springs as fresh here as elsewhere, but
the greenwood has forfeited some of its special grace ; the
gray crag drops as sheer from its crest as in any Highland
glen, but it has parted with some elements of dignity. Only
the other day, when strolling through a princely demesne,
well stocked with fur and feather, but within sound of a
great manufacturing city, did I hit by accident upon the
secret. ' Where were the lichens ? '

There were none. The humblest of all forms of terres-
trial vegetation had ceased to exist within the zone of
coal-smoke. That was why the wayside boulders showed
so dark and monotonous, and the tree stems seemed grim
and unyielding as wrought iron. There happened at the
time to be no impurity in the air ; it was a serene winter's
day — the sun unclouded, the lift blue, a brisk nor'-west
breeze flying across the Clyde from the snowy Highland
hills. But it was easy to understand that, with the wind
from another quarter, or in calm, damp weather, when fog
broods over the plain, the atmosphere would be charged
with the waste products of combustion. Men, beasts, and
trees manage to thrive through it ; only the lowest
organisms succumb.

Of course there is nothing new to science in all this.
Of myself I know nothing, or next door to nothing,
about the cellular cryptogams, but on returning home I
looked up a treatise on lichens by the Rev. J. M. Crombie,
and among the first statements that caught my eye was
that ' their fully developed condition is a sure indication
of the purity of the air.' Obviously, the lichen's im-
patience of coal-smoke is one of the elementary facts
known to every cryptogamist, but a fact acquired at first

NOVEMBER 263

hand from Nature without a prompter makes a firmer
impression than one gathered from books. It pleased
me to receive from high authority explanation of a
phenomenon which I had mooned for half a century
through the world without identifying till last week.
The explanation reveals in a flash the unsuspected
balance remaining at our debit after the coal-master's
bill is paid. Unsuspected — only because our lungs and
nostrils have accommodated themselves to that odeur
anglaise which struck Lady Mary Wortley Montagu so
offensively on her return from travel. Edward i. march-
ing south from a Scottish campaign, was so deeply
disgusted with the evil-smelling vapour that hung over
his capital, that he issued an edict forbidding any citizen
to burn sea-coal in London on pain of death. Imagine
what a fair aspect the city would assume were it not for
its smoke. Westminster Palace would receive in course
of years a silvery veil of lichen on its sunny aspect, a
tapestry of green moss on its northern face. The Abbey
would lose its gloom, and glimmer instead with gray and
gold. Tree-trunks in park and street would part with
their grit and grime in exchange for a delicate vesture,
kindly to the touch and restful to the eye ; all but the
planes, which would continue to strip to their new buff
skins each year. And, mark, that neither to stone nor
tree is the slow growth of lichen other than beneficial.
It protects the stone surface from corrosion and waste
by carbonic acid, and aids the outer bark in shielding
the integument of the tree from frost and heat. It is
the birthright of trees to afford foothold for the ' corticole '
section of lichens.

Foothold, and no more. The lichen is no parasite. It

254 LICHENS

asks and receives nothing from its host but standing
room, drawing all its nutrition from the sun and rain of
heaven. This is specially interesting in connection with
the chemical properties and economic uses of lichens.
One is so accustomed to think — of course wrongly — that
vascular plants, the green things of the earth, extract
and distil their various properties only from the soil
wherein they are rooted, that it surprises one to find
that such primitive cellular plants as lichens, which
possess no means of deriving nourishment except from
the air and light and rain, contain such unexpected
substances as iron, salt, sugar, oil, resin, starch, and a
whole host of chemical agents. The Highlanders who
scrape the crottle and ' staneraw ' from the rocks to dye
their yarn withal, are pursuing a very ancient industry ;
for society was in a very unfinished state when various
kinds of lichens were made to yield their secret virtue
of producing rich dyes in reaction to ammonia — scarlet,
purple, yellow, russet, and green. Litmus, commonly
used by chemists for the detection of free acids and
alkalies, is extracted solely from species of Rocella and
Lecanora. Arctic travellers nowadays carry their own
provender with them, cunningly preserved ; but the
pioneers in high latitudes sometimes owed their lives to
'Iceland moss' and tripe de roche, ground to powder
and baked in cakes. All these lichens are attached to
rock or soil, and some people may feel sceptical about
the assurance of men of science that they draw nothing
from that on which they grow; but the most nutritive
lichen of all is above suspicion, for it grows detached
from any foothold. This is the manna lichen (Lecanora
escul&nta), which lies in loose lumps or cakes, several

NOVEMBER 265

inches thick, over vast tracts of arid steppe in Tartary
and Asia Minor, and has often served to preserve life in
man and beast when more ambitious crops have failed.
From the reindeer moss (Cladina rangiferina), the chief
sustenance of those great deer in winter, the Russian
peasant has even learned to distil an ardent spirit.

Lichens — some of them, at least — possess one quality
which, while it appeals powerfully to the imagination,
tends to deter all but the most patient from attempting
their systematic study. That quality is their immense
longevity and the exceeding slowness of their fructifica-
tion. Human life dwindles to insignificance before that
of a patch of stone lichen. The oak may live down
fifteen or twenty generations of men, and complete each
season its cycle of bud, flower, fruit, and fall ; but nothing
bides its time like the lichen. It may live down fifteen
or twenty generations of oaks. Mr. Crombie cites the
instance of a patch of Physcia parietina growing on a
granite wall. After five-and-forty years all the progress
he has bei n able to record is that 'the thallus is now
well developed, but no fructification whatever is visible.'
In fact, given no violent cosmic or permanent atmo-
spheric change, some lichens appear to be capable of
immortality, containing in their structure no occasion
of death. Lecidea geographica, the species which spreads
those beautiful silvery stains in slowly broadening circles
upon the rocks, must be known to everybody. It is found
on the highest mountains in the world, wherever there
is a surface clear of ice and snow, and some of its patches
probably date from a time before man had come to claim
the lordship of creation.

Curiously enough, within three miles of where I am

256 A GRACIOUS SCENE

sitting, a rocky headland juts out into the Irish Channel,
and enables me to assign a respectable age to a colony
of lichen thereon. It bears the name of Benbuie — that
is, the Gaelic beinn buidhe, yellow head — obviously
derived from the golden lichen (Parmelia) which still
covers the verticle face of the cliff. Now, Gaelic has not
been spoken in this part of Galloway for three centuries
at least, therefore —

Let me counsel any one Avho would derive from lichens
the delight they are capable of affording, to carry with
him in the woods or on the hills a good pocket lens.

XLIII

Perhaps of all the privileges of civilisation there is
A gracious none that adds more to the zest of life than the
scene rapid contrast in scenery secured by modern

means of locomotion. ' 0 botheration ! he 's at it again,'
I hear some reader ejaculate, wearied unto death's door
by the incessant chortlings from press and platform
about the marvellous progress of the nineteenth century.
Nevertheless, I must out with it. The change accomplished
in the space of a single night from the dismal, choking
atmosphere we have lately been called upon to breathe
in London, to the limpid, though fitful, climate of the
Scottish west coast, is too like enchantment to be
brooked in silence. Of all the moods of this too versatile
temperate zone, there is none that suggests fairyland
more surely than a shining mid-winter day by the
shore. Alexandre Dumas— gentlest of satirists— girded
with unaccustomed bitterness against the winter sun of
England — ' une de ces rares journees d'hiver ou 1'Angle-
terre se souvient qu'il y a un soleil.'

NOVEMBEE 267

Perhaps he never saw it reflected from the western
ocean, having made his escape over night, as I have
done from darkness as of the pit — darkness which might
not only be felt, but smelt.

' Nor Springe nor Sonier's bewty hath such grace
As I have seen in one Autumnall face.'

A fleeting boon — so brief is the span from sunrise to
sunset, but how priceless while it lasts ! Looking over
the myrtle and arbutus which fringe the window at my
elbow, how gracious is the scene ! The sun, low circling,
sheds oblique radiance, touching scarlet and coral berries
into splendour, waking the close sward into breadth of
intense, voluptuous green, firing the russet of withered
oak and beech, and limning their shafts and branches
with oxydised silver. Birds of many sizes, hues, and
gaits, turn their breasts to him, preening themselves in
all the pride of fresh plumage; positively there is a
sub-tropical suggestion in the sulphur and black and
slaty blue of that ox-eye tit, so bravely is he lit up.
As for the chaffinch on the spray above, he is always so
well dressed that a little sunshine more or less scarcely
brings him into the category of the showy. He reminds
one of somebody's definition of a really well-dressed man
— one that, when he left the room, you could not for the
life of you describe what he had on.

XLIV

Fieldfares are surely unusually abundant with us this
autumn. The last time I paid them much ^^^^
attention was in July, when they were busy, oh
so busy, with their nests in the alders fringing a great

258 FIELDFARES

green Norwegian river. I could not but speculate upon
the difference there must be in the digestive powers of
nestlings reared in a humdrum British summer, wherein
even the longest day yields place to a period of darkness,
when supplies must be knocked off, compared with that
of birds reared in these high latitudes, where the summer
night is scarcely a transient dimness. I could not make
out that the parent birds ever went to sleep. At what-
ever period of the day or night I happened to pass through
that gray alder copse, there they were, stuffing their
insatiable progeny with good things. The fieldfare very
seldom condescends to rear its young in Britain, but in
Norway its nesting colonies are very notable features in
the forests. Unlike other thrushes, they do not abandon
their gregarious habits in the breeding season. Now they
are with us again, as is their wont in winter, and very
distinguished they appear, flashing along in their lofty,
curveting flight. They have a far more gamey appear-
ance on the wing than any other of the British thrushes ;
indeed, they are reputed to be excellent on the table. But,
Lord ! we have plenty of variety in diet without being
tempted to persecute these fine birds for their flesh.
Luckily, they take good care of themselves ; none of their
relatives are so gun-shy as they. Perhaps it is the vast
solitudes wherein they are reared that make them so wary
on arriving upon a man-infested island like this. Certain
it is, there is no song-bird so difficult of approach.
Bicycling lately one bright autumn day I saw a flock of
many hundreds of fieldfares in some high hedges and
roadside trees, but not one of them would allow me to get
within sixty yards of him.

NOVEMBER 269

XLV

The unusual numbers of fieldfares (1901) bodes trouble
should this winter prove a hard one, for seldom 3^.
have I seen such a poor store of winter berries. Migration
It is quite the exception this year to see a holly or a haw-
thorn bearing a decent crop, at least in this district ; and
greatly the fieldfare relies on such provender. Not so
much, however, as his cousin the redwing, of all birds the
first to suffer in seasons of scarcity. Redwings die in
hundreds in severe weather, of hunger, not of cold ; for
birds, albeit they always go barefoot, are strangely tolerant
of cold. (Remember this, ye over-thoughtful ones who
hang your woodland captives in cages on a brick wall ' to
enjoy the sun'!) Curiously enough, though fieldfares so
greatly abound, I do not recollect having seen a single
redwing this season. Yet both species are Scandinavian
breeders, and fare hither in winter in quest of similar food.
It almost seems as if the redwing intelligence department
had received notice of a shortage of berries in Britain, and
had steered their course accordingly.

How little we know as yet of the influences, the
motives, the aims of bird-migration. With its grosser
phenomena we are fairly familiar, thanks to the late
Heinrich Gatke and the statistics furnished by intelli-
gent lighthouse-keepers. Perhaps it is our ignorance
that makes so conspicuous the failure of our attempts to
acclimatise foreign species. I care not to reckon how
many of my ' saxpences ' have gone bang ! with nothing
to show for them. My spoonbills flew to other meres,
and were shot by excited field-naturalists; my purple
water-hens, lovely creatures, strayed to the stubbles, and

260 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE

were catapulted to death by schoolboys (oh ! for one hour
of Elisha and his she-bears); my wood-ducks (I had a
flotilla of fifteen) first showed a morbid propensity for
laying their precious eggs in cottage chimneys, and then
took to philandering on the seashore by night, and were
potted by flight-shooters. The only permanent additions
to the resident fauna for which I am responsible are three
in number, and they are not examples of acclimatisation,
but of restoration — badgers, to wit, which burrow and
breed, but never bless my eyes with a sight of their
streaked faces; jays, about which my neighbours use
dreadful swear- words ; and squirrels, which — no, I will not
admit yet that they are incompatible with clean forestry.
Let us change the subject.

XLVI

We are all familiar with a certain class of anecdotes in
Animal favour with readers of the Spectator — stories
intelligence illustrating intelligent behaviour in the lower
animals. Unluckily, they are almost always told by un-
trained observers biased by affection for some particular
cat or dog, and predisposed to hypothetical interpretation
of facts. How cautious one ought to be in the endeavour
to distinguish between inherited instinct and intelligent
reflection there are a thousand examples to prove. The
sister of the late Mr. Romanes had a pet capuchin monkey
of an exceedingly irritable temper. She noted in her
diary that one day this creature bit her several times, and
seemed afterwards overwhelmed with shame, sitting quite
quiet, and hiding its face in its arms. The obvious deduc-
tion was that it possessed an ethical sense, and was

NOVEMBER 261

conscious of wrongdoing. Had Miss Romanes not been
accustomed to apply the sound rules of evidence, the
behaviour of her capuchin would have been cited thence-
forward in support of the untenable theory that animals
have a sense of right and wrong according to a human
moral standard. But her critical faculty induced her to
add this significant footnote. ' On subsequent observation
I found this quietness was not due to shame at having
bit me : for whether he succeeds in biting any person or
not, he always sits quiet and dull-looking after a tit of
passion, being, I think, fatigued.'

Very few dog owners are accustomed to the mental dis-
cipline necessary for the application to the conduct of
their favourites of such criticism as Mr. Lloyd Morgan has
lately described in his thoughtful volume on Animal
Behaviour. He owned a fox-terrier, which had the run
of a court beside his house, separated from the road by an
iron railing and a gate, which swung outwards by its own
weight on the latch being raised. The terrier, being an
animal of spirit, naturally wanted to get out upon the
road, where he sniffed adventure, and used to run along
the parapet wall, thrusting his head between the railings.
Now this parapet brought him just upon a level with the
latch, under which, one day he happened to poke his
head. In drawing it back, the latch was raised, the gate
swung open ; behold the dog free of the road ! An undis-
ciplined observer would have jumped to the conclusion
that this dog had seen his master raise the latch, noted
the result, and put two and two together, implying that
the animal had the power of thinking a matter out. Not
so Mr. Lloyd Morgan. He coldly recognised a fortunate
occurrence arising out of the natural restlessness of the

262 INSECT MECHANICS

dog. In other words, it was a pure fluke ; but it passed
into experience, for it happened more than once. Dogs,
of course, are exceedingly susceptible of experience ; after
each successive repetition there was less poking of this
one's head into wrong openings, till at last he ' learnt to
go straight and without hesitation to the right spot.'
Yet the same dog ' seemed to be incapable of perceiving
the nature of the difficulty which vertical iron railings
presented to his passage with a stick in his mouth.'
When sent after a stick into a field through railings six
inches apart he dashed back with it, always held by the
middle, and found his return hopelessly barred by the
ends catching in the railings. Nor, although the experi-
ments were continued through two summers, did this
highly intelligent animal ever change his behaviour
with the stick, or learn what a moment's real reflection
would have taught him — to pass it through the railings
lengthwise.

XLVII

Occasionally the close observer comes across startling
insect manifestations of intelligence in animals very
Mechanics far inferior to dogs in the scale. The infinite
varieties of device and function in insects are usually
affected by means of highly specialised organs adapted for
definite purposes. But in the course of his most interest-
ing studies upon the habits of the solitary wasps, Dr.
Peckham was witness of the behaviour of one of the
genus Ammophila which it is scarcely possible to account
for by intelligence profiting by chance experience, as in
the case of the fox-terrier lifting the latch of the gate.
The deliberate use of a tool is generally supposed to

NOVEMBER 263

postulate reasoning power, yet it would seem preposterous
to grant in a little sand wasp what we are compelled to
disbelieve in the highly organised vertebrates. Dr. Peck-
ham watched the wasp in question digging a hole in the
earth, depositing therein an egg, together with a spider,
which she had stung into paralysis, to feed the grub
which should be hatched in due course. Then she filled
up the hole with sand or earth, jamming it down with her
head.

'When at last the filling was level with the ground, she
brought a quantity of fine grains of dirt to the spot, and, pick-
ing up a small pebble in her mandibles, used it as a hammer in
pounding them down with rapid strokes, thus making this spot
as hard and firm as the surrounding surface. Before we could
recover from our astonishment at this performance, she had
dropped her stone and was bringing more earth, and in a
moment we saw her pick up the pebble and again pound the
earth into place with it. Once more the whole process was
repeated, and then the little creature flew away.'1

The whole of this performance is so unexpected, so
little in accord with the manifestation of the uncon-
scious impulse which we define as instinct, that even Dr.
Peckham's high reputation as a scrupulous observer
might fail to convince sceptics that he had not been
deceived ; but similar behaviour on the part of a wasp
of the same species has been recorded independently by
Dr. Williston, of Kansas University.

Another resort to mechanical aid has been described
by more than one independent observer, this time on the
part of a co-operative or social insect. An Asiatic ant
(Ecophylla smaragdina) makes a house by curling up

1 Peckham's Instinct, etc., of Solitary Wasps, p. 22.

264 INSECT SOCIOLOGY

the edges of leaves. Having no means of their own of
fastening the structure, these ants have recourse to their
own larvae, which have glands secreting a mucilage for
the formation of a cocoon. Drawing the edges of the
leaves together, the ants pass the larvae (small white
grubs) to and fro along the two surfaces, which presently
are glued together by the thread of soft silk proceeding
from the spinners of the larvae.

XL VIII

The civilised organisation of ants and bees is an endless
insect source of wonder-stirring manifestation. Lord
sociology Avebury and others have explained their per-
fect co-operation, their respect for authority, their habits
of slave-keeping and tending herds of aphides ; but, per-
haps, it is not so commonly known that one species of
American ant live by an elaborate system of horticulture.
These leaf-cutting or parasol ants are so called from their
spending their time in running about with circular pieces
cut from the leaves of trees. Often the nest is at a con-
siderable distance from the tree. Mr. M'Cook describes
one instance where a passage ran from the nest about
eighteen inches underground for 448 feet, and then above-
ground for 185 feet to the tree, the whole course being
almost in a straight line. Nobody knew why such masses
of leaves were stuffed into the nest, until Alfred Moller
discovered that the harvesters pass the crop into the hands
of a specialised gang of workers which remain within the
nest. These, having cut up and masticated the leaf frag-
ments, store them in heaps and wait till a slender fungus
spreads through the mass. This fungus they treat in a

NOVEMBER 266

peculiar way, biting it and causing it to throw out a white
abnormal growth, which supplies the community with
their chief diet.

XLIX

Of all the infinite varieties of nest architecture none is
more strange and none more scientific than that Mound
practised by the Megapodidce, or Mound Birds, M**8
of Australasia ; none is more likely to set one speculating
upon the delimitation of instinct and reason, if, indeed,
there be any definite frontier between them, and if what
we revere as reason be not merely the fuller exercise of
and evolution from that function or agency which the
older naturalists agreed to designate as instinct.

The Megapodidaz embrace a group composed of three
genera confined to Australasia and the islands of the
Eastern Archipelago and Pacific. These genera contain
but few species, all distinguished by an extraordinary
development of legs and feet, which are specialised for
the purpose of a peculiar mode of nest-building. The
birds start at a considerable distance from the spot which
the hen has chosen to deposit her eggs; walking back-
wards, they scrape together with their powerful feet all
the grass and leaves in their path, and pile them in a
heap, in the lower part whereof the large eggs are laid.
The process is continued until there is piled above the
eggs a mound of vegetable matter mingled with soil to
the aggregate weight of several tons. The most ambi-
tious architect is the Australian inegapode (Megapodius
tumulus), a pair of which, although they are no larger
than Dorking fowls, have been known to construct a
mound measuring 150 feet in circumference. This,

266 MOUND BIRDS

however, was not the work of a single season; for this
species use and add to the same mound year after
year.

The eggs having been deposited, the parent birds go
about their business, which is not that of incubation.
They act as if they had a perfect understanding of what
happens when vegetable matter rapidly decays, and trust
to the generation of enough heat, not only to preserve life
in the eggs, but to hatch them. Still, all this prescience
would be in vain, unless some precaution were taken to
prevent these neglected eggs from addling. Eggs laid
upon their sides in a patent incubator would never hatch
unless regularly turned. The yolk would penetrate the
white, adhere to the shell, and die. This seems to be
perfectly well known to the mother megapode, for she
arranges her long, thin-shelled eggs separately with the
small end downwards. Nor is this the end of the mystery.
The chicks are hatched fully equipped for the business
of life, with wing-feathers well developed and capable of
almost immediate flight; but it is not easy to under-
stand how they retain life while burrowing through
the steaming mass of fermenting material to the outer
air.

Now, all this may be read in any encyclopaedia or work
on Australian ornithology, and is worthy of all credence,
resting as it does on the testimony of trustworthy and
scientific witnesses. But the mystery is brought home
to one by seeing mound birds at work in an English wood-
land, pursuing their traditional craft with wholly un-
familiar materials and environment. It was my privilege
lately (1903) to see five or six of these huge mound-nests
in the Duke of Bedford's park at Woburn Abbey. In that

NOVEMBER 267

spacious demesne many thousands of exotic creatures
have found a congenial home, and among them the Brush
Turkey (Talegallus Lathami), a bird bearing a general
resemblance to a common turkey, the male being of about
the same size, with a naked head and brightly coloured
wattles. Mr. Savile Kent, a good authority on Australasian
zoology, says that the incubators of this species are co-
operative: that several pairs of birds combine in con-
structing them, and lay their eggs in common; but I
could not learn that this had been observed at Woburn,
where each couple is credited with the construction of a
separate mound. Neither has the male bird been observed
keeping open a vertical ventilating shaft, as was reported
to be the practice of one in the Zoological Gardens. Cer-
tainly, in the mounds which I examined at Woburn, all
of which presumably contained eggs, there was nothing
in the nature of a shaft, although there was a distinct,
but shallow depression on the summit of each. Never-
theless, the male bird has been seen at Woburn to visit
the mound during the process of incubation, and to thrust
his wattles into it at different parts as though he were
taking the temperature. The mounds themselves resemble
nothing so much as heaps of garden refuse. The brush
turkey does not build such enormous heaps as those of
the Australian megapode, although it is a far larger bird.
Those at Woburn vary between thirty and fifty feet m
circumference, and between four and five feet in height,
and appear to contain three or four tons of material. J
are constructed in thick parts of the wood, generally under
the dense shade of yew, fir, or other evergreen. ,
times the brush turkey repairs an old mound for the eggs
of a new season, but as often as not a new one is started.

268 MOUND BIRDS

The birds are very jealous of any interference with their
mounds. If one is meddled with, they desert it straight-
way, and start a new one.

Far on every side extend the tracks of the builders,
sometimes crossing the short, close turf of mown rides,
as they laboriously kicked the leaves and grass behind
them to the appointed spot. Apparently, nothing can
be more complete than the acclimatisation of these anti-
podean fowls. The parents may be seen picking their
way through the herbage as much at home as com-
mon pheasants, and the eggs hatch with satisfactory
regularity. It is remarkable that some eggs removed
from a mound and placed in an incubator failed to
hatch.

Now it is scarcely possible to account for the hereditary
ingenuity of megapodes as the mere result of instinct, if
instinct be interpreted as unconscious automatism. Still
more improbable is it that the birds act with a reflective
knowledge that the material they collect will generate
enough heat to save them from the tedium of incubation.
Scarcely more satisfactory is the hypothesis that the
ancestral inegapode, happening to deposit her eggs on a
mass of fermenting vegetation, found that she could leave
them longer in such a position without their cooling to
the death-point (a matter on which all British birds are
intensely solicitous), and learned therefrom the trick of
artificial heating. Such a ratiocinative connection of
cause and effect far transcends the operation of instinctive
automatism. Then how, except by assuming that the
bird is obeying the mandate of some controlling and
guiding Power, are we to account for the hen scrupulously
placing her eggs in a vertical position in order to obviate

NOVEMBER 269

the necessity for turning them ? It is to be noted that
each generation of mound-builders would have to make
these discoveries for itself, because, albeit nobody knows
how precise and various may be the instruction imparted
to its young by a bird which broods upon its eggs and
sedulously attends to its chicks, the megapode mother
undertakes no such duties. The young birds are hatched
in her absence ; they find their food and their way through
the forest without her guidance. Nor can we get out of
the difficulty by explaining mound-building as an imita-
tion by young birds of the behaviour of their elders. ' The
mound-constructing instinct,' says Mr. Savile Kent, ' is so
strongly ingrained by heredity that young birds taken
fresh from the nest, and confined under favourable con-
ditions, have at once commenced to construct mounds
after the characteristic manner of their tribe.'

The mystery of megapode intelligence seems too pro-
found to receive explanation by ordinary evolutionary
process. If the disciplined understanding of Lord Kelvin
is forced by the contemplation of a spray of moss to
apprehend the presence of a directing Power, humbler
students in Nature's class-room may be pardoned for
speculating about an ultimate external source of sagacity,
common to men and other animals.

Reflections such as these land one plump in teleology—
the deliberate design and adaptation of creatures T^ Yucca
and their organs by an external Power to a specific MoUl
end ; and this has fallen far out of favour as a key to the
phenomena of animated nature; yet how hard it is to

270 THE YUCCA MOTH

penetrate certain mysteries without presupposing a stage
manager.

The American yucca is well known — the plant that
sends up a cascade of ivory white bells from the centre
of a sheaf of leaves like painted tin. It condescends to
flower under our cloudy skies, but never bears seed in
this country, not, apparently, because of our cloudiness,
but for want of the offices of a little moth (Pronuba). The
anthers in the yucca blossom are only half as long as the
pistil, which has its orifice at the extreme tip, so that the
pollen from the anthers can never reach it unless helped
by external agency. Pronuba lays her egg3 by means of
a sharp ovipositor near the base of the pistil among the
embryo ovules. But these ovules, upon which the moth's
grubs depend for food, would never develop unless the
pistil were properly fertilised. Pronuba is careful to
attend to this. She enters a flower, collects a pellet of
pollen from the anthers, flies with it to another flower, in
the ovary of which she deposits her eggs, and then swiftly
plugs the orifice of the pistil with the pellet of pollen
brought from the other flower. A double purpose is thus
effected; the flowers are cross-fertilised as is essential to
the vigour of future seedlings, and the ovules, swelling
into succulent seeds, afford provender to the young brood
of Pronuba. The yucca depends for propagation on what
the grubs leave untouched. In this complex process
there is a distinct act of volition on the part of Pronuba,
quite different from the casual transference of pollen
from flower to flower on the hairy bodies of bees and flies.
But science is dumb if you ask her how Pronuba learned
her part ; she can only report the performance.

NOVEMBER 271

LI

As a North Briton myself I might be suspected of
partiality were I to claim that there is no more
intelligent and practical peasantry in the world
than the Scots; therefore I shall content myself by
observing how closely they cling to certain kinds of pre-
judice, outworn in other communities. Of such is their
aversion for eels as food. Every river and lake — the
smallest burns also — contain great store of eels, yet you
shall traverse the length and breadth of Scotland, nay,
you shall live there for half a century, as I have done,
and never see eels served at table unless by your express
command. It was not ever so, for the reverend scribe
who furnished the text to the maps of Galloway in
Blaeu's admirable atlas in the seventeenth century,
having described the great abundance of eels in that
district, stated that the peasantry laboured to catch
them in quantities and salted them for winter fare. He
was a parish minister in Galloway, and was writing about
what he knew. At the present day, a true Galloway
man would as lief make his breakfast on rats as on eels.
And in all Scotland I know of but one eel-fishery — that
at the outlet of Linlithgow Loch, a survival from the
days when Queen Mary's French chef taught the natives
the true value of a neglected supply. Whence has arisen
the almost proverbial dislike of Scotsmen to eels ? Has
religion had any hand in it ? In days when the Church
of Rome prevailed in the land eels, like other fish, were
of high value to carry people over fast days. After the
Reformation fish culture fell into disuse, and in Presby-
terian Scotland, where divines were wont to enforce

272 EELS

obedience to the literal Scripture, a special ban seems
to have fallen upon eels — partly, no doubt, because of
their similitude to snakes, but probably more particularly
because they fall under the Mosaic definition of what is
unclean : ' Whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters
. . . them shall ye eat; and all that have not fins and
scales in the waters . . . they shall be an abomination
unto you.' The eel, by the bye, does possess scales, but
these may have escaped observation by scrupulous divines,
seeing that they are exceedingly small and deeply im-
bedded in the skin.

Now, seeing how greatly appreciated the eel is hi
England, it is strange that the practical Scot has not
turned the abundance of that creature to better account.
London imports many hundreds of tons of eels annually
from Holland and Ireland, and doubtless could take an
indefinite number more. I have seen it stated that the
eel-fisheries of the Bann alone produce a rent of £2000 a
year. Some day the Scottish peasantry may wake up to the
partiality of their English compatriots for eels, and turn
the abundance in their own waters to profitable account.

As with eels now, so it once was with blackberries.
I was wont to deplore the lavish crops of this excellent
fruit which used to be allowed to rot unheeded. Now it
is different. Partly to supply jam factories, partly to
meet the demand from dye-works, a regular seasonal
industry has sprung up in 'black boyds,' as they call
bramble-berries in my country, and hundreds of tons of
this once-neglected product are sent south by rail every
autumn.

The highly-educated modern specialist must often con-
tent himself with the vocables of untutored primitive

NOVEMBER 273

man, albeit the root-meanings of these may be far from
scientific. Thus the common name ' eel ' is but a con-
tracted form of the scientific title of the fish — anguilla;
and, by going far enough back, we can trace the meaning
to be 'the choker/ which seems inapplicable enough to
the habits of this slippery customer. It has come about
in this way. In the remote past, Aryan man came to
associate the sound agh, nasalised angh, with the idea of
choking. That property in snakes which seems to have
impressed him most was neither the poisonous fangs nor
the forked tongue nor the prostrate posture, but the
power of the largest of them to squeeze. So he came to
denote the big snake as aghi or anghi, the choker, just as,
by a similar mental process, modern men of science have
designated it Boa constrictor — the choker par excellence.
Smaller snakes required a diminutive appellation ; hence
the Sanscrit term aghla or anghla, appearing in Latin
as anguilla, the diminutive of anguis, as in Greek the
two words persisted in e^t? and e'7%eXv9, respectively
signifying a snake and an eel. In like manner, through
all branches of Germanic speech — Anglo-Saxon, English,
German, Icelandic, and so on— the eel is ineradicably
' the little snake ' ; and it is not every nation that has
rid itself of repulsion for a creature which, in its very
name, as well as by its appearance, stirs the instinctive
horror for snakes which is born in every son of man. Of
course, this is pure nonsense. Englishmen have dis-
covered long ago that eels are palatable and nutritious
food. Scotsmen, on the other hand, forego the legitimate
profits that might be derived from eel-fisheries in every
part of their land, and allow the Dutchmen to send over
hundreds of tons of eels to the English markets.

274 EELS

Ever since man began to indulge curiosity about the
lives of his humbler fellow-creature, the ways of the eel
have been shrouded in much mystery. Aristotle, baffled
in the attempt to solve the enigma of their reproduction,
fell back on the unphilosophic theory of spontaneous
generation — the outcome of putrefaction. Gesner (1516-
1565) had no better explanation to offer; and even at
this day many of our countrymen hold that you may
create as many eels as you wish by steeping in water
the hairs of a stallion. Yet who is there so unmindful
of the slow growth of understanding as to smile at such
superstition, seeing that, seven years ago, 'eels in the
larval stage were scientifically classed as a distinct order,
or at least, a distinct family, of fishes under the imposing
title of LeptocephaMdal It is true that Dr. Gtinther
cautiously refused them a separate place in his system,
but on grounds as far on the other side of truth as those
of the ichthyologists who gave these little creatures
generic rank. He considered that Leptocephalida were
the abortive offspring of various kinds of marine fishes,
perishing without attaining the character of the perfect
animal. Not until 1896 did the Italian naturalist Grassi
succeed in demonstrating that Leptocephalus was but the
larval form of the eel, produced from eggs laid in the
sea, probably pelagic, or free-floating, and crowding each
spring into all our streams in the singular phenomenon
of ' eel-fare.' These baby eels — elvers as they are called—
are slender, semi-transparent creatures, two or three
inches long, and appear in such prodigious numbers
that I have seen a Scottish trout-stream slate-coloured
with them from bank to bank for a distance of twenty
or thirty yards. It is an example of Nature's lofty

NOVEMBER 275

heartlessness to the fate of individual lives, for it must
be but a small percentage of elvers that escapes the
voracity of birds and fishes at this tender stage. Man
the omnivorous, of course, deigns to reckon elvers among
his delicacies. Couch was told by a Cornish fisherman
that he had seen at Exeter four carts loaded with these
creatures, about twelve to the ounce. They are fried
in lumps called elver - cakes, which Montague the
ichthyologist described as peculiar in appearance from
the number of little black eyes bespangling them.

Well, the Leptocephalus blunder has been wiped oft'
the slate, yet we are far from mastery of the whole eel
mystery. The elvers push up to the remotest inland
waters — to Highland lochs and village duckponds,
through the noblest river as well as the wayside ditch —
but nobody knows how long they remain there before
returning to the sea to spawn. Neither has it been
observed that, once having so returned to the sea, they
ever revisit fresh water. It is believed that eels remain
in fresh water for an indefinite number of seasons, till
the sexual and generative impulse makes itself felt and
sends them seawards. There the organs of reproduction
are developed with great rapidity and to such a degree
that both sexes die from exhaustion after the act of
reproduction. Nature is indifferent to their fate, for
her law— increase and multiply— has been amply fulfilled.
The ovary of a female eel thirty-two inches long has been
estimated to contain no fewer than ten million seven
hundred thousand eggs I

The fact that eels have continued to abound in the
Thames during the sixty and odd years when it was
hermetically closed by pollution against the ascent of

276 SNAILS AND SLUGS

all fish from the sea, eel-fare included, has been used
as an argument in support of the belief that eels can
and do breed in fresh water. Yet it is scarcely possible
that in doing so they can have eluded the vigilance of
naturalists ; the stock of Thames eels must have been
recruited and maintained by way of the canal system
which connects that river with the Severn. That they have
not come through the Thames estuary is proved by the
fact that it became impossible to convey eels alive from
Holland, as was formerly done, in the wells of the vessel ;
for the Thames water poisoned or suffocated them. They
are now brought over dead, in boxes.

LII

Scant regard is paid to snails and slugs, even by the
snails and increasing number of persons who in this
Slugs country give sympathetic heed to animals of

humbler grade than themselves. Indeed, it is a rare
thing to find an amateur in zoology who extends his
observations beyond the vertebrate classes and the more
conspicuous insect orders, such as butterflies and moths.
I possess, it is true, an amateur friend who has con-
tributed a good deal to what is known of centipedes,
and that at the cost of harassing anxiety to his family.
Of a truth, it is no light thing to be the wife of a
specialist in centipedes. She learns to dread the arrival
of boxes bearing foreign postage stamps by reason
of the exotic arthropods of forbidding aspect they
may contain, which, when they escape, as they often
do, move swiftly upon an indiscriminate warpath. But
I have never met with an amateur in molluscs. There

NOVEMBER 277

are shell-fanciers, of course, but theirs is not a serious
science. They pay prodigious prices to fill gaps in their
collections; £42 was paid recently for a single shell of
Gonus gloria-mar is, and a like sum for Cyprea guttata ;
but of the strange inhabitants of these pretty tabernacles
they reck little and know nothing. Yet even slugs are
entitled to such consideration as is due to a family of
so high an antiquity as to cause backbones to appear
a mere afterthought. The Cambrian beds— oldest of
stratified rocks — reveal about four hundred distinct
species of mollusc.

It must be confessed that British land molluscs do not
possess a captivating exterior. Their shells, when they
have any, exhibit little of the fantastic or exquisite
colour and form bestowed upon those of their marine
congeners. Having but a single foot, huge in proportion
to the entire creature, and placed, without the luxury of
a leg, upon what ladies' tailors euphemistically call the
'lower chest,' locomotion can only be performed by a
sliding motion, and such sliding is only rendered possible
by the profuse secretion of mucus, whereby the animal's
path is lubricated. Even so, speed is not a strong point
in land molluscs. It has been calculated that the
common British garden snail (Helix aspersa) can ' sprint '
at the rate of one mile in about sixteen days and fourteen
hours.

On the other hand, the strength of those humble
creatures is amazing. It is recorded of an individual
of the species last mentioned, weighing a quarter of an
ounce, that it dragged up a vertical surface a weight
nine times greater than its own. Another, weighing a
third of an ounce, dragged along a smooth table a load

278 SNAILS AND SLUGS

consisting of twelve reels of cotton, a pair of scissors, a
screw-driver, a key, and a knife, weighing in all seventeen
ounces, or more than fifty times its own weight. As
Mr. A. H. Cooke observes in recording this feat, it was
as if a twelve -stone man had drawn a load, not on
wheels, of three and a half tons.

While some molluscs (Pelecypoda) have dispensed with
a head, and get on very fairly without it, all our land
molluscs have retained that organ, and some of them
put it to good use. Darwin quotes the instance of two
snails (Helix pomatia) which were placed in a small
garden where there was no suitable food. One of these
snails was sickly; the other climbed the wall into the
next garden, where food was abundant. Nobody expected
to see it back; but, behold! it returned in twenty-four
hours to its invalid mate, whom it induced to start at
once for the land of plenty. Here we have evidence of
cogitation, resolution, memory, sense of direction, and
affection, or at least solicitude for the welfare of another.
And such solicitude is the more disinterested, in that
every individual Helix consists of a complete domestic
establishment in him — her — its — self. That is to say, it
is hermaphrodite; and although snails comply so far
with convention as to pair regularly, the close of the
honeymoon is marked by both parents setting to work
to see which can lay most eggs.

Many species of slug possess the faculty of spinning
threads of their own mucus or slime, which they use
in a manner which it is difficult to dissociate from
intelligence. The tree slug (Limax arborum) not only
can let itself down from branch to branch by means of
such a thread, but can ascend again to the place whence

NOVEMBER 279

it started. This species, it has been noted, conducts its
courtship suspended with the object of its affections in
mid-air. A great spotted slug (Limax maximus), which
is the largest of our British slugs, made its escape from
a box where it was confined and travelled along the
mantelpiece until it came to the edge. It then made
a survey of the position, and, perceiving that to drop to
the ground meant injury or death, proceeded to exude
slime, whereof all the kind have an almost inexhaustible
supply, which it worked with its foot into a slender rope,
whereby the animal let itself gradually down till it
alighted safely on the fender.

Still more complex is the mental process implied in the
proceedings of certain slugs — species not mentioned —
observed by Mr. R. Warner. The flowers of orchids, as
cultivators know to their cost, have an irresistible attrac-
tion for these creatures ; wherefore it is customary to bind
cotton wool round the spikes as a protection. Mr. Warner
had some fine plants of Odontoglossum Alexandra, which
were not only wadded in the usual way, but stood in pots
surrounded by water. Baffled in direct approach to the
delicious fare, many slugs ascended the rafters of the
greenhouse, and let themselves down upon the blossoms
by means of slime-threads. Here we have an exhibition
of design as apparently intellectual as that of the ant-lion
lava, which digs a pitfall in the sand, and, when a wander-
ing insect comes to the edge of it, discharges a shower
of sand upon the victim to bring it within reach of its
powerful jaws. But, whereas the ant-lion is exercising
an art or an instinct inherited from immemorial ancestors,
greenhouses and orchids are novelties in the experience
of British slugs, which display an unexpected faculty of

280 SNAILS AND SLUGS

up-to-dateness. No doubt the explanation is partly found
in the keen sense of srnell which all molluscs are known
to possess. The art of slime-spinning has been inherited
as a means of making short cuts; the sense of smell,
enjoyed in a degree which we, with our grosser faculties,
can scarcely realise, acts as a clue to the direction hi
which the short cut is to be made, and the sense of
direction Zeno held to be slight proof of intelligence.
'You fool/ said he to Euclid, 'why devote columns of
manuscript to proving that two sides of a triangle are
greater than the third. Any ass knows that without in-
struction. Tie a bundle of hay in the corner of a court,
and see whether the beast will not make straight for it,
instead of moving round two sides of the square ! '

It must be confessed that, whatever be the intellectual
qualities of molluscs, they exhibit no trace of conscience
or moral sense. The common black fellow (Arion ater),
which appears everywhere in numbers after a shower, is
professedly vegetarian, but greedily devours any carrion
he comes across, and cannot be trusted to keep his radula,
or rasping jaw, off the bodies of his weaker brethren.
Dr. Grey almost failed to find anything destructible
which Arion would not eat; it devoured newspapers
greedily, the bodies of five different species of slugs,
and Pears's soap. But the last-named article was con-
sumed without gusto, evidently under protest against
the abnormal flavour, and without any intention of giv-
ing it an advertisement.

Decent tier

LIII

ONE may often hear a comparison made between modern
medicine and surgery, greatly to the disparage- Primitive
ment of the former science. Be it admitted Leechcraft
freely that physicians can show nothing to rival the
splendid advance which the adoption successively of
antiseptic and aseptic methods has enabled surgeons to
accomplish within living memory, still we have only to
take account of the blind pranks which practitioners of
old played upon their patients to thank God that we are
no longer in the hands of such blundering blockheads as
they. The Rev. Oswald Cockayne has edited for the
Records Series a collection of primitive medical essays
under the title of Leechcloms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft
of Early England, and truly it would be difficult to com-
pile a more convincing example of human folly. Many
of the records prescribed seem worse than the diseases
they professed to cure : unspeakably nasty, some of them,
directing how the filthiest things on earth were to be
pounded together and mixed with the patient's meat and
drink, in a manner of which the slightest acquaintance
with bacteriology and the history of internal parasites
enables us to perceive the terrible danger; irresistibly
ludicrous others, as when wise Abbot ^Elfric (for he was
wise in many things) directs as a remedy for headache

282 PRIMITIVE LEECHCRAFT

a salve composed of forty-four ' worts ' or plants, and the
fat or bones of fourteen animals, to be rubbed on after
repeating the Creed, the Magnificat, the Benedictus, and
the prayer of the Four Evangelists.

^Elfric, of course, was only repeating what had been
handed down to him from pagan forebears — plus the
Christian anthems and prayers; nor were these pagan
forebears, perhaps, so simple as we may suppose. The
Germanic colonists, who proved strong enough to relegate
the Celtic tribes of Britain to the 'fringe' they still enjoy,
had not been wanting in brains. Their c^iief deity was
Woden — a name cognate with our ' wit ' and ' wisdom ' —
they worshipped him as the Almighty Wit — the Supreme
Intelligence. To Thor — the mighty Thunderer — was
assigned inferior rank to Woden — brute force they never
imagined as a match for intellect. It is true they were
of the same Teutonic stem which had overthrown the
culture of Rome, and violently checked the current of
civilisation for nearly a thousand years; it is true that
we, their descendants, are wont to use their names —
Goths and Vandals — to typify everything that is brutal
and ignorant and coarse. Yet even among these Germans
there were a few who were careful to preserve and hand
down some of the ancient learning. They studied, and
even translated, many works of Greek and Latin writers,
and much of their leechcraft was derived from Hippo-
crates, ^Esculapius, and Plato. But the ingenious and
delicate surgical instruments, of which such a variety
have been unearthed at Herculaneum and Pompeii, were
unknown to them, or, if known, their use had been
forgotten : surgical and medical science had to be recon-
structed from the foundation.

DECEMBER 283

One instrument, and one only, seems to have been
common to all ages — the lancet. Down to fifty or sixty
years ago blood-letting was indiscriminately prescribed
and universally believed in. I possess a folio account-
book of an ancestor who flourished when the eighteenth
century was still young — most entertaining reading, by
reason of his having made it a kind of journal also.
Regularly, every spring and autumn for many years,
recurs an entry such as this : —

' To a chirurgeon, for blooding my wife, Peggy, and me,

and for giving Peggy a vomit, . . . . 28 /.'

Peggy was the worthy gentleman's daughter, and the fee
was in Scots money.

But there is no need to go back so far for examples of
ferocious practice in medicine. Seasonal blood-letting
was reckoned indispensable till well on in the nineteenth
century. George iv. was bled the day before his corona-
tion, to fit him for the ceremony. His unhappy Queen,
after being refused admission to Westminster Abbey on
that occasion, drove sorrowfully home, and her agitation
brought on liver disorder. Here is an account of the
treatment to which she was subjected by the best London
doctors of the day : —

1 On Friday (the day after the coronation) last she lost sixty-
four ounces of blood; took first of all 15 grains of calomel,
which they think she threw up again in the whole or in part ;
and then she took 40 grains more of calomel which she kept
entirely in her stomach ; add to this a quantity of castor oil
that would have turned the stomach of a horse. Nevertheless,
on Friday night the inflammation had subsided, tho' not the
obstruction on the liver.' J

1 The Creevey Papers, vol. ii. p. 21.

284 PRIMITIVE LEECHCRAFT

It is small cause for wonder that within a few days of
this discipline Queen Caroline breathed her last.

The Saxons used the lancet at frightful haphazard,
except that they were positive about the right time of
year. In an old leech-book written by one Gild (pro-
bably only a clerk writing from dictation) for the Abbey
of Glastonbury, much stress is laid on the risk of blood-
letting fifteen nights before Lammas (August 1st), and
after it for five-and-thirty nights, because the ' lyft ' (air)
is then most impure. Herein is a trace of Mediterranean
lore, from a latitude where men had learned, to dread the
sirocco. But there is an appalling vagueness in directions
for the operation : —

' Let him blood from the left arm from the upper vein ; if
thou canst not find that [gif thu tha findan ne mcege], from the
midmost vein ; if thou canst not find that, then from the head
vein. Further, if that cannot be found, let blood from the left
hand, from a vein near the little finger. If the blood be very
red or livid, then must it be let more plentifully ; if it be clean
or clear, let it so much the less.'

Evidently this eminent surgeon did not know the vital
difference between arterial and venous blood, and his
diagnosis was based on the quality of the blood, differing
accordingly as he had tapped a vein or an artery !

It is horrible to think that blood-letting was pronounced
indispensable in the 'half-dead addle,' as the Anglo-
Saxons called paralysis, in order to draw forth the
poisonous humours from the patient. This theory of
humours died very hard in medicine; it drove bravely
through the eighteenth century.

There was, of course, no distinction till long after the
Norman Conquest between surgeons and physicians:

DECEMBER 285

though the use of the catheter, the probe, the dioptra,
and the forceps, all known to practitioners in classical
times, had been forgotten, anybody could handle knife
and saw. Therefore the directions are of the simplest how
to proceed ' if thou wilt carve off or lop off a limb from
a body ' [gif thu wille lim aceorvan othe asnithan].

From time to time one stumbles on a bit of sound and
solid sense, as when the writer is prescribing remedies for
loss of appetite — a terrible calamity to overtake people
from whom we derive our own unrivalled proficiency with
knife and fork. A Saxon lord who refused his victuals
must indeed, it was thought, be in parlous case — probably
possessed of a devil or two ; consequently a great variety
of recipes are given to restore the appetite, among them
one which looks curiously modern — 'Let them seek for
themselves fatigue in riding on horseback, or in a wain as
much as they can endure.' Carriage exercise in a spring-
less wain meant a more rigorous experience than a drive
in Hyde Park on rubber tyres.

After all, the leeches of those days may not have been
such fools as we are inclined to pronounce them. They
wrote very foolish prescriptions, and some very nasty
ones, but how much of them all did they believe? Is
there any fashionable physician in London at this moment
who will declare on his honour that he relies as much on
the resources of the pharmacopoeia as on the faith of his
patients ? How many modern doctors have the courage,
when they recommend regimen rather than drugs, to
reply as the famous Jephson did to Lady Londonderry ?
' Sir,' she asked, scandalised at the severe simplicity of his
orders, ' do you know whom you 're speaking to ? ' ' Yes,
ma'am; to an old woman with a disordered stomach.'

286 PRIMITIVE LEECHCRAFT

The Saxon leeches had very hazy ideas about the pro-
perties of herbs: it was certain, anyhow, that they had
some properties, and the popular notion was that herbs
were essential to any cure, so they complied with it, and
added a lot of fantastic observances — partly ex tempore
and partly derived from the world- wide and world-old
doctrines of the Magi. Doubtless these complicated in-
structions contributed to convalescence. It requires little
knowledge of human nature to perceive that a Saxon
thane, suffering from prolonged over-feeding, would think
very cheaply of the leech who ordered him to go bumping
about on an underbred hack, or jolting for miles in a
farm-cart : it was necessary to invent decoctions — the more
nauseous the better — to beguile the patient's imagination.
In short, leeches were expected to administer herb-potions,
for such was the tradition of leechcraft from wiser times :
it was sheer bad luck that the properties of the various
herbs had been forgotten during ages of anarchy, and
had to be slowly recovered by watching their effect upon
patients.

Leeches did not hesitate to go beyond the vegetable
kingdom in order to influence powerfully the minds of
their patients. There is nothing that affects the imagina-
tion more violently than cruelty, and cruel some of these
recipes undoubtedly are. Cataract, about the nature of
which the leeches can have known absolutely nothing,
was to be treated in this way. Catch a fox alive, cut out
his tongue, and let him go ; dry the tongue, sew it in a
red cloth, and hang it round the patient's neck. As a
precaution against pestilence, take a live badger and beat
out his teeth, put them in a linen bag, and wear them
next the body. For jaundice the sovereign remedy is

DECEMBER 287

indeed an appalling one : you are to take the head of a
mad dog, pound it, mix it with wine, and drink it.

It is sad to think that in the centuries since Pliny and
Lucian mocked at the Magi all this rubbish had been
allowed to accumulate and impede the ascent of man.
The work had all to be done over again. Pliny had
declared that of all earthly systems the doctrines of the
Magi were the most fraudulent — not stupid, but fraudu-
lent; yet even he inclined to believe that the popular
notion could not be altogether groundless, that a man by
eating roast hare improved his looks for nine days. ' Born a
goddess, dulness never dies.' Be assured, it is far from dead
yet. It lurks in privy places, waiting for some dislocation
of our prodigious progress, some clouding of our splendid
enlightenment, to spread its pall upon our faculties.

Sometimes one comes on a sample of it when least
expecting anything of the sort. The turf is hardly
firm above the grave of a certain man (one of the most
intelligent and upright of his class that I ever knew)
who once recommended me, as a cure for sty in the
eye, to gather nine thorns from a gooseberry bush, burn
eight of them to ashes, and prick the sty with the ninth.
In another instance, which happened in my own parish
within the last five-and- twenty years, may be recognised
that principle of propitiation by sacrifice which lies at the
base of all religion and its corruption — superstition. A
certain farmer very well known to me, whose social stand-
ing may be understood from the fact that he was an elder
of the kirk and paid about £300 a year in rent, wishing to
rid his cattle of the disease known as ' blackleg,' caused a
calf or stirk to be buried alive. Many persons were present
at the ceremony, including the local veterinary surgeon !

288 PRIMITIVE LEECHCEAFT

It will be observed that this propitiatory notion, which
runs through so much ordinary folklore, has very little
place in these Anglo-Saxon prescriptions, most of which
are purely empirical and arbitrary. It appears, indeed, in
the directions quoted above for curing cataract, and in
some of the recipes for the bite of a mad dog ; but, as a
rule, the cure was supposed to depend on the virtues of
specified ingredients, modified sometimes by the hour of
the day or the age of the moon. A few of these ingredi-
ents— mustard, aloes, colchicum, ginger, saffron, sulphur,
mercury, etc. — remain in the modern pharmacopeia,
their use having been well known to oriental and Roman
physicians; their tradition had been preserved, but all
understanding of their true properties had been lost in
the general wreck of learning.

Sometimes the Saxon name actually preserved the true
use of a wort — which had been perverted to other and
probably futile purposes. Thus Delphinium staphisagria,
staves-acre, was known to the Saxons as louse-bane, yet
they recommended a drink of it to correct evil humours
of the body. At this day there is no such sovereign cure
for vermin in a dog's coat. Among herbs that may be
reckoned neutral in effect betony was ever a prime
favourite ; in the herbarium of Apuleius it is recommended
for no less than twenty-nine separate ailments — for tooth-
ache, for sore eyes, for a broken head, for stomach-ache,
for fatigue after ' mickle riding or mickle ganging,' for in-
digestion (' if thou wilt that thy meat melt easily '), for bite
of an adder or a mad dog, for sore throat, or for ' foot-addle '
[gout]. Hardly less popular was waybread [plantain], which
must at least have furnished a harmless draught, disposing
the patient to give an easy rein to his imagination.

DECEMBEK 289

Physicians, audaciously laying claim to superior powers,
easily came to get credit for them, and became known as
' doctors ' — more learned than the common folk. Some
of them were so bold as to pretend to skill in many things
beyond medicine. A curious medley of charms borrowed
from the Magi and Christian prayers is associated with
vivid scenes of early English pastoral life. Thus when a
man had lost his cattle, which must have been a common
occurrence in an unfenced country, the natural assump-
tion was that some evil-doer had driven them off. He
was directed to say his prayers three times to each quarter
of the heavens, and then cry ' The Jews hung up Christ ;
they did of deeds the worst ; they did that they could not
hide. So may this deed be no wise hidden, through the
Holy Rood of Christ.'

In proportion as the Church became all-powerful in
human society, prayers became ingredients in prescrip-
tions as commonly as any drug ; and it was considered
important that, like drugs, they should be ' exhibited ' in
proper proportions. Hence a table of equivalents was
prepared as follows : —

One mass was reckoned equal to twelve days' fasting.

Ten masses were reckoned „ four months'
Twenty masses „ ,, eight months'

Thirty masses „ „ twelve months'

One psalm was reckoned „ one day's

120 psalms were reckoned „ twelve months'

Happy the patient or criminal who could afford to pay
for having psalms and masses sung !

Christianity, by the time it reached the pagan Saxons,
had lost its pristine purity, and the light it shed on the
physical world had become tinged with earth-born rays.
T

290 PRIMITIVE LEECHCRAFT

The Saxon convert was free to retain the fixed belief of
his fathers in the presence everywhere of incorporeal
spirits — evil and good. For him the forest-glade or river-
cliff was still the haunt of the dreaded wood-mare, as he
called the echo ; and we have retained the term by which
he personified the visitation apt to follow too generous a
supper — a nightmare.

And thus men blundered on, using prayers and charms
and herbs, sometimes hitting on something really useful
and adding it to the store of sound knowledge. After all,
we owe these venerable quacks something. Somebody
had to begin the ascent: the lowest steps on the stair
were very dimly lighted, and the first foot set upon them
stumbled and wandered in a way we are apt to think
supremely ridiculous; but no height could be gained
without the help of these. Nothing is attained in science
per saltum; little by little, line upon line, is progress
made, till the light increases and the view broadens. In
musing upon the lucubrations of these pioneers in leech-
craft, one is disposed rather to admire the good purpose
to which they put the dull wits of their patients, than to
hold them up to derision for the preposterous remedies
they prescribed. They were the Beechams and the
Carters of the tenth century, and, on the whole, produced
literature more exciting than that of our twentieth-century
empirics.

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Memories of the Months

Leaves from a Field Naturalist's Note-book
By The Right Hon. SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart., M.P.

Second Edition, large crown %vo, with Photogravure Illustrations, "js. 6d.

Various topics of country life are discoursed upon, and separated under the
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Bird Migration — Power of Birds to endure Cold — A Lake Sanctuary —
Canadian Pond -Weeds— The Scaup Duck— The Great Crested Grebe-
Spring Salmon— Winter Flowers— West Coast Meteorology— The Bottle-
Tit—Feathered Police— Revival of Primitive Flora.

' The easy style, the graphic descriptions of bird-life, and of the ways of beasts and fishes,
e clever sketches of s
and legend, will ensure

, ,

the clever sketches of sport, the happy introductions of plant-lore and of fragments of myth
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' Charming in language, and at the same time so varied in character that they never
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' Whether, indeed, to while away an idle half-hour at home, on a railway journey;, or as a
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' Sir Herbert Maxwell has written a book which has more in it of the true insight and joy
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'The present volume is to the full as delightful .as its predecessor These notes and
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Gazette.

LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD

LONDON BIRDS

Bn& otbcc Sfcetcbes
BY T. DIGBY PIGOTT, C.B., M.B.O.U.

WITH PHOTOGRAVURE ILLUSTRATIONS
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CONTENTS

I. LONDON BIRDS.

OF THE BEARDED TIT.
II. LONDON BIRDS (continued).

VIII. ST. KILDA'FROM WITHOUT.
III. LONDON INSECTS.

IV. LONDON INSECTS (continued).

V. BIRDS OF THE OUTER

FARNES.

VI. THE SHETI.ANDS IN THE
BIRDS' NESTING SEASON.

VII. THE LAST ENGLISH HOMK

IX. IN DUTCH WATER
MEADOWS.

X. HAUNTS OF THE SHEAR-
WATER.

XI. BIRD LIFE.
APPENDICES.

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LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD

Telegrams : 37 Bedford Street,

' Scholarly, London.' Strand, London.

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MY MEMOIRS.

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FURTHER RECOLLECTIONS OF
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Sir Horace Rumbold begins the Second Series of his Recollections
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AUTHOR OF ' PHASES OF MY LIFE," ETC.

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AUTHOR OF '"THE TIMES" HISTORY OF THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA.'

Crown 8vo. $s.

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4

THIRTY SEASONS IN SCANDINAVIA.

By E. B. KENNEDY.
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' No one has properly seen Norway,' says Mr. Kennedy, ' until he
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and islands, and knows perhaps as much as any living man of Scandinavia
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He is a true sportsman, and as one reads one realizes the secret of his
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and has that observant sympathy with Nature in all i£s forms which
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and ski-ing, and contain incidentally many valuable hints on camping
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The book, which is illustrated with some remarkable photographs,
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Sermons preacbeo mainly in TJClincb ester College Cbapel.
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ROUND KANGCHENJUNGA.

By DOUGLAS W. FRESH FIELD, F.R.G.S.

LATELY PRESIDENT OF THE ALPINE CLUB.

Royal Svo. With Maps and numerous Illustrations, i&s. nett.

The magnificent range of Kangchenjunga is perhaps, in one sense,
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is visible from the popular hill-station of Darjeeling; but till quite
recently it was almost unexplored and very inadequately mapped. The
complete circuit of the great mountain had never been made, and its
possibility was uncertain, till it was demonstrated by Mr. Freshfield's
remarkable journey.

The map which was the first-fruit of that journey is in itself an
invaluable addition to our geographical knowledge, but the volume
which describes it has a far wider range of interest. Its results have
been dealt with by Professor Garwood, but the book will appeal first
and foremost to mountaineers and lovers of adventurous travel. The
country traversed has also its own crop of frontier questions and poli-
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abundant scope in what is, perhaps, the most superb scenery in the
world. In connection with the photographs which adorn his narrative,
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MEMORIES OF THE MONTHS.

THIRD SERIES.

By the Right Hon. Sir HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart, M.P.
Large crown 8v0. With Photogravure Illustrations, js. 6d.

It is now three years since the Second Series of ' Memories of the
Months ' appeared, and it is hoped that the public will welcome this
fresh instalment, which, while dealing with Sport and Natural History
on the same general lines as its predecessors, is, of course, entirely
different from anything that has hitherto been published in the
' Memories.' Sir Herbert is, indeed, continually adding to his stock
of Memories by fresh experiences, so that his books afford a valuable
index to the condition of angling and deer-stalking at the time of
writing ; while it is rare to find a sportsman who has so keen an interest
in all matters of Natural History, Forestry, etc.

This volume is uniform in style and binding with the First and
Second Series.

THREE ROLLING STONES IN JAPAN.

By GILBERT WATSON.
Demy 8vo. With numerous Illustrations, izs. 6d. nett.

Japan is proverbially a young man's paradise, and when three young
men wander through the country with the fixed intention of enjoying
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merits. The adventures of these ' Rolling Stones ' are not only
interesting — that they could hardly fail to be — but are described with
quite exceptional skill.

Mr. Watson gives a picture of Japan and its people which fills one
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