The English year. Autumn and winter

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THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

PRESENTED BY
PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND

MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID

BIOLOGy
LIBRARY

THE ENGLISH YEAR

AUTUMN AND WINTER

PASTORAL LANDSCAPE
By SIR ALFRED EAST, R.A., P.R.B.A.

(By kind permission of Philip de Laszlo, Esq. )

THE ENGLISH YEAR

AUTUMN AND WINTER

BY

W. BEACH THOMAS AND A. K. COLLET

With a Series of Reproductions in Colour from

the work of Sir Alfred East, Harry Becker,

C. W. Furse, Buxton Knight, and Haldane

Macfall, and Drawings in the Text

by A. W. Seaby

LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
67 LONG ACRE, W. G.

AND EDINBURGH

t L tt <£

BIOLOGY

The joint authors whose names are on
the title - page are responsible for the
whole of the letterpress, with the excep-
tion of some few contributions from Mr.
A. H. Patterson, whose knowledge of life
on the East Coast of England is unrivalled.

M322253

CONTENTS

PAliE

INTRODUCTION, . • . . . . . * . i

AUTUMN, . . . . . . . ".' 9

SEPTEMBER, . . . . • ' « ••'." .v, 19

FAMILY PARTIES, . . . . ; * . ,° 21

THE WAY OF A SEED, . . . ,. . » ' 32

'SEASON OF MIST,' . . . . . :•• . . 47

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS, . . . • ../. 53
BIRDS IN FLOCKS, ...... 70

THE LAST OF THE FLOWERS, . . . . • 79

OCTOBER, ..... , . . 91

THE BURNING BUSH, . . . ; v <,*. ; 93

THE SOUTHWARD FLIGHT, . v<^ . . v ,. 104

FRUITFUL HEDGEROWS, . . . . . .112

THE WINTERERS, . . . . . . .126

GOSSAMER AND SILK, . . . . .137

AUTUMN RAIN, . •$ . . . . . 149

MUSHROOMS, . . . . . » 160

NOVEMBER, . . . . . . . « 167

WINTER BIRDS OF PASSAGE, . . . . .169

HUNTING DAYS, . . . .' , » . 184

OUR INDIAN SUMMER, . . , . , . 193

BRITISH DEER, . . . . . . . 201

viii AUTUMN AND WINTER

PACK

WINTER, . 213

DECEMBER, . . . . . . , .221

FEEDING BIRDS, . . , . . . . 223

TREE FORMS IN WINTER, . . . . .231

WAYS OF THE HUNTED, . _,. . . . . ,251

DAYS OF THE EVERGREEN, ..... 264

WINTER DRESS, : . . . . ,279

JANUARY, , . . . . . . . 287

FROST AND SNOW, . . . . . ,289

LIFE IN WINTER NIGHTS, ..... 297

THE NEW YEAR WIND, ...... 309

THE STRUGGLE WITH COLD, . . * . . 319

BIRDS IN LONDON, . . . * ; . 336

BY THE SIDE OF THE WATERS, . . - . - * . 352

FEBRUARY, ........ 363

HAILING FAR SUMMER, < 365

PAIRING AND EARLY SONG, .... * 376

THE SALMON'S JOURNEY,. • . • . v *. 386

THE STACKYARD POPULATION, ..... 396

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PASTORAL LANDSCAPE. BY SIR ALFRED EAST, R.A., P.R.B.A., Frontispiece

(By kind permission of Philip de Laszlo, Esq.)

PAGE

HARVEST MOON. BY HARRY BECKER, 22

STATELY AUTUMN. BY SIR ALFRED EAST, R.A., P.R.B.A., . . 48

THE GOLDEN VALLEY. BY SIR ALFRED EAST, R.A., P.R.B.A., . 82

(By kind permission of the Leeds Corporation)

AUTUMN WOOD. BY SIR ALFRED EAST, R.A., P.R.B.A., . . 96

LIFTING POTATOES. BY HARRY BECKER, . . . .150

POTATO GATHERING. BY HARRY BECKER, . ... 156

DIANA OF THE UPLANDS. BY CHARLES WELLINGTON FURSE,

A.R.A., 186

CUTTING GORSE. BY HARRY BECKER, . . . .196

WINTER. BY BUXTON KNIGHT, . . . . . .214

SNOW. BY HALDANE MACFALL, ...... 292

SHEE-PFOLD (CLOSE OF A WINTER'S DAY). BY HARRY BECKER, 322

THE RESTLESS CHASSE OF A RED ADMIRAL3

INTRODUCTION

THE world is * full of a number of things ' — things
which would keep us as well primed with interest and
wonder as the children are, if we had a little more curiosity.
As the towns absorb life more and more, our minds more
and more seek escape from urban thoughts ; and the appetite
is whetted for the incidents of the country, for the course of
the seasons, for what we call nature. After all, the seasons
give us a ' grand tour,' for which we need not travel. The
coming of the purple flowers on the elm or the green buds
on the quick is never stale ; nor the flight of the swallow,
nor the turning of the maple leaf, nor the crystals of hoar-
frost, nor the restless chass6 of a red admiral.

At the sunset we may be daily amazed and never tire of
reading, on the scroll unfolded by the winds between earth
and heaven,

1 Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance.'

Among the deeper moods and ampler spectacles of nature
take place a thousand pretty and curious episodes. The
hop tendril, as if endowed with mind, bridges a pergola.
A dormouse goes to sleep in the beehive. A stoat sleeps
in a thrush's nest. Three birds share a nesting-box. An
ugly creature climbs a water-lily stem, and from the dull and

A

2 AUTUMN AND WINTER

dirty form ' come out clear plates of sapphire mail ' — a
dragon fly is born. A robin feeds on the breakfast table.
Little red bees emerge from wormlike earth-heaps all over
the garden. Gossamers fall from heaven. An earwig
unfolds his wings. Hares take sanctuary with men, or a

'A ROBIN FEEDS ON THE BREAKFAST TABLE'

rabbit crouches at your foot. To the curious there is no
end of curiosities. One should go about like Melampus :

' With love exceeding a simple love of the things

That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck ;
Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings

From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck ;
Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball ;

Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook ;
The good physician Melampus, loving them all,

Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book.'

This intense and particular delight in the course of the seasons
is an English quality above all other qualities. It has been
so asserted by a great German historian, and he is right.
It was true when Gilbert White began to make Selborne
famous ; but the quality grows stronger year by year.
Hampshire, Norfolk and Yorkshire were always compact
of naturalists, caught into the particular affection for nature

INTRODUCTION 3

by the peculiar attraction of their surroundings, especially
and above all by the migrant birds. To-day every county is
full of naturalists ; and the tiniest events of the year are
discovered by prying eyes and quickened ears :

' To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.'

It is so with all of us. Even Kant, that man of books and
pure intellect, so felt when he saw ' the infinite starry
heavens/ Even Napoleon, the mad man of action, so felt
when he saw the sun. But beyond this general and over-
whelming sense of communion, which no one escapes, the
zest of natural history lies in our own discoveries quite
independently of the accident whether or no some one has
made them before. Sir William Flower said of Mrs.
Brightwen, who extracted a new life out of natural history in
her garden : * What a pity it was that so much was already
known about the phenomena of natural history, since it
deprived Mrs. Brightwen of the credit she deserved as a
discoverer.'

But there are still plenty of discoveries to be made.
English naturalists have excelled principally in studying
birds, the master interest of field observers. But the area
of popular observation widens rapidly. The extreme
marvels of instinct are to be seen among insects, especially
perhaps among beetles, of which really very little is known.
But Fabre, and Maeterlinck, and Tickner Edwards, and
indeed Grant Allen, have given accounts of insect life
which make the tales almost as exciting as biographies of
men of action. And they have proved persuasive.

A quaint sign of the new interest is the production
of 'insect boxes,' which are set up in gardens just as bird
boxes, for the housing of bees, or other creatures, when they

4 AUTUMN AND WINTER

would nest or hibernate. Insects are more easy than other
things to observe when we have once found their habitat.
They may be kept captive without any feeling that the joy
of natural liberty is sullied in any way ; and we may be sure
that they behave in captivity as in their proper haunt. We
can never tell this either of birds or quadrupeds.

But the real countryman is not an entomologist or an
ornithologist, or aviculturalist, or even a zoologist. His
interest is not limited to anything within his horizon. It
extends to the horizon itself. His eyes are the microscope
and the telescope both.

In his work the big and the little touch. Mysticism and
Science join hands. His parish is a full and wonderful
place, not narrow or parochial. Age cannot wither nor
custom stale the various booty of eyes and ears. The
tinkle of the thinnest ice echoes in his memory as clearly as
thunder overhead ; and the glow-worm pairs with the
lightning. One has lain prone some summer day on the
hilltop above the sea watching intently the struggle of a
little red ant in the grass roots, of which to him each is a
great rock of stumbling. Then, altering the focus of mind
and eye, gazed at the making of a cumulus cloud over the
unharvested sea. The blueness of the sky, the red of the
setting sun, have their clear causes as well as their
mysterious beauty. They speak prophecy as well as present
pleasure ; and the mind may be led from to-morrow to
eternity on the prompting of the western wind.

How particular and wide the interest has grown may be
judged by a comparison of the novelists and poets of to-day
and yesterday. No doubt the most English of poets have
been precise enough always. Nothing can prevent Chaucer
remaining modern ; nor will countrymen ever forget to take
Shakespeare into their company. But with these exceptions

INTRODUCTION 5

the later writers are incomparable as naturalists. Milton
wrote many things which are immortal, about the country ;
but if ' L'Allegro ' was written to-day there would be much
quiet criticism of details, amid the chorus of praise. Milton
wrote of the moon and the clouds indeed as an observer ; but
his famous list of flowers is cold and conventional, his allusions
to birds wrong, and his mingling of the seasons ludicrous.
You will scarcely find in Shelley, who, however, observed
clouds more closely than any writer in prose or verse, more
closely even than Ruskin — you will find neither in him nor
Wordsworth, that supreme poet of country scenes, any real
naturalist's knowledge or interest. Though of course poets
of poetic value far beyond their successors, they cannot com-
pare with Matthew Arnold, with Tennyson, with Bridges,
with Meredith, and above all Lord de Tabley, as observers
of nature in the naturalist's sense. Never in any literature
of any times have descriptions of nature's details been con-
densed into quotable words as in Tennyson. What Milton
did for wider views, as in the wonderful line describing
innumerable English churches among the elms :

* Bosomed high in tufted trees,'
Tennyson did for tiny things as in the line :

1 When rosy plumelets tuft the larch.'

But both are surpassed by Meredith in intensity of pleasure
in natural history. Almost every other poem bears the
signs. His best inspiration often comes from his naturalist's
knowledge. ' Love in the Valley ' and ' The Sweet o' the
Year ' have no parallels in literature for the association of
almost ecstatic insight into seasonal change. Milton used
the telescope, as it were. Tennyson used the microscope.
Meredith the unassisted eyes of such a long-sighted observer

6 AUTUMN AND WINTER

as Mr. Selous, who could change his focus unconsciously
from the towering hawk to the toad's gold-rimmed eyes
glancing from his hole.

Lord de Tabley, a supreme authority on one department
of botany, as well as a fine poet, takes his place along with
these. His inspiration was less but his knowledge more.
Inhabitants of Cheshire or Lancashire can taste the very
savour of their county in his verse ; and few writers have
taken more zest in the ' Royal aspects of the Earth/ as he
names one of his poems. To a Berkshire man it is as good
as a visit to Yattendon, that home of poets, to read Mr.
Bridges' lyrics, in which every month, almost every week
of the year, is compactly described with a lover's zest.

It would be too long a theme to follow out the same
contrast in novelists, among whom it is yet more conspicuous.
Shelley took his descriptions of scenery in Alastor — a debt
that few students seem to realise — from a contemporary
novelist who had travelled in the Pyrenees. But the two
descriptions, both hers and his, are vast and unreal. No
better contrast perhaps could be made between the new and
the older view than the country scenes of Sir Walter Scott
and Mr. Hardy. Sir Walter's scenes are rhetorical append-
ages, splendid examples of scene painting in the stage sense.
In Mr. Hardy the people seem sometimes no more than
emanations from the country in which they work and have
their being. The two are inseparable, and each studied with
equal affection ; so that the attributes of moor or woodland
take the particular importance of hero or heroine.

But when all is said, Hardy's woodlanders are no more
than the proper descendants of Chaucer's pilgrims. Spenser
loved the pageant of the year, and drew a pretty procession
of the months which modern writers on the circuit of the
year have unworthily neglected. Even though Milton, being

INTRODUCTION 7

wrapped in books and thoughts, mixes up the seasons, and
makes a lark into a house-sparrow, he had the country spirit
'as strong as any man in Illyria.' Every Englishman is
pulled to love of the earth in this green island where change
is continuous, and all the changes bound each to each in a
circle of natural cohesion and perennial novelty. Autumn
is not sad. Winter is not sad. If we seek the mood of
each, it is the same as the mood of spring, for the year is a
circle, the circle of our life, to which each season is integral.

AUTUMN

FINE and gentle though the gradations of English seasons
are, we also know changes that are sufficiently sudden and
complete. In and about September comes the suddenest
and completest of all. The harvest falls. Stiff and thorny
stubbles take the place of golden acres wonderfully sensitive
to light and air. You may see a puff of wind moving across
the field as you may trace it over the surface of a level sea.
The ears shift the light in wrinkles of laughter as 'number-
less ' as Aeschylus saw in the tumbling ocean. For a week
or two the sheaves are set up in stooks that the ripe grain
may mature, for ripening and maturing are quite different
though both necessary processes. So much sign is there of
the harvest that was. But the modern farmer has left little
of the old gradation. The ploughs now follow the reapers
so closely that often in south and mid England the stubble is
turned over, and the land in tilth again some time before the
carrying of the sheaves is complete. Indeed the ploughs
and the carts are often in the same field together. One walks
in a new country.

Towards the coast the gulls press and scramble so close
behind the plough that the ploughman could strike them with
the whip, and no sight adds more to the sensation of strange-

io AUTUMN AND WINTER

ness than these newcomers with their noise and brilliance
pressing insistently on our observation. And the drills are
not long after the ploughs. Almost before we know it the
thin blades of wheat have taken the place of the plough
which displaced the stubble, which succeeded the plain of
gold. All this may happen, if the weather is all that it
should be, within the compass of a month or little more.

So it comes about that autumn more resembles the begin-
ning of a new year than the waning period of an old. We
seem to have passed the year's Rubicon in September rather
than in January. Autumn is welcomed by some, and by
others feared, because it ends a long truce. We may say
that the year is divided into two halves. In one half you
may kill, in the other you may not. During spring and
summer everywhere has been sanctuary. Behind the screen
of leaves on tree and bush and lowly plants, within the
corridors of corn and among the long grasses, birds and
beasts have paired, have nested, have produced young, have
trained the young and launched them into the world. Our
law has followed nature and our sympathies : it has made
the life and homes of the birds sacred, and in a less degree
other living things have been left alone to multiply their
species. With autumn the spirit of the primeval hunter is
revived. The curtain of the sanctuary is worn thin, is torn
quite away. We see the hidden mysteries. The frail nest
of the whitethroat, that we sought in vain, appears almost
aggressively obvious outside the briar bush, as it seems.
The golden corridors of the corn are laid low. Roosting
birds are cleanly silhouetted against the sky. A wandering
spirit comes upon birds and beasts. Foxes begin to lie out
in the spinneys and the litters are broken up. The hunt
is up. Guns are heard — and the break-up of the homes is
complete. All sanctuary is violated. Another spirit prevails.

AUTUMN

ii

A good Darwinian prefers therefore to think of the year
developing from this point, from general warfare to general
peace. First the solitary life of the grown things, then the
pairing, then the family. With the rearing of the young the
circle is finished. The circle is imperfect enough to show
where the circumference was begun, but it is a true enough
circle on the whole, as we see it in England, and without too
obvious breaks. Spring and summer and autumn and winter
run into one another so that at no moment can any one say,
the change is here. We may feel spring in midwinter.

'THE FRAIL NEST OF THE WHITETHROAT'

Indeed, if we pay any heed to the foolish almanac, we see
the very picture of spring in the lap of autumn. For autumn
ends technically on December 22. Yet many a Christmas
holiday begins to the sound of spring songs from thrush and
missel-thrush, and the tits and robins and wrens — which is
almost a complete list of the premature singers. It is usually
possible to pick primroses and violets on these final days of
technical autumn : and spring is thus actively present though
it is a whole season off according to the diaries. Autumn,
indeed, is all the seasons, borrowing songs from spring, green
leaves and flowers from summer, and snow maybe from winter.
One may see September root-fields red with poppies in early
October and the ground white with snow on November the

12 AUTUMN AND WINTER

1 7th. This strange variety, which, however, has seldom
very much of winter in it, makes an English autumn like no
other season in any other land. Canada, thanks chiefly to
her red maple, has a wilder riot of autumnal colour. We
have no colouring in England to compare with the low
ground bushes whose leaves and berries spread a turkey
carpet over the peaty spaces between Newfoundland woods.
But in Newfoundland in autumn * no birds sing.' Nor is
any seed put into the ground trustfully until the ' azure
sister of the spring shall blow her clarion o'er the dreaming
earth.' The glory of an English autumn is that in a very real
sense it is also spring. In many ways there is no difference
at all, so far as the energy of growth goes, and this is usually
taken as the supreme mark of spring. We prefer to sow our
wheats in autumn, and they spring up into fresh and lush
growth in the 'happy, prompt, instinctive way of youth.'
The wise gardener sows his new lawn in September : and
sweetpeas, the queen of annuals, will live many weeks
longer into the coming year, if they are already plants before
winter comes. Sometimes even forest trees, which are most
regular in their ways, will put out new leaves in autumn, if
any accident has befallen the first leaves. The sap that
should fall has the power to rise again. If fruit and berries
fall, they fall to sow themselves, and for the most part they
begin to sprout. What a yeasty, a lusty spring-time it
seems, when we turn up a horse-chestnut from the decayed
leaves, and see curling round the polished grain of the case
a plump green shoot ready to greet a new year. The very
ground itself partakes of an activity that suggests the year's
beginning. Those who, faithful to the English games,
pursue cricket till it is out of season will find the fields
rough with worm-casts. Even Lord's cricket ground, though
it is immured by walls, is sometimes almost too rough for

AUTUMN 13

the game when the season is coming to a close. The activity
of the worms helps, perhaps, to give the air that suggestive
scent which belongs to this season of all seasons. But for
the most part the scents of autumn belong to the mists which
cover the land like the spirit of sleep before the midday
awakening. These mists are integral to British autumns.
England has been compared to Newfoundland. In that
strange land autumn is not un-English, but the air is singularly
bright and clear, even early in the autumn mornings, and you
miss these subtle perfumes and breaking glories of the mists
that ' half reveal and half conceal ' this England, ' this swan's
nest in an ocean.1

We must in some measure follow the world and the
poets in regarding autumn as a time of loss and decay. It is
true that

' The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burden to the ground ' ;

but it is also true that a new vigour dispels the languor of
sated summer. Their second gush of energy comes over
many birds. Tiny birds like the golden-crested wren, and
weak flyers like the corncrake, are possessed as at no other
season save spring with that energy of motion which urges
them to flights many thousand times more exacting than their
normal strength could endure ; and for autumn needs some
of the birds take on new feathers. The cock chaffinches
shine out in colours as gorgeous as their spring robes, for
they moult twice in the year, in autumn and in spring.
Nearly all birds begin to fatten ; they store up a reserve of
fat and heat, the universal accompaniment of energy, against
the demands of a barren winter. And autumn is a season
of breeding. The bees take their marriage flight. The
queen wasp, made fertile, takes her last outing before quench-
ing her energy in winter sleep. The moth lays her eggs

i4 AUTUMN AND WINTER

beneath the decaying bark, and the single bees, such as
Andrena rufa, bury their eggs deep in the ground. The
closer you look into the events of autumn the more you see
how active life is. Energy revives, as in some people who,
it is well said, enjoy their 'second spring,' their 'green old
age.' Even the leaves are thrust off by an act of energy.
They do not fall, as it were, helplessly, but are sucked dry

'WEAK FLYERS LIKE THE CORNCRAKE'

by vigorous action and then tossed away to nourish the
roots.

What gorgeous months the autumn shows. We could
spare no months more reluctantly than September and
October ; except for the sense of anticipation the days in
many qualities besides their length are the days of late
March ; and if autumn is spring, it is, in popular idiom, also
summer. Our * Indian summer' when it comes, as it usually
comes, is one of the greatest oases of the year, for it comes
when the joy of the year seems to have disappeared. The
blue and misty air, the soft warmth, the almost springlike feel-
ing, make those late autumn days in America as memorable as

AUTUMN 15

any period of the year. But we have several Indian summers.
Our ' St. Martin's summer/ which usually falls rather before
the saint's date on November nth, is an event to expect
with pleasure. It sets the thrushes singing, and gives the
elm leaves another week or two of life.

One must not altogether deny the melancholy of autumn
in which the world profoundly believes. It is true that in
autumn as in spring nature distributes and sows her seed,
and much of it germinates within a short space, but much
also lies dormant. Some of the bulbs and tubers cannot by
any persuasion be forced into growth. A potato tuber must
go through a proper period of invisible but definite
preparation before it can put forth spring shoots. It must
progressively mature within itself. It is so with many bulbs.
The autumn and the winter is for them a period not of
sleep but of something akin to ripening.

Perhaps it is because autumn has so many moods, is an
epitome of so much, that it appeals above all other seasons
to the poets. The autumn poems are the finest of all.
Keats's ' Ode to Autumn,' the 'season of mists and mellow
fruitfulness,' is often held to be the very best of all the odes
ever written. What pictures of homely England that last
verse calls up :

' Where are the songs of Spring ? Ay, where are they ?

Think not of them, — thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue ;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn ;
Hedge-crickets sing ; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.'

In Shelley's catalogue of masterpieces there are not half

16 AUTUMN AND WINTER

a dozen pieces that equal the 'Ode to the West Wind,1
which is in essence an address to Autumn :

' O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red.'

As he recalls these autumn hymns, and puts them in their
places among the poets' works, a lover of nature, a naturalist,
may feel a sort of pride in realising that the greatest poems
of all are evoked by birds. If the Odes to Autumn and the
West Wind come second, the ' Nightingale' and the * Sky-
lark ' of these two poets come first. As a rule the poets
have not been naturalists. A great exception is Lord de
Tabley, who has described the country with a fulness and
fidelity no one else has approached. His ' Autumn Serenade '
is a sort of naturalist's calendar, very much resembling in the
fulness of detail Meredith's spring poem, ' The Sweet o' the

Year.'

AN AUTUMN SERENADE.

Before the tears of autumn shed

All leaves away at winter's door,
My queen, across the foliage tread

Of yellow gusty woodland floor ;
And watch the squirrel overhead

In stories of her pine-trees hoar.

When only redbreast chirps thee on,
And fingered chestnut leaves are cast ;

And gaudy greenwood gathers wan
On lime and beech, and sickens fast ;

And acorns thicken paths upon,

And shrew-mice treasure winter mast.

When plovers tremble up to cloud,

And starling legions whirl apace ;
And redwing nations restless-loud

Are over every fallow's face ;
And barren branches like a shroud

Blacken the sun-way's interspace.

AUTUMN

The winds, all summer idly dead,
Give prelude to their winter tune.

Grey hoarfrost hears them, from his bed
Lays out white hands, and wakens soon.

He laughs as soughing elm-trees shed
Old homes of breeding rooks in June.

But as a rule the poets are
content with mood ; and doubtless
they know best. Perhaps the mood
of autumn is melancholy for all its
beauty. The mists are heavy when
we awake. The dews hang on the
webs and gossamers. The days
grow shorter. The jolly green
vanishes into the colours of a sort
of disease. The birds begin to
grow silent, the sweetest singers
and the most splendid flyers are
clean gone. The insects vanish to
their tombs, if they be not cradles.
The nipping frosts cut and destroy.
Winter clearly comes. Yet in tern- <THE HONEYSUCKLE is IN LEAF'
perate England this winter is such a poor affair that birds
and flowers scarcely dread it. Autumn and spring join

i8

AUTUMN AND WINTER

hands almost. The honeysuckle is in leaf before the last
elm leaves have fallen. The catkins grow fertile on hazel
and sallow, while the gum is still stiff over the chestnut
buds. When the hedgerows make skeleton patterns, the
kex is green at their foot, and the barest trees are touched
with the purple of half-invisible flowers.

SEPTEMBER

Thy shield is the red harvest moon suspended

So long beneath the heaven's o'erhanging eaves ;
Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended.

Like flames upon the altar shine the sheaves ;
And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid,
Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves ! '

LONGFELLOW, Sonnet on Autumn.

THE COUNTRY CALENDAR

SEPTEMBER may be properly regarded as the beginning of the
year. It opens the school year, the farmer's year, and, from some
points of view, the naturalist's year. A month of very vigorous
germination and growth as well as of decay, it is above others the
period of change. After the satiety of August, September seems to
many of us the most refreshing and the most English of all the
months. For every one it has some few days of peculiar charm. It
is a busy month for the entomologist, both for rearing caterpillars
and seeking pupae in the crevices of the bark and in the ground at
the foot of trees.

The First is recognised as one of the landmarks of the year,
because it ends for one large class of animals the spring and summer
truce which was first broken on August I2th, and is quite annulled
on October ist. Partridge shooting begins.

September 23rd, Autumn begins ; days and nights are of equal
length. The day is the counterpart of March 2 ist, or Spring the first,
and shows many symptoms of spring. But at this autumn equinox
daylight and flowers and other fair things are dwindling, though
seeds are germinating. The tide of life ebbs and flows in different
creeks. Almost the only flower that has not yet bloomed some-
where is the ivy.

The first full moon of the month is known as the harvest-moon.

19

20 AUTUMN AND WINTER

The mists and vapours which distinguish the coming of autumn
magnify and colour it at its rising and setting ; and at the zenith it
often rides with peculiar brilliance in a clear sky.

September 29th is Michaelmas Day, selected by men as well as
birds as a date for * flitting.' There is a saying, too, ' Plant trees at
Michaelmas and command them to grow.'

Up to the second week it is often as warm as August, but the
temperature, which remained at its maximum during July and
August, usually falls rapidly before the end of the month. At the
same time the rainfall is less, except on the West Coast, especially
in the Lake District, where the month is one of the wettest.
Average temperature, . , . 57'2° Fahr.
Average rainfall, . , . . 2TI inches.
On September ist, sun rises 5.14 a.m., and sets 6.46 p.m.

FAMILY PARTIES

' THE First' means always and everywhere in England,
September the ist, not New Year's Day; and its coming
seems to interest English people who have never shot off a
gun, hardly less than the sportsman. And indeed the First
begins a new year, heralds change as definitely as any date
that can be named. Our games alter. Cricket ceases, shoot-
ing begins. The face of the country is new, and what was
hidden is now open.

It is true that the fixing of the limits of the close season
for birds, and yet more for fish, has been rather haphazard ;
and not all the dates are the best dates. Five times out of
six September ist is too early for shooting partridges. The
corn is not all cleared ; and it ' goes against the grain '
in more than the proverbial sense, to be abroad shooting
partridges when men are sweltering and ' swinking ' — if that
fine old word may be revived — about the stooks. The seed
clover is just approaching ripeness. Half the purple heads
perhaps have been fertilised by the bees, and have fallen
limply downwards while the seed is forming, and out of the
brown mass the remaining unwedded flowers stand up sparse
and erect, like bright-headed pins in a pincushion. Every
man who walks through the field scatters a deal of seed, and
without exception it is the most valuable crop that grows
on the farm. It is among the most beautiful too. There is
no scent like the scent of a great acreage of clover in flower.

21

22

AUTUMN AND WINTER

There is no busier sound, out of a factory, than the hum of
bees over it. There is no pleasanter sight to a farmer than
a stack of it well got. Of all forms of cover it is the closest
and most thorough. The wildest coveys, even the barren
pairs, will lie close in it, and the temptation to follow them
is more than most sportsmen care to struggle against.

But the cardinal argument against the fixing of the First,
as the end of the close season for partridges, and almost all
other birds, is that the young are not yet mature. Never
a first goes by but a number of ' squeakers ' are shot ; and

PARTRIDGES AMONGST THE STUBBLES

though of course the good sportsman does not shoot the
small bird, the number of them generally seen on the First
may spoil the pleasure of his shooting. The Twelfth — just a
month later than the grouse — would be a more suitable date
in most years. But the First will remain the First. Our
English acres are in these days shorn so close that no cover
is left on the stubbles sufficient to hide a corn-mouse. The
reapers cut close and regular ; and there is a tendency to
reduce the size of hedges and clear up rough grass fields.
Those who would walk partridges and not drive them will
get within range of very few birds if they do not begin as
early as they may now begin. Even so the birds are wild
enough.

For the rest the First is as near to a real beginning of the

HARVEST MOON
By HARRY BECKER

FAMILY PARTIES 23

year as any day that could be fixed. On either side of it
are two very diverse pictures. Except for the game-birds,
the young birds of every species are strong on the wing, are
ready to fly overseas, covering a hundred miles at a stretch.
But in England, unlike France where any bird is game, we
only think of the close season as affecting game-birds ; and
it is perhaps the most noted of days because it begins a
month where a new year opens in the business of town and
country, not less than because it begins the break-up of the
coveys. The change is very marked in the appearance of
all birds as soon as the pairs congregate and the families
grow up. But among autumn families that of the partridge
is of peculiar interest. There is no bird in Britain, the
grouse excepted, which fulfils with such devotion maternal
and indeed paternal duties. The very tone of solicitous
affection is suggested by the strange ventriloquial call of the
birds, heard everywhere towards sunset over English acres.
The scattered and broken coveys are hallooing good-nights or
summoning the lost members as they collect and prepare to
sleep or 'jug' for the night. The call rings over the fields
in the ears of sportsmen returning in the dim light most
pitifully, most plaintively. Often the birds sleep together
in a quite compact mass. One of the reasons why they have
almost disappeared from many parts of Wales is that the
fields are small, and a poacher who watches the birds may
wipe out a covey at one shot. It is indeed a boast among
some of these native hunters that not a single bird of a covey
has escaped one of these foul shots. The instinct that helps
to their preservation against other enemies proves their ruin
among men.

What may be called the ' covey system ' is very rare
among birds, rarer than one would expect. The grouse and
the partridge remain in coveys until pairing time, but only

24 AUTUMN AND WINTER

one of the smaller English birds shows this family affection.
Of all the pictures of birds that one ever saw, the gambols
of a family of long-tailed tits remain most intimately on the
mind's eye of the writer. Out of a rough hedgerow rose an
old and decaying ash-tree. As one approached its hollow
trunk seemed to throw up a slight and sparkling fountain.
The drops of water were young long-tailed tits, still small
enough to be distinguished from their parents. The sun
was bright, having just conquered an autumn mist ; and it

LONG-TAILED TITS

lit the colours of these light and tiny creatures into the very
tints of a great bubble escaped into the air. They danced
and flirted up and down, more in the way of gnats marking
time under a hedge than in the progressive ways of birds.
When the dance was over and the music stopped they fell
back on to the tree as the fountain drops to the bowl. So
you may see them throughout autumn and winter moving
in a family party leisurely along the hedgerows, always keep-
ing close together, often, as seen that day by the ash-tree,
playing together like children. Presumably the prime reason
of the family party, as of the great congregation of birds,
is mutual help in finding food and protection from enemies.

FAMILY PARTIES 25

But these formidable economic reasons are joined, we may
allow, with a vital joy in companionship. Birds play as
well as eat, laugh as well as fear. Perhaps their start in
life tends to comradeship. In the way of snugness and
close packing there is no nursery to compare with the in-
terior of that deep beautiful bowl of lichen, moss, and down
in which the tit houses its young, who are often a dozen
or more in number. You would say the thing were impos-
sible till you handle one of these tits. They make a very
fair show of size to the eye, but are in substance imponder-
able. They are no more than bits of down themselves ;
and when they first leave the nest, a puff of wind sends them
astray like a single feather.

Except in their family affection, no bird could be less like
the partridge, which is very heavy for its size, like most birds
which either run well or swim well. One cannot imagine the
long-tailed tit on the ground. One can imagine the partridge
never leaving it. Indeed the French or red-legged partridge
very often fails altogether to leave the ground. In districts
of heavy clay-land in the midlands, scores of partridges are
caught on the ground from inability to raise themselves with
the adherent clay that their running exercise had accumulated.
On a horse one can hunt them down if the fields are at all big
and the hedgerows not over thick, according to a recognised
form of sport practised in certain parts of India.

The parental instinct of partridges has been very closely
watched owing to the attention of keepers who have to spend
much labour in preserving the nests from foxes. It is
evidence of the quick observation — for ' love has eyes ' —
arising from this instinct that for many years it was found
impossible to design a nest egg which should deceive the
partridge. The birds will sit so close that they will face
death in very many forms. In foul weather you may find

26 AUTUMN AND WINTER

them dead on the nest from cold and wet. They have been
killed by mowing machines, and the mother bird is not
uncommonly caught on the nest by a fox.

In comparing the social habits of birds, no attribute
differs so much as the part played in the family by the cock
bird. Among some of the terns the whole care of the family
is given over to the cock. Polyandry, of a curious sort, pre-
vails. The hen bird takes a new mate and starts a new

SITTING PARTRIDGE

family — ab ovo — before the first clutch is off and away.
The father has therefore to serve for both parents. These
terns are at one extreme. At the other is the cuckoo ; and
between them are birds of every degree of family affection.
Some help to build ; some to brood ; some do nothing but
feed the mother, surrendering even this duty as early as may
be. The cock partridge takes as full a share as any in all
duties. He is astonishingly watchful of the family after it
has grown up. How often has the bird suffered from rising
first when the covey is flushed. Even in their mating there
seems to be some stronger, one might almost say more
mystic affection than with other animals. It is at any rate
certain that scientific breeders, especially in France, have

FAMILY PARTIES

27

had quite extraordinary success since they have adopted a
principle of natural selection ; and mated their captive birds
according to the birds' own sense of affinity. The difference
in productivity has been remarkable, as compared with the
older way of casual mating-.

In their curious breeding establishments advantage has
also been taken of the parental zeal of the cock bird in taking
care of the covey. If a cock bird is caught up and kept in
confinement until a clutch of eggs is hatched artificially or
under a hen, he can be quite safely trusted with the youngsters.
He adopts them at once, shows every sign of parental fussi-
ness, and when released with this adopted family continues
to cherish them as attentively as would their own mother.

It is the custom on some estates, adopting what is known
as the Euston system, to put into a wild bird's nest as many

PARTRIDGE CHICKS

as thirty eggs which are on the point of hatching. The
bird has previously been supplied with boiled eggs of ancient
date to induce her to remain sitting. When this vast family
is hatched, both birds will on occasion * mother ' the brood.
Keepers have seen the two sitting head to head — a real
tete-a-t£te — to keep the thirty warm. It is an instance of the
extreme courage of the bird when the family is expected that
she will permit the keeper to push her with a stick from the
nest, and will not move off more than a yard or two.

A small personal experience will illustrate the affection of
the parents. A whole brood of partridge chicks were found

28 AUTUMN AND WINTER

by some children huddled into the gutter of a Hertfordshire
lane. The birds were brought home in a felt hat, were kept
for some hours, and then taken back to the place where they
were found and put just over the hedge. Almost in an
instant the old birds found them, and with a busy chuckle of
delight led the family down the gold corridors of the level
corn which made their palatial home.

Whether birds suffer pain or pleasure, as we use the words,
may be left to theorists. It is certain that these birds during
their hours of loss suffered alarm and anxiety as real as
reason itself could discover.

With partridges, more clearly than any other bird, you
may see from day to day how sharp is the fight with enemies.
In any county where keepers are few or incompetent, almost
every covey will lose members quite apart from the havoc of
the guns. In the quiet, almost domestic countryside of Eng-
land the enemies cannot be numerous, as they are for example
in Donegal or Scotland, where the peregrine and the golden
eagle are added to the ' vermin/ Indeed
the enemy must be on the ground, with
one or two exceptions. One new flying
enemy has been more or less recently
introduced. In a Cambridgeshire district,
where partridges were very strictly pre-
served, a full-grown partridge was caught
*n *ke °Pen field by a small Spanish owl,
one of that exotic tribe imported by Lord
Lilford, about which there is much to be

LITTLE OWL

looking rather larger than its victim, was
in fact nothing like so heavy ; and only the hunting spirit,
abetted by that marvellous weapon, its prehensile claw, could
have accomplished such a David and Goliath feat.

FAMILY PARTIES 29

The stoat is doubtless one of the most dangerous enemies,
though even his ravages are exaggerated. In our recent
experience a stoat, carrying a full-grown partridge as if the
weight had been nothing, almost ran into a pedestrian on
the open road, before he saw his danger and left the partridge
for his enemy's meal.

It has been feared that the partridge was gradually dis-
appearing from England, except where preservation was, if
one may use the word, intensive. The stocks were certainly
almost annihilated on some of the clay-lands, where shooting
is in the hands of the farmers, and keepers are unknown.
Probably, too, its multiplication is a little checked by the
mechanical precision of farming operations, and the want of
good cover, but one favourable season restores the numbers
even in some of the less congenial neighbourhoods.

There is one other enemy of the partridge, and indeed of
several other birds, which must be mentioned. One windy
day in 191 1, a body of sportsmen saw a covey, which had not
been shot at, fly straight into the wires along the road from
Huntingdon to Cambridge ; and four fell dead. Along one
mile of railway in this neighbourhood, Mr. Alington, one of
the greatest authorities on the partridge, calculated that some
100 birds were killed by the wires every year. There are
poachers who deliberately make use of the wires. A certain
farmer in Westmorland, in his unregenerate days, made
many a good bag out of a new line of wires running across
the moor. He would wait till dusk when the grouse were
jugging ; and then flush them from close quarters with his
dog. In their alarm and blindness, they would dash straight
into the wires, and it was a rare evening when he did not
pick up several victims.

Probably partridges, like wheat, would die out over great
areas of the country, if left to themselves, and if keepers dis-

30 AUTUMN AND WINTER

appeared. Vermin, once in considerable variety and plentiful,
have been reduced far below the natural level. In 1870
pole-cats were quite common throughout the midland
counties. Fifty years earlier than that, they were so
common on an estate within twenty miles of the Marble
Arch, that the keeper made a small fortune out of a bonus
on all he killed. In the accounts of an estate, which was
characteristic of others at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, the number of stoats killed in the year exceeded
the number of rats killed. One would infer from the lists
that stoats and weasels were the commonest of all animals
on the estate. The wild-cat survives only here and there
in the north of Scotland, though stuffed specimens are quite
common objects in the country houses.

A near relation of the partridge, with many of its qualities,
has, one may say, quite disappeared. Once quail-hunting
was quite a favourite occupation in autumn fields in England.
The quail did not usually nest in England, but it was a
common migrant, so common that the quail-call was an
article of commerce. Many sportsmen have in their career
shot quail in Britain. Several coveys were seen throughout
autumn and winter even as far west as Pembrokeshire in the
late seventies. Those who have watched the short low flight
of the quail must have wondered that a bird which appears
tired by the effort of topping a hedgerow should be one of
the world's most famous migrants. The herds cover vast
distances ; and the armies starting for the return autumn
journey over the Mediterranean, south and east, are a marvel
worth any man's journey to watch.

But the ground-nesting birds, whether or no they nest in
England, grow fewer in England. The corncrake, another
migrant that appears scarcely able to raise itself from the
ground, has almost vanished from many of its favourite

FAMILY PARTIES 31

haunts. Along the valley of the Ouse, twenty years ago,
you were seldom out of hearing of the cicala-like call of the
corncrake, mingling strangely with the chatter of the reed
bunting and the rustle of the reeds. It is now an event if
you hear it. Probably its disappearance is due to closer
agriculture. One hopes, at any rate, it is not due to the
dictum of a famous gourmet, that it is the best bird that
comes to table. And one may expect a return both of quail
and corncrake. A distinct revival of the corncrake was noticed
in Surrey, where several nests were found and protected
in 1911. It is a stalwart hope that under proper protection
quantities of our vanished birds, from the bittern to the quail,
will adapt themselves to new conditions and flourish again
almost as they flourished in the days of Here ward the Wake.

PARTRIDGE

THISTLE-DOWN

THE WAY OF A SEED

EVEN the turn of the leaf does not more emphatically
impress on us the mood of autumn than the dispersal of seed.
It is true that the way of a seed in the air is not autumn work
only, for our year is spread wide. Many seeds, including
the barren seed of trees, are scattered in spring ; then again
we may find a real instance of the kinship of the two
equinoctial seasons. Seeds are scattered throughout the
summer ; but it may be said that the work of spring and
summer has been preparation for the scattering of seeds in
autumn.

Almost all writers who have moralised at all on the vast
fertility of plants have regarded the colossal scale of seed
production as a waste. Some almost scold Nature for taking
this wasteful way. It is not rare for plants, even plants of
no great age or appearance, to produce ten thousand seeds.
Most people are familiar with the correction that Tennyson's
scientific friends imposed upon him in this reference. ' Of
fifty brings but one to birth ' became in the later edition ' Of
myriads.' But the seeds that do not come to birth or are
still born are not to be regarded as waste. There are birds
and beasts to be fed ; and the seeds are the chief of their
diet. The squirrels cut open the fir cones. The mice carry
loads of small seeds into old thrushes' nests for winter feed. '
The thousand sycamore seeds that fall and sprout produce

32

THE WAY OF A SEED 33

seed-leaves which bestow their riches on the soil. In
nature nothing lives only for itself. You cannot regard a
tree as a separate being, and say of it that its seed is wasted
because the tree sucks no advantage. Half the seeds that

'SQUIRRELS CUT OPEN THE FIR CONES'

fall are no more wasted than the corn seeds are wasted
which go to make our bread.

It seems to be a part of the policy of nature to make
many seeds which play the double part. They are attached
to a pulp which feeds the bird ; and the bird later sows the
undigested seed which it swallows. In our larger fruits — in
plums and pears and apples and cherries — the seed is doubly
or trebly provided. Every precaution is taken and attrac-
tion provided. The outside is comely and often sweet-
smelling. The very flower of the apple is not more odorous
and hardly more beautiful than the fruit. Outside it is
covered with a close skin that protects the flesh till the
chemical processes are complete, till the acid harshness is
converted into sugar and attractive salts, till the seeds within

34 AUTUMN AND WINTER

are ripened for sowing. The protection is from the weather
only, for the acidity is enough protection from the bird.
Colour and scent both reach their highest pitch when the
seed is first ready for migration. The kernel of the seed
itself is more stalwartly protected. It will need the digestive
fluids of the birds, the rains and weathering of winter, and
the force of the inner growth, before it responds to the call
of spring. The fruits of the wild briar, the may thorn, the
yew, the holly and ivy, and scores besides are thus designed,
and are all distributed over the country by the animal
sowers. Instances are quoted of seeds being so carried over
wide seas. But it is as much the part of the fruit to feed as
to be carried away, even though we grant the full Darwinian
theory that the fruits which have most surely tempted the
birds have most flourished. Laws of such double purpose
must work roughly, if only one purpose be considered.
Perhaps they work roughly from any standpoint. There is
certainly one habit of birds which seems rather to strive
against the interest of the plant. You may often find little
spinneys of trees growing up under the shadow of wide
branches which in the end kill them with their shade.
Many birds, especially the tribe of thrushes, delight, like
the ancient Egyptians, in retirement. They are fonder of
no tree than the lime, which sends out spreading and shady
boughs within a few feet or even inches of the ground.
There is a garden lime in Hertfordshire under which is
always to be found a regular nursery of young trees, especi-
ally of holly and thorn, the sign of many a hearty meal in
the quiet room of the lime boughs. All birds do not take
such trouble to escape to quiet quarters. Rooks do not ;
and so you will find little oak coppices growing up in the
most unexpected open quarters. There are some authenti-
cated instances of the work of rooks in sowing acorns ; but

THE WAY OF A SEED

more often,
perhaps, the
seeds are
carried by
ground ani-
mals ; by rats
and squirrels.
Pheasants
sometimes do
the work.
You may

watch companies of pheasants under any
oak round a preserved wood ; and if you
watch close, an easy thing to do while
the pheasants are tame and young, you
may see an unfortunate gourmand scuttle
away in great discomfort over the vain
effort to swallow an acorn of excessive
girth. That acorn is likely to be sown in
a much more effective spot than under
the shadow of the parent tree.

The seeds of many of the luscious
fruits are carried abroad about the land
by birds ; and for the most part passed
through their bodies. The nutty fruits,
in which Nature's efforts are chiefly
directed to the preservation of a seed
that is in no degree attractive to the
eyes or nose, are dispersed by animals
of all sorts ; but the dispersal has in
this case, if one may say so, nothing
causal in it ; and on the whole little advantage occurs
to the species except by a sort of accident, and that habit

BEECH-MAST

36 AUTUMN AND WINTER

of creatures not to eat food in the place where they
find it.

It is said to be the case that more seeds are carried
to new sites by help of their own grappling-tools than by
any other simple agency. The assertion needs more proof
than it has received ; but, however that may be, the method
which most appeals to all of us, when we are vagrants
in the wide autumn fields, is the wind borne, not the
animal borne — the balloon or parachute or arrow method,
whatever metaphor be preferred, — the way of a seed in
the air. Even within the very heart of London you
have ado to escape the sight of flying seed. Again and
again Londoners have noticed the thistle-down, endowed
with the restless to and fro motion of a butterfly, blow-
ing about the byeways of East and Central London. It
is true that the down has often lost the seed, which
steadies the flight and offers a stronger pull to the force
of gravity ; but the stiffer winds will carry the fattest seed
many scores of miles, and likeness to the balloon is very
striking.

Two years after the houses were pulled down to make
way for the great delta of King's Way and Aldwych, the
barren ground was a forest of willow-herb, which deserves
a place to itself among the feats of distribution and vitality.
Its natural place is along with loosestrife about the edges of
the rivers, where it has a master bearing among the tangled
roots of tall grass and flowers. But the long delicate feathers,
almost like the too precious aigrette plumes of the white
heron, carry the seed to every corner of the continents. In
North America and Newfoundland it is called the fire-weed.
After every forest fire it is the first thing to appear, cover-
ing the blackness and making the sooty ground into a rough
garden again. You may see the same resurrection on the

THE WAY OF A SEED 37

most barren furze bushes of Surrey after some great heath
fire.

Some seeds are more active, though their journeys are
shorter than the balloons. While the writer was busy about
this chapter, in a room close by the seashore in the Isle of

i '*M

SYCAMORE SEEDS

Wight, a sycamore seed, spinning round with dizzy energy,
struck the window with a loud rap, as a cockchafer might in
its headlong evening flight. So far had this seed come on
the oarage of this aerial screw that one could not find the
tree from which it had been launched.

Any one who has seen, as all must have seen, the host
of seedlings which spring up in the neighbourhood of a

38 AUTUMN AND WINTER

sycamore, will acknowledge the carrying power of the seed's
wings. You will find, except in the very big tree, rather
fewer seedlings under the spread of the boughs than just
beyond ; and if left alone they would very soon grow into a
wood. It is good for the tree that the progeny should be
free from the circle of the parent's boughs. But Nature's
ways do not always work to perfection. The seed of many
trees falls directly to the ground unless it is carried away by
birds or other animals. Though even here it might be
possible to make out a Darwinian case. In the beech and
the nut whose seeds fall vertically, the trees have the
particular faculty of flourishing in shade and close juxta-
position.

Such are the plain and obvious, almost insistent, examples
of seed dispersing itself over the land. We have all noticed
the spinning seeds of sycamore and hornbeam and ash.
We have all noticed — some in summer, some in autumn —
thistle-down and dandelion and garden anemone and ground-
sel and sallow, which will blow in quantities into the railway
carriages, and poplar seed flying like little moths about town
and country. And the success of this sowing is witnessed in
the multiplying of some of the plants. Nothing is more
noticeable over England within the last generation than the
spread of the wild clematis. Its seeds are carried on aigrette
plumes which float almost horizontally over the ground,
where they are rolled along when they fall. So it happens
that the seed takes root wherever an obstruction is, and the
clematis finds the support it needs. A curious sight in many
places is offered by the feathering of the seed over the dome
of a leafless tree, that looks from a distance as if covered with
white flower. The writer was never more surprised at the
effect than walking one late autumn day in a wild park at
Clifton. The grass is there dotted plentifully with may

THE WAY OF A SEED 39

bushes, and when the leaves fall each is re-covered with a
white canopy completely enveloping the upper part of the
tree. As you came in sight of each tree, in the misty air,
you could scarcely believe that they were not themselves

SEEDS OF HORNBEAM

putting forth some unseasonable bloom. The may-trees
doubtless had caught with their close boughs the flying seed,
which had later sown itself under the desired prop. So you
will find dandelions always in quantity under the west side
of walls and hedges, where the prevailing wind has sown

40 AUTUMN AND WINTER

them. One wonders whether there is not a regular drift of
dandelion eastwards. To come back to Tennyson, who was
more interested in the theme, there is no neater description
than his of the dandelion head preparing to cast its seed.
Like thousands of other children, taking their share in seed
dispersal, the little pair in Aylmer's Field amuse themselves

by blowing

' From the tiny pitted target,
What looked a flight of fairy arrows aimed
All at one mark, all hitting ' ;

and he uses the same comparison several times, once in
describing the shield of the warrior of the noonday sun :

' As if the flower,

That blows a globe of after arrowlets,
Ten thousandfold had grown.'

•

What a different manner is his from that much more
thorough investigator but less artful writer. In a seed-
time poem which did not quite ' come off' George Meredith

wrote :

* Flowers of the willow-herb are wool ;
Flowers of the briar-berry red ;
Shedding their seed as the breeze may rule.
Flowers of the thistle loosen the thread.
Flowers of the clematis drip in beard,
Slack from the fir-tree youngly climbed,
Chaplet in air, flies foliage seared ;
Heeled upon earth, lie clusters rimed.'

You may see on the north coast of the Isle of Wight,
near Seaview, clematis hanging from the firs twenty feet
above your head ; and there realise under the rough ex-
perimental words of the poem the truth and meaning of the
observation.

No scheme over the whole field of nature is so various

THE WAY OF A SEED

and precisely devised for its object as this dispersal of seed ;
and the more closely
you peer, the more neat
the process seems. The

balloons are the most 2-^^^sH^fc^j^
obvious, not the most
ingenious. Every gar-
dener, even the children
in a garden, notices
some of the common
devices which are as
good as toys. To touch
balsam seed, the balsam
known as Noli me tan-
gere, is an irresistible
garden amusement. It
is difficult not to be
startled, so sudden and
forceful is the ejection
of the seed. It will fly
several yards of its own
force, but the compli-
cated spring which
throws it out is so
sensitive that the trig-
ger, so to say, is very
often pulled by any
passing animal, which
as likely as not will be
struck with the seed and

carry it any distance. CLEMATIS HANGING FROM THE FIRS

Even cottagers whose

garden dimensions are of the breadth of one window, have

42 AUTUMN AND WINTER

noticed how the long-legged hinge of the geranium, as of
the wild cranesbills, heave the seed away much in the manner
of some of the mediaeval siege engines.

As you look more closely you find that some of the less
showy and obvious devices are yet more effective. Walking
one seed-time along the cliffs of South Wales, and climbing
repeatedly down and up the little crevasses that ran inland,
you may see stonecrop growing luxuriantly in many of the
minute crevices on the steep rocks. One knows that such
is the proper home of the stonecrop, but how in the world
did it plant itself there ? A German botanist has a theory
to account for the ubiquity of the stonecrop. The seeds,
as any one may see who has cared to notice, are held
singularly tightly in the little cases till the rain comes. To
the touch of rain they break; and are carried downwards
in the trickle, which makes its way along with the seed into
the depths of the tiniest crack.

Darwin himself saw, though he did not make the generali-
sation, that much seed distribution is purely accidental so

far as the artifice
of the plant is
concerned. He
gave a marvel-
lous instance,
which has be-
come one of the
best known of
his minor ex-
periments, of

FRENCH PARTRIDGES . .

what may be

called the ' muddy boots ' system of dispersal. He was given
a lump of mud, which that great pedestrian, the French par-
tridge, had collected on one claw in running about the stubble.

THE WAY OF A SEED 43

From this clod he germinated over 80 seeds. The porter-
age of these French partridges indicates a useful and quite
undesigned form of dispersal. The seas and rivers may
carry seeds immense distances, even from one continent to
another. And here again is accident. But when all is said
the special devices of dispersal have a variety and ingenuity,
if one may say so, an unlikelihood, which only Darwin's
philosophy can explain. The plants, as it were, work for
their own preservation. In autumn they prepare for spring,
they send out their children into the world, and the variations
of those species that have made preparation best have lived
and flourished while the others have perished.

In England a number of the forms of device are brought
unmistakably to the notice of every countryman. You can
scarcely walk through a wood and not carry away the
heads of some burr or teazel. The grappling-irons of various
shapes with which these are equipped are often so complete
that they give the burr-head the feeling of being actually
sticky, as if there were some gummy substance over them,
though the hooks are of hard, almost polished material.
They adhere so closely to any woolly substance, to clothes,
or the coat of an animal, that they can scarcely be pulled off.
It can scarcely be doubted that such species have flourished
beyond others because of the development by slow selection
of those individual plants which thus achieved the broadcast
sowing of their seed here, there and everywhere. Consider-
able dispersal may be very necessary to the continuance
of a species for other reasons than the mere multiplication
of plants in various places, for there is a tendency in some
botanical species, as one sees in the fungus fairy rings, to
poison, at any rate to exhaust the ground where they have
grown for some while. A clover field, for example, needs a
seven years' rest before it will grow clover again. Clover,

44 AUTUMN AND WINTER

however, is not a plant that has any method of flinging its
seed abroad. Unlike grass seed which is wind borne, the
round compact clover seed falls to earth where it is grown.

Some few seeds are pedestrians on their own account;
but their progressive power may easily be exaggerated.
However, the curious awns of a wild oat do certainly enable
it under any stimulus to wriggle itself forward along the
ground almost like an animal.

A trick of dispersal, that most country children have
noticed, is to be seen and heard, any hot autumn day, among
the whins. The pods 'go pop.' In shrivelling under the
sun into their blackness, lines of strong tension are developed
and the pods burst with a sharp spiral twist that shoots the
seeds a yard or two, as far as the more ingenious catapult
of the balsam or geranium.

Of the seeds that are dispersed many millions are never
sown. Safe sowing is as necessary to preservation as wider
distribution. So in the struggle for life some have sur-
vived by perfecting a mechanism for covering the seed with
soil or pressing it into a congenial crevice. It is worth
growing a garden hepatica for the pleasure of watching the
insertion of the seed. The stem bends over till the seed
is against the earth and then begins a spiral movement
which properly corkscrews the seeds into the earth. This
sort of device has been developed by rock plants which
might waste a dangerous percentage of their seed by the
destructive force of gravity if they did not guard against it.
Many have noted how the dainty toad flax, with the ivy
leaf, feels for cracks and then presses the seed home with a
delicacy of touch and a sense for the right spot which a
surgeon might envy.

The tricks of sowing and dispersal surpass enumeration
if the botany of the tropics is ransacked. The mangroves

THE WAY OF A SEED

45

develop darts which they shoot into the mud, the water
plants send out swimming and sailing seeds and bits of plants
which may make great voyages.

The making and sowing of seed is the greatest task of

THE IVY-LEAVED TOAD FLAX SETTING ITS SEED IN CRANNIES

nature, and in the stages of the process the seasons are
written in characters that we all delight to study. With the
coming of autumn the sowing comes to a finish and another
work begins again, a fact proclaimed in spacious scrolls over
thousands of our fields of England lined with the blades of

46

AUTUMN AND WINTER

autumn-sown corn. The ivy is the only one of our native
plants which has not begun to set seed or finished setting seed
when September is in its course ; and its seeds will not be
dispersed till the pigeons, which now come to us in great
flocks on the eve of winter, fall to work on this favourite
food.

r-^^s

« SEASON OF MIST'

FOGS and mists are clouds formed close to earth ; we can see,
inversely, that clouds are simply mists at a high level, when
we climb among them on a mountain pass. Autumn and
winter bring the cooler mountain temperatures down to the
plain ; and a thick grey mist with the grass-heads silvery
with beaded moisture is equally familiar in August on the
mountain-tops, and in November on lowland commons.
Though dense fogs are some of the worst features in our
climate, the thinner fog which we call a mist often gives
the supreme touch of attraction to an exquisite autumn day.
The whole year has nothing more delicately beautiful than the
slow clearing of the mist on a fine September morning ; and
even in November, the sun breaking through the denser
vapours on the golden elm boughs makes as glorious a scene
as any that summer can show. There is a fascinating sense
of mystery in a dense winter fog, either in town or country,
which largely compensates for its clinging or choking chill.
Birds call close at hand, and we come on them silently
and unforeseen ; a sheep coughing or sneezing on the hill-
side fills the solitude with unaccountable sounds ; its body
magnified in the haze seems as large as a bullock, or, standing
endways, takes the shape of a man. There is something
restrained and self-sufficient about these covert days which
well suits the temperate English climate. After summer's

D

48 AUTUMN AND WINTER

gaiety and sunshine, it is not unwelcome to see the land
withdraw for a while into its closed horizons, and grow calm
in the mist and rain. No one can know England well if he
does not appreciate its grey weather ; and the understand-
ing often grows deepest when there is apparently least
to see.

The connection between fog and cloud is often well
illustrated at nightfall on early autumn evenings, when belts
or layers of mist hang here and there over the fields at about
the height of the hedge-tops. These are simply small stratus
clouds, unusually close to earth. The warmed moist air near
the surface of the ground is chilled by the cooler upper layers
and condenses along the line of contact, forming these flat,
hanging clouds. Most day-clouds have more definite
rounded forms than these evening layers ; but it is not
uncommon to see clouds of the same flat, formless shape
hanging in the sky of dawn, where they are soon dissipated
by the warmth of the rising sun. Often on autumn evenings
fog forms in dense layers close to the ground, especially along
the beds of streams. These lower layers are caused in the
same way as the hanging belts, but the process is more
pronounced. The warmth of day draws up a great amount
of moisture from the stream and the wet meadows by its
side, which does not condense into visible mist so long as
the warmth is maintained, though we feel the air hot and
steamy. As the sun goes down, the moisture rapidly
condenses as the temperature descends, and colder air
from overlying layers and the sides of the valley mingles
with it. White fog lies like a blanket in the valley, and
does not melt, if the weather remains unchanged, until the
sun warms the vapour next morning, and enables it to float
invisibly at the higher temperature.

Autumn is the ' season of mists ' because of the warmth

STATELY AUTUMN
By SIR ALFRED EAST, R.A., P.R.B.A.

'SEASON OF MIST' 49

left behind in the earth by the summer sun. For many
weeks the store of warmth radiating from the soil tends to
raise the temperature of the moist air above it ; and fog
is formed whenever this moist air at a high temperature is
chilled. In winter and spring fogs are scarcer, because the
temperature of the earth is lower, the moist air above it is
consequently cooler, and therefore cannot undergo condensa-
tion so readily on the inflow of chilled air from elsewhere.
An approach to the conditions of autumn is seen again in
March, when in spells of bright, hot weather there are often
thick morning fogs like those of September or October.
The sun is then sufficiently powerful to warm the earth well
by day, so that condensation rapidly follows when its rays
are withdrawn. The morning mists common in autumn
often occur most regularly in the finest and most settled
weather, which at first sight seems rather a paradoxical
association. But in fine settled weather the sky is free
from upper cloud, and is as clear by night as by day ; and
the earth is thus deprived of the protecting blanket which
hinders the escape of heat by radiation, and makes cloudy
nights warmer than clear ones. Before morning the
reduction in the temperature of the earth produces con-
densation in the moist air above it, and a fog is produced.
It vanishes as the sun once more warms the moisture-laden
air ; but the time comes in autumn when the sun grows too
weak to raise its temperature to the required height, and
then the fog may last all day.

The clearness of the sky and consequent activity of
radiation supply one reason of the greater commonness of fogs
in dry calm weather. In autumn and winter fogs are often
thickest on the plains and along the valleys on precisely
those days when the hill-tops are bathed in sunshine. This
is especially the case when the weather is not only calm but

50 AUTUMN AND WINTER

frosty. Fog is favoured by calm anticyclonic weather in
other ways. The best conditions for its formation are when
a cold current drifts slowly over a moist and warmer layer
next to the earth ; and this is just what happens when the
light, cold airs of a winter's anticyclone wander over the
damp surface of the soil. Strong wind almost always dis-
sipates fog, rain carries the condensed particles of moisture
to the earth, and moderately warm air does not cause con-
densation. Strong wind and rain and moderately warm air
are all forthcoming in spells of typical cyclonic weather ; and
thus we find by experience that a wet autumn is generally
not a foggy one, or at any rate, that the wet and foggy periods
do not coincide. By another apparent paradox, the stormiest
winter weather is generally also the sunniest. Stormy
weather has spells of clear limpid sunshine between the
storms ; and in spite of the brilliance of bright frosty days,
the total amount of sunshine in a wet and warm winter is
generally much greater than in a dry and frosty one. In our
climate, frost and sunshine seldom persist together for very
long ; if it is calm, on creeps the fog, and if there is a strong
wind, it brings either snow or rain.

It has been established by experiment that the particles of
fog can only form round a nucleus provided by some form
of floating dust, or of some of the gaseous products of the
combustion of coal or wood. This supplies one very good
reason for the density of fogs in large towns, with their
myriad chimneys, and the ceaseless grinding and shaking of
machinery and heavy traffic. But it is equally true of the
clearest country air, and gives a remarkable indication of
the abundance of minute floating particles in the earth's
atmosphere. Many of these particles are mineral, consist-
ing of dust carried up by storms or ejected by volcanoes ;
others are vegetable, including grains of pollen shed from

'SEASON OF MIST' 51

flowers and grasses, and the dust from the bark of trees.
The wear and tear of the whole fabric of the earth must
contribute to these innumerable floating atoms, which supply
the foundation for the fog-clouds.

Land-fogs are produced either by the mingling of two
bodies of saturated air at different temperatures, which
causes condensation by cooling of the warmer mass, or by
the passage of a warm moist current over a cold land surface.
The former process is the commoner in the case of ordinary
low-lying fogs, though a moist sea-wind blowing against
a colder mountain-top often keeps its head wrapped in
cloud. Land-fogs, like clouds, can drift to a considerable
distance without dissolving, if the balance of temperature
keeps their vapour condensed ; and in autumn and winter
tracts of fog cover estuaries when the sea outside is clear, or
even join across the Channel, or drift off-shore in wandering
masses. Sea-fogs in the same way often overlap the land.
Sea-fogs are formed by the passage of warm moist air over
colder water, the chilly evaporation from which condenses
the vapour in the air. In regions where a cold sea-current
thrusts down into more temperate latitudes, fog is the normal
condition of the weather. Off our own coasts, where the
water is normally warm, sea-fogs are produced more
occasionally. They are commonest in spring and early
summer, when the sea still keeps a good deal of its winter
chill, and the temperature of the air is rapidly warming.
Sea-fogs provide the chief exception to the general rule, that
fogs occur in calms or light airs. There may be thick fog
along our own coasts with a fresh breeze blowing, while in
the seas round the Horn there is sometimes thick fog with
a heavy gale. This peculiarity of sea-fogs forms a striking
contrast with the way in which an autumn or winter mist
will often seem to melt by magic when a light draught

52 AUTUMN AND WINTER

springs up. The fugitiveness of land-fogs is probably due
to the constant slight difference of temperatures over any
tract of dry land, with its varying elevation and exposure,
and alternations of meadow, woodland and marsh. A slight
inrush of air from a warmer quarter is thus often sufficient to
dissipate the mist. At sea, on the other hand, there is far
greater uniformity in the temperature of the whole body of
water and of the air which sweeps over it. If the balance
of temperatures once sets up condensation, the process will
be so general and widespread, that the wind will not affect it.
Belts and islands of fog are often to be seen wandering out
at sea, hiding distant vessels and releasing them again, and
rousing the sirens of distant lighthouses to irregular bursts
of warning sound. These isolated volumes of mist are
perfect examples of the identity of fog and cloud ; they are
exactly like the blurred and formless dawn-clouds, though
they rest on the sea. Unlike the more widespread sea-fogs,
these banks only occur in calm weather, when there is little
wind to change their temperature and disperse them.

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS IN AUTUMN

IN a fine September English butterflies make almost their
most beautiful display. Gone, indeed, are the fritillaries
flashing like tawny streaks in the woods of June and July,
and the purple emperor soaring round the oaks. But the
equally beautiful white admiral has been known to have a
second brood in September after a very hot summer ; and
the gorgeous tribe of the Vanessae — the peacock, red admiral,
and their kin — is still almost at its best. Moreover, as
autumn begins to set in, and the number of wild flowers
considerably declines, butterflies and moths tend to con-
centrate in our gardens, and thus become more conspicuous.
It is a very beautiful and characteristic time in English
gardens when the ranks of grave autumn dahlias are bright
with peacocks and red admirals, the humming-bird hawk
moth comes whirring in the calm sunshine about the helio-
trope blossom, and the chestnut vapourer moth tosses across
the lawn and away in mad flight among the trees.

All the Vanessae pass the winter in the perfect winged
form ; and a few of them retire to hibernate before September.
The large tortoiseshell is the chief member of this group
missing from the September garden, and from the sheets of
blue scabious in the dry sloping pastures which attract
swarms of butterflies at this time of year. But small tor-
toiseshells are never more abundant. This is a particularly

53

54 AUTUMN AND WINTER

widespread and hardy butterfly, as well as a very lively and
beautiful one ; it scours the Lake Mountains as high as the
cloudy hollows where the mountain ringlets breed, and its
spiny caterpillars can be seen on the nettles by the doors
of the highest Alpine chalets. In England it is one of the
last butterflies to decline seriously in numbers in a series of
wet, cold years ; and after a fine summer it often abounds by
September. This is due to the fact that it normally has
two broods, while the other species of its family have
usually only one. The first brood emerges early in the
summer, and lays the eggs of a second, which hatches
towards the end of August ; and if both these broods prosper,
there is an enormous multiplication of the numbers of the
species between the reappearance of the hibernated insects
in March, and the hatching of the second brood in late
summer.

The peacock butterfly is a larger and statelier insect,
with all four wings boldly marked with the striking peacock-
eye pattern which recurs so frequently in Nature — as in the
peacock, the argus pheasant, and the eye-spots on a leopard's
skin. It is interesting to compare the peacock butterfly with
the small tortoiseshell, and to see how the pattern of the
tortoiseshell seems to be leading up to the perfect eye-spots
of the peacock. The upper wings of both have very similar
spots of brown and yellow and blue on a deep red ground ;
but the tortoiseshell just misses the eyelike pattern, while
its lower wings, though brighter than those of the peacock,
show no approximation to it. Such eyelike spots are some-
times said to be protective ; they are supposed to scare away
the enemies of the insect which bears them by their appear-
ance of being the eye of some large creature. In certain
cases they may very possibly have such an effect ; we shall
notice the case of the elephant hawk caterpillar a little later,

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS IN AUTUMN 55

when we wander out into the lanes. But in the case of the
peacock's tail, for example, it can scarcely be supposed that
the effect of all these eyes is to multiply terror in the
beholder, as well as to fulfil the other traditional purpose of
exciting the admiration of the peahen. It is also very
doubtful whether its similar markings protect the peacock
butterfly. Its chief enemies are flycatching birds ; and
both the spotted flycatcher and the sparrow occasionally
hunt a peacock butterfly across the garden with no sign
of alarm, though the butterfly usually escapes from them by
sheer size and speed and agility of flight. Protection may
be an occasional effect of this eye-pattern in Nature ; but it
certainly does not appear to supply the main thread or purpose
of its development.

The other British Vanessae are the red admiral, painted
lady, comma, and Camberwell beauty. The last species is
very seldom seen in
this country, though it
is a common garden
butterfly in most parts
of the Continent. Its
caterpillar or chrysalis
has never been found
here, though a few
winged specimens have
been caught when they
had apparently only
just left the chrysalis.

Probably many of the specimens seen in England have
travelled from the Continent ; it is certain that large
swarms of painted ladies arrive from time to time in this
way. Painted ladies are exceedingly common in some
summers, and very scarce in others ; their numbers are

PAINTED LADY

56 AUTUMN AND WINTER

increased by Continental emigrants, and gradually decline
in succeeding seasons. In September 1903 there was a
great inrush, and multitudes of this species were seen over
the greater part of the country. But the wet weather of the
later autumn apparently destroyed the vast majority ; at any
rate the painted lady was not a common species in the
following summer.

Comma butterflies also vary greatly in numbers in
different years; but this is due to the character of the

seasons alone, without the
changes and chances of mi-
gration from abroad. The
headquarters of this curious
species is now in the western
midlands ; it seldom now
appears in the south and
COMMA east of England, where it

used to be fairly common in

favourable years. It is like a miniature and richly coloured
small tortoiseshell, with wings of a deeply jagged outline,
like that of some thorny shell. It is named from a con-
spicuous light comma-like mark on the dark under side ;
but it might well be called the ragged robin, for any one
unacquainted with the existence of the species might well
suppose that a specimen flying in front of him had been
torn and battered through a whole season by wind and
thorns and birds. Then the exact symmetry of the apparently
mangled wings would strike him with delighted surprise ;
for it is always beautiful and curious to see the comma
butterfly settle on a September marigold, or on the trunk of
a sun-warmed tree in early spring, and make the thorny
outlines meet above its back.

Most characteristic of all the autumn butterflies is the red

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS IN AUTUMN 57

admiral. Its velvety black wings, laced and spotted with
scarlet, seem appropriate to the lengthening autumn shadows
on the lawn ; both alike suggest a presage of the dark days
near at hand. Red admirals appear later than most of the
rest of their tribe, and retire later in autumn ; they can be
seen flying on warm sunny mornings as late as November,
when no other butterfly but the small tortoiseshell is still
abroad. They haunt wild and garden flowers with the
peacocks and painted ladies, but are equally fond of the
juice of ripe and decaying fruit. Half a dozen red admirals
can often be seen bickering with the wasps over the fallen
plums and apples in the orchard ; and they will flit about
the garden walls for plums damaged by wasps and birds,
but still hanging, or sail in foraging flight round the heads
of the orchard trees. Their airy flight at such times recalls
a little the soaring of the purple emperors round the July
oaks. Still the wings waver among the hum of many insects
under a golden sun ; but the admirals fly when the sunshine
has the drowsy September haze, and the dews fall early and
dense. The pota-
tions of the butterflies
and wasps are pro-
longed till after night-
fall ; a lamp turned \ x
beneath the orchard [
trees in the still dark-
ness wakes a drowsy
buzzing from the
hollowed apple-shells,
and sets the red ad-
miral creeping slowly over the scented fruit in the dewy chill.
The odour of the fermenting juices is heavy even to man ;
and to the insects it is evidently stupefying. Red admirals

RED ADMIRAL

58 AUTUMN AND WINTER

do no appreciable harm to a crop of fruit ; their flexible
sucker or proboscis takes a minute liquid draught where
birds or wasps or weather has broken the skin. Even in
the larval stage most of the Vanessae feed on thistles and
nettles ; indeed, with the exception of the two cabbage
whites, no butterfly does harm to farm or garden at any
period of its existence. The destructive caterpillars are
those of certain moths.

One striking feature of the Vanessae is their possession
of only four active legs ; the front pair are dwarfed and
apparently useless. So far from this making them feeble or
awkward, these butterflies seem to walk more gracefully and
lightly on two pairs of legs than other butterflies on three.
Another peculiarity is the great contrast between the brilliant
patterns of their wings above and their duskiness beneath.
The under side of the red admiral has a delicate damask
pattern of pink and grey, and the painted lady is a little
gayer. But the tortoiseshells and the comma are almost
covered with dense dark streaks ; and the under side of a
peacock is as black as a piece of charcoal, or the under side
of a dark tree fungus. This is a case in which the protective
effect of their markings can hardly be doubted. Peacocks
and tortoiseshells naturally hibernate in heaps of brushwood
and old hollow trees, hanging with folded wings and antennae
hidden between them. Against their dusky background
their under sides must often be practically invisible. The
under side of the peacock in particular is amazingly like the
slightly ridged surface of old blackened wood. Sometimes
these butterflies hibernate indoors, creeping into dark cup-
boards or behind bookcases. In such places they seem
to have no instinct of settling on a surface of like colour ;
they will go to sleep for the winter on a light picture- frame,
or buff distempered wall. Brimstone butterflies, on the other

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS IN AUTUMN 59

hand, seem to have a distinct though partial sense which
leads them when flying about by day to settle on yellow
flowers and dead leaves, chips of yellow wood, and other
objects which help to conceal them. They do not always
do this ; they will feed in spring, for example, on purple
vetch, and on dahlias of many colours in the autumn garden.
But the habit is sufficiently marked to be interesting and
significant. Sometimes they seem to hibernate in thick
heather, from which they may sometimes be disturbed in
October and November ; and among the dark-brown heather-
twigs their greenish-yellow under sides cannot help to conceal
them, unless, as is possible, they serve to imitate a yellow
leaf of sorrel, or sallow, or some other heath-growing plant.
But they have lately been found hibernating in quite a
different situation — among growing ivy leaves in a hedge ;
and there their hooked greenish-yellow wings gave a striking
imitation of the under sides of the pointed ivy leaves. The
small pale spot in the centre of the wing precisely imitated
a fleck of decay on the leaf. The two species of clouded
yellows have a similar spot ; and although their special place
of hibernation is not known, it is highly probable that they
hide in some spot where they imitate pale yellow leaves.

Clouded yellows are as erratic in their appearance as
painted ladies, and for the same reason. Our British supply
is periodically reinforced by immigrants from the opposite
shores of the Channel ; and the number of their descendants
depends on the weather for the next year or two. There
are two species, the pale clouded yellow being much scarcer
than the common one. They are most plentiful in Kent,
where the migrants from France most thickly settle ; but in
some years they are fairly general in the south of England
in late summer and early autumn. The common species is
of a deep saffron tinge, a good deal richer than the colour

6o AUTUMN AND WINTER

of the male brimstone or his moonlight-coloured mate.
They are too restless to haunt gardens like the Vanessae,
which love to return over and over again to the same perch.
Clouded yellows are usually seen in rapid though dancing
flight across open meadows, or the wide vetch and clover
fields that skirt the downs. It is this restless habit which
scatters them far and wide across the country by September,
when there has been a migration from France in May or
June.

Common blue butterflies are still plentiful at the beginning
of September, but become scarcer as the month advances,
and have vanished by the end. They too are field rather
than garden butterflies ; but when drought parches the
meadows, they visit gardens for the sake of the moisture of
the watered lawns and beds. But they are not happy in a
small area, and after coursing to and fro for some time,
vanish again into the dry land outside. With them comes
the small copper, which is commonest in dry heathy fields,
but wanders far and wide. It has all the spiritedness which is
associated with red colouring in many different forms of life ;
a small copper will always be sparring in the air with the
blue butterflies that haunt the same field, or with others of
its kind. Small coppers are often abroad very late in the
season. After a fine summer they are often seen on bright
October days, and sometimes linger into November. In
damp summers they produce two broods, but in warm seasons
three or even four ; and it is these latest broods which haunt
the autumn pastures and woodsides among the last of the
thistle-down and the faded seed-heads of the knapweed.
In hot seasons the last brood of caterpillars pupate and
emerge as butterflies instead of hibernating ; then the butter-
flies lay eggs, and the young caterpillars hatched from them
hibernate instead of their parents.

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS IN AUTUMN 61

Gatherings of autumn butterflies are reinforced by two
conspicuous species of day-flying moths. The humming-bird
hawk moth can be seen all through the summer half of the
year ; but it becomes much more abundant at the end of
summer and the beginning of autumn, when the year's brood
appears before hibernating. It is a very strange and con-
spicuous insect, as it hangs, whirring like a humming-bird, at
some blossom while it sucks its nectar with its long unrolled
proboscis. Its fore wings are smoky grey, and its hind
wings rich orange bordered with
brown ; it has also large parti-
coloured tufts of down about the tail,
which it spreads out while hovering
so as to help it to float in the air, like
the membranes of a flying squirrel.
Sometimes it rests on hot brick walls, /
and sits fretting its wings together in
the sun ; when startled on such a
perch, it instantly flashes away in a
soaring curve. The second common
day-flying moth that haunts flowers
is the gamma or silver Y. It is a small moth with long
powerful fore wings, marked with a white character re-
sembling the Greek and English letters after which it is
named. The gamma is also a swift flyer, and occasionally
hovers at a flower something in the manner of the humming-
bird hawk ; but it is impossible to mistake the two. The
hawk moth looks much larger in the air, and its flight is far
more buoyant and commanding ; when it hovers at a flower
its wings vibrate in a rapid blur. The vapourer moth
generally appears in September, though in years when it is
abundant it can be seen all through the summer. It is some-
times very plentiful in the London parks. The male is con-

SILVER Y MOTH

62

AUTUMN AND WINTER

spicuous with its bright chestnut wings and capering flight in
the sunshine. The female is wingless ; she sits on the trunk
of a tree, lays her eggs and dies, often not moving more than
a few inches from the web of the cocoon from which she
emerged.

The variety of night moths diminishes as September
draws on and leaves the life of August behind ; but a few
striking autumnal species now first appear. Most conspicuous
is the red underwing, which is not uncommon in the south of
England, and is often attracted by lamps in rooms with open

windows, or is found resting on walls
in passages, to which it has also been
drawn by lights at night. It is a
large moth with four wings of mottled
and banded grey, and hind wings of
crimson, striped with black. Another
handsome and much commoner moth
is the herald, which can easily be
recognised by its stout body, the
irregular outline of its fore wings, their
conspicuous white lines and orange blotches on a grey ground,
and above all by its fondness for sheds and houses. Very
occasionally, the herald can be caught feeding on flowers or
on entomologists' sugar after dusk ; but for every one insect
seen flying out-of-doors, probably a hundred will be found
resting in dark corners. This curious passion for hibernation
seems to seize them almost as soon as they emerge. The
fretted wings, painted with autumn tints, doubtless mimic a
crumpled autumn leaf when the herald hibernates in natural
surroundings, though they make it a rather fantastically con-
spicuous moth when seen in a storehouse or stable. Several
other moths appearing in autumn are coloured like autumn
leaves; common examples are the August and September

HERALD MOTH

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS IN AUTUMN 63

thorns and the sallow. But these cannot be claimed confi-
dently as examples of special protective colouring, for an
equally autumnal-looking series could be picked from most
groups of moths in spring and summer. On windy days in
October the threshing beech boughs often send forth large
numbers of mottled umber moths — a small species of the
frail-built geometer tribe, with upper wings freckled and
banded with brown, and under wings of pale freckled grey.
This rather dull-looking little moth is chiefly interesting
because it is an old friend in a new shape. It is bred from
the thin reddish * looper ' caterpillar with buff or yellow marks
along the side, which is always plentiful on trees in May and
early June, and is excessively abundant in dry springs.
From June to October it has been a chrysalis; and now it
reappears in its final form to lay eggs and produce small
caterpillars which will sleep through the winter. The umber
moths which flutter from the beech boughs are the males ;
the females are wingless, like those of most moths which
emerge in the stormy autumn and winter months.

Little is seen of the perfect moths and butterflies as they
go into hibernation, except when the herald or the peacock
is found resting inside some building. But the descent of
many kinds of caterpillars from these trees to the earth is a
characteristic feature of the September days. When the
first curled leaves of the elm and lime begin to drift down on
the dry surface of the lanes, the larvae of the lime hawk moth
come down to turn to pupae in the earth. They are often
commoner on the elm then on the lime. The full-fed cater-
pillar can be seen crawling down the trunk of the tree, or
creeping slowly across the road to find loose earth in which
to burrow. Its resemblance to the curled autumn leaves is
very remarkable, especially to those of the elm. Both lie on
the surface of the road as yellowish-green cylinders, about two

64 AUTUMN AND WINTER

inches in length, with a point projecting at one end : and
both have oblique stripes along the sides. The conspicuous
horn on the tail which is the badge of the hawk moth larvae
closely imitates the stem of the leaf; the rough shagreen-like
skin of the caterpillar mimics its colour and texture ; and the
stripes on the caterpillar's flanks reproduce the lateral veins
of the leaves. Only on a close examination is it likely to be
noticed that in the elm leaf the lines of the leaf and the stem
run parallel, while the horn of the caterpillar runs crosswise
to the stripes on its flanks. This mimicry may help to pro-
tect the lime hawk caterpillar from the hedgehogs, shrews,
moles and mice which forage along the surface of the ground
in the September nights.

Similar concealment is afforded by their horns and stripes
and varying shades of green to the caterpillars of several of
the other species of hawk moth, which grow fat and descend
to earth about the same time. The privet hawk caterpillar
is a handsome great creature, nearly four inches long, of a
beautiful shade of apple-green, with mauve and white lateral
stripes. It feeds on holly and guelder and other shrubs,
as well as on privet ; and in spite of its large size, it is sur-
prisingly inconspicuous among the leaves. Its green blends
with the general shade of the foliage, its stripes imitate their
general markings, and the horn very fairly represents a spine
of holly or the privet leafs pointed tip. The resemblance
does not bear an exact comparison in detail ; it is not even
so close as that of the lime hawk to the withered elm leaves ;
but on the whole it is very effective. There is a specialised
resemblance, again, between the grey-green of the poplar
hawk caterpillar and the pale foliage of the poplars and willows
among which it feeds ; and the blue-green skin of the eyed
hawk caterpillar is surprisingly hard to detect among the
pale under sides of a spray of apple leaves, even though we

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS IN AUTUMN 65

know it is there. None of our English birds seem to attack
these large hawk moth larvae when full grown ; but the
mimicry may none the less be of use to them in their earlier
stages of growth.

The pattern and colour of these species of hawk moth aim
at concealing the caterpillar from view ; but the markings of
elephant hawk caterpillar seem designed to make it look
terrifying. The large elephant hawk feeds chiefly on the
common purple willowherb which flowers in late summer by
lakes and streams, and in flowing ditches ; and it reaches its
full growth in September, and is then three inches long.
It is mottled greyish-black in general colour ; but the
peculiar feature is the pair of large eyelike spots on the fifth
and sixth segments, which are greatly swollen. The first
four segments are small and slender, and are retracted against
the fifth segment when the creature is at rest. The swollen
segments then look like a large head, and the spots give an
extraordinarily vivid imitation of two glaring eyes. It is
hardly surprising that country folk who know nothing of
the life-history of the creature regard it with terror, and think
themselves courageous when they face it armed with a spade.
As it does not aim at concealment it does not need to be of
the same colour as the leaves of its food-plant ; and it is
therefore nearly black, so that the effect of the glaring eye is
intenser. This dark colour and the thin trunklike segments
in front of the pretended head have given it its English name
of elephant hawk.

A better known object of terror is the death's-head hawk
moth, and to a less extent its caterpillar, both of which are
often found in potato-fields when the crop is dug in autumn.
The death's-head is irregular in its habits, sometimes passing
the winter as a chrysalis, and sometimes hibernating in the
perfect state. Strange and sinister-looking as is the skull

66

AUTUMN AND WINTER

depicted on the moth's thorax, it is, of course, a purely
chance similarity. The picture of the death's-head is alarm-
ing only to mankind ; and it is impossible that the moth's
markings should have been developed in the comparatively
short period of man's existence as a formidable species, and
as the result of any struggle between them. The death's-
head mark is in fact not always a protection ; for the anxious
potato-lifters make an end of the menacing creature with a

fork. Another un-
canny feature of the
death's-head hawk is
its unique possession
of a voice. Alone
among our moths and
butterflies, it can
squeak. Both the
winged insect and the
pupa can make this
sound ; and it is not
known how they do
it. The moth has
been thought to emit
the sound by the friction of the thorax against the abdomen,
after the fashion of some beetles, or by forcing air through
the thorax, head and trunk. But the fact that the pupa
can also emit the sound makes it very unlikely that the
latter explanation is correct. The mail of a pupa fits too
close to make any such passage of air seem possible ; but
it can writhe its abdominal segments, so that the sound
seems more likely to be produced by friction in that part of
the body.

The large greenish caterpillars of the buff-tip moth are
often seen in late August and September as they descend

CATERPILLAR OF DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS IN AUTUMN 67

from the boughs where they have fed in a numerous colony.
They strip the twigs almost bare by the time that they are
full-fed, when they are about three inches long. Unlike the
hawk moth caterpillars, they are thinly covered with short
hairs ; and they are easily identifiable by the narrow black
parallel lines which run nearly from end to end of their
bodies. Many of them are crushed underfoot, or by the
wheels of carts, as they cross the paths and
roads beneath these trees ; the survivors
pupate on the surface of the ground among
the herbage, and emerge at midsummer.
Then they are found clinging to the trunks
of trees, with their grey wings wrapped
round them so as to imitate a lichen-covered
stick or fragment of bark; and the buff
splashes at the end of the fore-wings
resemble the paler surface of broken wood.
Yet another method of protection is illus-
trated by the handsome caterpillars of the
pale tussock moth, which appear abundantly
at hop-picking time in September, and
are known in Kent and Surrey as hop- CATERPILLAR OF THE

, ™, 1-1 • i • -j BUFF-TIP

dogs. 1 hey are bright green, with vivid
black transverse bands, and five large tufts of yellow
hair, the last of which turns backwards like a dog's tail.
These conspicuous tufts serve as warnings to birds to
let their wearers alone. Cuckoos are the only birds
which habitually eat large hairy caterpillars ; for all other
species their bristles apparently make them an unwhole-
some diet. It must thus be a considerable advantage
to a caterpillar to be conspicuously protected in this way ;
and the hop-dog is one of the best examples of this device.
It spins a loose cocoon among leaves or other herbage, and

68

AUTUMN AND WINTER

spends the winter as a chrysalis, emerging in May. Many
other caterpillars leave their food-plants as the sap goes out
of them and the nights grow cold, and hibernate in the earth,
or wrapped to some twig or bough. The most conspicuous
of this group of caterpillars is that of the fox moth, which is

CATERPILLARS OF THE PALE TUSSOCK MOTH

very plentiful in August and September on heathy commons
and dry hills, and readily attracts attention by its thick soft
chestnut hair. Though its thick mantle serves to warn birds
to keep aloof, it is no protection against ichneumon flies.
These are some of the most dangerous enemies of moth and
butterfly life. The flies pierce the skin of the young cater-
pillars with their slender ovipositors, and insert a number of
eggs. The larvae feed within the larger caterpillar's body,
and eventually kill it. Sometimes the victim turns duly into
a chrysalis, but a troop of winged parasites emerge instead of
the butterfly or moth. Other caterpillars waste away before
they can change ; and we sometimes see the shrunken body
of a fox caterpillar lying on the grass with the white oval
pupae of the ichneumon fly bursting from its skin. The
delicate callousness of this process is less objectionable when
the victim is one of our own garden pests. When the last

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS IN AUTUMN 69

of the green caterpillars of the small cabbage white climb
under lintels and copings in September to undergo their
change, their end often comes suddenly. Their habit is to
bind themselves to their support by silken bands round the
middle and at the tail, and so to hang safely in the helpless
pupal state. But dissolution often comes upon them before
the operation is complete ; and instead of the pale angular
chrysalis, we find in a few days' time a shrivelled greenish
cerement and a cluster of ichneumon pupae like small eggs.

GOLDFINCHES

BIRDS IN FLOCKS

ONE of the most characteristic signs of gathering autumn is
the congregation of many kinds of birds in roving flocks. A
gregarious existence seems natural to the majority of birds,
except in the crisis of the nesting-season, when they are
driven asunder partly in order to have sufficient territory for
the collection of food for the hungry young, but mainly to
satisfy the overmastering instinct of jealous independence
which most creatures feel with regard to their mates and
young. At any rate, with most of our familiar English birds
the season of separate households and a settled domicile lasts
for little more than a third of the year, and for nearly two-
thirds of it they roam far and wide in company with others
of their own and kindred species. As surely as we see in
September the first leaves dropping from the lime-trees, and
the first golden boughs shining in the crowns of the elms, we
hear the flocks of linnets piping in the cornfield hedgerows,
and the mixed cries of the jackdaws and rooks and starlings
as they rise in a loose cloud from the tanned and tufted
pastures. The birds' family life is merging day by day into
the communal existence of the great winter packs. Species
forgathers with species, and a different conception of

TO

BIRDS IN FLOCKS 71

existence seems to spread among them as the vital sun
declines.

Though this change becomes unmistakably conspicuous in
September, its beginnings are visible long before. Just as
the new song of the robin and the new thrusting of the leaves
and buds of the primrose seem to reach forward from autumn
to spring, so even in June or early July the first gathering of
small flocks and parties of birds gives a sign of coming
autumn to the watchful eye. The date of the change depends
a good deal on the weather. If there is a sudden spell of
wet and cold, even as early as the second or third week of
June we may see the first party of five or ten plovers, perhaps
attended by a few starlings, or fraternising tentatively with
half a dozen jackdaws. They appear in pastures where they
have not been seen during the breeding season ; and they
seem to regard the spell of wind and rain as a sign that
autumn is already coming, and that the time for the old kind
of life is past. Once they have begun to pack, they do not
break up into family parties, or attach themselves definitely
to a single spot, even though, as often happens, the weather
soon turns fair again, and the hottest part of the summer is
still to come. The casual association of a party of plovers
with one of jackdaws or starlings may be merely the acci-
dental consequence of meeting on one feeding-ground, and
species may part company from species at a slight alarm.
But once the instinct of flocking is reawakened, it does not
slumber ; and week by week the wandering parties of rooks,
jackdaws, starlings and plovers become more frequent in the
pastures, and on the shorn hayfields, and in the green salt
marshes by the sea and tidal rivers. Early in August wood-
pigeons begin to appear in these mixed flocks ; they are later
breeders than the other species, and are busy with eggs or
young until long after midsummer. Curlews which have

72 AUTUMN AND WINTER

bred on inland moors begin to gather on the marshes outside
the sea-wall, and flights of dunlin and redshank pipe and
wheel across the ooze-beds threaded by the tide. Sparrows
form flocks in July, and migrate from towns to feed on the
ripening grain. As the berries ripen and the corn is carried,
the silent woods are quickened with the cries of wandering
titmice, and flocks of linnets begin to mass on the weed-filled
stubble. The change is least visible in the garden, where
many of the robins and thrushes are still to be seen in their

DUNLIN

old corners, and the wood-pigeon croons on with its old
summer note among the shadows swinging wider on the
lawn. Garden birds are far more stationary than most of
their kindred in the woods and fields ; they have shelter and
a more constant food-supply, and do not need to roam. But
even through the trees of the garden the flights of wandering
titmice come flitting in autumn unrest ; and sometimes a
troop of starlings will sweep over the tree-tops, as if to settle,
but rise again and seek the wider fields.

Linnets may sometimes eat the corn spilt among the
stubble at harvest-time ; but they chiefly visit the cornfields
in search of the seeds of cornfield weeds. The presence
of these flocks in September and October is one of the most
constant and characteristic features of any corn-growing dis-
trict at this time. They range from small parties of a dozen
or twenty to great bodies of several hundreds, or sometimes

BIRDS IN FLOCKS 73

even thousands ; and their ways are very fascinating. They
are in constant movement from the hedge to the field, or
from one part of the field to another, moving with a simul-
taneous flash of wings, and a jerkier and more erratic flight
than the ordinary wheelings and long glissades of the starling
flocks. They seem responsive to a hundred thrills of im-
pulse for which we can detect no obvious reason ; but probably
it is their fine sense of hearing which gives them so many
superfluous alarms, and often prevents them from feeding
quietly for more than a few seconds together. We remember
watching a large flock of hen chaffinches feeding one winter
day in a stubble-field on a high wooded hill above some weirs
on the Thames, which were murmuring loud in flood. The
noise of the river came beating up through the woods on a
gusty breeze, and the birds were continually flying up from
the field into the shelter of the surrounding beeches. At last
a sudden tremor seized not only the chaffinches on the stubble,
but a long-tailed tit searching in a bush close by us ; and a
moment later a flaw in the wind brought up the noise of the
weir in a deep roar. It seemed that the birds had caught
the vibration of the approaching sound before it became
audible to human ears ; and most of the sudden movements
of birds feeding in flocks are probably due to subtle sounds
or cessations of sound, which are unperceived by the human
listener, but are perfectly perceptible to their acute and
watchful senses.

In the silence of the golden September afternoons in the
stubble-fields even our own heavy hearing becomes keener,
so that it is easier for us to conceive of the acute senses of
birds and wild animals. If the field is empty for a while of
wandering flocks, the silence at first seems absolute, when
we stand still or lie down on the faintly aromatic haulm.
Gradually our ears are opened ; we can hear the far-off

74 AUTUMN AND WINTER

murmur of the threshing-machine — a sound more deeply in
harmony with autumn stillness than the throb of the old
flail, now seldom heard — or an occasional faint cry from the
distant village, or a dog barking at a farm. Then the still-
ness is invaded by the lilt of a party of linnets, or perhaps
the still sweeter call-notes of a flock of goldfinches, as they flit
into view in loose order with their springing flight. Gold-
finches seldom settle close to the earth among the stubble,
as linnets do ; while the seeds sought by linnets grow on
low weeds, or are strewn on the ground, the goldfinches are
hunting for the seeds of thistle and knapweed, and other tall
plants, which in stubble-fields are only found by the hedge-
rows, or by the side of a raised footpath. The goldfinch is
one of the birds which have unmistakably profited by the Wild
Birds' Protection Acts ; and the beautiful sight of a flock of
goldfinches flitting among the autumn thistle-heads is com-
moner in many parts of the country than it was twenty years
ago. But the flocks of linnets make the familiar autumn
music in the stubble-fields, combining single notes and brief
scraps of their true spring song into a gentle melody that
harmonises with the deep sunshine and drowsy fields. In
sunny weather linnets spend as much time softly singing in
the hedges as in feeding ; and sometimes a large flock will
burst suddenly forth into a surprising volume of half-articu-
late song.

Skylarks also begin to haunt the stubble-fields in Sep-
tember in small parties, though the larger flocks come later
in the season, and chiefly consist of foreign birds. They
now feed on the seeds of cornfield weeds, like the linnets,
and are undoubtedly beneficial ; the destruction of these
troublesome seeds must not be forgotten when they are
accused of pulling up the young corn later on. Skylarks
occasionally sing all through the autumn on fine days ; but

BIRDS IN FLOCKS 75

their most familiar note in the stubble-fields is the soft
chirrup which they utter as they flit up with their drooping
white-edged wings. While skylarks keep to the open field,
and linnets haunt both the stubble and the hedgerows, the
strings of wandering titmice are to be found in the hedge-
rows alone. It is a mistaken idea that tits never perch on
the ground, but at this time of year their booty is chiefly
to be found among the boughs of trees and shrubs, where
pupae of summer insects are numerous, and the kernels
of the seeds and berries are ripening. Mixed parties of
several species, sometimes accompanied by a goldcrest or
two, push from tree to tree through the woods with chirping
cries, searching the twigs and crevices in acrobatic attitudes,
and constantly pressing on. At the end of a wood they fol-
low the hedge leading down a field ; and at the corner of the
hedge they jerk across the open space where the larks and
linnets are trooping on the stubble, and twitch their way up
the hedge on the other side. The great contrast with the
ways of the same birds in the nesting-season is that there is
no anxious concentration about a certain point — the position
of the nest or the young — which was then so conspicuous.
The nests that held the young in May are now downbeaten
and neglected, or haunted only by nocturnal field-mice ; the
birds have no care either for them or for the wood that
held them, but wander as vaguely as the thistle-down in the
autumn air.

In the shortening September evenings the starlings begin
to form their great winter congregations. Rooks are gre-
garious at all seasons of the year ; and starlings also nest in
colonies on situations such as cliff-faces or old buildings, which
provide them with plenty of convenient holes. But from
early autumn until the following nesting-season most of them
collect to roost in hosts which far outnumber the flocks in

;6 AUTUMN AND WINTER

which they feed by day, and form some of the most remark-
able spectacles in bird life. The flocks of starlings are usually
by far the largest. A little before sunset on September
evenings we often see flights of starlings, ranging from several
hundreds to parties often oradozen,collectingfrom all quarters
on some small wood or conspicuous group of trees. Every
minute fresh flocks fly in, till the trees are black with them,
and the lesser boughs nod with their weight ; and all the
while they utter a chiding murmur which becomes louder
and louder as the swarms increase. Suddenly they spring
swiftly into the air together with a roar of wings which is
sometimes as loud as the early growlings of a thunder-peal,
and vanish swiftly towards their roost. They choose for this
some dense plantation of rhododendrons or other evergreens,
or a close-grown thicket of thorns, or sometimes a large reed
or osier bed. The scene at this central meeting-place when
the contributory flocks come pouring in from all quarters is
almost indescribable. The surge of the incoming armies is
almost continuous, but it is half-drowned by the tumult of the
birds settling to rest among the boughs. High above the
thicket the starlings check their flight, and plunge headlong
downward with the wild motion of a broken kite, checking
themselves just in time to alight safely in the branches. As
twilight deepens the tumult ceases, and the host of birds falls
asleep. But it is long before they cease to stir and rumble
in the heart of the thicket at any slight alarm ; and the least
disturbance produces a murmur in the almost solid mass
which is extraordinarily impressive in its suggestion of teem-
ing life. The odour of these roosting-places indicates them
plainly by day; and evergreen thickets are sometimes
stripped half-bare of their leaves by the pressure of the in-
numerable birds. These roosting-places are abandoned by
the great majority of their winter inmates when the flocks

BIRDS IN FLOCKS 77

break up for the nesting-season. In most years starlings
are paired and distributed in their breeding-places by early
April ; but after the heavy snowfall at the end of April
1908 huge evening flocks were still to be seen in the first
week of May, when all the spring flowers were coming out
together in the sudden warmth.

Rooks congregate in their winter roosting-places about
the same time in autumn as the starlings, but in much smaller
numbers. The dignified passage of seven or eight hundred
rooks across the sunset sky has a very different kind of in-
terest from the rallying of the starlings. There is something
overwhelming and almost appalling in the starlings' enormous
hosts ; but the rooks' flocks are large enough to be impres-
sive, without verging so uncomfortably upon infinity. After
the end of May, when the young are fully fledged, rooks
often desert their rookeries more or less completely, and for
the rest of the summer choose other quarters, where they
roost in fair-sized flocks. In September or early October
they collect for the night in larger bodies in a roost which
is often chosen in a large and sheltered wood. Hencefor-
ward, until the beginning of the nesting-season, their daily
movements have almost the regularity of the sun. Soon
after it is light they can be seen passing high overhead to
their feeding-grounds on some broad belt of cultivated land ;
and while the sunset sky is still red, they troop home again on
the same steady path. Their movements before settling to
roost are often much like those of the starlings, but are less
remarkable and defined. They collect with busy clamour in
the trees or on the grass not far from the roost, and some-
times plunge to the tree-tops in the same remarkable flight.
Starlings roost alone in their great winter congregations ;
but rooks often forgather with jackdaws and sometimes
with smaller and more stationary parties of starlings which

F

78 AUTUMN AND WINTER

do not frequent the great public dormitories of their
kind. It seems not unlikely that the inmates of the great
winter starlings' roosts are chiefly or wholly immigrant birds,
and that those of our home-bred starlings which remain with
us during winter keep to themselves and roost near the places
where they build. Though rooks and jackdaws and star-
lings can often be seen feeding together in the winter fields,
starlings do not join the two larger species in their home-
ward flight. They go early to roost, like sparrows and
finches ; and by the time that we watch the rooks and jack-
daws sailing home through the autumn sky, and listen for
the querulous cry of the daw among the rooks' graver voices,
they are already snug for the night.

RAGWORT

THE LAST OF THE FLOWERS

THE calm and sunny weather which often fills September
seems to add to the richness of summer a new sense of
autumn peace. Day after day the golden sunshine lies so
deep and still upon the landscape that all strife in Nature
seems forgotten, and all change far away. The dews of the
longer nights only add new freshness to the lawns and
pastures ; the glowworms still light their summer lamps in
the herbage above the warm dust of the roadside ; and the
heavier morning mists and the yellow boughs that start out
singly in the elm-crowns are such distant warnings of winter
that they speak less of decay than of rest. The general
colour of the foliage is still the bronzed green of July ; and
only a slight deepening and tarnishing of the hues of the
prevalent flowers mark the change from late summer into
early autumn. The white or almost white blossoms which
were so conspicuous in spring and early summer have almost
vanished. The last of a long succession were the blackberry
blossoms in July, which have now turned into the berries
ripening from green through crimson to black. Here and
there the rank herbage by the watersides still hides straggling
plumes of midsummer meadowsweet ; but even the meadow-
sweet is of a soiled whiteness compared with the water

79

8o

AUTUMN AND WINTER

crowfoot and cherry blossom, and many other flowers of
spring. Milfoil, or yarrow, still puts up a few heads of
white blossom in the pasture-fields and among the roadside
grass ; but this too, like the white convolvulus stretching
from the shadows, is a hardy relic of an earlier epoch, and
blooms too rarely to give character to the colour of the
time.

In September the dominant hue of the flowers is some
shade of purple or lilac ; and next to this comes yellow,

which is the most persistent
colour at all seasons of the
year. But whereas in May the
chief colours were yellow and
white, so that the yellow butter-
cups gave the deepest note to
the landscape, now the ragwort
and hawkweeds and dwarf
autumn gorse supply a clearer
contrast to the rich tones of lilac
and purple. Moors and com-
mons are still flushed with deep
purple bell-heather and the paler
starry ling. By pools and quieter
streams the deep banks of summer
verdure are stained with the mauve plumes of the tall hemp
agrimony and lingering masses of purple loosestrife and
willowherb. Beneath them and in their fringes the humbler
mint-plants lift blossoms of the same prevailing hue. All the
streamside blossom that catches the eye readily from a little
distance is now of this colour ; and it is the same when we pass
from the watersides to the commons and upland fields. The
autumn or devil's bit scabious blooms in wide stretches of bluish
lilac, mingled here and there with ling and heather, or tinged

HEMP AGRIMONY

THE LAST OF THE FLOWERS

81

URPLE LOOSESTRIFE AND WATER MINT

DEVIL'S BIT SCABIOUS

82

AUTUMN AND WINTER

a little by the faint blue of the harebell. These breadths of
scabious blossom are one of the most characteristic features
of the September flora ; they draw multitudes of early
autumn butterflies, and nod with a drowsy murmur beneath
the weight of the bumble-bees. The haze that dims the
blue of September skies is reflected in the prevailing colour
of the flowers beneath. They too have lost the cerulean

HAREBELL

freshness of the spring bluebells and speedwells, and seem
dimmed with the age of the year.

Deeper and duller, but still of the same general purplish
hue, are the flowers of two species of gentian which bloom
in early autumn on chalky hills. The smaller species, usually
known as the field gentian, is often very abundant, embroider-
ing the turf of the downs with its short, stiff stems, and heads
of blossoms cloven into four points. They are often found
half-closed, but expand in bright sunshine. The larger, or
autumnal, gentian is a scarcer plant, growing to a foot in
height, and easily distinguishable from the largest specimens
of the field gentian by the corolla being divided into five

THE GOLDEN VALLEY
By SIR ALFRED EAST, R.A., P.R.B.A.

(By kind permission of the Leeds Corporation}

THE LAST OF THE FLOWERS 83

points instead of four. The common centaury is a kindred
plant which is often called the purple gentian, and is also
found in September, though it belongs more properly to
August. This is more spreading in growth, and has larger

AUTUMN GENTIAN

tufts of smaller lilac-pink blossoms. The corolla is cloven
into five segments, like that of the autumnal gentian ; but
the whole plant is smaller and more branching, and is easily
distinguishable, apart from the confusion caused by its popular
name. Much like the centaury in general growth and closely

84 AUTUMN AND WINTER

allied to it is the perfoliate yellow-wort, which is often called
the yellow gentian. This clings more closely to chalk and
limestone soils than the centaury, and is less common. It
has bright yellow star-shaped blossoms, and can easily be

recognised by its pairs of
smooth grey-green leaves,
which surround the stem like
a collar. It begins to bloom
soon after midsummer but
often lingers late into Sep-
tember.

Yet another purple flower,
more strictly characteristic of
this month, is the beautiful
meadow saffron, which thrusts
up its head of crocus-like
blossom in damp meadows
when the verdant aftermath
begins to shoot in the autumn
dews. It is not very common
in this country, and is chiefly
seen in some of the valleys
of the western Midlands and
Wales. In Germany, Swit-
zerland, and some other parts
of the Continent it grows
abundantly in many of the
cooler and shadier grass-
fields, and is familiar to most travellers in late August and
September. Much like those of garden crocuses, the leaves
shoot after the blossom ; but in the case of the saffron they
do not appear till the following spring, so that the flowers
seem to spring from nothing and vanish almost like soap-

MEADOW SAFFRON

THE LAST OF THE FLOWERS 85

bubbles on the autumn grass. The saffron used to colour
cakes and other dishes is procured from the long stigmas,
which droop over the edge of the blossom when it opens
wide to the September sun. Unfortunately this beautiful
plant is poisonous to cattle, and is a dangerous weed in
pastures where it grows abundantly.

The lady's tresses orchid is as characteristically fond of
the short turf of dry pastures and limestone hills as the
meadow saffron of damp and grassy hollows. It is a true
autumn-blooming plant, seldom opening until well into
September, and sometimes lasting into October. All our
British orchises have a share of the curious and fascinating
qualities which reach their height in many of the tropical
species and their hothouse varieties ; and although the lady's
tresses is a humble and inconspicuous little plant at first
sight, it has plenty of attraction. It has a slender stem
about five inches high, the upper part of which bears a suc-
cession of small dull white blossoms running spirally up to
the point. This spiral arrangement gives a plaited appear-
ance to the spike, and so suggests the plant's English name.
Besides this neat and delicate growth, the flowers have a
scent at evening as sweet and as powerful in proportion to
their size as the butterfly orchis of the June beech-woods or the
fragrant orchis of the hayfields. The blossoms are so small
that they arrest the eye by their pattern rather than their
colour ; and the plant grows so sparely and slenderly among
the dry bent grasses that it hardly makes an exception to
the general absence of white in the autumn flora. A more
marked exception to the prevailing colour of the time is
afforded by the blue autumn squill. There are two kinds of
squill, one blooming in autumn and one in spring. Both
are very abundant in their chosen haunts on the turf of sea-
cliffs ; but the blue of the autumn species is almost as pure

86 AUTUMN AND WINTER

and springlike as that of its forerunner in May. Yet even
in this case there is a tinge of purple in the autumn blossom ;
and while the sheets of vernal squill that cloak the turf on
many Cornish cliff-tops seem to reflect the sky, the colour of
the autumnal squill seems to be borrowed from the bands of
bluish purple in the September sea. For the sea's colour
also changes with the seasons on those coasts ; and by the
end of the summer it is streaked and belted with rich greens
and purples that are absent from the colder waters in
spring.

Many seaside and inland cliffs, as well as most heaths
and commons where the spring gorse flames in May, are lit
up by the fires of the dwarf species in early autumn. The
dwarf gorse or furze is not to be confused with the needle
furze, or petty whin ; the latter is a spare and almost creep-
ing plant with fine, needlelike thorns and small yellow pea-
like blossoms, which flowers in early summer on bare heathy
commons. Dwarf furze generally grows about three feet
high, and is apt to be mistaken for the common species ; but
it is not difficult to distinguish by its much lower stature
and its habit of coming into full bloom from late August to
October. It is less woody and branched, its growth inclin-
ing more to short sprays springing direct from the root, or
to a dense cushionlike bush, when clipped by rabbits or the
wind. Its stems and needles are distinctly yellowish-green, so
that the boughs of common gorse seem almost blue-black or
inky beside them ; and the blossom is of a perceptibly
deeper shade of yellow. This is another case in which an
autumn flower is deeper in colour than its spring equivalent.
Though the heather is gradually fading as the dwarf furze is
coming into full bloom, their mingled purple and gold clothe
the hills with a splendid garment under the September sun.
In the cool grass of mountain ledges and upland mires,

THE LAST OF THE FLOWERS

September still nurses the white blossoms of the grass of
Parnassus, as delicate as any flower of the lowland spring.
Its green-veined petals, happiest when holding a bead of dew,
have a freshness that is gone at this season from the stream-
sides where it would mingle so well with the April cuckoo-
flowers. Often not far away,
the white tufts of the cotton-
grass waver in the moorland
or mountain wind.

In cultivated lowland dis-
tricts one of the chief in-
terests in the plant life of
September is the discovery
of the numerous cornfield
weeds which the tall corn has
hitherto concealed. Among
thick crops their growth is
often delayed for want of
light and sunshine, so that
when the corn is carried
there is a tardy flower-time
among many pleasant weeds.
Venus's comb, or shepherd's
needle, ripens its pointed
seed-vessels, or still opens
its small white umbels of

blossoms like dwarf cow parsley. Fluellen trails among
the stubble its angular leaves and mouthlike blossoms,
with one lip dark purple-brown and the other yellow ;
and here and there round-leaved toad flax creeps with
the same curious blossoms, but with leaves not sharp
at the base. The narrow-leaved hemp nettle is an
abundant weed in autumn in cornfields on a chalk soil ;

TOAD FLAX

88 AUTUMN AND WINTER

it has a purple labiate blossom, mottled with creamy
white or pale yellow, and grows from three to six
inches high. A larger and more conspicuous member of
the tribe is the large flowered hemp-nettle, with purple-
spotted yellow flowers like those of the red and white dead-
nettles which are common on hedgebanks and in gardens.
It is common in cultivated fields in mountainous districts.
The tall yellow toad flax, or 'butter and eggs/ is a late
summer flower which blooms on strongly into September ;

MUSK MALLOW

and in some counties the fringes of the roads and cornfields
are brightened here and there with the large rosy blossoms
of the musk mallow, which flowers persistently from May to
September, or even October. These two plants do not
grow among the corn, but at its side ; but on soils free from
chalk or limestone the golden corn marigold often blossoms
vigorously after the crop is carried. It often puts forth an
extraordinarily vigorous autumn growth on cultivated land
when the summer has either been exceptionally dry or
exceptionally wet. In the former case, after lying parched
and dormant through drought, it is stirred to new vigour by

THE LAST OF THE FLOWERS

89

the autumn rain ; while a very wet summer produces a
luxuriant growth of stems, which then make haste to blossom
in the autumn sunshine. The same autumnal vigour is shown
in either set of circumstances by corn-poppies and the scent-

SUCCORY

less mayweed, as well as by succory and other less profuse
and conspicuous blossoms of tilled land. In normally
equable seasons their flowering-time is almost over before
September begins ; but great drought or continued rains
in summer will set them gaily blooming by the autumn
sheepfolds.

OCTOBER

The day becomes more solemn and serene

When noon is ended : there is a harmony

In autumn, a lustre in its sky,

Which through the summer is not heard and seen,

As if it could not be, as if it had not been.'

SHELLEY, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.

THE COUNTRY CALENDAR

IN October, the ' battle month ' of the red deer, we take a last leave
of summer. The mark of the weather is the coming of frost in the
morning and evening, and the heavy morning mists. Such frosts
will often fell every leaf of chestnut and ash within the day. It is
seldom that either of these heavy-leaved trees keep more than a few
leaves beyond the end of the month. The same frosts kill or send
into hiding the last of the insects. But the middle of the day,
especially about the date of St. Luke's Summer, is often warm and
soft. Towards the end of the month easterly winds are apt to
return. A few flowers remain — the miniature gorse, the meadow
crocus, corn wound-wort, horehound, wood sage, wild mint, and ivy.
As the flowers disappear the fungi multiply. Search is now made
for truffles in the beech-woods. There is a rhyme quoted in Mr.
Steward's Nature-study Notebook :

' A good October, and a good blast
To blow the hog acorn and mast.'

It is a popular saying — ' Much rain in October, much wind in
December.'

October \st. — The close season for pheasants, which are the last of
the young birds to reach maturity, comes to an end, and shooting is
legal.

G

92 AUTUMN AND WINTER

The first moon of the month is often known as the hunter's moon ;
and October I5th is often given, for no particular reason, as the date
when hunting begins.

October 12th. — Old Michaelmas Day.

October \%th. — St. Luke's Summer; the second of the short
periods of interpolated warmth which have a popular name.
Average temperature, ,- ; . 50°.

Average rainfall, . . . . 2*8 1 inches.
On October 1st, sun rises 6.2 a.m. and sets 5.41 p.m.

THE BURNING BUSH

MAPLES, 'burning themselves away,' provide in Canada
almost a national festival, as well as a national emblem.
The cherry blossom, aesthetically if not mystically wor-
shipped in Japan, does not excel the cult of the burning
leaf in North America. This Canadian red maple, in which
the broad ample leaf is suffused over its whole surface by an
even crimson of the richest tint, is not found in England.
The common English maple of the hedgerows often turns
a level yellow ; and even in the redder form is excelled in
colours by a dozen other leaves, by cherry and beech and
spindle and briar. We have indeed nothing to compare
with the red maple. Its startling pillars of flame and hot
fires from the burning bush make the supreme glory of
autumn colour. In places where a red maple is isolated
from other maples, especially if it is seen against fir-trees,
the optical effect is as though a hole had been made in the
background, a sort of irregular casement cut in the wood,
through which a strange light shone. You seem to see far
away through a cleft at the back of which some glowing metal
is heated red. The impression, which is vivid and curious,
is not an idiosyncrasy. Very many people have felt this
illusion in looking at the red and rayless sun through the
copper-coloured mist. Others have had it in most
persuasive form looking at the few first flowers of a red
may. The tree perhaps had been pruned, and bears in

94 AUTUMN AND WINTER

consequence few flowers set deep behind the billowy green.
They might be the peep-holes of a furnace, and at a distance
it will be quite hard not to feel that you see a red light
glowing from somewhere on the far side of the tree.

Many countries outflame England in the autumn.
Above the Danube rise banks of wood so over-gorgeous
as to seem upholstered in gorgeous and fantastic colour.
The Philistine who compared them with a Turkey carpet
had full excuse. We achieve the effect in some of our
English gardens. Banks of acer or maple in every tint are
in fashion. The sumach, which outdoes the maple in riot
of colour, is a popular exotic. But the crowning colour in
rough gardens, which in many places now disappear into
the rougher grounds about them, is the berberis in several
varieties. There is a famous Westmorland rough garden,
compounded as part of a wood rising abruptly from the river,
which in its measure outdoes the Canadian autumn. The
river Lune at that point cuts through some strata of very
red red sandstone, which shows its boulders here and there
in the wood and garden. Almost in the centre, as it
happens, of the garden grows luxuriantly the reddest of all
the varieties of berberis. It looks as if it had sucked its
colour from the stone and from the sunset. You might
think that it would light up the garden when dusk falls.
But our gardens, and the Canadian and Danubian woods,
excel our countryside more in glory than in grace.

The continental transformation scene is well described by
Kerner, that great and most lively of European botanists.
' The first frosts are the signal for the beginning of the
vintage ; all is busy in the vine-planted districts, and the
call of the vine-dresser resounds from hill to hill. But it is
also the signal for the forests on the mountain slopes, and
in the meadows, to change their hues. What an abundance

THE BURNING BUSH 95

of colour is then unfolded ; the crowns of the pines, bluish-
green ; the slender summits of the firs, dark green ; the
foliage of hornbeams, maples, and white-stemmed birches,
pale yellow ; the oaks, brownish-yellow ; the broad tracks of
forest stocked with beeches in all gradations, from yellowish
to brownish-red ; the mountain ashes, cherries and barberry
bushes, scarlet ; the bird-cherry and wild service trees,
purple ; the cornel and spindle-tree, violet ; aspens, orange ;
abeles and silver willows, white and grey ; and alders a dull
brownish-green. And all these colours are distributed in the
most varied and charming manner. Here are dark patches
traversed by broad light bands and narrow twisted stripes ;
there the forest is symmetrically patterned : there again the
Chinese fire of an isolated cherry-tree, or the summit of a
single birch, with its lustrous gold springing up among the
pines, illuminates the green background. To be sure, this
splendour of colours lasts but a short time. At the end of
October the first frosts set in, and when the north wind rages
over the mountain tops, all the red, violet, yellow and brown
foliage is shaken from the branches, tossed in a gay whirl to
the ground, and drifted together along the hedges. After
a few days the mantle of foliage on the ground takes on
a uniform brown tint, and in a few more days is buried under
the winter coat of snow.'

The colours are even more splendid in Canada, and the
variety is greater. In a good year the duration is much
longer. The tree of trees, as it seems to many English
visitors in Canada, and now indeed in South Africa, is the
oak. The varieties are very numerous. Some have almost
smooth leaves which change, as the green departs, into
blades of a tawny red, more like the deep colour of an
amaryllis than any leaf. In addition to the rhus and tulip-
tree and sumach, and many others not less gorgeous, such

96 AUTUMN AND WINTER

creepers as we term Virginian will wrap trunk and boughs to
the very summit in parasitic flames. In our gardens we may
claim some of the great and glorious splendour. The lovely
liquid-amber flourishes in England. We may grow the
creepers about our trees. Already here and there several
of the finest Canadian oaks have grown to great sizes even
in the English fields. The tulip-tree is the glory of New

College garden, Oxford, the
Judas-tree of old Dulwich,
the flowering Tree of Heaven
of Battersea Park, and a

^I'l & ^£*£~ ;r;' ^W* ? hundred sorts of flowering
Tf^ ^f-^^f- *M*V4T A.- t.

f &*,?• ^jstotif* exotics of Kew.

But in spite of all the
autumnal wonder round Lake
Erie, it is not easy to find a
superior to the English hedge-
row in autumn or the long-
drawn turning of the trees.
Nature, one may say, is so
natural in England. Yet
here, too, the splendour of
autumn is sudden beyond other changes and so prompts
inquiry into the inner causes of this yearly explosion of
colour coming strangely when summer dies, and we might
expect from nature a drab and melancholy scene.

The clear yellow which gives the waning elms a sunlit
appearance, as if some partial shaft had caught this and that
bough, is not only different in quality of colour, but also in
causation, from the reds and purples that run in streaks
down the leaves of the spindle-tree or the jolly red of the
cherry. Among the chemical properties with which a plant
is endowed is a store of colouring matter which may dis-

THE TULIP-TREE

AUTUMN WOOD
By SIR ALFRED EAST, R.A., P.R.B.A.

THE BURNING BUSH 97

appear, and grows red or blue, or what not colour, according
to the acids with which it comes in contact. This colour-
ing matter plays a part which is little understood. But some
of its functions are known. It has beyond doubt a pro-
tective purpose. A walnut-tree in spring has almost an

FLOWERS OF TULIP-TREE

autumnal appearance, so red are the young leaves. This
same ruddy tint invades the young rose leaves and those of
many another tree. The colour in this case protects the
tender green from excessive burning from the sun and
screens the chlorophyll which is the tree's life-blood. This
colouring is best seen on the skin of apples and other fruits.
It will make its appearance even on pure white roots if they
are exposed to the sun. It is present in varying force in

98 AUTUMN AND WINTER

different plants. The kexes are full of it. You see it in
the purple spots, which give so poisonous a look to the
stems of the hemlock. It appears more beautifully in the
leaves of the common kexes, chervil or cow's parsley, on
which odd leaves capriciously assume a hue of gorgeous
purple.

These reds and purples, probably always present as
matter within the leaves, become vivid as soon as the green
chlorophyll is gone. Autumn colouring is indeed the outward
sign of a migration, or one might say a hibernation, which
has more than a fanciful parallel with autumn habits in the
animal kingdom. Waste is not Nature's way, except where
reproduction is concerned. When the leaves, those slight
but perfectly designed factories for the manufacture of carbon
and chlorophyll, have done their part, the stuff is all trans-
ferred to the solid and permanent members of the tree. A
' migration ' — botanists use the word — begins, and by the
same paths that the sap flowed up the chlorophyll flows
back. When it has left the leaf the colours previously hid
appear. With the eyes or with the microscope this may
best be seen on the spindle leaf from which the green
flows back by partial streams, leaving curious streaks and
layers. One part of the leaf will be deep green, another purple,
another almost a brick red. The quick contrast of green
and red makes very gorgeous the floor of the Alps when
autumn comes, when the bearberry and a host of other
ground plants give the slope quite as gorgeous a carpet
as the spring flowers themselves. The ground is not less
gorgeous in Newfoundland, and the leaves of the wild
currant, which combine as many tints, though not in quite
such abrupt contrast, as the spindle-tree itself. When this
is complete in the elm the leaves are left pure yellow. But
this colour is not due to any definite matter provided among

THE BURNING BUSH 99

the attributes of the tree. It is due, principally if not
wholly, to the crystals of the waste substances left when all
that is useful to the economy of the tree is withdrawn, has
migrated, has retired to winter quarters. But even this
refuse leaf has still its purpose to fill.

The elm leaves, as indeed most others, are full of lime
in one form or another ; and though this is of no use to the
new buds that are to form for the coming spring, and is there -

HORSE-CHESTNUT

fore rejected, it is most useful to the soil, and will serve
later to feed the roots ; and so the circle will be complete.
In our kindly country, autumn may last for many months.
We may see the elms still green in the last week of
November ; and the elms, those pillars of English scenery,
are much the hardiest of all the more aspiring growths.
From a record of nature-study dates kept over many years
it appears that the fleshy and wide-leafed trees succumb
for the most part soon after the first week of October. A
frost and a misty morning, followed by a clearing sun, will
send every horse-chestnut leaf to the ground. They will

ioo AUTUMN AND WINTER

tumble in a continuous downpour from noon to eve, till they
are heaped high over the gleaming fruit. The children
come and paddle gaily in the litter as if it were a sandy
pool and the chestnuts shrimps. The horse-chestnut for
the most part makes a good show of colour before the
frost comes. It had made preparation to lose its leaves,
as any one may tell who looks at the bare twig or the
leaf. Between the leaf and twig have formed little studs
of cork in a pattern always perfect to type. The scar
remains on the twigs, pencilling them with a quaint crescent
for the rest of the year.

A worse sufferer from October frosts is the ash. The
tree is the last to come into leaf. Tennyson's ' more black
than ashbuds in the front of March7 has bruited one fact
as widely as any little piece of botanical knowledge. He
might also have written : More black than ash leaves in
October frost. While still full of juice and green with
energy, they are cut in one night to as black a tint as the
tops of our early potatoes, and fall down in a lugubrious, a
most vicious circle about the tree. One wonders that the
tree recovers ; and it may be that the loss of vigour tends
to the late production of leaf in the spring.

The reddest tree in the English scenery is the cherry,
which is frequent in Hertfordshire and many Midland
counties. Its pillar of flame stands out as distinctly in the
autumn as its bridal figure in the spring. Its nearest
parallel in what some Midland writer called remoter Eng-
land, is the mountain ash, which brings the very hues of
sunset into many a Welsh landscape.

But the glory of the English autumn is not red, but what
we call brown. If any one were asked to recall a character-
istic English scene from October, his mind would first recur
to the beech-woods. One must perhaps call the leaves

THE BURNING BUSH 101

brown ; and yet they seem the very contradiction of brown
leaves, to the brown leaves, for example, of the hornbeam,
which is very like the beech both in foliage and nature.
The beech is vivid and luminous, akin to the brilliant bands
of the spectrum. The hornbeam is dull and gloomy beyond
almost any leaf, unless it be the mildewed white poplar.
How strangely vivid the massed beech leaf is was curiously
illustrated one day by a party astray in a very open beech-
wood. They saw a cock pheasant running in front, and as
the wood was full of pheasants, no one looked at him with
any special attention ; but it was noticed by some one that
the bird had vanished in rather surprising fashion. He
walked towards the vanishing point, but could at first see
nothing. At last, within three or four yards of where he
stood, he made out with difficulty the rainbow hues of the
vanished bird. There is no English bird which can compare
with the Chinese pheasant in range of hue ; but the beech
leaves almost outshine him. He was at least matched by
the layer of leaves ; and if any Darwinian had the courage
to claim the example, his vanishing trick could be quoted
as an illustration of protective coloration.

The beech saves many a landscape from autumn gloom.
Bracken alone plays as large a part. An isolated bracken
may look as dead as the withered stalks of the grasses or the
nettles, or the brittle kexes — hogweed and cow's parsley
and the rest— or the burdock stems. All these are cenotaphs,
unlovely places marking the extinction of sweet life, and in
spite of red dogwood and tawny blackberry and painted
spindle, giving a spent and wasted look to some autumn
hedgerows. But bracken, at its best, is the crowning colour
of many a scene that would be bare and bleak without. It
is best where the ground is most barren. It clothes the hills
all over the lake country of Westmorland and Cumberland

102

AUTUMN AND WINTER

with sunny patches of light varying from pale yellow to deep
brown. It is the one cheerful thing on some Norfolk wastes ;
and even in its duller and browner form, is the chief autumn
and indeed winter beauty of many English woods else
gloomy enough in the season of fallen leaves. Lake
enthusiasts protest that they rejoice in the absence of heather

4 -ST^;, * , .. , ..

SSN^fiff \,^L:*^ • «^> vV-

THE YOUNG SHOOTS OF THE BRACKEN ENTANGLED AMONG THE DEAD STALKS

from the hills, preferring the yellow patches of fern to all the
dusky browns of withered ling.

It is the glory of bracken that it lives beyond
autumn into spring, until at last its dried stalks begin to
look strangely out of place among the encircling fingers of
the new shoots. It is not alone. The blackberry briar, as
Darwin noticed, is on the way to become an evergreen. In
the woodland, many sprays will be as freshly green as the
hollies in December ; and when in spring the young shoots

THE BURNING BUSH 103

are growing lusty, they have much ado to thrust off the
older leaves which even yet are not wholly browned. Like
them, too, oak and beech and hornbeam, especially in the
coppiced form, are ' fast of their leaves ' through winter ; and
this quality gives especial virtue to a hornbeam hedge, which
perhaps is the ' fastest ' of the trio, though we miss the
luminous richness of the beech.

Any one who has been to Australia, or any land where all
the trees are evergreen, will feel how much of the zest of
English scenery comes from the deciduous trees. Painters
of autumn colouring delight in the contrast of the firs and
pines ; but there is contrast enough in the changing leaves.
The colours are best of all on the hedgerows, where no ever-
green is. Thankfulness for this gift of colour in the final
scene of the pageant is prompted by the real melancholy
of much that grows at the hedgerow foot. There is nothing
more lifeless than the withered bents of grass, than the
shrivelled strands of the goosegrass, than the hollow parsley
which in spring made a green bed for the hedge. They
suggest all the gloom which is the professional attribute of
autumn. But above them, rich in the deepest of all
autumn colours, the May bush rises ; berries, stems and
leaves, all of a royal colour which we would scarcely ex-
change for the freshness of spring itself.

YOUNG CUCKOO RESTING ON ITS JOURNEY SOUTH

THE SOUTHWARD FLIGHT

THE departure of the summer birds first becomes con-
spicuous in October, though it has been in progress ever
since the flight of the parent cuckoos in July. Most of the
summer migrants live so silent and elusive a life after the
young are hatched that it is difficult to trace their move-
ments ; and when some bird has been familiar to eye or ear
for many weeks, we are apt to overlook its departure, and
only later to realise that it has been missing for an indefinite
time. Old cuckoos are able to slip away so early because
they avoid bringing up their young ; but the young cuckoos
do not go until late August or September, and thus receive
no guidance from their parents on the journey. The exact
processes of migration are still so imperfectly understood
that we cannot tell whether the young cuckoos are guided to
their winter homes in Central and Southern Africa by trans-
mitted habit or 'instinct,' by the direct influence of the
changing weather in more northern climes, or by following
other migrants. Next to the parent cuckoos, the first birds
to leave the country are the swifts. Their usual time of
departure is the second week in August ; but it is not very
uncommon to see one or two stragglers as late as the
beginning of September. The swift is one of the latest
birds to come, as well as the earliest to go ; a bare three

104

THE SOUTHWARD FLIGHT 105

months is its whole sojourn in this country. It seems
probable that its early departure is due to the diminishing
supply of insects at the lofty levels where it prefers to feed.
By the beginning of August the nights are already growing
far longer and more dewy than they were in June ; and the
period when Britain is habitable for the swift seems to lie
within six or seven weeks on either side of Midsummer Day.

As September goes by, we gradually miss several birds
from their accustomed haunts, if we keep a careful daily watch.
Some warm day in
the garden we notice
that the spotted fly-
catcher is no longer
perched in its favour-
ite position on the
tennis - post or the
corner of the porch ;
and in the evening
twilight we miss the
nightjar flitting noise-
lessly down the clearing in the copse. Both these birds are
late-comers, and obey the same general rule as the swift in
being quick to go. For them too, with their need for an
abundant insect diet, the English climate sets an early term
of departure. But still we can hardly feel that the summer
birds are really leaving us, so long as the days are full of
sunshine, and the empty places are so few as compared with
any week in the quiet time since June.

By October there is no mistaking that the southward
migration is in full swing. It is most visible in the case of
the swallows and their kindred, which migrate by day. The
concourses of swallows and martins on roofs and telegraph
wires are not only larger than when they first began in

f\ €:

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NIGHTJAR

H

io6 AUTUMN AND WINTER

September, but much more restless and shifting. If we
keep close watch, we shall find that sooner or later, when
some party rises and circles in the air, it does not come back
to the perch as it did after its former sallies, but vanishes in
the southern sky. An hour or two later, the church spire or
barn roof may be once more thick with swallows or martins ;
but they are a new contingent. The same quiet coming and
going of smaller parties may be seen on an October day over
sheltered pools and rivers, or warm meadows in the lee of a
wood. The swallows sweep so regularly over the water or
past the boughs that they look like the regular summer
residents ; yet, ten minutes later, they may be gone, leaving
the surface of the pool spread empty between its orange
sedges. This quiet but constant stream of travel is even
more impressive than the great simultaneous movements of
the larger flocks. It suggests far more vividly the elusive
secrecy of the movement which has been depeopling our
copses and gardens for weeks past, till we awake to find
them almost desolate, or occupied by restless strangers. For
sheer impressiveness of numbers, the first place is easily
taken by the collection of a large flock of migrating swallows
in a roost in some reed or osier bed. They plunge down-
wards almost as wildly as roosting starlings ; and it was the
sight of the swallows plunging so quickly towards the water
on some autumn evening about the time when they were
seen no more which most helped to foster the belief that they
slept out the winter at the bottom of the rivers and ponds.
They also roost in crevices about the buildings which they
haunt by day.

The distance travelled by migrating birds in autumn
varies enormously with different species. Marked storks
from Denmark, Germany, and Hungary have been identified
in the winter months in Syria and various parts of Central

THE SOUTHWARD FLIGHT 107

and South Africa ; while a still greater distance is travelled
by several species of waders which breed in the far north of
the Russian Empire or in Greenland, and winter as far south
as Cape Colony. Some of these birds, such as the little
stint and curlew-sandpiper, occur in Britain only as
passengers for some weeks in spring and autumn, on their
way between their southern and northern homes. Other
species, such as the knot and sanderling, are also winter
visitors. Most of them haunt the sea coasts, especially the
oozy estuaries, which supply them with the most extensive
feeding-grounds. But a typical bird of double passage, often
seen along inland streams in spring and early autumn, is the
green sandpiper. It can be easily distinguished from the
common sandpiper with a fieldglass, or even with the naked
eye, by the tail being transversely barred with white, instead
of being merely edged with it. The green sandpiper nests
in the Baltic and Arctic basins, and winters in Africa and
southern Europe.

As birds which cross the equator on either passage
secure two summers in each year, and no winter, there
seems no reason why our birds should not breed twice
a year, once in either hemisphere. But all the most
trustworthy evidence at present indicates that they nest
only in the northern hemisphere ; no certain case has
yet been reported of any bird which nests in summer
in the far north of Europe or America also nesting
in South Africa or South America. Some of these birds
of double passage are believed to travel as much as
eleven thousand miles in each direction annually. From
these vast journeys the scale of distances traversed on
migration descends to the few yards which part the nesting-
quarters of a robin or pied wagtail in the shrubbery or by
the farmyard pond from its winter haunts in the sheltered

io8 AUTUMN AND WINTER

part of the garden or by the back door. One great route
of migration in autumn runs from the west of England
through southern Ireland or north-western France, and
thence to the sunny coastal districts of Spain and Portugal,
where many birds from northern Europe find a winter home.
Two plovers marked in the nest near Stirling have been
found in Portugal, and five others in Ireland ; a song-thrush
from Aberdeen and a black-headed gull from Argyllshire
were also found in Portugal. But in spite of these and other
instances showing the importance of this route, other birds
of the same kinds have been found in winter not many miles
from their nesting-quarters. In the case of many of the
hardier birds, the migratory movement is plainly very
irregular, and may be regarded as almost optional. Some-
times they are even found migrating the wrong way, that
is, towards the colder quarter. A song-thrush marked in
Berkshire in April was found in November near Norwich
— having migrated in exactly the opposite direction to
thousands of thrushes, and larks, and plovers, and rooks, and
many other kinds of birds which come over from Germany to
England at that time. Even more striking was the eastward
journey of a starling marked in Berkshire in February, which
was found in Kent before the end of the month. Because
the east of Europe is colder in winter than the west, the
usual line of autumn and winter migration is south-westerly,
and sometimes even north-westerly, and not, as might be
thought, direct from north to south.

To a considerable extent — exactly how much we cannot
yet tell — migrating birds follow definite routes, such as a
river valley like that of the Thames as it leads northwards
past Oxford, or the line of the seashore. The rarity of
certain birds of double passage in spring as compared with
autumn, or vice versa, indicates that they do not all follow

THE SOUTHWARD FLIGHT 109

the same route on both journeys. At least one striking case
has been discovered in which the spring and autumn tracks
lie far apart. The American golden plover flies straight
across the sea in autumn from Nova Scotia to the coast of
South America — a distance of about 2,500 miles; but it
returns in spring by a more circuitous route to westwards,
through Mexico and up the Mississippi valley.

There seems to be an obvious reason in the failure of the
food-supply why birds of passage should depart southward
in autumn to milder climes. But it is not so easy to under-
stand why they should want to return in spring. It might
be thought that they would be well enough off where
they were, like the resident species of tropical forests,
without daring the long journey over land and sea to
reach some distant corner of the British islands, or some
haunt even further to northwards, within the Arctic circle.
The key to this movement is probably to be found in their
general habit of scattering in pairs in spring, to bring up
their young in privacy and with an ampler food-supply than
they need when there are only their own mouths to fill.
They would thus naturally tend to spread outwards from
their winter home ; and those birds would thrive best which
pressed further and further to northwards (or to the south, in
the southern hemisphere), and so gained the advantage of
longer daylight and a longer period each day in which they
could hunt for food. As they settled in a new home,
inherited habit would tend to attach them to it by a strong
bond ; and so the great double migration would grow up, at
the times of year when the seasons most sharply change.
Marvellous as the length and adventurousness of their
passage seems, it has after all to be remembered that birds
are winged creatures, constructed by nature with supreme
powers of locomotion ; and that they do sometimes perish

no AUTUMN AND WINTER

on migration in great numbers. But the waste of life from
storm on passage or untimely and exceptional cold on arrival
is probably more than made up by the advantage of rearing
their broods in the most favourable circumstances.

Just as all existing species of birds are the result of a
continuous chain of evolution, of which many of the connect-
ing links have not been preserved, so the great movements
of the migrants between their summer and winter homes are
probably the outcome of a gradual and tentative process of
migration, which has been fixed on its present lines by the
survival of the fittest. Most birds live in flocks for the
greater part of the year, only separating for the compara-
tively short nesting-season ; so that gregariousness seems their
natural and earliest habit. As they broke up for the breed-
ing-season, and at first spread evenly outwards from their
gregarious haunts, they would come sharply into competition
with other birds expanding outwards in the same way.
Gradually the struggle for life would settle which group of
species was the strongest in each region ; those species which
were best adapted to its peculiar conditions would prevail,
and those which were less well adapted would tend to die
out within this area, but would have a better chance to the
north, where fresh lands lay open each spring. Their
migrations would further tend to be controlled by their
power to endure the winter climate of their new homes. If
they could pick up a living there in winter as well as in
summer, they became resident species ; if not, they became
what we call summer migrants. Winter visitors — a term
which is used more often than winter migrants, but precisely
corresponds to it — are the summer migrants of more northern
regions, viewed from the winter end of their journey. Such
are the redwings and fieldfares, which usually arrive with us
in November ; these are summer visitors to Norway and

THE SOUTHWARD FLIGHT in

Sweden, like the nightingale or swallow in England. Our
birds of double passage, like the green sandpiper, are summer
and winter migrants in other parts of the world. The wood-
cock in Great Britain is chiefly a winter visitor, but to a small
(though increasing) extent a resident species. In Austria
it is a bird of double passage, though much commoner in
autumn than in spring. In central Germany the robin is
chiefly a summer migrant, and only occasionally a resident.
Such examples show how hard it is to get a true understand-
ing of the habits of birds if we only consider their habits in
our own islands, from our local point of view. We should
always think of them as essentially migratory creatures;
though there are more or less definite exceptions. The
Dartford warbler and the Cornish chough are among the
more resident British species ; and their scarcity and very
local distribution show how unprofitable it often is for a
species to become too much wedded to one locality. The
case of the extinct great auk is another famous instance in
point. Even such common resident species as thrushes and
robins would fare ill if the majority of their individual
members were really resident. Probably not one in fifty
of the song- thrushes which breed in England find safe
winter quarters within a mile of their nesting-place ; and the
rest are migrants. Often on an October morning we may
see the lawn harbour, for a short rest, one or two yellow
wagtails, or a larger party of pied wagtails, running with
equal grace and activity over the dewy grass. According
to the traditional distinction framed from a local British
standpoint, the yellow wagtail is a summer migrant, and the
pied one a resident. But most pied wagtails migrate, and
both the pied and the yellow that alight on the lawn in this
way are migrants on autumn passage from England.

PRIVET-BERRIES

FRUITFUL HEDGEROWS

RIPENING berries in October brighten innumerable hedge-
rows with a more fruitful splendour than the colours of
the changing leaves. In warm September weather, the
monotony of the bronzed foliage and unripe berries is merged
by the hazy sunshine into uniform peace ; but when the
beginning of autumn is marked, as sometimes happens, by
sharp winds and unrefreshing showers, there is a singular
lack of interest in the landscape of faded summer colours
without summer warmth. All Nature seems chilled and
inert, and waiting for a new inspiration. It comes when the
woods and hedgerows break into a hundred contrasting hues
under the October rains and frosts. Amid the broader
splashes of colour formed by the changing leaves, the ripen-
ing berries gleam with a concentrated intensity that appeals
both to the eye and the mind. The crimson berries hanging
among the orange boughs of the hawthorn are the susten-
ance of birds and animals in their time of dearth, and the
seed of plants which will flourish in distant places. The
promise of the spring and summer flowers is brought to
visible fulfilment in the crop of autumn berries ; and when
it is brilliant and abundant, it sets a crown of prosperity
on the wild year.

112

FRUITFUL HEDGEROWS 113

The softer and juicier berries form a dainty which is
gluttonously devoured very early in the season. At the

WOODY NIGHTSHADE

beginning of October the wandering missel-thrushes are
already stripping the heavy scarlet clusters of the mountain-
ash on the open hillsides, and raiding the trees in gardens

DEADLY NIGHTSHADE

with noisy oscillations of attack and flight. The missel-
thrushes are wise to be so greedy ; for the overweighted

ii4 .AUTUMN AND WINTER

clusters of soft berries soon break and decay under October
winds and frost. They are all stripped, as a rule, before the
leaves of their trees have changed from green to amber and
orange. Equally juicy and attractive are the translucent
scarlet clusters that make such an exquisite contrast with the
deep crimson leaves of the wild guelder-rose, which is the
original stock of the round-blossomed ' box-rose ' of gardens.

The clusters of the mealy guelder,
or wayfaring - tree, are stiffer in
growth, and turn from scarlet to
black as they ripen. All these softer
berries, including those of the elder
and the bilberries of August moor-
lands, are specially attractive to the
same fruit-eating birds which raid
strawberry and gooseberry beds
earlier in the season. Flocks of
ring-ousels and missel-thrushes begin
to roam the Westmorland mountain-
tops for bilberries as early as July;
and when the bilberries are over,
they are ready for the mountain-
ashes, or rowan-trees. In lowland
districts the ring-ousel is replaced
by the blackbird ; and two or three cock blackbirds raiding
an elder-bush at a dangerous corner make almost as noisy a
party as a flight of missel-thrushes. The soft twigs of the
elder are often bent almost to breaking as the disks of black
berries swell and ripen ; and they are so abundant that some
are still usually left when the early-falling leaves have
burned themselves out in their tints of flame, and the ground
beneath is strewn with their pallid drift.

Black and scarlet are the chief tints of ripe autumn

BLACK NIGHTSHADE

FRUITFUL HEDGEROWS

berries ; but they have so many half-ripe
shades of crimson and orange that they fill
the hedges with endless attractive con-
trasts. Privet-berries change from green
to black without any intervening shade of
crimson ; and the same is true of the berries
of the buckthorn, which are also con-
spicuous in many autumn hedges in chalky
districts. Alder buckthorn, with its blunt-
tipped leaves like those of the alder, bears
smaller and looser clusters, and is gener-
ally found on sandy and not calcareous
soils. But unripe elder - berries have
almost as many shades of crimson as
and they all make a characteristic contrast with any
shade of scarlet or orange. The gradations of colour are
essentially different in each case. Woody nightshade hangs
small but abundant clusters of scarlet berries about many
hedgerows and thickets, often opening its purple and yellow
blossoms on the same stem as ripe and half-ripe fruits.
Deadly nightshade never becomes a climber as the woody
nightshade does when it can ; it is a bushy herbaceous plant
about a yard high, and its very poisonous berries are like
black cherries. They ripen in August, but the plant does
not die down till the middle or end of October. It is
much rarer than the woody nightshade, but is sometimes

BLACK BRYONY

blackberries ;

n6

AUTUMN AND WINTER

plentiful on chalky warrens, bare limestone slopes, or among
old ruins, where the decaying mortar gives it a similar
calcareous soil. The black and white bryonies both bear
scarlet berries with the same liquid translucence as those of

the guelder-rose and the mountain-
ash. The bryonies shoot and
perish almost as swiftly as Jonah's
gourd ; and their quick decay in
October sometimes leaves the
translucent scarlet clusters hang-
ing almost unsupported, except
by the shrubs among which they
climbed.

The day of all these softer
fruits is soon past ; they barely
outlast the departure of the summer
birds. The blackberry has a firmer
structure than most others, and is
often fairly palatable as late as
mid-November. It is curious that
blackberries are very much less
attractive to birds than to man ;
blackbirds and thrushes seem
seldom to touch them, except in
very dry seasons, when they are
thankful for any food which helps
to quench their thirst. This difference of taste is all
the more marked as both birds and men like wild rasp-
berries, which would seem to us berries of much the
same class as blackberries, and very different from those
of the guelder or rowan. But even the blackberry is
a perishable food compared with many of the seeds
and berries which provide a food-supply to many birds

WHITE BRYONY

FRUITFUL HEDGEROWS

117

and several kinds of animals until spring. The bright
scarlet tints of the various species of wild rose have a
tough rind that preserves them for many weeks or months,
if they escape the bullfinches and wood-mice. Hawthorn
berries are rather softer, but are hard enough to outlast the
winter, and gleam neglected on the boughs of spring, when
the winter has been an open one, and the birds are turning
to other fare. Yewberries are often devoured early in the
autumn by missel-thrushes for the sake of their soft outer

BLACKBERRY

pulp ; but after the pulp has decayed, the hard inner seed is
searched out all through the winter by the great tit, like the
stones of whitebeam-berries and of haws. Thus the same
fruit may be sought by some species for its pulp, and by
another for the enclosed kernels. Blackbirds devour the
softer rose-haws for the red pulp ; but bullfinches and tits
seem to open them for the sake of the numerous little
kernels enclosed in a hairy core. Redwings and thrushes
swallow haws for the sake of the pulp ; but tits crack the
stone, and wood-mice pierce it for the sake of the kernel.
Many kinds of seeds and small stones can be found in autumn

n8

AUTUMN AND WINTER

and winter in the hoards collected by the wood-mice in their
nocturnal rovings, and piled together in a deserted bird's
nest, or on some nestlike cushion where the falling seed-
plumes of the wild clematis have collected among its pliant
bines. As autumn goes on, the store of unopened seeds
decreases, and the gnawed litter grows more abundant ; but
the wood-mouse is a wasteful feeder, and many sound seeds are
left hidden among the husks, or spilt on the ground beneath.

The work of the wood-mouse can
be recognised on these opened
seeds and stones by the fineness of
the hole through which the kernel
is extracted, and the very delicate
marks of its teeth. Traces of many
different creatures can be found in
the shells scattered among the dry
leaves in the bottom of wide hedge-
rows, and in the heart of a mixed
thicket. Squirrels crack nutshells
into irregular fragments. Dormice
gnaw them at the edge of the rough
patch at their lower end, and make
a neat round hole extending up the
side, through which they extract the kernel. Wood-mice
drill a hole at the top. Nuthatches fix them into crevices
in posts, or the bark of trees, and hammer them to pieces
with their bill ; and the ground beneath oaks and some
other trees with deeply furrowed bark is often found
sprinkled with fragments of different shapes, according as
the nut has been split or roughly shattered. Great tits split
the stones of yew and hawthorn and whitebeam berries in a
less skilful way, by holding them in their bills and hammer-
ing them on a bough, as thrushes break snails' shells on

SQUIRREL WOOD-MOUSE

NUTHATCH

FRUITFUL HEDGEROWS 119

stones. The sound of this operation can be heard a con-
siderable distance through the woods on quiet days, and may
be mistaken for the heavier and more deliberate strokes of the
nuthatch. The pulp of sloes seems to be too sour and acrid
to appeal to any bird. But hawfinches feed on the kernels,
crushing the stone with their huge conical bills ; and when
the fruits have dried and fallen, the stones are attacked by
wood-mice, and probably by dormice also. Fruit and nut
and seed and berry are terms which we usually apply rather
vaguely. In botanical language a fruit is a seed and its
covering, of whatever form. A sloe, or a haw, or a white-
beam * berry ' is a nut enclosed in pulp ; and a fruit of this
kind is called a drupe. A nut is a dry shell containing a
seed ; and it is as much a nut when it is enclosed in pulp as
when it is bare, like a hazelnut. A walnut, in the natural
state, is a drupe, like a sloe ; but because the nut is the part
which interests us most, we do ordinarily call it a nut, and
not a fruit or a berry. A berry is strictly a collection of
seeds enclosed in a mass of pulp, like the holly or elder
berry. A blackberry or raspberry is thus a group of drupes ;
while a strawberry assumes the extraordinary aspect of a
group of nuts set on a mass of pulp. The variety of Nature
plunges a strictly logical terminology into almost as many
difficulties as ordinary careless speech. But it is well to
realise the relation of one kind of fruit to another, and not
be misled by the importance, for human purposes, of the
different parts. The peach is only a larger and softer
almond ; but because we eat the pulp of the peach and the
kernel of the almond, we call the former a fruit, the latter a
kind of nut, and forget that they have anything in common.

Sloes are occasionally so abundant as to tinge a whole
hedgerow with purple when seen from a hundred yards away,
but in some seasons the crop almost entirely fails. In spite

120 AUTUMN AND WINTER

of the belief which still prevails that an autumn rich in
berries foretells a hard winter, it is hardly necessary to point
out that there is no such connection. The abundance of
every kind of berry depends on the weather in the previous
spring, when the blossom was fertilised, and the young fruit
was setting ; and there is no meteorological rule by which
mild weather in April or May is followed by a rigorous
winter. The idea that provision is made in this way for the

f^

SLOEBERRIES

birds in a hard season ignores the fact that migratory birds
in winter are not tied to any one district or country, but
range over wide territories in search of food. It is not
necessary to look far back to find a striking contradiction of
the theory ; for the autumn of 1911 was one of the richest in
all kinds of fruits and berries ever known, and the following
winter one of the mildest. Nor is this a solitary exception ;
there is not even a superficial appearance of truth about the
idea. Subject to favourable weather at the critical moment
of blossoming, a luxuriant crop of wild berries is most likely
to follow a very poor one. The trees seem to store up
energy in a season in which they ripen little fruit ; and

FRUITFUL HEDGEROWS 121

Nature is apt to make good its general average by a surpris-
ing outburst of vigour. There is a great sense of delight in
an autumn in which every wild tree and shrub is loaded
with fruits and berries after its kind, and the earth beneath
is strewn with the shakings of their boughs. It is good to
see the earth heaped high with harvest, even though much
of the increase brings no profit to the purse or the granaries
of man. Blackbirds make festival over the fallen crab-
apples yellowing the mire of the lanes, where a scent of the
earth's October wine streams down the wind in the dusk.
Squirrels crunch the winged bunches of hornbeam seeds,
balancing among the bending twigs ; and the herds of swine
bring back a forest picture of earlier days, as they rove in the
October sunshine, and champ the thick layers of oak-mast
or the fallen chestnuts. Rooks and wood-pigeons and
pheasants gorge under the oaks in the quieter fields ; and
flocks of bramblings and chaffinches flicker under the beech-
trees in quest of their ruddier crop. Birds and beasts hold
harvest-home all the shortening day ; and when night falls,
the busy mice collect their stores till morning, and leave the
linnets' nests fuller in the hedgerows. Under the hunter's
moon the moist woods breathe the exquisite aroma of dis-
solving oak-leaves, most tonic of all the perfumes of the
year; and deep in the sighing lanes the acorns still patter in
their fall.

Early in autumn the scarlet berries of the cuckoo-pint
begin to ripen in the lee of the hedges, and the thinning
herbage of October sets them gleaming above the new-fallen
leaves. Conspicuous in early spring, this wild arum is
eclipsed, like most other spring hedgeside plants, when
the herbage begins to shoot high. But unlike the primrose
and bluebell, of which little is seen again until spring, the
cuckoo-pint finds a second period of conspicuousness in its

i

122

AUTUMN AND WINTER

seed-time. The same is true of the stinking iris, or gladden,
which grows freely in many chalk and limestone woods, and
on clay cliffs. The veined, exotic-looking blossoms open
about midsummer, and their flower-time is over early in
July. By October the pods burst, and reveal rows of bright
scarlet berries ; and these grow more and more conspicuous
as the pod-husks wither into leathery blackness as winter
goes on. The seed-heads of this iris are more vivid though
not more striking than the flower. Most
remarkable of all is the autumn splendour
which comes over the spindle-tree. In
spring and summer it is a mean and scanty
shrub, with small greenish-white blossoms
and dull leaves which are particularly
subject to the ravages of sawfly larvae.
In autumn all is changed : the leaves turn
a brilliant crimson, but they are outshone
by the beauty of the berries. At first these
form light clusters of carmine-red ; but soon
each lobed fruit splits, and shows inner
seeds of brilliant orange, set in the carmine
shell. If spared by birds these linger long
on the twigs, and shine in the naked hedge-
rows. No more brilliant winter picture could be seen in
England than one which comes back to memory of a troop
of half-wild golden pheasants climbing among the spindle-
trees in a snowy wood, and tearing at the pink and orange
berries.

Sand-dunes, marshes, and mountains foster berries of
their own peculiar kind. On sandy coastlines the orange
berries of the sea buckthorn ripen in late summer and early
autumn among its hoary leaves. The contrast is beautiful
and unusual ; for though the silvery colour of the leaves

FRUIT OF WILD ARUM

FRUITFUL HEDGEROWS

123

resembles that of the sea-poppy and sea-holly and garden
lavender, and many other plants which grow on a dry soil in
the reflected glare of the sun, the sea buckthorn is the only
member of its family in Britain ; and its berries are unlike
any others. It has no kinship with either the common or
alder buckthorns of inland hedges and thickets, and its
narrow silvery leaves, at first sight, make it look like some

SPINDLE-TREE

species of willow. High woods and mountains have an
abundant and characteristic series of berry-bearing plants,
most of which are plentiful at lower levels over a vast tract
of land in northern Europe and Asia. Besides the bilberry
or whinberry or whortleberry or hurt — as it is called in
different parts of the country — many high-lying tracts
abound with the black crowberry and the red cowberry and
bearberry. The shoots and berries of all these plants form
a considerable part of the food of the red and black grouse
and of the ptarmigan, though the red grouse, at any rate,

i24 AUTUMN AND WINTER

depends to a greater extent on the shoots of the ling. Ling
and purple bell-heather combine with the paler bells of the
cross-leaved heath, and with all these berries, to form a
typical mountain vegetation in the mountainous parts of
these islands, and on lower ground further to northward.
Vegetation descends, like the snowline, as one gets
further to northward, so that the plants of English moun-
tain-tops may occur almost at sea-level in Lapland or Siberia.
The crowberry plant is easily recognisable by its small round
black berries ; it has finely cut leaves, much like those of the
bell-heather, though juicier looking and of a brighter green.
Cowberry belongs to the whortleberry tribe ; the leaves are
smooth and evergreen, and the scarlet berries grow in small
clusters. Bearberry is extremely like it in general appearance,
though it is more closely allied to the heaths. It can be
distinguished from the cowberry by the top of the berry being
perfectly smooth, while the cowberry has the little scar, or
'eye,' which marks the position of the withered blossom, as
in the currant or gooseberry. The great bilberry, which
occurs in some of the more northern and mountainous parts
of the country, is rather larger than the common species, and
has grey-green instead of yellow-green leaves. The berry
is larger, but more tasteless. The cranberry and cloudberry
are two of the rarer mountain berries in these islands, though
two species of the former are often sent to our markets from
abroad. The cranberry belongs to the whortleberry and
cowberry family, and is distinguishable by its slender, creep-
ing stems as well as by its crimson berries. The cloudberry
is like a large pale yellow raspberry, and belongs to the same
tribe. It grows in bogs and wet hollows on a large-leafed
plant a few inches high, and is a very delicate fruit ; eaten
with cream, it is almost better than the strawberry, and in
many wild regions abroad is doubly welcome from the

FRUITFUL HEDGEROWS 125

absence of fresh vegetables and garden fruits. It belongs,
however, rather to late summer than to autumn, like the
dewberry of English hedges and river- banks, which is an
earlier, softer, and scarcer blackberry, covered with a bloom
like a sloe. But in the far north the autumn snowfall pre-
serves even the softer berries, like the cloudberry and
cranberry, fresh and undecayed till spring ; and they form
a valuable food for many kinds of birds when the next year's
thaw releases them from this natural cold storage.

THE WINTERERS

IT has been questioned whether our English countryside is
more populous in winter or summer, The coming birds take
the place of the departing birds and the general average is
maintained. However this may be, every naturalist feels
that his world is emptying very fast as the hours of sunshine
diminish. Every day, mysterious disappearances take place.
The frogs no longer jump with a pleasant plop into the river
as you walk along the edge. The squirrels that not so long
ago were raiding your filbert plantations or frisking about
the adjacent deodar are not discoverable anywhere. You
can no longer play the game of cheating the bats by throw-
ing up small gravel stones for them to hawk at, nor listen for
the squeak, pitched so high that few people can hear it at
all after their ' salad days ' are over. The bees are gone,
the wasps are gone, and you begin one day to realise that
thousands of creatures have done of themselves what the
farmer has done with his stock.

They have retired to winter quarters. Soon you may travel
many score of miles along any railway and have trouble
to find a field that is not emptied of all domestic animals, so
empty are the haunts of the naturalist. In more northern
lands the race of living things seems quite to disappear.

126

THE WINTERERS 127

The fields themselves vanish under snow. The beasts are
all close cooped up, and will come out in spring thin and
weak and almost blind, as if they were experiencing a
resurrection. It is a place ' where no birds sing.' Life
in England does not vanish with this completeness. The
robin and wren and thrush will sing. The honeysuckle and
blackberry are in leaf. The rabbits line the spinney-side
morning and evening.

Yet almost every living thing even in England prepares
against winter in some degree. One may call the putting on
of the winter coat a sort of hibernation : it is a method of
wintering. In the north where winter is winter, birds and
beasts, ptarmigan, or willow grouse, hares and ermines,
clothe themselves in white. Sometimes in some measure
stoats in the south of England whiten. A very beautiful
stoat, just half white and half red, was captured not many
years ago in Surrey; but it is only in the north that the
change is general. It has generally been supposed that this
seasonal change is an example of protective coloration. The
ermine whitens because the white coat is an aid to hunting.
The hare whitens because it is less easily seen by the hunters.
But it is more than doubtful whether this is the master reason.
The change is probably correlated with a general alteration
of the tide of life. The old hairs whiten in some cases,
while in others new white hairs take the place of the old.
The white coat is in nearly all cases warmer than the dark
coat, and there is some reason to believe that it affects the
wellbeing of the animal quite apart from any effect in pro-
tecting its life from violence or helping it to food.

The whitening ptarmigan as certainly makes ready for
winter as the swallows, who migrate, gathering very
obviously together to give one another nerve for the
great journey. It was once held, even Gilbert White had

128 AUTUMN AND WINTER

his doubts, that some of the swallows hid themselves in mud,
like the pike and the frogs, or in rotten wood like the bats.
It is a question whether one action is much more strange
than the other. Hibernation is, at any rate, a parallel
marvel to migration. The trouble with animals is to find
food and warmth in winter. One set surmount the difficulty
by chasing the sun. Another by reducing vitality to such
a point that food is unnecessary. A third, taking a yet more
simple course, die.

The winter sleep is very like death. Pull away a
panel of loose bark and see underneath the almost scorpion

A CURVED PANEL OF LOOSE BARK'

pattern, that tells its own tale. The moth grooved a tunnel
for her eggs ; and in the mouth of the tunnel ' died sweetly,
her end accomplished.' In the spring, the young emerged
from either side, tunnelled their way to freedom, leaving the
pattern of their paths in perpendiculars to the central
groove where the eggs were laid. If one is lucky one
may find in the moss at the foot of the tree a queen wasp
sleeping on to the winter. How little difference between
the wasp and the moth, save that the fertility of the one
gives her some heat of vitality which will keep her alive
through months of storm and cold.

The law of hibernation is not very precise in detail. We
cannot quite say that these creatures hibernate and those do

THE WINTERERS 129

not. The house-fly and the butterflies ought, if one may
say so, to perish before the face of the first frosts ; but
quantities live through the winter in a state that is neither
sleep nor waking. We discover several scores of flies
crowded behind a piece of wallpaper that had come loose
in a half-deserted room. Some butterflies, such as the
orange tip, live a very short life, often only a few days,
though one can see no special tenderness in their structure.

Round some species a hot controversy rages ; and no
one knows whether they hibernate or no. They are in the
position of the swallows in Gilbert White's day. But as
knowledge grows we find more and more instances of
wintering butterflies. Every naturalist has found in odd
crevices stupefied specimens of the common admiral. With
many it seems just an accident. Here and there a specimen
settles down into a warm corner and being well treated by
enemies and weather tastes a second summer, and the race
is protected by a double safeguard. With the wasps, which
run a heavy risk even after they emerge from sleep, one
almost wonders that now and again the whole race is not
annihilated, so precarious is the hold on life and so flimsy
the protection. It is among the strangest of natural devices,
that the female, nursing her own fertility in lonely retreat
during these long hard months, should awake in the spring
to found by her unaided efforts a vast colony, all of whom,
again save selected queens, perish at the breath of autumn.
You may always find the last of the colony, the queen
excepted, feeding on the ivy flowers in sheltered but sunny
spots. Ivy is always a happy hunting-ground ; and October
is the month. The belated flowers then come to bloom,
and about them cling, in the last torpid struggle for life, the
last of the wasps and flies and the most energetic bees. To
quote a personal experience : * There was one little clump of

1 3o

AUTUMN AND WINTER

ivy alongside a lamp shed on a little country station where
I have found wasps many weeks after the last of them were
thought to be dead. I have never seen them in December,

IVY FLOWERS

but very often found one or two during the last days of
November.' The flies usually outlive the wasps. The thin
watery sunshine of a December morning will catch the
metallic blues of the bottle-fly crawling slowly over the leaf

THE WINTERERS 131

showing a not less metallic surface. By midday the fly
may discover just enough energy to crawl up a fruit head
and search, probably in vain, for a last grain of pollen among
the black-headed pins of fruit.

The haphazard wintering of the flies and some butterflies,
even the solitary wintering of other creatures, is very
different from the organised wintering of the honey-bees.
Of all the sounds in nature, none is more suggestive than
the high-pitched vibrant hum which you can just hear if you
put your ear to the hive. The bee has as strong and
insuperable an instinct as any creature. But the course of
this instinct is also the course of reason and has the appear-
ance of it. In the hive proceeds all the military preparations
for a long siege. Food is served in minute rations. Water
is procured only when winter is ending and the queens
demand it, by the agency of as few water carriers as possible,
who are absent from the hive for a short while and only
when circumstances are favourable. Warmth is conserved
to the utmost by close packing ; and health in such crowded
quarters is maintained by the ventilation of many wings
working as an electric fan works. It is the hum of the
ventilator one hears. Doubtless the tide of life, perceptible
indeed in inorganic as well as organic things, ebbs in the
bee as in others. In winter, the hive bee, as the bumble-
bee, sinks in vitality and can live with less food and less
activity than when the days are longer. Nevertheless, in
the bee, the organisation, the definite methods of meeting
winter, are more obvious than the intrinsic adaptation of
the physical qualities. It is not so with other insects.

In October most of the winterers prepare their retreat.
On the whole the insects, perhaps, sleep hardest ; but few
creatures look so dead as the bat. Old barn roofs are a
certain covert where one will never draw blank ; but the bats

132 AUTUMN AND WINTER

will choose almost any quarters that are dark and hidden.
They are very fond of the old hollowed scooped willows,
growing in pollarded shape along the brooks. In there you
have to dig them out of the half-rotten wood into which they
burrow, such is the writer's experience ; but they are sup-
posed as a rule to hang themselves up. If you climb to one
of their haunts where suitable beams provide a hooking-
place, you will see, if you peer close, a thing that looks as
lifeless as a withered lichen. The creature hangs upside
down, as if it were preserved like bacon on a kitchen
chimney. It might have been nailed there as a keeper
nails weasels to a tree. Life is indeed very nearly extinct,
so far as tests go. The heart beats only just perceptibly,
the temperature sinks to the limit, sight and hearing pro-
bably cease. But the dormancy is not that of the lily bulb
which must pass through its period. Exceptional weather
will wake the bat, and for a few minutes one springlike
evening it will fly out into an early air quite devoid of
insects ; and after a few minutes' vague hawking will return
to the intermitted sleep. But the varieties differ. The
little pipistrelle, which is the commonest, wakes more easily
than the noctule, which begins its winter sleep as early as
August, it 'aestivates' as well as hibernates and 'diurnates,'
or, if English words are allowable, it summers, it winters, and
it sleeps by day. Like the flies, the bats, especially the
pipistrelle, winter in companies, often clinging on to one
another, as Homer, among other naturalists, noted and
described in haunting lines.

Some scientific writers say that the hedgehog winters in
a state of deeper coma than even the bat. This is not
agreeable with experience in a Midland county where
hedgehogs greatly abounded. It was quite easy to find
them hidden under the mossy snags of coppiced bushes

THE WINTERERS 133

within some open spinney. If you came upon one in
autumn he was very fat ; and there were people in the
neighbourhood who regarded the animal as a table luxury.
If you found him late in the winter he was very thin, and it
is reasonable to infer that the ordinary processes of life
went on much more actively in the hedgehog than in many
other winterers, certainly the bats and frogs and fish. A
warm day of late November would bring them out from

BATS

under the snag ; and they were afoot in spring as soon as
spring growth began.

Possibly observers have exaggerated the depth of the
hedgehog's torpor, because he rolls himself up in a tight
ball when disturbed. But the very tightness of the ball is
a sign of muscular activity. It is quite easy to tell from
the outward appearance whether the ball is or is not tightened
for defence.

To some degree almost all animals prepare for winter
inactivity. Most birds as well as beasts lay up a store of
fat as winter comes on ; and upon this fat they can feed for
some while if conditions are hard. Turtles will live through
a long journey on their own fat. The domestic hen puts on
a large weight of fat ; and being fed nearly all the winter,
whatever the weather, finds trouble to get rid of it, nor does
she lay eggs till it is gone, a fact of which the keeper of hens

i34 AUTUMN AND WINTER

is too little aware for his own profit. Almost all wild, and
indeed domestic animals, can feed on themselves. The
sheep, which Jan Ridd in Lorna Doone rescued out of
the snowdrift, could have lived there quite happily for a
good while so long as they could keep a hole for ventilation.
Rabbits and hares have been known to lie snug for many
days in a snow cavern.

The squirrel who, like the virtuous man in Vergil,
4 wraps himself in his own virtue,1 comes between the hare
and the bat as a hibernator. Sometimes he sleeps soundly
and the breathing diminishes, sometimes he goes to his
stores and is as ready as Shelley's seeds to wake up to life
as soon as ' the clarion ' of spring sounds its first note over
the dreaming earth.

No autumnal disappearance is more secret and silent
than the self-burial of frogs and some fish. More often the
winterers one comes across in autumn and winter rambles
make themselves snug and comfortable in sufficiently obvious
places. The snuggest of all is the dormouse. The writer
has found him showing a particular fondness for the upper
story of a beehive, the uninhabited attic over the swarm.
It is just the right place for him. There is usually cloth or
stuffing of some sort put to keep the bees warm through the
winter. The dormouse cards and teases this till he has
composed a ball of soft wool so evenly distributed that in
spite of its lightness it is as effective to keep out cold as the
best cotton-wool. Finally he covers up the hole of ingress,
leaving as little trace as a hedgehog leaves of his own head
and tail. Both

' Roll their sweetness up into one ball,'

as Marvel advised in a different sense, and doze away the
winter snugly. Perhaps the dormouse is open to the child's
complaint that it 'had no habits.' It is never very lively

THE WINTERERS

135

or amusing, but it makes things level by its extreme beauty.
' Pearls are not equal to the whiteness of its teeth ' was said
of a dead dog. One may say of the live dormouse that seal-
skin is not equal to the softness of its coat ; and there is no
brown quite of its colour.

The disappearance of the frogs, and indeed the toads, is a
-much more dour business ; and it is more unexpected. It is
more than burial, a more thorough inhumation even than the
caterpillars. Sometimes it »

is as fatal as the experiment
of Romeo and Juliet. One
often sees on the edge of
a pond a little graveyard
of frogs — and a miserable
spectacle it is — which had
died in the mud, from which
they should have been re-
surgent in the early spring.

No one has quite fathomed the mystery of some of their
disappearances.

A host of stories are current of the longevity of toads
immured in rock. Corresponding to these are many country
stories, to which insufficient attention has been paid, of the
re-emergence of fish from dried river or pond beds. Many
fish hibernate in some degree. They do not lose vitality
in the same degree as the bat ; but they retire in sulky
slumber to remote crevices. In Eastern countries there
are species which seal themselves up by means of some
secretion within mud chambers ; and some are convinced
that pike or perhaps other fish are capable of maintaining
life in the mud for a great length of time. But this is rather
'aestivation' than 'hibernation/ and the fish wait under the
caked mud for the rains of autumn.

FROG

136

AUTUMN AND WINTER

But much mystery remains. We do not even know the
place of the hibernation, though perhaps the mystery is not
lessened when we do. No one knows how far the snail can
be said to be alive in winter. He shrinks far back into the
shell. Across the mouth he leaves a hardening film that
shuts out the elements of life as well as the entrance of
enemies. If you broke the film you see a thing that is of
the very type of death. Its recovery looks as impossible

as a shrivelled piece of lichen, which may remain changeless,
it is argued, for a thousand years. But the lichens will
revive at the touch of moisture as surely as the snails to the
lengthening sunshine. In them too is symbolised 'the
mystery of resurgent eastertide.' It is symbolised even in
the snake, which is among the winterers.

* The world's great age begins anew,

The golden years return.
The world doth like a snake renew
Its winter weeds outworn.'

GOSSAMER AND SILK

X

You may scarcely take an autumn walk and fail to see the
signs of a new activity to set against the autumnal loss and
failing. Young birds are finding their vigour ; migration
itself is an example of almost preternatural energy. The
minute goldcrest that whispers about the evergreen in the
garden, that allows us almost to touch it, and makes no flight
of more than a score or two of yards, has just dashed across
the North Sea in one ecstatic burst of incredible power.
The dragon-flies in their marriage flights embroider un-
traceable patterns of colour in and about the purple sprays
of the hedgerow. Moles and worms, the first ploughmen,
turn up the ground, as if just for enjoyment of the yeasty
smells and softened stuff. But if there is to be a com-
parison of activities at this season the spiders perhaps take
the suffrages. Indeed spiders are remarkable for activity
at many seasons. Country people take their appearance for
a sign of foul weather ; and they certainly also prognosticate
fine weather.

The district to see them is the West of England ; per-
haps South Wales is the best of all. Walking along the
valleys where the furze and broom flourish, you might think
that nature designed the spikes and minarets of the gorse
for the purpose of slinging horizontal webs. In the dewy
morning each is strung with pearl drops, making' distinct the

K

138 AUTUMN AND WINTER

webbing and the general shape even to the ropes that sling
the nets. The bush might be a cabinful of slung hammocks.
If you peer more closely as the webs dry, you may see on
some webs of rather different shape than the majority strings
of minuter drops, marking a certain zig-zag thread that
joins the spokes together. It is the glue-thread, most fatal
to the winged things, a bird-lime for midges.

Whatever we think of spiders the webs are worth study.
Even many naturalists have a certain repulsion from spiders
and the tribe of scorpions which they include. They are
held to be ugly. On occasion the females are beyond
question cannibals devouring the males. It is not a pretty
sight when the poisoned jaws of the spider meet in a trapped
victim. The red spider on the beans is one of the foulest
plagues, and the harvest bump rather more than a discom-
fort. About the spider superstition hangs, though there are
pretty as well as unpleasant sayings, as in the favourite
French proverb :

* L'araign^e du matin — chagrin,
L'araignee du midi — plaisir,
L'araignee du soir — 1'espoir.'

But the beauty of the spider's web no one questions. It
is as undoubted as its ingenuity. The subject was long ago
made popular by those most charming and most old-fashioned
entomologists, Kirby and Spence, a pair who wrote more
than others out of the fund of their own observation. The
geometric spider with its vertical web is the most perfect
artist. Like the economy of the hive his work is almost too
perfect to arouse any affectionate interest. But watch the
process of building and interest returns. There is nothing
mechanical or automatic about the way the animal sets to
work; and when, as a consummation of the web the bird-limed
thread is wattled in and out, and the scaffold-pole threads

GOSSAMER AND SILK 139

removed, one gasps for wonder at such an ingenious, and
it seems well-reasoned device. But the horizontal webs of
these gorse-builders are prettier ; and being less geometric
give a greater impression
of an adaptive mind, if
the word may be used.
However, the instinct
springs from the irresist-
ible processes of the body.
The ' spinners ' and ' spin-
nerets,' and the pincers in the leg for
carding and teasing the spun silk, make
the web no more wonderful than other
wonders. The animal just indulges the
free play of life to the end of the con-
tinuance of the life for future generations.
It is driven to certain action by the pro-
pulsion of its own capacity, which is
supereminent in one direction.

Edison, looking at the energy of the
sea, is said to have wept that so much
power should be wasted. In a less tragic
vein the merchant astray in a South
Wales valley might lament for the waste
of good silk in these autumn factories.

For the web of the spider is often made 'THE MINUTE GOLDCREST
of the very finest silk thread imaginable, • • • HAS JUST DASHED

J ACROSS THE NORTH SEA5

a silk that no process can produce. It
is at least as probable that one day spiders will be drilled
to the work of the silkworm as that the tides will be har-
nessed to the creation of available power.

In early autumn days the race of spiders discovers a new
activity, visible enough in the webs of these voracious spiders

140 AUTUMN AND WINTER

on the whins ; but it is one of the smaller and less visible
species which produce the strangest of autumn phenomena.
Until you look into it, the cloud of gossamer, sometimes
completely covering one of 'the happy autumn fields/ sug-
gests the impossibility that something has been made out
of nothing. The gossamer will settle down like manna,
altering the whole complexion of the surface. The strands
flow close along the ground down the wind in long-drawn
streaks not unlike the surface of the sea where it is stretched
thin along the wedge of a steamer's bows. You may see
them float downward, a gift from nowhere, out of the misty
air. Every countryman in every village in England has
seen this gossamer visitation again and again ; yet not one
in a hundred has the vaguest idea of its cause, except that
the gossamer threads bear some resemblance to the stuff of
a spider web. The cause is a little difficult to realise even
when you investigate it. That these almost microscropic
creatures should all together spin each his parachute or kite
tail, should early launch himself forth into the air, should
each deliberately migrate to unknown regions in search of
food — all this and more has an unexpectedness, an unlikeli-
hood which keeps alive the astonishment, even when you
have anatomised the animal, and learnt all the parts of the
living factory. When one considers the migration of birds,
and offish, the migratory movements of lemmings, of rats and
of shrew-mice, the dispersal of seed, the up and down patrol
of the sap, such sudden common movements as these young
spiders make, one begins to regard autumnal migration or
its equivalent as an attribute hardly less integral to the
common plan or design in nature than some of those more
familiar structural and functional similarities which bridge
the extremest differences between the vegetable and the
animal kingdom.

GOSSAMER AND SILK 141

It has never been quite satisfactorily explained why the
spiders develop this seasonal activity. No doubt the mists
that settle down over the surface of the country bring with
them little insects of many sorts, and it is probable that the
gossamer spiders skim low for the same reasons as the
swallows. The birds and the arachnids share successively
in the same chase. As the one departs the other takes up the
hunt. No doubt too many of the spiders are young, perhaps
three months old, and have just reached their full capacity
to make these kite tails just as the young swallows have
learnt the proper art of using their wings. The spinning
and the ' remigium alarum ' in both arts need some age and
some skill. But not all the spiders are young, and food is
not found near the ground only in autumn.

The phenomenon of the gossamer flight may be seen in
town as well as country. Minute black spiders, one of a
number of varieties that play this part, have been seen
climbing the railings in London parks. Once at the top
they stand in such position that the spun web flies out most
suitably down wind. As soon as enough is paid out the
spider takes the leap and sails away like a kite to lands
unknown.

In the country people have tried many times to trace the
first flight from a hedge or tree, but with little success. Often
the flyer starts from no better vantage-point than the top
of a tall grass, and one would infer that this is the rule.
Iron railings are perhaps more tempting than a hedgerow.

However, in general the spider's use of height or depth is
one of the most effective promptings of its instinct. If it is
desired to bridge a wide and deep gulf, the spider will tumble
down from her height to the lowest possible point, spinning
as she falls two threads, one stout, one light. The lighter is
loosed ; and if it catches a lucky breath is lifted across to the

142 AUTUMN AND WINTER

farther bank, where it clings by virtue of its own stickiness.
The spider climbs aloft again by the stouter rigging to find
that rocket apparatus has successfully thrown the rope to
the desired goal.

How clever! but the word seems the wrong one when in
another month one goes out and sees the hop-bine bridging
similar heights in much the same manner and with as true an
instinct for direction. What does it all mean ? Darwin told
us a little ; much more than any one else. Doubtless very
pat explanations have been written. * The engineer,' so
they put it, * who throws the bridge across the Zambesi Falls
has a brain which works by reason. The spider which
weaves the two webs has, instead of brain, ganglionic centres
from which instinct emerges. The hop-bine has irritable
cells which respond to stimulus/ Doubtless the tale is true ;
and those to whom it gives satisfaction are welcome, if they
wish, to cease wondering. After all ' ganglionic centre ' is a
great and satisfying phrase, and is good anatomy.

Indeed the production of silk, in what may be called the
manufacturing months of autumn, is vast. The silkworm is
only one of scores of species of insect and of spider which
produces silk of the finest quality ; it is indeed a singularly
complete example of all that is characteristic of the common
moths and butterflies. It is a sort of text-book example of
the type. Many children have kept silkworms and learnt to
appreciate the rest of insect life through them ; even Milton,
who was a child in these things, knew about the silkworms.
His Comus talked of men who loved 'to set to work millions
of spinning worms that in their green shops weave the
smooth-haired silk.' The worms flourish perfectly in Eng-
land for a certain period, and many people have tried to
start an English industry. But ' the third day comes a frost
— a killing frost/ In England we have sudden visitations of

GOSSAMER AND SILK

THE HOP-BINE
BRIDGING

heat and cold which occur but now and
then and are forgotten. But these few excep-
tional days kill off the silkworms which might
else flourish exceedingly.

Probably the silkworm has taught more
natural history than any animal there is. It
has been cultivated for four thousand years or
more for the production of an article that all
this while has been the most popular and
valuable of stuffs. The regular progressive
changes of insects through their several forms,
each singularly unlike the other, make one of the cardinal
wonders of a very wonderful world. Indeed as we descend
in the scale of life the miracle of life seems to increase in
strangeness. Yet to the most learned, even to the most
scientifically learned, some of the common plans of natural
history are often unsuspected. There is a most delightful
passage in an essay of Fabre's, who, if the superlative may
be permitted, was the very best writer on insects and spiders
that ever lived. Apart from his acute powers of inference,
working on the closest observations, he plunged into his
subject with a relish that influences every word he writes.

Well, M. Fabre was astonished one day in his humble
house by a call from the great Pasteur ; and the following
dialogue took place : —

1 A few words were exchanged on the prevailing blight ;

144 AUTUMN AND WINTER

and then, without further preamble, my visitor, M. Pasteur,
said : "I should like to see some cocoons. I have never
seen any ; I know them only by name. Could you get me
some ? "

' " Nothing easier. My landlord happens to sell cocoons ;
and he lives in the next house. If you will wait a moment,
I will bring you what you want."

* Four steps took me to my neighbour's, where I crammed
my pockets with cocoons. I came back and handed them to
the savant. He took one, turned and turned it among his
fingers ; he examined it curiously, as one would a strange
object from the other end of the world. He put it to his ear
and shook it :

* " Why, it makes a noise," he said, quite surprised.
" There 's something inside."
1 " Of course there is."
«" What is it?"
' "The chrysalis."
' " How do you mean, the chrysalis ?"

* " I mean the sort of mummy into which the caterpillar
changes before becoming a moth."

' " And has every cocoon one of those things inside

it?"

1 " Obviously, it is to protect the chrysalis that the cater-
pillar spins."

' " Really."

1 And without more words, the cocoons passed into the
pocket of the savant, who was to instruct himself at his
leisure touching that great novelty, the chrysalis. I was
struck by this magnificent assurance. Pasteur had come to
regenerate the silkworm, while knowing nothing about cater-
pillars, cocoons, chrysalises or metamorphoses.'

Pasteur's ignorance is very common : we all share it

GOSSAMER AND SILK 145

more or less. Even the most persistent entomologists are
continually astonished by unexpected discoveries.

There are many such discoveries yet to be made among
the silky cocoons concealed in every sort of nook and crevice
— in the bark of trees, in the roots, on wood palings, under
stones. The commonest of all is the cabbage white which
hangs itself up very neatly, almost in a hammock. But the
silk is used in a hundred ways, to swing the spider or catch
its flies, or to spin a moth's cocoon or to line a hole.

What most astonishes the Pasteurs coming with delight-
ful freshness to these subjects is the very short time during
which in many creatures the chrysalis stages last. There
are some cocoons designed to hold the pupa through winter
months ; but often, as in the silkworm, the chrysalis stage
is surprisingly short considering the astonishing transforma-
tion which proceeds. An egg, usually laid so that it adheres
to the leaf which is the caterpillar or worm's natural food,
may lie through a winter, though often, as again in the
cabbage white, they may hatch between spring and early
summer. The caterpillar may live in the grub state for
years as does the goat hawk moth grub which burrows into
our oaks. The perfect butterfly or moth, though usually it
is ephemeral, may safely hibernate through the winter, as
always do some of the Vanessae ; but the chrysalis case in
which the supreme transformation takes place is as a
rule only designed in spite of its perfection to last a few
weeks. A silkworm cocoon might be a life work. The
design is perfect. The outside of the case, in which the
twin threads are woven tighter, more compactly than the
rest, is designed to case-harden ; it forms a crust, a sort of egg-
shell, as some one said, for the soft interior, which is as
warm and snug a couch for the nursing of the coming Imago
as ever the spiders swung for Titania. Case and couch

146 AUTUMN AND WINTER

serve for just as long as a hen's eggshell. In three weeks
the silkworm, as ugly as useful, has become the perfect
moth. The specialised apparatus, differing in a hundred
species, for opening the case is brought to work and the
moth emerges. At once the sexes find one another, in a
day or two the eggs are laid ; and the parents as a rule die
with little delay. Sometimes their dead bodies serve, as
Caesar's, to 'stop a hole to keep the draughts away.' The
common bark moth often, but not always, dies in the mouth
of the tunnel along which her eggs are laid. In almost all
cases the male dies at once. M. Maeterlinck has made
common property the fact of the death of the bee selected by
the queen. He dies by force of his own energy. In very
many scorpions the female at once kills and often eats the
male; and the house-spider is as ruthless. Sir Herbert
Maxwell horrified quite a large public by describing in great
detail the tragic fate of a series of husbands of a certain vast
house-spider. Her venomous hate of the male, whether or
no the accepted suitor, has been a theme for years. It is the
very final example of the law of nature by which everything
is sacrificed to the continuance of the species. The male
dies the moment his end is accomplished. The marvel is
that the fear of the tragedy, which quite obviously has a
place in the imagination of the male spider, does not deter.
However, he has at least the chance of escape, while
the scorpion, it seems, does not as a rule even make the
attempt. The scorpions are, of course, allied to the spiders,
and it is in this savage race that the destruction of husbands
prevails. The spider needs vast amounts of food for the
production of silk and nothing is rejected. They eat their
own cast shells, and it is but a small advance in cannibalism
to eat their own species.

The spiders and moths have no racial affinity, but, greatly

GOSSAMER AND SILK 147

as they differ in classification — the six-legged insects and the
eight-legged arachnids — the general similarity of nature's
plan is very striking especially in this art of silk manufac-
ture. Both produce silk in tubes and a viscous fluid along
with it. In one stage of the silkworm's life the fluid and
the silk together form the very toughest and finest form of
catgut made. Both tease and card and distribute the silk
through * spinnerets ' set at the end of the tube. Possibly
the first use of the silk in all cases was for a cradle and a
home. The butterfly uses it still for no other purpose than
to protect over the critical weeks the transforming grub.
' Behind the veil,' the silken veil, the mystery develops.
Forms that we think ugly in form, if not in colour, are
transmuted into forms which we think lovely. The beast
that is purely sensual, in the sense that its whole vocation
is voracity — it eats and eats and eats — unfolds into a fairy
thing that either eats nothing, living like Shelley's chameleon
on light and air, or sucking only the most delicate nectar
from rainbow flowers. That which crawled on the earth or
below it, sometimes, as in the cockchafer grub, so weighed
down by its own belly that it can do no more than heave
itself along from grass root to grass root, suffers an air-
change into a thing almost bodiless, with wings so wide in
their sweep that it must aspire upward as the other must fall
downward. They carry the new being in a wayward patrol
up to the tree-tops and over in a path as untraceable as the
downward chasse of a snowflake. The stored energy of
long months of material life is suddenly expressed in a
blaze of shapely glory, as when a flame bursts upward from
the barren pith cells of a log or the blackened inertness of a
carbon lump.

' The flame of the soul burns upwards.' There is a com-
peting symbolism in this air-change, wrought quickly and most

148

AUTUMN AND WINTER

perfectly behind the silken veil, that lets through only so much
of air and light as life demands and keeps out the cold and
dust and profanity of other earthborn things.

* Blow, blow the clarion, sound the fife !

To all the sensual world proclaim :
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.'

The symbol of the emergent chrysalis is enough to excuse
the martial quotation.

AUTUMN RAIN

•j 4^\ '

ABOUT the beginning of October a great change usually
comes over the weather, with the arrival of what are com-
monly known as the equinoctial storms. The autumn
equinox falls on September 24 ; and neither that day nor
those immediately preceding or following it are marked in
any long series of years by exceptionally stormy weather, so
that the idea of the equinoctial storms is often quoted as a
popular fallacy. But none the less a period of gales and
rain does usually set in about that time in autumn, forming
a marked contrast with the calm bright weather which is
typical of early September ; and it is natural and not very
misleading to date this revolution of the seasons by the
chief landmark at this time of year, though it is doubtless
more correct to speak of the autumn storms, and thus to
avoid the suggestion that the stormy weather has a definite
connection with the equinox. When the weather breaks up
at this time of year the land seems given over to the
Atlantic winds and rain, which strip the woods of the outworn
vegetation of summer, soften the cleaned fields for the
autumn ploughing, and fill the pools and streams for the
needs of the coming year. There is a fine exhilaration and
refreshment about this wet and turbulent season, whether
the weather of the summer and early autumn has been foul
or fair. After the long heat and sunshine of a dry summer,

149

150 AUTUMN AND WINTER

the rain and soft ocean winds beat on the soil of England
with a new draught of healing and fertility ; and when the
summer has been damp and lowering, we feel hardly less
glad to reach the time of year when wind and rain are
seasonable, and to end the continual disappointment of
expecting fine weather in vain.

The autumn sense of being merged in the rains of the
sea is not a mere fancy, but is strictly true to the meteoro-
logy of a normal year. England lies on the frontiers of
two great systems of weather which are perpetually advanc-
ing and receding across our borders for the greater part of
each year. It is this peculiar situation which makes our
climate proverbially so uncertain. A great anticyclone, or
system of fine weather, is normally centred to the south-
west of us in the neighbourhood of the Azores ; and a
cyclonic or stormy system has its seat to northwards over
Iceland and Greenland. In a normal summer the Atlantic
anticyclone over the Azores spreads northwards and em-
braces the greater part of our islands. This staves off the
series of cyclonic systems which normally coast along the
borders of an anticyclone, sending them spinning north-
eastwards over our far north-western coasts, or outside our
area altogether. In autumn the Atlantic anticyclone con-
tracts ; the limits of settled fine weather recede to Portugal
or Madeira, and the Iceland and Greenland depression
expands over Britain. The storms passing from the western
Atlantic along the northern fringe of the great anticyclone
now find our islands in their path ; and we are drenched
with their abundant rain. The term anticyclone simply
means the opposite of a cyclone ; and a cyclone in meteoro-
logy means any storm-system with a revolving or eddy-
ing motion, and not only the very violent revolving
storms of the tropics to which the name is more familiarly

LIFTING POTATOES
By HARRY BECKER

AUTUMN RAIN 151

applied. The difference between the shallow cyclonic de-
pressions which bring a day's light summer rain in England
and the destructive storms of the tropics is simply one of
degree. Cyclones are characterised by the thinness of the
air in their midst, and by the inrush of air from outside to
fill the vacuum ; a rough mental picture of their structure
and motion may be gained from the revolving eddies which
sweep downstream past the piers of a bridge in a flood or
a strong ebb-tide. The thin air within them exercises a
comparatively feeble pressure on the column of mercury in
a barometer ; it therefore sinks, and we speak of the
barometer being depressed, and of the system which causes
it as a depression. Additional appropriateness is given to
the phrase by the fact that an anticyclone consists of a great
pile or mound of air, while the centre of a cyclone has a
comparatively thin layer ; compared with the structure of an
anticyclone, a cyclone is a depression from this point of view
also. It is the agglomeration and compression of the air in
an anticyclone which causes the high pressure, as marked by
the barometer ; and the comparative rarity of the air in a
cyclone which brings the barometer down. The inevitable
tendency of the compressed air to flow into the eruptive
eddies causes the cyclonic winds ; and thus cyclones and
anticyclones are indissolubly linked.

Cyclonic systems in our latitudes generally, though not
invariably, move from west to east ; and the on-coming of an
autumn gale is marked by definite and well-known features.
Often the first sign on a clear October morning is a shift of
the wind to the south-east, or a wind unexpectedly springing
up from that quarter out of a frosty calm. It is the first
suck of the air into the depression still many miles away ;
and as it is drawn from the Continent or the cold North Sea,
it is generally chilly. The sun gradually fades in a formless

152 AUTUMN AND WINTER

haze, which presently thickens into ill-defined grey cloud.
The wind drops, and capriciously springs up again from the
south-west ; pale woolly clouds hang under the darker grey,
and the first drops of rain begin to fall. The sky darkens,
and tearing gusts sweep up dust, paper, and leaves ; the rain
comes on more heavily, and the wind blows harder and
harder from the south-west. The elms groan with their long
south-westerly music, and the rivulets tear channels through
the carpets of leaves in the lanes. The length and fierceness
of the storm depend on the size and intensity of the depres-
sion, and on our nearness to its centre ; but sooner or later
the rain falls more heavily than ever, the wind shifts towards
the west or north-west, the air grows colder, and with a few
more showers the rack of cloud breaks up into open masses,
and the sun or the stars shine through. The cyclone has
passed, leaving the beech boughs half stripped but shining,
the rivulets running thinly down their last night's courses,
and the summer grass submerged in the ponds.

The general movement of the wind currents in a cyclonic
depression in the northern hemisphere is in the opposite
direction to that of the hands of a watch, or of the sun.
But all cyclones, at any rate in temperate latitudes, do not
merely revolve round and round their centre of depression ;
they are gradually sucking in air from outside as they spin,
until the depression gradually fills up and disappears from
the map. Currents of air curve inwards from all quarters
and merge in the general cyclonic circulation. A very
simple rule enables us to tell from the direction of the wind
on which side of us the centre of the storm is situated.
If we stand with our face to the wind in the northern
hemisphere, the centre of depression is on our right hand.
In the southern hemisphere it will be on the left. In
England most cyclones pass to the northward of us, on a

AUTUMN RAIN 153

north-easterly course ; and it is the conjunction of the
structure and path of a normal cyclone which gives us the
characteristic succession of winds. The south-west wind
tears past us to bend a little to the left and enter the
depression from the south ; and the north-west wind is
following up the retreating eddy to bend a little to the left
in the same way, and enter it a little more from the west.
When we face the south-west wind our rule shows that the
depression is to the north-westward ; it is still on its way
towards us. As we face the north-west wind, the rule shows
the centre of the depression to lie to the north-east ; it is
now receding from our shores.

This knowledge of the general route and structure of
cyclones in England will help us a great deal to understand
and take an interest in the larger processes of the weather.
Small cyclones are often very intense ; the violence of a wind
depends on the rapidity with which pressure diminishes in a
given distance, and the consequent force of the indraught.
We can often see very strong but very local cyclonic suction
in the eddies a few feet in diameter, which whirl round paper
at the street- corners and straws in the stable-yard. In a large
cyclone, with its centre speeding across the Iceland seas, the
strongest winds may blow from the south-west over our whole
islands ; but when the centre of a smaller cyclone passes
over the north of England, as it often does, a northerly or
north-easterly gale may be blowing in the north of Scotland
at the same time as a south-westerly gale on the opposite
side of the cyclone in England. The circulation of air in
an anticyclone is exactly opposite to that in a cyclone. It
radiates outward on a curved path, following the direction
of a clock's hands, or the sun. Its typical path is out from
an anticyclone, and in to a cyclone in a great double curve
like an S ; but this perfect path is usually more or less

154 AUTUMN AND WINTER

interrupted and complicated by the broken state of the
weather in some quarter. It is more difficult for an anti-
cyclone to maintain the perfect circulation of its winds than
for a cyclone ; for the currents rushing in to fill nature's
abhorred vacuum are strong, while an anticyclone is a system
of settled weather, in which the airs are usually light, and
often hardly noticeable.

Cyclones in Britain travel at a rate varying from about ten
to seventy miles an hour ; and in those which move slowly the
regular incurvation of the wind from all quarters is often
well maintained. But the observations of the Meteorological
Office tend to show that many cyclones do not conform
fully to the typical cyclonic pattern. The sudden jump of
the wind from south-west to north-west, often experienced
as the centre of the cyclone passes, is itself enough to
suggest some sharp irregularity of structure. In a fast-
moving cyclone the speed and violence of the wind would
need to be tremendous, if it completed the full circular
course. We do not get such terrible hurricanes in this
country ; cyclones of this perfection of structure and corre-
sponding violence are reserved for tropical climates. Accord-
ing to the best opinion, the effective air currents in a
cyclone are three in number. First, there is a moist warm
southerly wind, on the front or east of the depression. In
the second place, there is a cold dry east wind crossing the
southerly current at a point about opposite to the centre ;
and the third current blows from the west, and comes in
on the south side. If the direction of these three currents
is set down as a diagram, it can be seen that they conform
to the general pattern of the cyclonic eddy. By the modi-
fication of their direction where they meet, the complete
cyclonic pattern can be formed from these three elements.

The existence of these three main currents has been

AUTUMN RAIN 155

determined partly by study of the daily records of the
direction of the wind over the Atlantic and European region,
and partly by consideration of the causes which produce
rain. According to the present evidence, the rain in a
cyclonic depression is due to the meeting of the warm moist
southerly current with the cold and dry winds coming from
the east and west. When the depression has passed, so
that the southerly current on its front has retreated from
us, the rain quickly ceases, and the sky clears. The south-
west wind which usually blows during the wettest and
stormiest period of the cyclone, is due to the fusion of the
southerly and westerly currents ; and the north-west wind,
which is characteristic of the retreat of the depression, is
probably the easterly current on the north of the depres-
sion curving round to form the current from the west.
Where this cold current drawn from the north meets the
warmer and moister air to the south of it, it produces the
heavy ' clearing shower/

The same causes which produce rain in the different
quarters of a cyclonic depression, influence the rainfall in
the different parts of England. Rainfall is heaviest about
high ground ; and this is the chief reason why the west of
England is far wetter than the east. In its hills and high
moors gather the bulk of the air-borne moisture. Hills help
to precipitate moisture in two ways. Their surfaces are
colder than the warm air coming from the southern Atlantic,
so that they condense its invisible vapours ; and they throw
up the air-currents to a greater elevation, so that the
vapour condenses by the cooling consequent on reduction
of pressure. Both these processes are believed to help in
the production of a cyclonic rain-storm. The mingling of
the warm southerly current with the cold easterly and
westerly currents causes rain, in the same way as the cold

156 AUTUMN AND WINTER

earth-surface meeting the warm air from the sea; and the
southerly current thrust up by the incoming easterly one
causes more rain by reduction of pressure. Immediately to
leeward of a mass of high ground, there is sometimes a com-
paratively dry, low-lying district : where the next hills rise to
eastward, the rainfall increases again.

Wet autumn weather plays a great part in the prepara-
tion of the soil for nature's next annual crop. Wind and
rain soften and beat down the dry stems and faded leaves of
summer's vegetation ; and the worms set busily to work in
burying the fallen leaves in the damp earth. They are
extraordinarily active in wet autumn weather, especially by
night ; they draw down the leaves into the soil, and also
bury them by the digested soil thrown out of their burrows.
The soil is fertilised by the leaf-mould thus formed, and its
surface is cleansed for the growth of the young blades in
spring.

Autumn floods carry the seeds of plants for many miles
downstream, and wash them into crevices and hollows high
above summer level. So, when spring and summer come,
the rocky walls of the torrent are garnished with clinging
flowers. When the streams roll furiously in their beds, the
eels pass down to the sea on that strange autumn journey to
the depths, where they breed and die. But the chief work
of the storms is the replenishment of the pools and streams.
By the end of a long dry summer the beds of the ponds and
brooks are half choked by weeds, and covered by a dry
growth of turf. The first task of the autumn rain is to
reclaim the lost ground. It is curious to see how quickly a
grass-grown watercourse loses its carpet of verdure in wet
autumn weather. A few hours after it is first filled by a
rapid current, the grass-blades are all strained in the same
direction downstream, and flattened into a discoloured film.

POTATO GATHERING
By HARRY BECKER

AUTUMN RAIN

Shrunken dandelion blossoms gleam from the floor of the
stream, and the grey leaves of the silverweed shine where
the water has twisted them aslant. In two or three days the
decaying vegetation is hardly noticeable ; and a fortnight
later even its corruption has vanished, and the rivulet is
once more lined with clean gravel. Meanwhile, if the wet
weather goes on, the whole earth becomes a system of hurry-
ing streams, ramifying from the great navigable rivers to tiny
tributaries trickling from the summits of the hills, and even

AUTUMN FLOOD.

from the tops of the trees. Rivulets run down the trunks of
the elms and beeches in regular channels ; on the smooth
beech trunks their courses are traced even in summer by the
dark streaks traversing the green. When they reach the
earth they sometimes trickle through the wet wood or down
the hillside, until they join some runnel leading to a brook ;
but a large proportion of their moisture sinks directly into
the soil. The cracked earth in the beech-wood closes, and
the moss grows green again. Deep in the pores of the
gravel and interstices of the rock a network of rivulets is form-
ing, like the channels on the surface above. Gradually they
oenetrate to some impermeable layer, and form buried

158 AUTUMN AND WINTER

reservoirs ; but it is weeks or months before they saturate
the thirsty depths of the soil, and produce a visible result
in the swelling of the springs. Deep wells and streams fed
by springs are often lower in November, or even December,
than in August, in spite of six or eight weeks' plentiful rain.
The surface water soon runs away when the weather clears ;
and though the young wheat springs wholesomely from the
moistened soil, the shrunken brooks retain a curious aspect of
bygone summer. Minnows still play on the shallow fords,
as in the July heats ; and the water- wagtails on autumn
passage run daintily on the half-covered gravel.

The autumn rains do not seem to fulfil their promise until
the springs and wells begin to rise about midwinter. The
most striking example of the delayed effect of the autumn
rains is the flowing of the periodic streams, which are
common in chalk and mountain limestone districts, and are
known as winterbournes or nailbournes. The meaning of
the latter name seems to be unknown, though that of the
former is clear. The flowing of the winterbournes can often
be foretold almost to a day by old inhabitants, or by water
engineers ; they usually begin some time in January or
February, and run at an even height until early summer.
The regularity of their appearance and flow is due to the
homogeneous structure of the mass of chalk or limestone out
of which they burst. The surface water sinks evenly through
vast layers of the porous rock until the level of the accumu-
lated supply rises above one of the vents in an upper valley.
Then it starts flowing, and the spring draws an equal
volume from the great internal sponge, until the water-
level once more falls beneath it. After a long series of dry
years, these streams are often quiescent for several seasons.
The winter following the extremely wet summer of 1903
was the first in which many winterbournes had run for a long

AUTUMN RAIN 159

series of years. The famous 'Jubilee' summer of 1887
introduced a cycle of dry years ; and even the rainfall of
1903 was not enough to keep most of the winterbournes
running for more than one winter. For the last few years,
in spite of some extremely hot and dry summers, we have
experienced a cycle of wet years again ; even the summer of
1911 did not prevent the whole year being one of almost
precisely the average rainfall. The winterbournes have
accordingly begun to run more frequently; and they have
considerably surprised and inconvenienced people in some
parts of England who had forgotten them, or thought they
would never return, and had built or laid out gardens in
their beds. Long though nature may seem to sleep, she
resumes her old rights in the end ; and the reappearance of
her periodic streams must be looked for with the same
certainty in our gentle climate as the repetition of earth-
quakes or volcanic eruptions in lands where she rules less
temperately.

MUSHROOMS

THE least summer-like, if not the most autumnal of all the
things that grow, is the strange tribe of mushrooms. About
them all hangs a very odour of decay, though in fact the
mushroom is a fresh growth of strange vigour. The savour
of the charnel-house, consummating the alleged melancholy
of autumn, is common to almost every fungus that grows,
but the fungus itself rather kills than dies. It is powerful
enough to raise great stones, and the activity of the white and
stringy strands that serve for roots is not less great than in
any spring plant. Some of the mushrooms and toadstools
have a peculiar beauty. Artists, especially children's artists,
have revelled in the hooded shape, and about a thousand
toadstoals gnomes and fairies have danced at night. What
a compelling picture is that of the caterpillar smoking his
hookah on the mushroom over whose edge the little Alice
strains to peep. But the most delicate of all the tribe are
seldom found in picture or prose.

The place for the toadstools is the wood in a wet district.
Stools of utter fragility shoot pagoda-like from all the decay-
ing sticks, which they devour and disintegrate. Their peaked
heads are streaked with the deepest sepia, like the darker
feathers of the woodcock, or sometimes with the most
brilliant crimson. The tribe is yet more prevalent than the

160

MUSHROOMS 161

eye can observe. The roots of many trees are closely
wrapped in fungus ; and without the fungus they would
scarcely be able to suck nutriment from the soil. The
fungus tribe indeed, including bacteria, alone have the
power to transmute the soil into food for the plant. The
trunks and boughs of the trees in these wetter districts are
blue and green with lichens, the most curious of all the things
that grow ; an old wonder to the botanists. The lichen will
stay shrivelled and unmoving for a thousand years, and then
wake again, with Rumpelstilzchen vigour, to a new life. It
possesses this persistent hold on life, it can suck nutriment
from a stone ; and yet it is killed more easily by foul air than
any plant. No lichen has been discovered, save one small
patch on stucco, within the circle of London smoke. The
lichen is not all fungus ; but half fungus, half alga ; and the
two are joined together in an inextricable copartnership, each
flourishing with the other's help. In the wetter west the
lichens hang in quaintly twisted plaits of green and grey and
brown, giving every tree and rail a dank and mouldered air,
though beautiful withal. In the drier east and within range
of a town they dwindle to almost dusty disks. You may tour
the better part of Epping Forest and scarcely find an
example.

Like small and unpleasant animal parasites each fungus
has a close affinity with a particular host, whom, in many
cases, it eats out of hearth and home. Watching the tits
busy one autumn day along the larch boughs, one notices
a twig of needles that have paled before their time. The
fungus, which is the ruin of new forests clothing the catch-
ment areas of the Lakes, has begun to take its hold ; and the
tree is doomed. In happy England no disease rages with
extreme virulence ; larches may suffer, but they are not wiped
out. 1 1 is different in America. Within the early years of this

162 AUTUMN AND WINTER

century great chestnut forests have been annihilated by
a fungus that was imported — it is thought — in dry timber
from Japan. The host in this case could not resist its
unwelcome guest for more than two or three years ; and you
saw masses of the finest trees decay into mouldered ruins
helplessly, incurably, while the fine dust of the fungus, like
fertilising pollen from an autumn yew-tree, floated leagues
wide to spread the malady.

As an English vagrant wanders about the autumn woods
he sees signs everywhere of the fungus as disease, but for the

MUSHROOMS

most part it produces rather eccentricities than death. It
acts curiously, like the galls and flies, which by a sting can
make a leaf grow into a ' pin cushion ' on the briar or a round
ball on the oak. When the leaves are gone 'the witches1
brooms' stand out in black distinctness, like old magpies'
nests, on the birch-trees, and similarly on the beeches. This
quaint misshapen growth is often, though not in all cases, due
to the strands of a fungus sucking nutriment from the live
wood. In spite of all the brilliant colours that they may
reach, such as the startling scarlet of the Fly Agaric or the
Blusher or indeed the pink gills of the common mushroom,
the tribe has, to our eyes perhaps, a colour as unwholesome
as the smell. We all associate green with health in a plant,

MAGPIE MUSHROOM

MUSHROOMS 163

and the distinction of the mushroom is that it is without
green, or, for those who prefer Greek, chlorophyll. In the
mushroom the green life-blood is, as it were, turned to water,
and the complexion is the complexion
of a sort of disease. The unpleasant-
ness has found its way into the woods.
The fungus is a parasite ; and if there
are two more unpleasant words in the
language than fungus and parasite they
are hard to find. Yet the tribe when
it reaches the dignity of a separate and
manifest plant makes up in form — it
may be added in savour — for the wan \
and unhealthy pallor of some sorts
and the advertised poison of others.
Something prevalent in the mushroom and toadstool form
fixes it on the memory. What cunning shapes they take :
the magpie mushroom folding down over its stem like a

Chinese umbrella ; the
crinkled cushion of the
puff-ball; the fluted bracket
of the oyster mushroom
fixed against an old tree
stump : the faery ring,
whether of the gross horse
mushroom dyeing the
grass to a black green,
or the pretty Elizabethan

frill round the stem of the Dolly Vardon champignon,
quaintly tip-tilted ; and in spite of the yellow, rather leathery
look, curiously attractive. Not least are the hundred dainty
forms springing from pine needles or slips of twig in and
about the moist woods.

DEFLATED PUFF-BALLS

1 64

AUTUMN AND WINTER

Did ever any plant offer such contrasts in its effect both
on us and on things. It may give utter disgust. To quote a
passage written one gloomy day after seeing some fungi in
their more loathly forms: — 'Hard and loathly forms appear
like the spirit of death from rotting trunks ; a charnel smell
betrays the life-sucking parasites that spring from lively tree
roots. As depressing a sight as any that winter brings is the

'THE FAERY RING'

horror of a dead fly glued to a vertical grave by a fungus
growth from its own body. The very principle of decay
seems illustrated by the mould that comes on damp,
neglected things, so impossible does it appear that this
same should be a plant sown in the common way by external
agents. . . . One fungus is found only on goose's feathers !
Another only on oak leaves, so that the more you study its
ways and narrow habits the more the growth still impresses
you as an emanation. One springs only from the body of
a caterpillar, another lives by catching meal-worms in
a spore-noose, specially adapted to the size and habit of
the victim.'

But the wanderer in autumn fields or woods could ill
spare the fungus. The rings of the coarsest of all the

MUSHROOMS 165

mushrooms is still a faery ring, and suggests not decay but

the elves :

— The nimble elves

That do by moonlight green sour ringlets make
Whereof the ewe bites not ; whose pastime 'tis
To make these midnight mushrooms.

Only — the rings are not sour, but green from excess of the
nitrogen which is the master attribute of growth, and which
the fungus makes available.

NOVEMBER

* Torn and shattered the trees, their branches again reset,
They trim afresh the fair

Few green and golden leaves withheld from the storm ;
And awhile will be handsome yet
To-morrow's sun shall caress
Their remnant of loveliness :
To quiet days for a time
Sad autumn, lingering warm,
Shall humour their faded prime.'

ROBERT BRIDGES.

THE COUNTRY CALENDAR

NOVEMBER is perhaps the least distinctive of all the months. You
will scarcely find it mentioned in all the corpus poetarum. Those
who write of autumn prefer October, and those who write of winter
begin with December. In the gardener's calendar it is often put
down as the first of the gardening months, but it may more properly
be called the first of the idle months, varying sharply between
autumn and winter. The elms may be leafy, but the chestnuts are
bare. Hunting and pheasant-shooting, legal in October, now become
active. It is established in statistics that a cold spell, corresponding
to the festival of the three ice saints in May, is commonly experi-
enced between November 6th and I2th, and its results are usually
to clear the woods and hedges of their relic leaves. There is no
better month for observing the heavens ; and it is the month of
shooting stars.

In that remarkable list of earliest and latest events in natural
history, kept for a hundred years by the Marsham family in Norfolk,
the first ' indication of spring ' is put down to this month. On

167

168 AUTUMN AND WINTER

November 2Oth a thrush was heard to sing his spring song. A
popular saying, which has strong backing in statistics, states in a
delightfully Saxon manner :

' If there's ice in November that can bear a duck,
There '11 be nothing after but sludge and muck.3

November 1st. — Salmon-fishing with rod and line ceases, indicat-
ing a sort of first of spring for fish.

November nth is Martinmas Day, introducing 'St. Martin's
Summer,' a warm period that follows the cold.

Average temperature, . . -43°.

Average rainfall, . . . .2-27 inches.
On November 1st, sun rises 6.54 a.m. and sets 4.35 p.m.

f

vA

REDWINGS

WINTER BIRDS OF PASSAGE

To most people in England the arrival of the winter migrants is
signalled on some cold clear November morning by the harsh
clack of the fieldfare heard overhead. The date of the field-
fare's arrival varies a good deal according to the weather ;
and the weather in its summer home in Russia and Scandi-
navia has more influence on its coming than the warmth
or coldness of the season in England. But its summer
quarters are near enough to our islands to be affected by
many of the same changes of wind, and we usually see and
hear the fieldfare when the wind has been blowing keenly
for twelve or twenty-four hours from the north or north-east,
and the morning has been white with rime. Fieldfares are
gregarious even in their summer nesting-places in the northern
pine forests ; and we see them much less seldom in Eng-
land singly or in small parties than in considerable flocks.
When we hear these big thrushes clacking in the tops of the
hedgerow elms, or stringing high overhead with their careless,
dropping flight, it is one of the great turning-points of the
year. Their harsh notes and grey backs tell of winter, with
its bare boughs and bracing chills, and its sense of multi-

170 AUTUMN AND WINTER

tudinous restlessness in bird life. The nests in the garden
that were the centre of so much busy life have been deserted
and sodden for months past ; but now the regret that they
inspired is effaced by the fresh purpose of a new epoch.
The drowsy period of late summer and early autumn is past,
and the loss of the summer birds is more than half made
good by the coming of the roving winter flocks.

Redwings arrive at much the same date as fieldfares, but
are less conspicuous, and therefore less likely to attract
immediate attention. The fieldfare resembles the larger and
wilder missel-thrush, the redwing the smaller and quieter
song-thrush. Both are gregarious birds, but redwings less
frequently break up into small parties. Their flocks pass
hurriedly overhead with an occasional single piping note
and a flight only slightly undulating ; fieldfares flit with a
loose, flapping flight, rising and falling in careless motion,
and constantly uttering their characteristic note ' chak-chak-
chak.' Redwings prefer to feed on the open turf of the
pastures, where they collect a prey of insects and slugs ; but
though fieldfares also feed in the grass fields, often mingling
with starlings and jackdaws to pick a living, they are fonder
of the hawthorn and holly berries. They will descend on a
red hawthorn bush in November and keep rising and settling
in alternate appetite and alarm in much the same way as
smaller parties of missel-thrushes raid the ripe berries of a
mountain-ash or garden cotoneaster in October. They can
be distinguished from missel-thrushes by the conspicuous
slaty patch on the lower part of the back, where the missel-
thrush has a patch of pale brown, and by the dark grey
wing-feathers, which contrast sharply with the lighter patch.
The cries of the two birds are also quite distinct, though
manifestly belonging to the same family. The irregular
jarring screech or chatter of the missel-thrush is easily dis-

WINTER BIRDS OF PASSAGE 171

tinguishable from the clearly articulated ' chak-chak ' of the
fieldfare. Redwings can be most easily distinguished from
song-thrushes by their smaller size, plumper, more robin-like
build, and by their habit of keeping in flocks. These features
are plain at a considerable distance ; at close quarters or
through a fieldglass, we can tell them by a well-marked
pale stripe over the eye, and by the reddish patch on the
flank, uncovered by the wing as they fly. They are
tenderer birds than fieldfares, nesting in lower and more
sheltered woods in Sweden and Norway, and suffering much
more severely from hard weather in English winters. In
this too they agree with song-thrushes rather than missel-
thrushes ; the song-thrush also lives chiefly on worms, slugs
and insects, which it cannot obtain from frozen soil, while
the missel-thrush's diet of berries is available in any
weather, so long as it lasts.

Bramblings or mountain-finches migrate from the same
regions as redwings and fieldfares ; but their visits are much
more irregular, and they haunt much more limited areas
during the winter. Their great resort is a beech-wood
where the ground is well strewn with fallen mast ; and
in a district where beech-woods abound their flocks can
be found in most winters when there has been a good
crop of beech-nuts. They are of much the same size
and general habits as chaffinches, which also come in
flocks to feed on the beech-mast ; but they can be dis-
tinguished by their conspicuous yellow markings upon the
wings, and a pale patch above the tail which catches the
eye when they fly. The siskin is a smaller and more beauti-
ful member of the finch tribe, which sometimes appears in
winter in parties and flocks, feeding with linnets and
chaffinches, or in the large mixed flocks of sparrows, finches
and yellowhammers which haunt the ricks and stackyards

i;2 AUTUMN AND WINTER

in frosty weather. It is a smaller bird than the linnet ; and
the general effect of bright golden-green in its mottled
plumage makes it very noticeable in a flock of various
species. Its golden feathers are more evenly distributed
about its body than those of the yellowhammer ; and it is
also much smaller. The crossbill is yet another species of
the finch tribe which appears irregularly in Britain from the
continental pine-forests in winter. Its visits are exceedingly
irregular ; sometimes very few crossbills are seen in this
country for many winters, and then our island shares in a
great migration extending over a large part of Europe, and
probably extending to the Siberian forests beyond the Asiatic
boundary. The last great migration of this kind took place
in 1909, and was repeated to a smaller extent in the follow-
ing season. Flocks of crossbills were seen wandering in the
Alpine valleys as early as July; and a few weeks later the
arrival of these fascinating birds was reported from many
parts of Britain, as well as from most other parts of Europe.
Both crossbills and siskins breed irregularly and in small
numbers in this country, and since the 1909 migration, the
stock of breeding crossbills has been considerably increased.
But the vast majority of the crossbills which have haunted
fir and larch woods in recent winters have departed before
the spring. In old cock birds the prevailing colour of the
plumage is red ; but they are greatly outnumbered in most
flocks by the hens and young birds, which are chiefly green.
Besides this conspicuous colouring, a flock of crossbills is
likely to attract notice on the wing by their eager, jerky
movement, and a chattering note which seems to corre-
spond to their flight. Their motions are equally restless as
they search in the tops of the firs or larches for the cones,
which they dissect with their remarkable beaks. The tips
of the curved mandibles cross when the beak is closed and

WINTER BIRDS OF PASSAGE 173

at rest ; when it is open and in action, it serves as a power-
ful forceps for wrenching open the obliquely inserted scales
of a fir-cone, and extracting the seed at their base. Some-
times crossbills feed on haws and other hard seeds like
hawfinches or greenfinches.

The arrival of hooded crows in winter is more regular
than that of the three birds last named, but is confined more

HOODED CROW

strictly to certain districts. Considering how common the
hooded crow is each winter in the eastern counties and
along a considerable stretch of the south coast, it is remark-
able that it is an almost unknown visitor to districts but a
few score miles distant. It seems to migrate on a very
definite plan which no new influence disturbs. It is scarce
in Surrey, though common along the coasts of Kent ; but in
autumn a few birds may be seen under the southern slopes
of the North Downs, apparently working their way along
from the gap of the Medway estuary ; and they reappear

174 AUTUMN AND WINTER

on the return migration in March. In many parts of East
Anglia the grey or * Royston ' crow is as familiar in winter
as the robin by the kitchen door. But its manners, though
equally intelligent, are warier ; it haunts the open country,
and particularly the marshes, where it picks up an abundant
living on the flats bared by the tide, and along the belts of
drift cast up along high-water mark. It will eat almost
any animal substance, either dead or killed by itself ; and it
prefers the marshes and estuaries because many forms of
aquatic life are found there in addition to the birds and
animals which haunt the uplands and cultivated fields. As
one lies on the edge of some great cliff, such as the South
Foreland, it is interesting to see the grey and black forms of
the hooded crows contrasted with the seagulls as they hunt
on the shore far below. On such beaches their food con-
sists chiefly of shell-fish ; and they have been seen to carry
up cockles and drop them from a height — a device which
has also been learnt by at least one species of gull.

Woodcock now breed in Britain in increasing numbers ;
but our whole stock of native birds is small in comparison
with the autumn immigration which takes place from
Scandinavia. The great rush takes place between the
middle of October and the middle of November ; and it is
expected at the time of the full moon, which is believed to
be chosen by the woodcock for their passage by night. The
movements of woodcock in this country form a very interest-
ing chapter in the history of migration, and one which is still
imperfectly understood. The general body of evidence tends
to show that the migrations of this species oscillate along a
path running from Scandinavia and northern Russia on the
north-east, south-westwards through our island to western
France, Spain and Portugal. The last point at which they
rest in our islands is the south-west of Ireland ; there they

WINTER BIRDS OF PASSAGE

175

collect in large numbers, and often provide excellent sport.
It is chiefly a matter of the weather whether they collect in
large numbers at this or any other point in their path ; cold
weather sends them on, and mild weather attracts them to
unfrozen feeding-grounds in the woods and mires. Most of
our own breeding birds seem to begin to move southwards
about the end of August. But the date and extent of their
wanderings seem very variable ; they do not appear to be
guided by strict rule any more than the other species nesting

WOODCOCK

with us which are noted in the chapter on the Departure of
Birds. Woodcock are regarded as immigrants in winter,
not emigrants, because the majority of the species nest more
to northwards, and move down at this time ; but they pro-
vide an excellent example of the way in which the same birds
may have a different classification in different parts of their
range, and the same species may be represented in any one

1 76

AUTUMN AND WINTER

district from month to month by birds with a very different
history.

The same is true of snipe ; they nest in many parts of the
country, but the numbers of winter visitors are far greater
than those of the nesting birds. The jack snipe is a winter
visitor pure and simple ; it breeds in Lapland and the Arctic
tundras, and departs again in March. Golden plover appear

SNIPE

on heaths and wide ploughed fields in hard weather, flocking
down from the Baltic and Arctic basins where they chiefly
breed. Some of them may possibly come from nesting-places
on the mountains and high moors of the northern counties
and Scotland ; but probably most of our own birds go south-
ward early, in the vanguard of the movement. On the sea-
shore and in oozy estuaries, as early as August, flocks of
dunlin are once more veering over the creeks and channels,
showing their gleaming bellies as they turn. Curlew come
down from their high-lying inland nesting-grounds at the

WINTER BIRDS OF PASSAGE 177

same time ; and they are joined by wandering whimbrels and
redshanks and oyster-catchers. As autumn goes on, a
greater variety of waders flocks down from the high north.
Some of them, like the ruff and the black-tailed godwit, once
nested in the English fens, and still breed not far away in
Holland and the Baltic basin. Others, like the grey plover
and sanderling and knot, are migrants from the swamps that
fringe the Arctic sea, and their nests have seldom been seen.
Most of these visitors from afar fare still further, and are
seen no more after the season of autumn migration ; but some
remain to add interest to winter walks and watchings.

With the woodcock at the end of October comes the
* woodcock owl.' The short-eared owl is widely known by
this name among sportsmen, because it not only arrives at
the same time as the woodcock, but is flushed in the same
wet woods and thickets where woodcock lie. The owl has
the same accidental connection with the woodcock that the
cuckoo's mate, or wryneck, has with the cuckoo. It is the
least nocturnal of owls in Britain, except the recently intro-
duced little owl, which is now quickly spreading ; and its
greyish-buff form is often seen flying low towards twilight
over some rushy field or tract of sedgy marsh in quest of
field-mice. The barn-owl also flies occasionally before it is
yet dark on an autumn or winter afternoon ; but it is paler
and brighter in colour, as well as being a little smaller. As
is the case with the woodcock, the short-eared owl normally
nests in Britain in numbers small in comparison with its
winter flights. But the enormous multiplication of breeding
birds in the districts of the Scottish lowlands affected by the
great vole plague of 1893 wn*l l°ng De remembered. The
short-eared owls gathered in great numbers to prey on the
swarms of voles, and a great number remained to nest in
spring. Waxing fat on the unlimited diet, they began to

i;8 AUTUMN AND WINTER

breed very early in spring — some time before the ground
was clear of snow — and laid double the usual number of eggs.
The concentration of so many owls on this one district is an
indication of the great numbers of birds which normally
traverse any area during their winter wanderings, and depart
unnoticed. Every short-eared owl which came to this land
of plenty stayed there ; and the consequent abundance of the
species seemed unaccountable and almost miraculous.

Besides short-eared owls, the vole-ridden sheep-farms
were visited on that occasion by large numbers of rough-
legged buzzards. This fine bird of prey, with its legs
feathered right to the toes, is a regular winter visitor in small
numbers from the uplands of Norway where it breeds among
the crags. Usually it is a rare bird, and many years may
pass without its being noticed in a locality ; but the abund-
ance of voles collected the rough-legged buzzards from a wide
area — possibly from the greater part of their whole winter
range. Normally it lives a wandering life during the winter,
chiefly haunting hill ranges and open downs. It is one of the
most typical winter visitors, though not a common one.

Every rough-legged buzzard identified in Britain is easily
recognised as a visitor from abroad, because the cases of its
breeding here are so rare as to be negligible ; but there is no
such easy criterion in the case of some other birds of prey,
such as the sparrow-hawk and kestrel, or of the great flocks
of diverse species which they accompany and prey upon.
The winter visitors to Britain include vast numbers of sky-
larks, chaffinches, goldcrests, rooks, crows, plovers, wood-
pigeons and many other species which are included among
our breeding birds ; and the wanderers from one English
county are winter visitors when they appear in the next.
There can be no doubt about birds of common English
species being visitors when they are seen landing, or passing

WINTER BIRDS OF PASSAGE 179

the lightships and lighthouses, as is often the case. Gold-
crests arrive in autumn in great numbers from the pine-
forests of Scandinavia ; the passage of this minute and
short-winged bird over the stormy breadth of the North
Sea at the roughest period of the year is one of the most
striking features of migration. Soon they spread themselves
over the country, haunting fir- woods and the shelter of ever-
greens in gardens ; they are far more abundant in many
English gardens in winter than in summer, and can constantly
be heard passing through the dark boughs of the spruce
coverts with their needle-like cry.

The visits of most of the geese and ducks which are
commonly classed as ' wild-fowl,' depend to a very great
degree on the weather in this and other lands, and are con-
sequently exceedingly irregular. Some species of geese are
regular in their appearance in their old haunts each autumn,
though variable in numbers ; but the great majority of these
water-fowl come to us when the frost of a severe winter has
gripped their oozy feeding-grounds in the Baltic basin and
along the eastern shores of the North Sea, and their coming
depends on the season. Their numbers have greatly
decreased, since reclamation of marshes and harbours has
diminished their feeding-grounds, and their chief haunts are
more closely watched by gunners. Next to the well-known
mallard — often called the wild duck to the exclusion of all the
other species in this fine group — the commonest species of
duck which visit us in winter are wigeon and teal. The
wigeon keeps chiefly to the estuaries, though it sometimes
visits inland lakes ; but the brilliant little teal distributes
itself well about the country, settling down on small wood-
land ponds as well as larger sheets of water. Pochard are
scarcer than teal and wigeon, but are seen fairly often on
inland sheets of water in hard winters. Though they belong,

i8o

AUTUMN AND WINTER

like the wigeon, to the group of diving ducks, their natural
haunt is on fresh water, and not in the estuaries. Tufted
duck are becoming more common as a nesting species in
many counties, and more familiar as winter visitors where they
do not yet breed. With their bold pied markings of black
and white, bright yellow eye, and hanging crest, the drakes
are very handsome birds, and catch the eye from afar as they
rest on the water or dive. The ducks have the same general

ft . .

-\\ i ;,

TUFTED DUCK AND POCHARD

pattern, but the black and white patches are replaced by two
shades of brown, so that they are much less conspicuous.

All these species belong either to inland waters or to
creeks and harbours ; the true sea-ducks haunt open salt
water, and scatter round the coasts in winter with the divers
and guillemots and gulls. The commonest of them is the
common scoter, or ' black duck,' which can often be seen
near the coast, as well as occasionally inland, when it has
been carried out of its course by stormy weather. Even
during the hour's crossing on the frequented route from
Dover to Calais, scoters can often be seen ; they fly low over
the water like smaller cormorants, or float low in the trough
of the waves. Gannets are also frequently seen in winter in
the straits of Dover, as well as round the rest of our coast ;
as autumn approaches, they wander from their densely packed

WINTER BIRDS OF PASSAGE 181

breeding-places — chiefly off the Scottish coast — and live a
roving sea-life till spring. Guillemots, razorbills, and puffins
rove off the coasts through winter in the same way; and the
little auks join them from their far northern breeding-places
within the Arctic circle. True sea-birds, none of them
willingly approach the shore ; but we see them cast up dead
on the beach after long spells of stormy weather, and they
are sometimes picked up far inland, when gales and thick
weather have confused and beaten them from their course.
Divers are more often seen close inshore, as well as out at
sea ; they nest in fresh-water lakes, and sometimes take
refuge on them in winter. The great northern and black-
throated species are more often seen in winter than the red-
throated, though the last-named is the commonest breeding
species in Britain, and the great northern diver does not
breed with us at all. Most of the divers seen in winter are
immature birds, and their species is difficult to distinguish ;
but they well display the characteristic build and habits of
their tribe as they urge their large and powerful bodies along
the sea, disappear for a long dive, and rise with long neck
and bill uplifted many yards distant from the point where
they disappeared.

A peculiar view of migration is opened to observers on
the east coast of England. It is generally supposed that
a south-east wind sees the greatest movement, although
birds flitting from north-eastern Europe would appear to
prefer a slanting wind. Often there is a dreary undirected
drizzle prevailing, a condition of weather by no means to their
liking or benefit. They often tire and lag on their journey ;
many drop into the sea to perish, and others bewildered, like
mariners on an uncharted coast, drop wearily on ships, or
strike the lanterns of light-vessels, to be picked up in dozens

N

182

AUTUMN AND WINTER

in the morning by the lightsmen, dead or maimed. Black-
birds, starlings, redwings, crows, rooks, and many others are
found by the score, and not infrequently by the hundred.
In widely extended flocks, like baffled skirmishers, they beat
jadedly in. Lapwings also almost invariably arrive abreast
of the wind, often so utterly fatigued as to drop down in
the first sandy wheel-rut that offers, or behind the nearest
stone that affords a little shelter. They are then so tame
and tired that they may be picked up. A lady one day thus
caught a way-worn linnet, placing it in the bosom of her

BREYDON

jacket : when the warmth had revived it, it struggled out
and took to wing.

Some of the great salt-water broads — of which Breydon
is the chief — have been known as great tidal resorts of
numerous species of wild-fowl.

In stirring autumn and in severer winter many travellers
drop in, breaking the southward journey, some driven, maybe,
against their will, by the keen frosts of winter, from Scottish
lochs and Scandinavian fjords. In the shallows, the wigeon
pulls at the long-stemmed zoster a or ' grass/ and deftly breaks
in pieces the succulent stem ; the mallard and his kin bite the
greener fronds into short lengths, and between them they do

WINTER BIRDS OF PASSAGE

183

a good spell of shearing, but there always remains enough,
for ducks to-day are fewer and the zosteras range is wider.
When the broads are hard frozen there flock hither crowds
of coots, that, hungering for the roots of reed and rush,

WIGEON

remember that last year they found a friendly substitute in
the luscious ' wrack.' And they fly to the broad, feeding
like sheep on the grass that lies prone when the tide is out,
and wander about upon the soft ooze, all heading one way,
like grazing cattle.

HUNTING DAYS

IN many of the shires, as a group of the Midland counties of
England are proudly named — the shires with a peculiar right
to the name — a certain sort of morning is called a cub-
hunting morning. It is early. Rich autumn colours glint
through the breaking mist. Blackberry and bracken seem to
assume a particular richness of hue. The air is quiet and
odorous ; and as you stand by the covert-side the baying of
the young hounds — ' matched in mouth like bells ' — seems
scarcely a disturbance of the scene. But the hunt is up ;
and to that everything surrenders. In the rides and outside
the covert the few mounted men clap their riding-whips on
the saddle-flaps to keep the cubs in a particular quarter.
The hour of observation is over. Just now the live things,
cubs and others, would come close up almost to your feet ;
and you would see them quietly exercising their watchful
and furtive gifts. Of the wild animals that England boasts
— and they are not many — the cub is the most delightful to
watch ; and the grown cub, many hold, the only one worth
hunting. The hunt may almost be said to be a part of the
scenery in rural England and Ireland. The floor of lanes and
rides and droves are pitted throughout the year with the hooves
of the hunters. The bay of the hounds is the most musical of
sounds ; the restless sterns of the pack were once compared
by an enthusiastic master with the swaying heads of the

184

HUNTING DAYS

185

reeds in a wind. The flaming pink of huntsmen, whip and
habitut, is an attraction to draw every countryman, even the
persistent labourer, from his work. A politician on an Irish
tour not long since offered a country driver two pounds to catch
a certain train ; but as he offered it the horn of the Galway
hunt rang over the moor, and the driver refused to stir.

/*

FOX CUBS AT PLAY

Villagers of all ranks proudly * walk ' the puppies, so sharing
in a sport vicariously democratic, though aristocratic enough
in equipment.

All hunting is autumn and winter sport ; but it fills more
than half the year. Cub-hunting begins in September, and
there are those who boast of killing a May fox. It fills too
much of the year. Beagles and harriers hunt many a hare
that is heavy with young ; and this is an inhumanity that no
sportsman can face with equanimity. The May fox is now

i86 AUTUMN AND WINTER

seldom killed, though out on the rougher moorlands the
ambition to kill him still holds.

'Cubbing,' the most democratic form of the sport in one
way, because it may be followed on foot, is one of the few
sports which compels an early start. How many of us owe
our knowledge of early morning hours to the news, never
published, but breathed quietly to a few residents, that
hounds will be at such-and-such woods at five-thirty on such-
and-such days. People as a rule begin shooting at a late

THE RUNNER AND HIS DOG

hour, though they would be wiser to imitate the cub-hunters.
There are no hours in the year to equal the early autumn
hours ; and a wood is the place to enjoy them, cubs or no
cubs. As hunting, the training of the young hounds in the
pursuing of cubs is not a grand sport, and it may be brutal.
No sporting experience is more appalling than the digging
out of the cub from an earth; but one hopes that the
fighting savagery of the animal overcomes fear ; and it
seems so. Many a cub, whom we watch in earlier months
playing with the rest of the litter, will a little later reach
an ecstasy of the fighting spirit in which he will attack
anything. One has seen the cub thrust his head out of the
earth, and in face of the ring of hounds and men and

DIANA OF THE UPLANDS
By CHARLES WELLINGTON FURSE, A.R.A

HUNTING DAYS 187

children close his jaws on the metal of the draining spade,
even while the terrier was fastening on to him in the rear.
The rush of the hounds, overwhelming cub and terrier (who
runs a greater risk outside than in), is frankly terrible, as the

hunt of a grown fox in the open never is. But the litters
must be reduced. In every hunt the poultry money comes
to a considerable sum ; and though it is a humorous reproach
against farmers that they prefer to have their chickens killed,
the havoc is often pitiable. When one has once seen a
houseful of hens killed and mauled by a fox one realises that
this splendid beast is vermin nevertheless, and deserves the
generic name. Nature is ' red in tooth and claw/

If you would see the fox at his best or in most character-
istic guise, wait by the side of the covert till the hunt is gone.
Within a very short while the old vixens return. If you
know their ways you may come thus within a few yards of
them. Light-footed and wary she will slip back along the

i88 AUTUMN AND WINTER

hedgerow, looking this way and that and listening. She will
stop and stare greedily at the grown lambs which huddle
away in a sort of inquisitive alarm. When the vixen comes
quite close to you, as you wait by the gap peering at her, and
becomes aware, she sheers off and moves rapidly ; but at no
moment is there any sort of start or look of alarm. She
never scurries, never loses for a moment her full presence of
mind.

A splendid picture of this strong-nerved readiness of the
fox was seen in a Cheshire wood after the hunt was gone.

The wood had been drawn blank and the keeper's pride was
touched. The hunt would certainly say that he trapped or
shot his foxes, a crime still regarded as among the most
heinous. So the keeper, with a stopper of earths, entered
the woods and led the way to a great sloping tree. Snug
and almost hidden in an axil of the branches lay a watchful
vixen. She was stirred out of her lair ; and seeing her only
alternative, took it with great deliberation. Quite slowly and
steadily, looking at the watchers on this side and that, she
stalked down the trunk, taking in, one would say, every
detail of the scene. Then, within a yard or two of the
ground, she jumped down and slipped off with wonderful
noiselessness on velvet foot through the undergrowth. She
might have stood for a likeness of the Happy Warrior.

HUNTING DAYS

189

If in any animal instinct has developed into a form of
reason, it is in the fox. A Welsh observer has given some
evidence that the dog-fox will on occasion drive the game
to the vixen ; but whether or not this is so, almost all their
actions show notable deliberation, give the suggestion that

the action whatever it may be is thought out. This holds
through the chase till the point of death. Foxes realise the
danger of their own scent. A hard pressed fox has been
seen to roll itself well over in a heap of manure. He fre-
quently runs through a drain or takes to water, or attempts to
confuse the trail among a flock of sheep.

The hunting months of the year may be said to be four.
The summer-time is ended with the first cub-hunt, at five

i go

AUTUMN AND WINTER

o'clock some September morning. Many a hunting man has
enjoyed a stolen run in October ; but the first real runs are
in November. No rural science is more characteristic of
England than these opening days. The hounds are an
English dog bred through many generations to present
perfection. Even in Canadian county clubs, where the drag
is a popular pursuit, the huntsmen boast of the Fitzwilliam or
the Belvoir blood in their packs. The horses are hunters

such as you will not see out of England, for in no other
country is there the thoroughbred strain from which to breed
them. The little woods — the gorses, the groves, the wolds,
the spinneys — which they will draw, the trim hedgerows
round the fields across which they will run, the quiet eagerness
of the men and women, the spruce grooms on second horses,
the unquestioned leadership of the huntsman and deference
of the hunt, the fine Saxon names of the hounds, drilled into
obedience matching the rest of the hunt, by the cheery voice
of the whip — all this and a hundred more details of the meet
will remain pictured on the mind of the countryman as if they
made up the season not less than the last leaves fluttering

HUNTING DAYS 191

from the elms or ' Huntingdonshire Oaks,' as they are known
in the Fitzwilliam country.

Among the favourite reminiscences of hunting men is the
record of Mr. Parry's last verdict. Towards the close of his
life he was asked what he most regretted in his past life, what
in especial he would do differently if he had his life again.
His answer came pat. ' I should hunt/ he said, ' a great deal
more before Christmas.' Nine years out of ten, the season
is open up to Christmas. Snow and binding frost are rare.
' The southerly winds and the cloudy sky ' that the hunting
man longs for are frequent. The ' going ' is soft. The very
wind suggests a ride ; and in the bared hedgerows is no
symptoms of budding green, in the woods is no sound of
spring song to suggest that the truce between hunter and
hunted is approaching.

Yet February is usually regarded as the hunting month of
months, though frost is common and pairing has begun. But
the middle of the season is the truer zenith. The contrary
theory has prevailed, principally because shooting ends on
February 2nd, and hunting remains the sole sport in the shires.
December may be taken as the summit of the season ; and the
best days that most hunting men recall are those when they
rode back in the dusk and the tea hour was not passed when
they reached home.

The cardinal mystery of hunting is the scent. The
wisest cannot be sure when scent will lie and when it will not.
It is held by some that a blue fog on the horizon tells of
a bad scent. A very heavy wind is certainly against scent.
Extremes of dry as extremes of wet are against it.
But all their rules are broken. Mr. Scarth Dixon, in a
charming little book on The Hunting Year, records the
fastest runs he remembers as coming in March ; and adds he
has never enjoyed an exceptional run in January. It is not

192 AUTUMN AND WINTER

unlikely that different foxes leave scent of very different
power, certainly the vixen, like other mothering animals, leaves
a very faint scent in spring. Perhaps the one thing that can
be said with certainty is that scent is better under a low
barometer than a high ; and the barometer is never lower
than when the wind blows heavy clouds towards the north-
east. The hunting-poet had therefore full justification for his
ideal of a ' southerly wind and a cloudy sky.' Such a wind
is an insurance against frost unless the clouds are level and
very high — it has enough moisture to make that most perfect
of all organs attain its most sensitive pitch, and the air holds
the vibrations or infinitesimal particles — whatever they be —
that instruct the nose of the hound as the ethereal vibrations
the eye of the eagle.

OUR INDIAN SUMMER

BETWEEN the roaring gales of autumn there is usually some
calm interval of exhausted violence when the sun shines
bright from a limpid sky, and summer almost seems to have
returned. Though most of the summer flowers have vanished,
and some of the trees are already bare, the colours of the
autumn foliage fill the landscape with redoubled splendour,
and make this season the most brilliant of the year. In
America this period of calm dry weather after the early
autumn storms is longer and more regular than usually in
England ; and the oaks and maples in that dry climate burn
with a fiercer brilliance than in our own mild air. There
this halcyon season is known as the Indian summer, because
it was formerly the great hunting-time when the Indians and
the settlers who followed them gathered most of their year's
harvest of furs and game. The name carries a suggestion
both of the forest peoples and of the forest landscapes, which
flame into pre-eminence after the cultivated fields are stripped
bare ; and it is conveniently used in England for the whole
season of late autumn sunshine and brilliant boughs, when
the woods are at their richest.

According to the older reckoning, St. Luke's summer
falls in October, and is followed by St. Martin's little summer,
when the November sunshine lights up the golden elms.
Our autumns are generally broken into alternate periods of

194 AUTUMN AND WINTER

calm and storm ; and the bright periods often fall true to
the calendar. St. Luke's Day is on October 18, and
Martinmas falls on November n. Between the two there
is generally a week or more of stormy weather, which strips
most of the trees which have turned colour by that time.
St. Luke's sunshine wakes the full splendour from the
beeches, which have a greater wealth and diversity of colour
than any other British tree. It falls on the autumn bracken
at its richest, and on the gold and purple of the lingering
furze and heather. By Martinmas the beeches are bare, the
bracken is down-beaten, the furze and heather have grown
dim. But the elms which were still almost green in mid-
October have changed to their frail but splendid gold ; and
a deeper russet begins to smoulder in the tops of the oaks.
The landscapes of the two little summers show a contrast
that is only possible at the swiftest turning-points of the
year. Nature sinks far towards winter between the days
when the last swallow greets St. Luke and the Martinmas
morning when the fieldfare clacks overhead as the white fog
clears. But both of these little summers are filled with calm
sunshine, and a sense of a summer day-dream still lingering
to enchant the land.

On an average of a series of years the features of these
two summerlike seasons are very constant ; but part of their
attraction is the way in which they vary from year to year.
In 1911 the glorious October weather added the flowers of
summer and almost the growth of spring to the unchanged
verdure of the beech-woods; and many house-martins delayed
their departure until November. The first snow seldom lies
in a green landscape ; but St. Martin's summer may open
with the oaks' crowns still green, and rising above the white
sheet spread on the fields. Then the sun shines day after
day, and the earth forgets its vision of winter. By St.

OUR INDIAN SUMMER 195

Luke's Day the autumn harvest of berries is at its height ;
but in some seasons it is combined with a rich display of
lingering flowers. Beautiful and unusual posies can be
gathered of crimson rowan and guelder berries, mingled
with yellow corn marigold, and the dark clusters of the
privet contrasted with sky-blue chicory flowers. Mayweed
and poppy still brighten the corn and root fields, harebells
and blue campanulas mix with the gorse and heather on

GUELDER-BERRIES

downs and commons, and honeysuckle and sprays of fox-
glove lurk in the thinning copses. But the brightness both
of berry and blossom is overwhelmed by the splendour of
the autumn foliage. The boughs in the beech-woods range
through every shade of red and yellow, from pale buff and
ivory to richest orange and crimson. The colour of the
rain-washed bark blends with that of the leaves and produces
a rich tint of purple. Where a great beech-wood burns to
the blue October sky in ridge beyond flaming ridge it almost
awes the mind by its vastness ; but the effect is hardly less
striking where a single coloured spray lights up some wood-
land avenue. In garden alleys and dark paths by streams,

o

196 AUTUMN AND WINTER

where the dull bronzed foliage hung heavily all through
July and August and September, now a branch of elder or
sycamore stands like a blown torch across the track, and
makes the whole place beautiful. Through the thinning woods
the gold and amber of the bracken bathe the hill ; red leaves
come floating down the freshened stream, where crimson
berries hang towards the red-spotted trout. The colour
seems intenser for the prevailing silence ; the last curlew's
cry is gone from the moors, and the birds are subdued in
the garden. There would be something almost sinister
in this squandering of all spring's verdure in splendid ruin,
if we did not feel through all the riot and waste the year's
quiet march to spring again.

Silent as are these brilliant October days, when we
compare them, as they seem to invite us, with the other
season of bright colour in spring, they are not without their
song. Compared with the dead season of August, October
is a musical time. The robins are in fine singing courage, as
if every red leaf mocked them with the suggestion of a rival.
They have nearly finished the sharp contests for autumn and
winter quarters which begin after the summer moult ; but
still they chase one another about the walks, and the
conqueror mounts in triumph to utter his paean. There is
no instinct of melancholy in the robin's autumn song, as the
occasions on which it is uttered sufficiently testify. The
poets have looked into their own hearts and not into his
when they represent him as mourning for summer's decay.
At all times the clear sweetness of the robin's song has a
touch of plaintiveness to our ears ; even in spring this is
very noticeable when the robin is heard just after a gay
singer like the chaffinch. As far as it is possible to compare
them, the robin's autumn song has not quite the cheerful
vigour of its March or April notes, but this is simply due to

CUTTING GORSE
By HARRY BECKER

I

OUR INDIAN SUMMER

the fact that it has not reached the
full physical vitality of the mating
season. The song-thrushes are
only just beginning to recover
their songs in October ; they utter
a scrannel piping from the elm
boughs, on the soft wet afternoons
that seem most to encourage them
with a suggestion of spring. A
rare but characteristic October
singer is the woodlark, which
can be heard pouring out its
singularly rich and skilful song
from a tree-top or telegraph
wire. A few bright insects of
true summer are still active in
these October days and nights,
though most have sunk to
sleep. Red admiral and small
tortoiseshell butterflies linger in
warm corners on the ivy-bloom,
and small coppers flicker among
the gorse, and settle on the
last hawkweed blooms on the
common. In the calm and un-
chilled nights the glow-worm
shines by the roadside with a
pale greenish light. Her lamp
changes with the warmth of the
season ; in the hottest weeks of
July it burns almost as red as
the end of a cigar.

A great change is wrought

197

SMALL COPPERS SETTLE ON THE
LAST HAWKWEED

198 AUTUMN AND WINTER

by the next spell of stormy weather, and St. Martins
summer shines on a barer world. The mornings are
heavy with white mist, through which the heavier leaves
pat the earth as they are loosened by the rising
temperature after the night's frost. As the pale blue sky
appears through the melting mist overhead, the crowns
of the elms stand out in masses of gold and amber and
smoky yellow. Though the range of colour is much nar-
rower than in the beeches three weeks earlier, the increased
simplicity of this Martinmas display only adds to its effect.
It is in accordance with the whole spirit of the time, when
summer stands on the thinnest of platforms separating it
from the dark gulf beneath, and yet never looks more fair.
The mist clings all day to the remoter distances in an almost
invisible film, and dwells transparently even in the hollows
among the upper boughs of the elms. We feel that all this
beauty hangs by a tenure as frail as the mist, and that it will
be destroyed by a single night of storm. The finest of all
the pictures formed by the elms at this time is where they
stand massed round one of the large black red-tiled barns
which are common under the flanks of the chalk hill-ranges.
Elms grow to a great height and volume of foliage on the
first belt of loam under the chalk-hills, and dominate the
open landscape. Their golden boughs make a magnificent
contrast of colour with the long red roof and black sides of
the wooden barns ; and there are just those minor repetitions
of colour which bring out the force of a general contrast
most picturesquely. All the year round a crust of yellow
and orange lichen mottles the tiles ; but now it falls into a
new harmony with the boughs above, and with the leaves
that drift upon the roof. The sooty spots that fleck the
yellow elm-leaves answer in the same way to the barn's black
timbers below. Every feature of the English countryside

OUR INDIAN SUMMER

199

has its one perfect season ; and the time to see these old
timber barns is when the elms turn yellow. The few flowers
that linger in the November landscapes are too faded and
scanty to hold their own against the brilliance of the foliage
and the delicacy of the pale blue sky. The eye overlooks
them as it catches the broad outlines of the elm-tops and the
pale haze clinging to every horizon. Masses of thistle-down

THE TALL ELMS AROUND THE BARN

drifting among the rough roadside herbage shed a gleam
like the grey dews and pearly sky ; and the banded crimson
and orange of an osier-bed ripe for cutting seize the attention
by their very vividness. The only other conspicuous note of
colour in the landscape is the smouldering russet of the oaks,
or sometimes their dark bronze-green. But while the vigour
of vegetation declines, the song of the birds is increasing.
In November the song-thrushes first gain the rich winter
song, which is not much inferior to their full music in spring.
Often they sing from among the elm boughs ; and the con-

2OO

AUTUMN AND WINTER

centration of colour and song shows St. Martin's summer at
its richest. Starlings flute and chatter among the trees and
on the house-tops all through the sunny days ; and on calm
mornings, when there is a promise of a fine day to follow, we
can hear them beginning their broken monologues outside
our windows before dawn. Robins utter sudden bursts of
song in the dark hollows of the shrubbery where the rotting
leaves give out a smell of mould ; they will haunt those dark
bowers until they nest in them again in spring. It is these
songs of the birds which carry the mind forward beyond the
frail brightness of St. Martin's summer to the spring which
its falling leaves prepare. There is a sense of respite in the
sunshine and golden boughs that is all the keener because
we know there is no exemption. Winter may come suddenly
in a night, and all the elm boughs be bared by the gale, or
by the gentle morning wind after a frost and fog. But to
the thrushes it is almost spring already ; they have felt it
for a full month past, and will hardly cease proclaiming it
all through the shortest days. While the mists and golden
leaves of St. Martin's summer speak of imminent decay, its
birds foretell life's renewal.

BRITISH DEER

OUR three kinds of deer are the finest group of wild animals
now surviving in our islands. In speed and grace, combined
with the noble appearance of its antlers, the red deer excels
all our other beasts ; its wild and yet cloistered habits
and fine instincts give it an added charm. Two of our
three species — the red deer and the roe — are undoubted wild
animals, descended from the races which inhabited Britain
in far prehistoric times. It is possible that the fallow deer
may be the same. Since no remains of bones or antlers
have ever been found in the recent fossil deposits, or in the
peat-beds, it is generally believed that the present stock of
fallow deer in our parks and forests were introduced in
Roman times, like the pheasant. But remains of the fallow
deer are not lacking from the older fossil layers, where they
occur with those of the red deer and the roe. It is strange
that this one species should have vanished, while the other
two survived : and it is possible that further search in the
peat-beds will yet discover traces of the existence of the
fallow deer in early historic times, and link up the present
stock with the primeval dwellers in the land.

The red deer is a thoroughly characteristic animal of the
great forest belt which runs right round the world in north
temperate climes. Its representative in America is the

201

202

AUTUMN AND WINTER

wapiti ; and in Asia, South and East Europe, and North
Africa, there are numerous races and varieties of red deer
which do not deserve the name of separate species. The
branching form of the antlers has been moulded by develop-
ment among the like patterns of the forest boughs. Now-
adays it may seem strange to speak of the red deer as a
typical forest beast ; we are more accustomed to see it amid

the more or less bare moor-
land and mountain scenery of a
Scotch deer-forest. But it is
chiefly confined in Scotland to
open country, because no room
can be found for large beasts
of wandering habits and hearty
appetites on the lower, more
wooded and more fertile
ground. The red deer has
been expelled to the lonelier
uplands, like the raven among
fowl. But there are miles of
dense thicket as well as open
moor in its haunts on Exmoor ; and the same is true of the
New Forest, where a very few red deer still survive. For-
merly they inhabited all the great tracts of forest which
covered the larger part of England. Their comparatively
small size, and the inferior growth of their antlers in Great
Britain, also show that the exposed conditions of a typical
deer-forest are not the most suitable for them. Fine beast
though a well-grown Scotch stag may be, the spread of the
best horns ever seen nowadays is far inferior to the finest
specimens from south-eastern Europe, and also to those
dug up from the peat, and probably dating from two to three
thousand years back. The weakening effect of inbreeding

\\

HIND OF RED DEER

BRITISH DEER 203

has been one cause of this deterioration of the stock ; and
the natural tendency for stalkers to kill off the stags with
the finest heads has also had some effect. But the main
reason is simply that the feed is poor in a typical deer-forest,
and the climate bleak ; and the deer do not grow to the
same fine proportions as in more sheltered and fertile
places. Park deer that lie warm and feed richly usually out-
grow the stags of the open forests. Exmoor stags have
comparatively poor heads in spite of the conditions more
nearly approaching the ancient forest life. The reason in
this case is partly that the soil and feed are generally poor,
in spite of the ground being wooded, and partly owing to
the deer being regularly hunted. This prevents them
waxing fat in comfort, and laying on flesh and horn. The
most active stags are frequently those with the poorest de-
velopment of horns ; * hummel ' or hornless stags are among
the most vigorous of their kind.

Late September and early October are the time of the
red deers' rutting season, when their activity is at its height.
They have put on the thick dark winter coat, with the shaggy
pendent fringe on the throat ; and their horns are rubbed
clean of the last trace of the velvet which covered them
during their growth. Now they pursue the hinds, and bell
in the autumn nights ; they fight with one another for leader-
ship among the hinds' herd, and are dangerous to approach.
The spreading antlers borne on powerful necks are a dan-
gerous weapon. Stags do not often engage in desperate
fights ; the weight and condition of the stronger beasts are
well appreciated, and the junior gives in after a rather per-
functory display. But rousing fights sometimes occur be-
tween well-matched stags from different quarters of the forest,
which have not grown up together and so learnt one another's
strength. Sometimes, too, there is a great fight when the

204 AUTUMN AND WINTER

stag which has long ruled the herd is dispossessed by a
rising rival.

Stags eat little during the excitement of the rutting season,
and are often much wasted by the end, when hard winter
weather may set in. Unless severe weather makes them
pack on the lowest and most sheltered ground, they abandon
the more or less gregarious life which they live during
autumn, and rove in small parties until the next autumn.
In May they throw off the grey-brown winter coat, and put
on the red-brown dress which gives them their distinctive
name. The hinds calve in May and June, and grow bold
in defence of their young. They have an inbred fear of
dogs, derived from the old days when they were assailed by
wolves, and will maul and even kill a dog by striking it with
their forefeet. In May in Scotland, a few weeks later than
in England, the stags also shed their horns. Very soon
the new ones begin to appear as velvet-covered knobs ; the
growth is very rapid, so that by early August the new pair
are complete, and the stag cleans them of their velvet coating
by rubbing them against trees, posts, and palings. Then the
stalking season begins in the Scotch forest, and stag-hunting
on Exmoor. Besides these great headquarters of the red
deer, and the handful still left in the New Forest, there is an
ancient herd still surviving on the Cumberland fells between
Helvellyn and Ullswater.

Fallow deer have existed for many centuries in the New
Forest, and those of Windsor, Epping, and Rockingham, as
well as in other parks where they were originally shut up
and protected when the land around was enclosed. Red
deer stand about four feet high at the withers, and fallow
deer about three ; but the smaller deer, though less majestic,
is even more graceful. There are two distinct races, both
of very ancient origin, and conspicuously distinguished by

BRITISH DEER 205

colour. The commonest and handsomest variety has the
well-known red-brown coat, spotted with white, in summer,
and in winter becomes greyish-brown. The other variety
is dark grey-brown all the year round, though in winter it
becomes a little paler. The deer of Epping Forest are of

FALLOW DEER

this type. It is commonly said to have been introduced by
James i. ; but it is known to have existed earlier, and to
have dwelt with the spotted variety in Windsor Forest in
the fifteenth century. Besides these two main types, varie-
ties of colour, including pure white, are not uncommon. The
spotted variety is now found in a wild state in many parts of
southern Europe and in Asia Minor ; but the origin of the
dark variety is unknown, though it probably arose from some
local and semi-domesticated breed.

206 AUTUMN AND WINTER

October is the rutting season of the fallow deer as
well as the red deer ; and the bucks kept in parks some-
times become dangerous at this season, though much less
often than the red deer. Their cry is a kind of grunt or bark,
much less sonorous than the voice of the red deer at the
same season. The horns are dropped in May, and the
growth of the new pair is complete in August, as in the case
of the red deer. From the middle of May to the middle of
June is the time when the doe calves. The young fawn is
hidden by her in some lair among the undergrowth and
bracken, and her anxiety often shows that the little creature
is hidden not far away. She runs irresolutely to and fro
near an intruder ; and if she thinks that he is going to inter-
fere with the fawn she will attract its attention by a half-
whining, half-bleating cry. Then the fawn springs up from
the concealing fern, and leaps lightly away at its mother's
heels through the woodland. If the doe and fawn are run-
ning together when an intruder is first seen, the doe will
sometimes hide the fawn in safe cover and run straight away
from the spot. When she hides it in this way she seems to
have confidence in its safety ; but she does not appear to
think that a fawn previously left hidden in the long herbage
is safe against a man arriving subsequently. When the
fawn grows stronger, in July, it follows its mother more
regularly, and the pair speed off together at any alarm. As
with the red deer, the fallow bucks only consort with the
does in the mating season, and at other times wander to-
gether in small companies. In the semi-confinement of park
life these parties are apt to be larger than in open forest ;
but bucks and does still feed some distance apart.

Fallow deer gain their name from their colour, like the
red deer. Fallow is an old English word originally mean-
ing pale yellow-brown, or light tawny red — very much what

BRITISH DEER 207

we call * fawn ' — and the fact that this is the old name of the
species confirms the view that the dappled variety has always
been best known in England, and that the dark phase is a
more recent introduction. Their horns are broader in the
beam than those of the red deer, and approximate more
closely to those of the reindeer and elk. Both these animals
once flourished in Britain, as their remains show ; and with
them, as the sovereign of all the world's race of deer, roved

the magnificent Irish elk, which was really a giant fallow
deer. This splendid beast stood half as high again as a
modern red deer, and the span of its horns is between nine
and ten feet across. Very few of the best red deer heads
killed for many years past span forty inches. The most
abundant and finest heads of the Irish elk have been found
buried in or just beneath the layer of peat in Irish lakes and
bogs ; but they also occur in England and the south of Scot-
land. In some races of fallow deer this broad or palmate
form of the horns is almost lost ; it is very narrow in the deer
of Epping Forest, which have rather degenerated owing to
long isolation. Like red deer, fallow deer principally feed

2o8 AUTUMN AND WINTER

on grass, but have an appetite for the leaves of many de-
ciduous trees. They are also fond of gnawing the bark of
thorn-trees. They are a more purely woodland species than
the red deer, though less so than the roe. From the com-
paratively small size, the tameness, and the great beauty of
the true * fallow ' or dappled breed in summer, they are far
the most suitable of the British group of deer for keeping in
most parks. The red deer is almost too large and wild an
animal to fit in with the gentle sylvan aspect of typical Eng-
lish park land. It needs a grey day when the distances are
blinded with drizzling rain, and the feeding stags shake them-
selves free of the moisture from time to time with a strong
spasmodic motion that surrounds them with a thick cloud of
spray. On fine days they look too big for their surroundings,
which the dainty fallow deer suit perfectly.

The roe deer is rather remarkable among our larger
English animals for the recent extension of its range. This
is due to the great increase of plantations in Scotland, which
supply this typically woodland species with a congenial
home. They also tend to wander further afield into new
plantations when their old woods grow dark and over-
shadowed, and the feeding consequently poor. Roe are
thus growing noticeably commoner in many districts where
planting has been general during the last half century, and
are making their appearance in places where they have
been unknown in living memory. Their increase as they
populate fresh districts is only partly counterbalanced by their
diminution in some of their old haunts. Their increase as
the result of the extension of planting is comparable to that
of the capercailzie in the same districts. In England the
roe became almost extinct in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries ; it seems only to have kept a footing at Naworth
Castle in Cumberland. But it was reintroduced into Dorset-

BRITISH DEER 209

shire in 1800, and from its original home at Milton Abbas
has extended far and wide. Though the roes are nowhere
very numerous, owing to their solitary habits, and the lack
of protection in many places, they are becoming a familiar
species over a considerable part of Hampshire and Somerset-
shire, as well as Dorsetshire. They have reappeared in the
New Forest, where they were long extinct. Their spread
has been greatly helped on the Dorset and Hampshire
border by the increase of plantations and self-sown thickets
of the Scotch fir. The two Scotch species thrive and spread
together. Probably the roe will gradually extend its range
through a large part of the fir-clad region in the southern
counties ; but it loves sylvan quiet, and is never likely to
settle in the more populous districts. Its dislike of disturb-
ance is so marked that in spite of its comparatively small
size it tends to wander away from Epping Forest, where
it has been reintroduced, though the fallow deer are well
content to stay. Its habits are wary and partly nocturnal, like
those of the red deer. If the forest has quiet open glades
in which it can browse the mixed herbage, it will feed by
day ; but if it inhabits a thick wood bordering open land,
it will wait till night to come outside the wood to feed.
Besides grass, it eats the leaves of holly and deciduous
trees, shoots of heather and other various shrubs, and also
raids growing corn, clover, and turnips. Its spread is there-
fore a good deal checked by the hostility of farmers, except
on estates where it is carefully protected.

The roe differs considerably from both the red and
fallow deer in the chief dates of its calendar. Early autumn
for this species is the quiet time after the rutting season,
when the reddish summer coat is changed for the thicker
pelt of grey ; and in November the bucks begin to shed
their horns. The last horns are dropped by about the end

2IO

AUTUMN AND WINTER

ROE DOE

of the year ; and the new pair are clean of velvet in

April. Unlike the males of the other species, the roe-
buck keeps company with the doe
throughout the winter ; but though he
is sometimes supposed to be strictly
monogamous, his fidelity is not quite
so unwavering, Sometimes accom-
panied by a fawn or two, a pair of
roes often haunt the same tract of
woods through the whole winter
season ; they usually form no such
herds or parties of the separate sexes
as are conspicuous in the case of
the larger deer. When roes pack,
it is a sign of very hard weather.

As spring comes on, the bucks tend to wander away from

the does, often seeking higher ground. The young

are born early in June, one or two

in a family. The timid doe shows

the usual maternal courage at this

season, and will sometimes attack a

human trespasser in the thicket

where the fawns lie, or any four-

footed enemy such as a dog or a fox.

Foxes are the chief enemies of the

roe ; but in some parts of Scotland

the fawns are now and then seized

by the golden eagle. In the midst

of the concealing brushwood the

doe sometimes makes a soft bed for

the fawns, and covers them with

moss and plucked grass when she

leaves them. The rutting season

ROEBUCK

BRITISH DEER

211

of the roe is in July and August. As the roe only stands
about two feet high at the withers to the red deer's four,
and the fallow deer's three, its horns are naturally much less
imposing. They are short, upright, and three-pointed, and
their rough surface is very familiar in the shape of the ' stag's
horn ' handles of pocket-knives and carving-knives, most of
which are supplied by the roe.

It is an axiom of natural history that the young of a

ROE DEER

species often reproduce the ancestral markings ; and it is
an interesting point that the young of all three species of
deer are spotted with white. It thus appears that the normal
dappled type of fallow deer in summer dress preserves the
original livery of the whole group, from which both others
have completely departed. Even the fallow deer has given
up the traditional pattern in its winter dress, and at all times
of the year in the case of the grey variety. All this must
help to raise a doubt whether the spotted type of marking
is really a highly protective device, gradually elaborated by
ages of natural selection, as it is often held to be. The

212 AUTUMN AND WINTER

evidence supplied by these three deer, and by various other
animals and birds, points rather to the spotted livery being
a primitive and imperfect design of very general occurrence,
out of which many species have emerged. The spotted type
of marking, as exemplified by the fallow deer, or panther, or
spotted hyaena, is supposed to protect its wearer by blending
with the chequered pattern of sunlight falling through
deciduous foliage. It would therefore be reasonable enough,
on the protective argument, for the fallow deer to lose its
spots in winter and adopt a plainer grey dress ; for the deci-
duous trees lose their leaves, and the chequer-pattern is
missing. It might be argued that the red deer and the roe
lost this pattern because they haunted forests chiefly con-
sisting of coniferous trees, in which the chequer-pattern
characteristic of deciduous woods was absent altogether.
This is only partly true at the present day ; and it is impossible
to determine what type of woodland was inhabited by the
red and roe deer while they were acquiring their present
colours. But whatever may be the precise protective value
for these two deer of their plain red and grey liveries, either
now or in times past, it does seem clear that they represent
Nature's perfected pattern, and that the spotted markings
are an earlier pattern which they have outgrown.

WINTER

WINTER, in the Pickwickian sense, is rare in England.
Except that the days grow short, that the solstice falls and
the sun seems to stop still, giving five days of equal length
on either side of Christmas, we should hardly be aware of
winter's arrival. We may pick snowdrops, primroses, and
even outdoor strawberries on Christmas Day. We may hear
the thrushes sing. We may ride to hounds on either side of
Christmas Day. Snow, very rare in November, is still rare in
December, and often the frosts are much milder than those
which brought down the ash leaves in October. The ' old-
fashioned winter ' seems to have disappeared as completely
as ' the snows of yester year/ Now and again, of course, we
have had great frosts round the week of shortest days. In
1860, a sudden frost after open weather bridged the rivers.
The thermometer was below zero, and there was skating on
the Ouse on Christmas Day. Those born since then have
enjoyed a longer period of skating in March than in
December, and some of the most serious drifts have been
in Easter week.

The impression left from many Christmas Day walks upon
the memory of a dweller in the southern half of England,
is a picture of green fields. The green grass leads to a path
across the ploughs, where on either side the blades of wheat
or winter oats gleam almost transparent in the sun. At the

213

2i4 AUTUMN AND WINTER

top of the hill the larks sang, and on the other side where
the path passes a spinney, the thrushes let out now and again
a burst of spring merriment. The leaves of the honeysuckle
are an inch long, and catkins hang from the hazel. Can
this be called winter ? December is, of course, the beginning
not the middle of winter, as we often regard it. Presently
bitter and perhaps ' bearing ' frosts will change all this. The
wheat will be happily protected under snow or, if it is too
luxuriant — ' winter proud ' in the delightful country phrase —
and snow is sparing it may be cut to death. Yet one of the
necessary qualities of winter is absent when we enter a new
year. ' Vere novo incipiendus erat ' ; we ought to have
begun our year in spring. But most of us feel the argument,
expressed with great force by a Lancashire naturalist, that
spring begins as soon as the days lengthen. The drawing
out of the days influences us almost as much as it stirs and
encourages the birds. They exult marvellously in longer
hours of sunlight. A curious example was found in the
Zoological Gardens where numbers of the small equatorial
birds at first perished of darkness. It was against their
instinct to feed in gloom and twilight : they would rather
starve. When at last a sympathetic keeper lengthened day
by the aid of electric light, their health and appetite returned.
It is so with our native birds.

Longer hours of sunlight have their effect, however stern
or cloudy the weather may be. Of course, very hard frost,
if it lasts long, ruffles their feathers and may even kill them
through starvation, but at a breath of warmth or moisture
the sense of spring, of a new life returns. One cannot
remember a year where partridges have not paired before
January was out, or when spring songs had not been heard
from tits and hedge-sparrows. Every January some of the
spring flowers are out, and the number is increasing at great

WINTER
By BUXTON KNIGHT

WINTER 215

rate all through February. Already Tennyson's neat but
perhaps too particular lines become applicable :

1 Now fades the last long streak of snow,
Now burgeons every maze of quick
About the flowering squares, and thick
By ashen roots the violets grow.'

By March 25, when technically winter ends, the world has
been enjoying an orgy of spring gardening, especially of seed-
sowing. So, however crabbed winter may be, spring is
always in its lap, and the season in England is the least
real of all the seasons : ' If winter comes shall spring be far
behind ? '

The feeling of the unreality of winter results, it may be,
from an incidental course of too gentle because unseasonable
weather over the new century. In the future, we shall no
doubt taste again the Shakespearean or the Pickwickian
Christmas. In the earliest of all his plays Shakespeare,
out-topping others in his native manner, put the sense of a
really seasonable, what we call an old-fashioned, winter into
two stanzas where each line is a picture :

'When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in the pail ;
When blood is nipt and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl :

Tu-whit, tu-who. A merry note.
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all about the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,

And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marion's nose looks red and raw ;

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl —

Then nightly sings the staring owl :
Tu-whit, tu-who. A merry note.

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.'

216 AUTUMN AND WINTER

Such pictures still hold. In the fen country, which receives
the first brunt of the east winds, one remembers hearing
the ice tinkle against the sides of the milk cans being
carried home by the children ; and pictures straight from
Holland have arisen along the great dykes of that wonderful
country. On the meres the fenmen played at bandy, and
along the dykes they set off in queues, swinging arms and
legs in time, on twenty or thirty mile journeys, as if the
iceway were an established thoroughfare in their country.
Wonderful accounts of winter which was really winter were
written of this district hundreds of years ago. Not only was
winter, winter, but the country, country. The place was
rough and wild : and man struggled for life along with the
beasts. In winter he fished and trapped.

December, nevertheless, is the deadest month of the year ;
and though when winter begins, at the end of December,
the awakening is near, you must still peer closely and with
knowledge to find the signs of life. The trees are still

'Bare, ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.'

In spite of Christmas roses and some spring flowers, in spite
of spikes of bulb stems which ' hail far summer with a lifted
spear,' in spite of the spawning of fishes and the rush of
the salmon, and the seeding of mosses, the world is in out-
ward appearance flowerless and leafless and lifeless. Whether
a bright and starry sky follows the setting of a sun blood-red
in the mist, or whether ways are foul, and the air dark and
the heavens murky and the winds wild, the season speaks
its lesson. Its mood is perceptible. Perhaps because there
are few things to notice in the winter landscape, the few are
the more firmly implanted in the memory. The bare forms
of trees are more easy to remember than the green domes.
The green woodpecker, who laughs as he travels in his ridge

WINTER 217

and furrow flight across the fields ; the rattle of the withered
leaves of the oak ; the tracery of a filigree frost pattern on
the holly-leaf, take a peculiar importance. Is there any
sound so characteristic of a season as the tinkle of a stone
slid across a sheet of black ice or the fall of an ice- film held
for a while above the sunken water by a bush, spray, or
rush.

Yet even in midwinter some things will put on a spring-
like greenness. Two classes of plant have essentially a
winter prominence, the mosses and the lichens. Some of
the mosses seed in winter, anticipating our spring as the
salmon do ; and the lichens exult in winter weather, for they
depend wholly on air-borne moisture.

Both are characteristic rather of the west than the east.
In the winter woods of Ireland the trees are so heavy with
lichens that they look to be in the last stage of decay, while
on the east the trees are only less trim than the apple-trees
of a modern fruit orchard, just treated with a caustic spray.
Some of the eastern counties are very poor in mosses which
abound in the woods of Westmorland.

The little seeding caps standing up daintily on the mosses,
the bright green pillows, where you will certainly find a
colony of spiders, join with the meadow grasses to destroy
the impression of winter, and bring us back to its unreality.
At the worst we see winter only in short bouts. Any one
who keeps a diary through these months will find it full of
springlike events. 'January i2th, A robin's nest and egg
found in ... garden (Surrey).' ' December 29th, Primroses
plentiful in Cook's spinney (Hertfordshire).' 'January I5th,
Tits singing spring songs and inspecting nest-boxes.'
'December 2oth, Choisya in full flower under south wall.'
'January i7th, Groundsel seeding, seeds being well set.' It
would be easy to continue quoting such events for many

218 AUTUMN AND WINTER

pages. Some few birds always nest in February. The
earliest of all is the crossbill, which in these later days has
settled itself in many parts of England, and is no longer a
rather rare visitor. In certain Norfolk and Surrey pine-
woods you may invariably find nests with eggs in the third
week of February. The birds begin to build in January,
thus anticipating that hoary pioneer of spring the raven,
which with this exception is the earliest builder.

Now again we see in February the very first of our so-
called summer migrants, though many suspect that the very
early chiff-chaffs, often recorded, come not from overseas
but from the warm counties of perpetual spring in south-
west England. In Cornwall one might lay it down, with no
more qualification than ' once in a blue-moon/ that winter is
unknown.

This absence of winter during winter has this drawback,
that the season, having missed its cue, tries, as it were, to
make all sorts of ill-timed and belated appearances. It is
quickly warned off the stage ; but often not before it has
interfered with the piece in a lamentable manner. The only
really evil thing of regular recurrence in the English climate
is the late frost ; and the very rapidity of its ejectment
increases the damage. One would be as confident in
prophesying that there would be a frost on, say, May nth
as on December 25th.

So it is that we never prepare for winter as they do in
other northern countries. In London are no arrangements
whatever for getting rid of snow, which always surprises the
authorities. When our poets deal with winter, which is
seldom, they dwell on its breaking up rather than its lasting
rigour. So Matthew Arnold : —

' And as in winter when the frost breaks up —
At winter's end, before the spring begins

WINTER 219

And a warm west wind blows, and thaw sets in —
After an hour a dripping sound is heard
In all the forests, and the soft strewn snow
Under the trees is dibbled thick with holes,
And from the boughs the snow loads shuffle down,
And in fields sloping to the south, dark plots
Of grass peep out amid surrounding snow
And widen.'

Thaw and frost we regard as a Box and Cox. A thaw
after three white frosts is the commonest of county pro-
phecies ; and as often as not it does not wait for the third.
The astonishing difference that two hundred or three hundred
miles make is only less remarkable in frost than in rainfall.
Almost every year the fenmen in the neighbourhood of Ely
have a day or two on the ice. In South Wales or Cornwall
it is common to find people who have never donned a skate,
and the boys all strangers even to the * postman's knock ' on
a slide.

It is in winter more distinctly than in summer we see the
width of the differences between one part of England and
another. In summer the chief contrast is between east and
west. That still holds, but now a greater appears between
north and south. Winter is always real winter in Scotland
for some part of the season ; and this sense of winter appears
in very vivid form in north-country and south-country poets.
Tennyson, from his lovely and sheltered home in the Isle of
Wight, looking over that wide meadow in which the lifted
spears of crowded daffodils began to hail the spring in January,
had another view of winter than Robert Burns lurching on to
his plough-handles over his barren fields. He knew what
winter was even better than the poet of our Lady of the
Snows, who makes winter, for all its severity, a merry and
active season, as it is in the Russian capital.

Whichever course winter takes, the northern or the

220

AUTUMN AND WINTER

southern, it is a time of observation hardly less rich than
other seasons. Coleridge perhaps of all writers most nicely
touched its spirit :

* Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothes the general earth
With greenness, or the robin sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-trees, while the high thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw ; whether the eve-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles
Quietly shining to the quiet moon.'

Certainly in winter the sky takes a new importance, by
day or night. Our weather prophecies chiefly refer, if not to
winter, to the wintry half of the year. ' A red sky in the
morning is a shepherd's warning ; a red sky at night is a
shepherd's delight,' is one weather-rhyme that most properly
belongs to winter when the flocks need protection. And at
night when the frost comes how Orion gleams in the south-
west, Cassiopeia is printed in capitals overhead, and the con-
stellations, the Gemini, Canis Major, and the rest seem
visibly to swing round the Great Bear.

DECEMBER

' Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin' fast,
An' cosie here, beneath the blast,

Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash ! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.'

BURNS, To a Mouse.

THE COUNTRY CALENDAR

NATURE is less active in December than at any date in the year.
It is a month of rest ; and the only young leaf among wild plants,
always excepting the wild grasses and winter weeds, is the honey-
suckle's, which is proof against frost and foul weather. Though in
statistics the drier half of the year begins, winter is announced
clearly. We all feel the shortness of the days. Indoor merriment is
at its zenith ; and we decorate with the berries that are becoming the
only food of the birds. The thrushes are sowing the mistletoe
seeds, wiped from their beak on the bark, as well as hips and haws
and holly stones under the bushes.

One of the earliest authorities on seasonal weather selected
December 3rd to Qth as one of the regular warm spells, strangely
interpolated into our English winter. The Marshams recorded two
'indications of spring' in December. On the I5th snowdrops, and
on the 26th the turnip flowered. But there are many more indica-
tions. Primroses almost always flower freely. Hints of a new year
come in the slow lengthening of the days and in the first restoration
of the hunter's truce. Lopk for intense cold if the barometer falls
with a northerly or westerly wind.

December loth. — Grouse and black game shooting ends.

December 22nd : The Winter Solstice. — The sun enters Capricorn.

221

222

AUTUMN AND WINTER

Winter begins. The days are at their shortest. It is a curious
astronomical accident that the evenings lengthen but not the morn-
ings. The sun, which rises at 8.6 on December 21, rises little later
on January 6th.

Average temperature, . . . 40°.

Average rainfall, .... I'// inches.
On December 1st, sun rises 7.45 a.m. and sets 3.53 p.m.

FEEDING BIRDS

A BIRD table is now becoming a necessary piece of furniture
in country gardens. But it is well to remember that January
and February (not December) are the months when the duty
of feeding birds is most insistent, and the profit greatest.
Birds can endure starvation in early winter ; indeed they
naturally then reduce their feeding ; but as the days lengthen
they grow as hungry as a cabbage caterpillar. Not seldom
the beginnings of this access of hunger will coincide with a
period when the frost cuts off all food-supplies, save the
scraps of dead creatures stuck in the resin of the fir and
larch, or in the cracks of the bark. Happily this winter
amusement and duty of feeding birds is becoming very
popular in England ; and abroad the Governments are
gravely considering the economical wisdom of encouraging
the practice. Indeed every year more of our gardens — even
the little rectangles in towns and suburbs — are becoming
sanctuaries to which birds of many species resort from the
worst of all enemies, hunger, and for the best of all pleasures,
a nesting home.

During the twentieth century we have seen birds grow
perceptibly tamer and vastly more numerous. It is a
wonderful addition to life to eat with the birds, as it were, to
tempt them on to the window-sill, if not within the room.

Q

224 AUTUMN AND WINTER

For birds are tamer than we think. The man whom we
used to watch in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris had no
special charm by which the sparrows were drawn to settle on
his shoulders and to peck from his hands. If he possessed
the qualities of St. Francis, they were not obvious on simple
inspection. It is indeed an easy thing to get into touch with
birds ; to induce a gull on the embankment to take a sprat
from your fingers, or to tempt a robin to the breakfast-table,
or tits to a cocoa-nut within the window, or sparrows to your
feet. Any invalid has the chance of realising this and taking
profit by it. An open window and a tray of crumbs may
make all the difference between a cheery and wretched
period of illness or convalescence. More than one particular
picture comes to the mind. The first is an invalid's room in
Dorset. As a beginning the window-sill was scattered with
crumbs each morning. Then a tray was fixed so as to
extend the table. As spring began to warm the air the
window was opened as often as might be, and the tray fixed
inside instead of out. The change made no difference to the
birds. Blue-tits, great-tits, cole-tits, robins, chaffinches, and
an occasional wagtail came gaily into the room ; and it was
noticeable that the birds less tame, one would say, by nature,
and especially the chaffinches, showed even less nervousness
than the robins when they had conquered their first fears.
Another picture of this sort is set in the frames of windows
looking on a beautiful garden sanctuary in the Isle of Wight.
But we may all do the same ; the extended window-sill is the
first and best attraction. If it be put before the window
in sight of the breakfast-table it will pay 100 per cent, in
the first week.

One of the best of all tamers was that charming
naturalist, whose invalid state suggested the study of
natural history as a solace, Mrs. Brightwen. The poet

FEEDING BIRDS

225

Cowper's happy family, whose playful and affectionate ways
assuaged the melancholy of his madness, less deserve fame
than her household of birds and mammals, from which she
drew intense satisfaction to within a few minutes of her
death. Falstaff — not in Shakespeare perhaps, but in a
brilliant emendation of Shakespeare — ' babbled o' green
fields ' as he lay dying ; and there is
something Shakespearean in the last
hours of this modern naturalist. ' In
her dying moments,' wrote Mr. Gosse,
' she was attended by those wild
creatures, who had long been accus-
tomed to her presence. When I
took farewell of her, two squirrels
were gambolling and struggling on
the toilet-table, and a robin was
seated on the edge of her cup. Her
last conscious moments were glad-
dened by the sound of the cuckoo
calling from the height of the great
tulip - tree opposite her bedroom
window, and awakening one more
flash in her sympathetic eyes.' She
laid great stress on winter feeding,
which 'gave her great insight into
the habits and traits of otherwise shy birds, as then, to a
lesser extent, and at all times, a large collection of birds
were to be seen in front of the windows, in size ranging
from a pheasant to the tiny tits ; even the fussy water birds
were enticed on to the lawn and under the tulip-tree.'

If the birds are hungry and you have food, all the
'conditions precedent' to a common understanding exist
and will exert a compelling influence. There is virtue in

BLUE-TITS

226 AUTUMN AND WINTER

elaborating a little the simple art of feeding the hungry,
though the dietetic science as taught by some of the
professors has a touch of absurdity in it. However, it is to
be confessed that some very astonishing results have been
achieved in Germany by the scientific baron who has devoted
himself to the work of encouraging birds to breed and feed
and have their being in his garden and park and woods.
The baron is a sort of latter-day Winterton ; and however
formal his methods, they are not without hints for us in
England, whether we have a two-thousand acre park, like the
wonderful sanctuary at Woburn, or a rectangular rod, pole or
perch close to London or other town — indeed within the
city pale. No one could more profitably follow his example
than the public authorities who attend to the parks and the
live things in them.

The baron has made a speciality of feeding apparatus and
nesting apparatus, for birds will come first to those places
where they can find most suitable food and nesting places.

Food, however, comes first, and food is a subject that
really requires a certain amount of scientific thought, such as
Baron Burlepsch has spent on it. The most engaging of all
his devices is what has been called the Christmas tree and
plum pudding arrangement. The tree can either be a real
tree — for preference, a small spruce, such as those sold for
Christmas trees — or it can be a made-up tree, artificially put
together in the manner practised on a large scale by Mr.
Thomson Seton in his sanctuary in New York State. In a
garden the tree can be put up within sight of the window.
This tree is to play the part of a widow's cruse. It is to ooze
plum pudding, as it were, as a fir-tree oozes resin. It is a
not uncommon practice to smear boughs with the remainder
of the breakfast porridge reinforced by crumbs and scraps ;
and birds of all sort appreciate it highly. But the baron has

FEEDING BIRDS 227

played the scientific doctor in this matter. He makes a
pudding or porridge or olla podrida, which is a compound of
the sorts of food that birds most enjoy and most flourish on.
The following is his ideal recipe : —

White bread, (dried and ground), . . 4^ oz.

Meat, ( „ „ ), .3 „

Hemp, . . . . 6 „

Crushed hemp, . . . 3 „

Maize, . . . . . 3 „

Poppy flour, . . . . . i£ „

Millet, white, . . . . 3 „

Oats, . . . . 1} „

Dried elder-berries, . . . ij „

Sunflower seed, . . . ij „

Ants' eggs, . . . . ij „

This elaborate mixture is incorporated into a mass of fat
or suet equal to nearly twice as much as the whole of the
previous mixture. The pudding is heated and poured over
the branches and trunk, over which it forms a film ; and to
these rich and succulent boughs the birds will flock, pecking
at the plums in the collection from every conceivable attitude
— robins on tip-toe, tits upside down, thrushes blundering
about, and warblers alighting daintily. Of course the food
need not be so elaborate as the baron's, but if it contains
some meat and some seeds, so much the better. It is a good
plan to collect the seeds of elder or sunflower at the
right season, and keep them for the birds against the hungry
hours of the year. The really important thing is to pour the
mixture on the trees when it is boiling hot, so that quite a
fine coating is spread as widely as possible.

Another idea is a 'food stick.' A succession of holes
are cut or scooped out of a narrow bough which is then
nailed across a trunk. It provides a very handy and
picturesque way of feeding tits and tree-creepers, and the

228 AUTUMN AND WINTER

food can be well protected against the weather if the holes
are faced to one side. As might be expected, a quantity
of more elaborate methods are practised in the German
sanctuary. There are food bills and food hutches and
houses of many sorts designed to protect the food from the
weather and to attract the birds. Some of them would be
a great addition to the London parks, but they would not
be of less use in gardens.

These methods have been elaborated for some years,
but the economic value has only recently become apparent,
and induced the German Government to take this model
sanctuary under its wing, following an example set by
Hungary, where the Government assists the study of migra-
tion with as good results as have followed its teaching of
economic ornithology.

Every one finds it easy enough to attract the common
birds and some of the bolder. The cole-tit and march-tit
may in some neighbourhoods be regarded as more or less
uncommon or at least hard to find ; but they will at once
come to the suspended fat on the Christmas tree. Other
birds are not so bold as the tits ; and to draw them more
care must be taken and their habits more closely observed.
The nuthatch is one. He seems to have as shrewd a sense
for a nut as a vulture for a carcase. You may offer any sort
of food ; and never discover that nuthatches exist ; but if
a frame be fixed with wire or wood in front to hold the nuts
without hiding them it is odds that the nuthatches arrive
within a week. The better plan with all the shyer birds is
at first to put the food in the places where they are most
likely to be rather than where you wish them to be. When
once they have found food within your precincts the rest is
easy. They may be tempted nearer and nearer ; or out of
the obscure into the open with some ease.

FEEDING BIRDS

229

Some birds baffle all attempts ; but among the untamable
are very few of our native birds or indeed our winter
visitors. The obstinate are the summer migrants ; and the
timidest of all perhaps is the wryneck. Among the easiest
are game birds, and the partridge at any rate pays for his
food ; he is delightful to watch.

Some few birds are so persistent that they will learn to
take food in ways entirely foreign to their nature. In a
small garden in the Midlands one starling, after weeks of

ROBIN

endeavour, learnt to take the fat meant for the tits. His
discovery came by a sort of accident. He perched on the
end of the bar where hung the suspended fat, and after long
gazing tried to manipulate the string. In doing so he half
tumbled, so it seemed, but getting both claws on to the
string, slipped down, and found himself to his surprise safely
landed where he would be. On the following days he per-
formed this acrobatic feat with increasing skill and of
deliberate purpose. Later other starlings, observing the
success of the manoeuvre, followed the example ; and in
order to save the fat for the proper feasters the string had
to be lengthened.

23o AUTUMN AND WINTER

In the same way robins will now and again learn to take
a precarious stand on a swinging cocoa-nut ; but they do
not often repeat the attempt. A starling is of all birds
perhaps the most deliberate imitator ; imitative in his songs
and sounds, imitative in all his ways. It is, for example, by
no means uncommon to see starlings, short though their
wings are, pick up food off the surface of the Thames. They
have learnt the art, though they remain clumsy in the
technique, from the gulls, who do not mind a wetting- and
have wings suited for the purpose.

TREE FORMS IN WINTER

THE true forms of trees can be best appreciated in winter,
when the deciduous species are bare of leaves, and the ever-
greens stand out more conspicuously in the naked woods.
The green leaves of summer half muffle and disguise the
essential architecture of the trunk and boughs ; and it is
only in winter or early spring that we can see how one tree
differs from another in strength of build, and in the arrange-
ment of the leaf-bearing twigs. The best time for learning
to distinguish trees is in midwinter, after the last leaves
have fallen from the tall oaks, and of all the deciduous
foliage only a few patches of oak and beech and hornbeam
scrub keep a russet mantle clinging until spring. As spring
conies on, our attention is apt to be distracted from the per-
manent forms of the trunk and branches by the budding of
the earliest shoots and blossoms, and by the anticipation of
the period of awakening. In the heart of winter there is a
strength and endurance about the lines of forest trees which
suits the mood of the time. We learn to appreciate their
beauty, devoid of luxuriance, and find a pleasure in bare
boughs which is in some ways greater than the delight in the
full foliage of May.

Most trees can be recognised even at a distance by the

231

232 AUTUMN AND WINTER

characteristic form of their trunk, boughs, and twigs ; and at
close quarters identification is helped by their bark. Except,
perhaps, for an occasional immature sapling, of which the
growth is still indeterminate, or for a warped and stunted
specimen growing on bad soil and in vitiated air, every tree
can be recognised as certainly in winter as in summer by a
practised eye. The strength of the oak stands out twice as
clearly when it is stripped of its leaves, and the contrast of

OAK

its stalwart lines with the feminine grace of the beech or the
wych-elm becomes more visible. Oak boughs traced against
a winter sky make one of the most beautiful sights in English
Nature. The peculiar attraction of the oak lies in its com-
bination of endlessly varied curves with essential strength of
structure. If we observe the lines of a well-grown oak clearly
silhouetted against a sunset glow, we see what a wealth of
design it has in its larger boughs and branches as compared
with the simplicity of the elm's few large limbs, or the
angular and uninventive structure of the black poplar. Oak
boughs twist and curve with almost fantastic freedom ; and

TREE FORMS IN WINTER 233

yet there is unmistakable power in every curve. When the
wind arises, every crook and curve becomes a tough resilient
spring ; the small boughs dance to the gale with a steely
quiver, and the pressure of the wind is transferred to the
larger limbs. These have a similar reserve of power in their
great bent lines, which can yield sufficiently to dissipate the
pressure of the blast without being forced back so far as to

WALNUT

snap. The fullest strength of the oak is reached in its thick
trunk, buttressed roots above ground, and the depth to which
they reach beneath the soil.

Other trees with characteristically curving boughs are the
walnut and the plane. At a first glance in winter an old
walnut-tree often looks very like an oak. Its boughs seem
to take the same delight in crooks and curves ; and when it
has a stalwart trunk below, it is often a very fine tree. But
when we examine it a little closer, every point of resemblance
to the oak brings out an equally conspicuous difference. The
curves are both fewer and noticeably softer ; the tree has not

234 AUTUMN AND WINTER

the oak's characteristic appearance of having each bough
tensely braced against the onset of a storm. The main
limbs of the walnut are also longer and more straggling in
proportion to the amount of their support ; this makes them
weaker, and they are more often torn off by a gale. As we
trace the lines of a main bough as it ramifies into smaller
branches, and onwards as the branches become twigs, we see
how at every stage it lacks the oak's wealth of design. Its
outer fabric is emptier of pattern ; and when we come to the
outmost twigs, they make a thin network against the sky,
very different from the oak's innumerable knotted spurs, and
more like the blunt tips of the ash. Well-grown old planes
are chiefly seen in London and a few country gardens;
they have never gained a thoroughly acclimatised status in
the woods and fields. They combine strength with sinuous-
ness to a remarkable degree ; many of their boughs writhe
like a captive snake ; yet they very rarely succumb to a
storm. They also grow to a fine girth, both in the trunk
and in the main limbs. Yet in spite of their real toughness,
and the massive dignity of the largest English specimens,
they do not possess the peculiar aspect of power which is
seen in the oak. Even more than in the case of the walnut,
the boughs seem to writhe idly and uncontrolled, instead of
framing every curve to withstand the violence of the south-
west. And they have not the oak's accurate proportions,
which give so conspicuous and satisfying a sense of power.
The boughs twist independently of the lines of the main
limbs and of the trunk ; and often a long thin wandering
bough will start off at an erratic angle from the flank of a
massive stem. These characteristics are most marked in
English specimens ; in central and southern Europe, where
the plane grows to a greater size than here, it is also better
proportioned. But the same features are still noticeable,

TREE FORMS IN WINTER

235

though the large growth of the trunk and main limbs helps
to conceal the sinuousness of the boughs ; and the most
magnificent plane has little of the tense strength of the oak,

PLANE

It is pre-eminently a shade-tree, like its relation the syca-
more ; but no one thinks first and foremost of the oak's
shade.

2j6

AUTUMN AND WINTER

The ash can be recognised by its moderate height and
breadth of head, and by the characteristically blunt and
spare design of its lesser boughs and twigs. Compared with
the beech or the elm, it might almost be said to be twigless ;
the reason of this is that its large palmate leaves cover a
large air-space in proportion to their foothold on the spur,

while the small and
abundant leaves of the
beech and elm need plenti-
ful twigs to support them.
It is a general rule that
the larger or more numer-
ous are a tree's leaves, the
denser will be its winter
pattern. The bare and
blunt appearance of the
ash is increased by the
smooth bark of its lesser
boughs, and by its thick
black buds. The light
grey - green rind shows
pale and glossy against
the winter light ; and the
black winter buds push

out at the ends of the spurs. The bark of the trunk and
larger boughs is also paler in colour than that of most other
trees, but is furrowed with grooves of medium depth, more
closely set together as the tree grows older. This furrowing
of the bark begins in young trees as a series of vertical
cracks or tears, parting the smooth rind. The corrugations
thus produced are closer and shallower than those of most
other trees with ribbed bark. In combination with its pale
and glossy colour, this pattern makes an ash trunk easy to

ASH

TREE FORMS IN WINTER 237

identify, apart from the pattern of its boughs. The bark of
the walnut is of much the same pale colour, but the furrows
are wider apart. The hard, dark and deeply furrowed bark
of the oak is well known ; it is one of the trees which shelter
the pupae of many insects in its deep grooves.

ELMS

Very different from the spare tracery of the outer boughs
of the ash are the dense heads of twigs formed by the beech
and elm. Though possessing this general similarity, both
are very individual trees, and easily distinguishable. The
height and rich rounded curves of the elm make a well-
grown specimen one of the finest of our trees. In bleak

238 AUTUMN AND WINTER

situations, or towards the northern limit of its English range,
it is much less distinguished ; but it is still easily recognis-
able by its height in proportion to its breadth, the dense and
rounded lines of its smaller branches, and the sheaf or frill
of short twigs which usually surround its trunk. Its bark is

HORNBEAMS

softer than that of the ash or oak, and the grooves are less
strictly parallel, running into one another every few inches.
Though its great height and spread of Hmb make it one of
the noblest of English trees, its roots run close to the surface,
and thus give it a poor hold on the soil. It is the weakest
of all large trees in withstanding a gale ; and it has an even
more dangerous way of occasionally dropping a bough, with

TREE FORMS IN WINTER 239

no more than a crack of warning, on a perfectly calm summer
day, when the weight of the leaves overcomes a feeble spot
in the wood. This density of the leaves is associated with
the thick network of the smaller twigs, by which the elm can
be distinguished. The leaf-bearing twigs have a variety of
pattern which prevents them from appearing monotonously
crowded, in spite of their numbers. In this respect a typical
elm is more handsome than a typical beech. The outer
twigs of the beech are monotonously straight, instead of
being crisped like those of the elm ; and this sometimes
gives a rather uninteresting appearance in winter to an
otherwise stately tree. The smooth, silvery bark of the
trunk and larger boughs of a beech makes it the most easily
recognised of all our trees, when seen close at hand. At a
distance, the best points for identification are the smooth
and sinuous outlines of the larger timber, and the straight
hairlike pattern of the dense outer twigs. The hornbeam
grows very like a beech, though it is a smaller and slenderer
tree. It has the same smooth bark, but can be distinguished
by the ribs and ridges which run beneath it, lifting the skin
like the muscles of a wrestler. Hornbeams are most
frequent as pollards, and well-grown trees are rather rare.

Most people can recognise a beech or an elm, but com-
paratively few a wych-elm, which combines some of the
characteristics of both. A poor wych-elm is a very dull
tree, without even that appearance of straightness and tall-
ness which marks a small elm. But a well-grown wych-elm
is a very beautiful object. It is a shorter and broader tree
than the elm or beech ; its special beauty lies in its beautiful
proportions, which are as conspicuous as those of an oak,
but of an entirely different kind. The wych-elm is as
feminine as the oak is masculine. All its lines are gradual
and delicate ; it has no tense crooks or rugged elbows. In
* R

240

AUTUMN AND WINTER

a fine typical specimen, the trunk parts fairly low down into
several ascending limbs, which ramify evenly outwards into
a densely rounded head. There is none of that abrupt
transition from thick to thin stems, or from curves to straight

WYCH-ELM

lines, which detracts from the beauty of many trees ; every-
thing is well-proportioned, to the very tips of the sensitive
outer twigs. The pattern of these outer twigs is much like
that of the beech ; but even when they are densest and
straightest, it is saved from monotony by its perfect propor-
tion to all the rest of the tree. The wych-elm's bark is
ribbed with straighter and narrower ribs than that of the

TREE FORMS IN WINTER

241

elm ; its whole surface is less deeply incised. The wych-elm
is found in most parts of Britain, and is the original native
member of the family. The common elm is believed to
have been introduced from the Continent by the Romans,
and has never made its way into the north of England,
where the wych-elm is the 'elm/ pure and simple, and
assumes a new importance in the landscape, as does the
sycamore.

Sycamores are common in most places where trees will
flourish, but are most frequent and conspicuous in gardens

SYCAMORE

in the north of England and Scotland, where they are much
grown for the sake of ornament and shade. They are
probably not indigenous to Britain, and are said to have been
introduced by Mary, Queen of Scots, and first planted at
Holyrood. However this may be, they are a beautiful and
characteristic feature of the North. A spreading sycamore
overshadows the porch of many a hill country farm, with a
trunk as grey with lichen as the limestone cropping out of
the slopes around. Sycamore saplings are conspicuous for
their angular growth ; the branches stick straight out from
the stem, and the side twigs straight out from the branches.
At this stage of life their bark is smooth. Older trees lose
this regularity of growth ; their boughs are rather twisted
and irregular. The top of the tree is rounded and rather

242

AUTUMN AND WINTER

broad ; often the density of the outer twigs gives it a curious
packed or compressed look, as if the air was squeezing it in
on every side. The bark of old trees is scaly, and shows a
tendency to flake off like that of the London plane.

The sycamore is really a maple, its name being due to a
confusion with the wild fig- tree mentioned in the New Testa-
ment. The common English maple is more often a shrub
than a tree, but sometimes grows to medium height. It
usually makes a rather straggling and ill-shaped tree, but
sometimes its wayward growth leads it to take some unusually

CORKY BARK OF THE HEDGE-MAPLE

picturesque form. Besides its individual and erratic shapes,
its most recognisable feature, at a little distance, is the density
of its rounded masses of twigs, which are considerably closer
and blacker than those of the beech or elm, and make a great
contrast with trees of open growth, such as the ash or black
poplar. The hedge-maple, as it is sometimes called, can be
identified most easily by its bark, which is reddish in colour,
corklike and almost spongy in texture, and ridged and
furrowed very deeply. Like the birch and the cherry-tree,
the hedge-maple is often garnished with the dark masses of
small twigs known as witches' brooms. These may easily be
mistaken for large birds' nests. This excessive growth of
twigs at a certain spot is most probably due to an injury of

TREE FORMS IN WINTER

243

the bough, and may be caused by some wood-boring insect,
such as a beetle or gall-fly.

Most trees of the poplar tribe have broad and branching
tops, and sparse and open tracery in the smaller twigs. The
common black poplar is very conspicuous with its wide head

BLACK POPLAR

formed by several large limbs stretching at an obtuse angle
from the main stem, which generally vanishes towards the
top of the tree, merging in one or other of its offshoots.
This structure is obviously top-heavy and unsafe, and is all
the more so for the brittleness of the poplar's white wood.
Most large black poplars lose one or more of their main
boughs, which leave a shattered fracture and a ragged and

244 AUTUMN AND WINTER

lopsided crown. In large aspens the main stem runs up very
high, and the lateral boughs do not diverge until near its top,
then forming a rounded head. The bark of these large
specimens, as of white poplars or abeles, is usually of a
silvery white, but scarred with rough vertical cracks. Aspens
also occur as spare, slight trees from twenty to forty feet high,
with smooth grey bark. The Lombardy poplar, with its
close upright growth, make a remarkable contrast with the
broad and rounded outlines of the black poplar, of which it
is a variety. No English tree has a more magnificent
development of root- buttresses, in proportion to the thickness
of the trunk. Its slenderness and great height necessitate
these living props to safeguard the great columns of verdure,
gazing far across fen and plain.

Willows and alders are often found growing in the same
low moist ground as poplars and aspens. The species and
varieties of willows are very numerous ; but the only common
species which reaches the full stature of a tree is the crack
willow, with its long, bright green leaves, paler underneath,
but not so silvery white as those of some scarcer kinds.
This is the willow which is usually pollarded ; and pollard
willows are even more recognisable in winter than in summer,
whether their knobbed heads are close polled, or bushy with
the straight stems of several years' growth. When the crack
willow is let grow freely in suitable soil, it forms a fine and
individual tree. The trunk and the main boughs are massive
and free-growing ; the boughs have a tendency to sprawl
abroad and become top-heavy, like those of the black poplar,
but to a much less extent. The frequency with which
straggling branches break off in stormy weather has given
this willow its special name ; but it is a less fragile tree than the
poplar, and the freedom of its growth makes it very attractive.
The tracery of the branches and outer twigs is very open and

TREE FORMS IN WINTER 245

sparse ; and the fine and slender sprays readily distinguish it
from other trees of generally similar growth. The bark of
mature specimens is marked with narrow and shallow vertical
furrows ; and it is one of the most lichenous of trees, the
trunk and main limbs being often as heavy as an old apple
or hawthorn tree.

Alders are very different, and make a great contrast with
willows by many winter streams. They are trees of very
various growth ; but the comparative density of the fine,
crisped twigs and the abundance of little black seed-cones
clinging to them make the alder the blackest of all deciduous
trees in winter. These little brittle cones are the female cat-
kins of the previous summer ; they cling to the tree after
their scales have parted and set the seed free. Winter
parties of redpolls, as well as linnets and several kinds of tit-
mice, are often seen searching among them on the twigs,
probably for small insects that creep between the open scales,
as well as for lingering seeds. Most small alders, and some
large ones — especially when growing close together — have a
tall, straight stem, and stiff and comparatively slender hori-
zontal branches. The tree has then rather a weak and unin-
teresting appearance. But it is curious that many old alders
assume a very different growth, and become gnarled of trunk,
broad of head, and warped and twisted of bough. Alders of
this handsome type are generally found growing in wet
meadows or trickling hillside pastures ; but fine specimens are
sometimes found by streams. Young trees have smooth grey
bark ; but as they grow older it becomes lightly furrowed in
an irregular network, and is rather scaly. Most old specimens
are well covered with grey lichen.

The birch's graceful lines make it easy to recognise in
any group of bare winter trees. Though free-growing, often
with two or more main stems, it is always beautifully pro-

246

AUTUMN AND WINTER

portioned in all its parts ; and the delicacy of its long outer
twigs is therefore devoid of any suggestion of weakness.
For all its sensitive beauty, the birch has the self-contained
appearance of a tree which knows well how to hold its own

BIRCH

against snow and storm. Next to its graceful growth, its
most conspicuous feature is the silvery bark of its trunk and
larger branches, which often peels away in transverse strips,
showing a layer beneath slightly more tinged with yellow.
This yellowness is due to the inner layers being more moist
with sap. If we peel off the outer layer before it is quite
ready to come away of itself, the inner coating is found of a

TREE FORMS IN WINTER 247

pale yellowish-green, which represents a still earlier stage.
This silveriness of the bark is not an invariable mark of the
birch. In old or weather-beaten specimens, the bark grows
split and blackened, and the whole surface covered with dark
callous scars. The birch's slender catkins, like the stouter
cones of the alder, are much sought in later autumn by
linnets and redpolls, which pick them to pieces for the seeds.
The ground beneath the boughs is often thickly strewn with
the yellowish scales ; and by the time that the last yellow
leaves have flown down the November blasts, the catkins are
usually almost gone.

Birches love a bleak, upland situation, or a barren, sandy
soil ; and in their higher and rockier haunts they are con-
stantly found in company with the mountain-ash or rowan-
tree. Often this is clipped by the winds into a straggling
and stunted shrub ; but in sheltered situations it sometimes
becomes a large and rounded tree of thirty or forty feet
high. It is most easily recognised in winter by its smooth
and glossy bark of pale grey. The tracery of its twigs and
branches is sparse and blunt, so that it forms a very decided
contrast with the fine filaments of the birch. Young rowans
are often light and graceful, as they spring in the shelter of
some Welsh nant or North country clough ; but before
many winters pass over them the buffeting of the wind makes
them one-sided or cramped of growth, and often dispro-
portionately thick in trunk and bough. They run into stout,
yet supple curves, which, with the smoothness and colour
of the bark, gives the tree an appearance of being built of
india-rubber. The rowan has not the birch's power of
growing delicate sprays in the teeth of the moorland winds ;
and its leaves being large and compound, it does not require
so abundant a growth of twigs as are necessary for the small
leaves of the birch.

248

AUTUMN AND WINTER

The bark of the wild cherry has much the same pecu-
liarities as that of the birch. It is thin, pale and glossy,
though less brilliantly silvery ; it flakes away in the same
transverse strips ; and it often becomes split and scarred,
showing a dark woody growth. But in general appear-
ance the birch and the wild cherry are very different.

The cherry has a variety
of growth something like
the alder. Most young
trees have an upright
stem, and stiff horizontal
branches ; but in old speci-
mens the branches become
long and twisted, and the
head of the tree takes a
broad and rounded outline.
With its torn and scarred
bark, an old wild cherry-
tree has a shaggy and
rugged appearance, often
increased by the dark and
tangled growth of one or
two witches' brooms.
The lime and the Spanish chestnut are two trees often
found in close neighbourhood in parks and old gardens. In
every respect but size they present a marked contrast. The
lime is rather the larger of the two, and sometimes becomes
very tall when grown in a clump or close avenue. On the
other hand, when standing isolated it usually forms a very
rounded head, and sometimes attains an immense spread of
bough. The sweet or Spanish chestnut is a tree of about
the same size as the lime, though it seldom or never grows
as tall as the tallest specimens ; but it is conspicuous for the

WILD CHERRY WITH WITCHES' BROOMS

TREE FORMS IN WINTER 249

heaviness of its trunk and boughs, whereas the lime has
slender boughs, and a trunk no more than proportionate to
the total mass. The branches of the lime decrease gradually
and evenly to the outer twigs, which are fairly dense, though
less abundant than those of the elm or birch. The chestnut's
branches dwindle very rapidly, and there is little interval
between the large limbs and the leaf-bearing sprays. The
limbs are spreading though comparatively short, and are free
and picturesque in growth. The bark of young limes is
smooth ; after the tree reaches full growth it splits into
shallow and regular ribs and furrows. Chestnuts have bark
strongly grooved in a shallow network, with a wide interven-
ing rib. It is softer in appearance than that of the ash
or oak, or most other trees, with parallel rather than flaky
sculpture ; the ribs and grooves often run obliquely or spirally
up the trunk, as is sometimes seen in pines and firs. This
is probably due to the unequal development of different sides
of the tree during growth. The massiveness and free growth
of the sweet chestnut make it a fine tree even in our climate,
where it is not quite at home. It is a native, like the walnut,
of central and southern Europe ; and it grows more freely
and abundantly in a characteristic zone of culture midway
between the high pine forests of the Alps and Pyrenees and
the plain. The horse-chestnut belongs to a different family,
and is believed to have come originally from the Balkan
peninsula. It is easily distinguishable when bare of leaves
and blossoms, owing to its rounded head, the smooth and
regular lines of its limbs, the blunt tracery of its outer twigs,
and the appearance of the bark. On the trunks of young
trees and on the boughs this is smooth and unusually dark.
The boles of old trees have grey and scaly bark, something
like that of the sycamore, but with thicker and rougher
flakes. These three trees well illustrate the different degrees

250 AUTUMN AND WINTER

to which introduced species have acclimatised themselves
in our soil. The sweet chestnut grows freely in many woods
and plantations, though it is never found very far from where
man originally planted it. Limes are very seldom found
in outlying woods, and are trees of the park and garden.
The horse-chestnut is even more of an exotic ; it needs
good soil and protection from the coldest and roughest
winds, and usually makes a poor and stunted tree when
planted in exposed meadows or on shallow and rocky soil.
We saw earlier how the common elm abounds in the southern
half of England, but has never acclimatised itself in the
north. As we learn the lines of the trees in the bare winter
landscape, we realise the deep natural harmony between the
aspect and exposure of the land and the trees which people
it. The first glance at a field or hillside from a train window
will show what trees are to be expected in it, and the charac-
ter of their growth. Lean slopes of the grit-stones and coal
measures suggest ill-grown oaks and ashes or (in the south)
small spindly elms ; deep meadows and gradual hills set us
waiting for elms in full majesty above a homestead. White
knobs of limestone thrust through turf foretell spreading
sycamores by the farm-doors and close hillside pastures
sprinkled with dense and hoary whitethorns, which have ten
or twelve feet of dwarf stature, and the age of a forest-tree.

BADGER

WAYS OF THE HUNTED

AT many, now and again at most forms of hunting, even
the robust countryman may feel queasy. An old sportsman
used to say that there were only two animals that could be
hunted : the fox and the rat. And, indeed, ' Hunting ' with-
out qualification means fox hunting. Doubtless hare hunt-
ing is the older sport, but either to shoot the hare or hunt
her has in it something that goes against the grain.
Coursing has always seemed to some of us the very worst
of all sports, though as a spectacle of lithe movement and
the courage of flight, if the phrase is allowable, nothing
equals it. But the hare is too soft and timid to hunt with
any pleasure. And how different from the fox! When
you watch him move, sly and cautiously, alert to hear any
noise, ready to take any cover, yet looking angry as well as
cunning — you almost come to believe Jorrocks's breezy con-
jecture, ' The 'untsmen like it, the 'ounds like it, the 'orses
like it, and we don't know as the fox don't like it/

How all hunted beasts disclose during pursuit their
cardinal character : the fox, the otter, the badger, the deer,
the hare, the rabbit, the stoat and weasel, and their behaviour
* under fire ' is worth some discussion.

The badger, which is a very much commoner animal
than most people suppose, behaves in a manner quite
peculiarly his own. He is inflexibly courageous and blindly

251

252 AUTUMN AND WINTER

obstinate. On the coast of South Wales, where the animal
is very common, the writer has seen a gang of self-constituted
navvies dig a whole afternoon and still fail to penetrate the
remotest tunnel of the earth where the badger is digging.
On the other hand, he has known the small Sealyham terriers,
a hunter much cultivated in Pembrokeshire, draw a badger
within a few minutes. For a while the animal shows no
fight. It is concerned solely with passive resistance, shrink-

OTTERS SWIMMING

ing from the light almost as sedulously as from the terrier.
When put in a bag and carried off it scarcely struggles, but
lies, like Brer Rabbit, waiting events. If it is released
anywhere near its home — the inference is from badgers
caught but not harmed in Pembrokeshire — it makes back to
its hole as straight as a homing pigeon, and heeds nothing in
the way. On one such occasion two men, who had been left
to guard the hole, failed altogether to divert the animal by
a yard from its course. It brushed the leg of the man who
tried to stop it, and disappeared down the hole in a flash.
It had run across two grass fields at an astounding rate,
considering the awkward roll of the gait, in which blind

WAYS OF THE HUNTED 253

obstinacy was unmistakably expressed. But it is out of
keeping in daylight. To view the badger properly you
should view it, like fair Melrose, at night. The low scuttle
has then a proper furtiveness. You might take the beast
for a marauder ; but of all the mammals few do less harm.
There is no good reason why it should ever be killed. You
could not say this, if economy is a motive for destruction,
even for the hare, which indeed is the forester's very worst
enemy. It is easier to observe the badger than is commonly
thought, for in his almost Mosaic attention to cleanliness, he
attends regular resorts, which, when once discovered, may
be easily watched.

But he is not a favourite. Fox-hunters do not like him,
and many a badger has been dug out because he is supposed
to keep foxes away. Nor do keepers like him, for he is
supposed to be destructive. It is true enough that he is
omnivorous, in the sense that, at certain times and on certain
occasions, he will eat anything. But the more we study the
food of animals, at any rate of the larger mammals, the more
clearly it appears that they will vary their diet indefinitely
under the pressure of circumstance. The writer has absolute
evidence that the brown squirrel, as a rule most harmless
and dainty of animals, will eat young birds ; will indeed
climb to the rookery on purpose to feed on them. The grey
squirrel is worse. It has recently become a naturalised
English mammal. The Park that is sanctuary and zoo at
Woburn was full of them, but the Duke of Bedford found
them so destructive of other animals that he was forced to
their destruction. In America, their native home, opinions
differ about their character. The writer was once walking
round the beautiful zoo at the Bronx Park outside New
York, in company with one of the directors. The grey
squirrels were seen in all the open parts and were given

254 AUTUMN AND WINTER

a good character. We were assured that they were in no
degree dangerous to the birds. The assurance, however,
had hardly been given, when one of the party saw a squirrel
with a sparrow in his mouth. This was taken as evidence
that the numbers had grown excessive, and that evening
orders were given for the destruction of some of them. It
will soon be necessary to reduce the number in Regent's
Park, where they are rapidly destroying all the nests of the
blackbirds and thrushes. The hedgehog, again, will eat
anything, from a young partridge to a seedling wallflower.
The badger has various tastes in the same manner. He
will kill a maimed or sleepy pheasant. He will even kill
and eat a young lamb. He will destroy eggs. But his
crimes are rare, as with the squirrel, and perhaps the hedge-
hog. The harm he does is always too small to give any
excuse for destruction.

Among the animals which we call vermin, the most
noticeable quality is courage, deliberate courage, which, when
the beast flies, is expressed in control. The writer has seen
it, in remarkable instances, in both the stoat and weasel.
An attempt was made to bolt a stoat from a rabbit hole
which he had been seen to enter. Directly the ferret, a very
big albino, was put in the burrow, the stoat came to the
mouth of the hole, and looking round at a dangerous, if not
alarming company of men and dogs, retreated to face the
smaller risk inside. In the underground fight he won, and
drove back the ferret. The albino was then supported by
some polecat ferrets of perhaps greater courage if less bulk.
The stoat again came to the bolt-hole entrance, took a quite
calm look round, and again retreated ; but a quarter of a
minute later shot out of the hole straight to the very thickest
bunch of thorn outside, moving with such impetus that none
of the terriers, though they saw him come out, ever came

WAYS OF THE HUNTED 255

even near him. The quickest keeper could scarcely have
shot the stoat in time. No Dumas musketeer could have
more coolly and courageously thought out and carried out
his ways of escape than that buck stoat ; and the behaviour
is normal to the species. It is also characteristic that they
dislike skulking or lying low to escape notice as do the
timid creatures, such as rabbits and hares. This reluctance
may lead to their undoing. If you frighten a weasel into
any cover, such as a heap of
faggots, you may know for
certain that he will not stay
there long. As surely as a
rabbit which took sanctuary
would stay in it, so surely
would a weasel leave it at the
first opportunity. You have
only to sit still and watch.

The strangest and most
thrilling feat that the writer
ever saw was the escape of a
hunted weasel. It appeared
from a grating close by the

wall of a beautiful sixteenth-century house of red brick.
The age and material of the building are pertinent to
the issue of the story. The animal had come forward very
little way when his retreat was cut off by a party issuing
from a door just by the grating. They were armed with
nothing more alarming than tennis balls and tennis racquets,
but these were weapons enough. The weasel at once made
for the wall of the house where it jutted out on the side
remote from the door. He ran up a climbing rose-tree, but
on reaching the top, where he stayed a moment, he found
himself still within reach of the racquets. The only way of
* s

WEASEL

256

AUTUMN AND WINTER

effective flight was straight up the wall ; and he took it.

With his body very close and legs wide he clambered up

without great difficulty until he came to an old window that

had been filled up with newer brick.
On this the claws could hardly grip,
and as he attempted it, three feet
slipped altogether and a fall was only
prevented by a single claw. The
weasel, now about thirty feet from the
ground, stopped still, perhaps intending
to wait till the enemy had departed.
But one of them, less kind than the
rest, began to throw tennis balls at
the clinging beast. Again he had only
one safe alternative, and took the
venture. At this attempt he crossed

the danger zone successfully, and going very quickly over

the last stage, disappeared into a gutter running along

the roof. The athleticism of the escape astonished us at

first, but the brick was old and well pitted. It may be

that in the chronicles of the weasel's

accomplishments it would not reach

very high.

But as one thought over the stages

of the flight, its reasoned pauses and

determined rushes, one was most

astonished by the cool courage, the

deliberate calculation of odds at a crisis.

The animals are vermin when they hunt, but they deserve a

more heroic word when they fly.

In one sense, nearly all animals are brave : they bear

pain well, or, if the description is preferred, their nervous

system is not sensitive enough to suffer. A rabbit with

WAYS OF THE HUNTED 257

a broken leg will run at great speed for 60 or 80 yards ;
and then, if there is no pursuit, stop and begin barking a twig,
as if nothing had intervened to interrupt the ordinary
feeding hour. Sometimes, of course, they are dazed by
a sort of terror ; and doubtless both rabbits and birds are
charmed by stoats as no creature is by a snake. One
astounding instance of the numbing of all the initiative
faculties of a rabbit deserves to be recorded. The rabbit
pursued by a stoat ran to the very feet of the onlooker and
there crouched. It allowed itself to be lifted and carried
into the house, showing no fear, and no relief. Sense
seemed numb. It was clearly unhurt physically ; but when
set down within the house made no sort of effort either to
run away or to frisk. The same utter lethargy of mind and
body remained when it was taken on to the lawn. No exact
time was taken, but it was afterwards estimated that at any
rate more than an hour elapsed before the rabbit showed sign
of normal alertness and fear. Then it ran off into the bushes
as a wild rabbit should. The stoat will not always terrify
the rabbit out of its self-control ; and in defence of its young
the doe rabbit discovers a courage that is peculiar to the
maternal sense. She will drive off even a stoat, and limbs
hardened to a wonderful temper by burrowing practice
become sufficiently terrible weapons. It is courage of a
more patient sort which enables a rabbit to endure, it may
be for hours, the attack of a ferret from the rear. Many
a rabbit has saved itself by shoving up to the narrow end
of a blind alley in the hole ; and not even running the risk
of a kick while the ferret scrabbles vainly at its quarters.
The hare or rabbit in its form shows similar fortitude. How
often walking through the crackling stems of the dried kex
in an open spinney, one has seen a rabbit lying low, so close
that you may almost touch it, and may easily strike it. On

258 AUTUMN AND WINTER

such occasions even a dog with a good nose will pass close
without noticing. But the moment there is a vestige of a
sign that the hiding-place is observed, you see just a glint
of the eye which has been stock still, and the rabbit is off
at a pace that few animals can equal at their start. The
rabbit thus shows peculiar presence of mind within its own
surroundings ; and it is a question whether any mammal has
equal skill in giving the alarm. The note is singularly
appropriate to the occasion. If you step up noisily to some
bracken or to a spinney where rabbits are out, you will not
be vouchsafed any sign, except perhaps a scamper. The
noise is such that no further warning is necessary. But if
you can creep without notice to such a point of vantage
before making your experiment, the rabbit behaves very
differently. One has often tested them. From your hiding
flick a gravel stone or scrape a stick or make any other slight
and non-human noise. It is odds that the movement in the
bracken ceases. Repeat it, and you may expect to hear
the thud of a rabbit's foot striking the earth hard. Its effect
on other rabbits is not quite instantaneous. But within a
few seconds you see the rabbits which are out in the open
stop feeding ; and then turn head to the spinney, so crouching
for a while. A few may recover courage and presently
continue to feed ; but what happens times without number
is, that one by one they all slip back into the wood slowly
and quietly. ' It is best to be on the safe side.' ' He is
a good sound watchman and would not "start a hare"' —
such seems to be the attitude. Clever and quick though the
rabbit is within his own domain, he is easily flurried and
seems to lose instinct if removed a very little way off. If
you catch a rabbit in a net — a very easy thing to do — and
take it even to the next field, it is quite astray. It will run
to the first cover it sees, in a rather undecided way, but when

WAYS OF THE HUNTED 259

there appears to have little idea of any course to follow, and
is, as a rule, easily caught. For the rabbit is a stay-at-home,
venturing very little way from his burrow, except in the
evening or under stress of food. During a time of deep
snow, they will travel quite a long way to find where the
snow is drifted up against ash saplings ; and so a platform
is provided for their meal off the tenderer bark. Many
people have been puzzled when the snow is gone, to account
for these barked places high above the ground.

No form of the hunt has more spectacular attractions to
the multitude ; and yet none, at
least as it appears to some of us,
is less endurable than coursing.
The hare appears to have been
developed on purpose to escape
the greyhound. The eyes are
set back so that without turn of

the head a full sight is obtained ""V* '****?* v*/*
of the pursuer. If you stand still

a hare, blind to things immediately in front, will run right up
to your feet, but there is no approaching a hare from the back
or either side. The eyes are made for flight ; and if you
could regard the sport without other feelings as an athletic
feat, the jink or quick turn of hare at the last possible moment
would thrill you with admiration. It is timed with perfect
precision, and is so rhythmic that it seems part of the natural
paces. But Darwinian nature works more slowly than the
fancier, and the pursuer has been developed to a perfection
that leaves the pursued almost helpless. No sight is more
heartrending than the vain exercise of their supreme turn
and 'bends.' Atalanta's suitors had as poor a chance and
were as ruthlessly slaughtered. Except in good grass
country not one hare in a score escapes ; and the uncomely

26o AUTUMN AND WINTER

crowds which flock the outer fields to see the sport, rejoice,
and will, if they get the chance, head the hare and hound it
back. It is common for the animal to make for the line of
people. This may be due to the accident of blind terror ;
but the incidents are so many in which animals, especially
hares, have, in extreme, turned for protection to men, that
one wonders if in the coursery field, too, this instinct does
not work.

Mr. Thompson Seton, best of all the transatlantic natur-
alists, once gave the writer a strange example of this trust in
man as a last resource. He was out on the snow in the
North- West looking for ermine. In the course of his journey
he saw a white hare pursued over the snow by a white
ermine ; and the hunt was near its tragic end. But in the
hunted hare there was just enough initiative and sense left to
take a last chance. She ran straight to Mr. Seton, and
squatted between his legs. The white ermine, cool and
collected as ever, stopped to watch the manoeuvre, circled
twice round the man and hare, decided that the chance
was past, and made off. In a minute the hare recovered
and hopped away quietly, shy again of the man, but not
frightened.

A hare is almost like a bee in one thing. It cannot
endure any quick movement in man. Stand still and
it loses fear. Even if it sees it is not alarmed. When
pressed even in a slight degree the hare will take to water
like the stag. The writer has known a hare land at his
feet across a wide and rapid brook. It took to the water
without any sort of hesitation and swam strongly and easily.
It was entirely undistressed on landing, and did not even
shake itself, though the pursuit, such as it was, had hardly
come into sight, and was no more than a strolling labourer.

Preservation is usually attained by shyness, by intense

WAYS OF THE HUNTED

261

wariness, but no hare, or indeed any animal in England, can
approach the red deer in that quality. It seems to have
learned by inheritance the signs of man's approach, for man
is its only enemy in England. Some of the hardiest and
most skilled of sportsmen who hire the same deer forest in
Scotland year after year, and know the land to perfection,
are wholly unable, even with the most perfect of modern
weapons, to circumvent them. They have to rely largely
on the gillie, who is as much at home in
the so-called forest as the deer themselves ;
and the sportsmen readily confess the barren-
ness of their solitary stalking. The deer has
almost every quality that the hunted need ;
an acute nose, an acute ear, a marvellous
power of speed ; and greater power than
would be suspected by any visitor to a zoo
of suiting himself to his environment. The
hunter must know not only the nature and
habits of the quarry and the lie of the ground.
He must know even the course of air currents
and eddies, even the echoes of the hill. But
like many animals the deer is not always well
served by his eyes. Sounds and smells seem to satisfy
curiosity, to convey knowledge that is complete or com-
plete enough to suggest flight. The eyes, on the other
hand, stir curiosity ; and the hunter can use this curiosity.
Lying in sight of a deer, he sees that further approach is
useless. Any advance would certainly mean discovery. He
has waited in vain for the animal to move of its own way-
ward will. His only hope is to make the animal restless
but not fearful. Under such conditions, it is not an infre-
quent device of the stalker to flip pieces of moss up into
the air from his hiding-place. Such a sight is new in the

262

AUTUMN AND WINTER

animal's experience. He stares with a sort of fascination,
as deer hunted at night in America will stare at a bright
light. It is unlikely that he will actually approach the spot,
but he will rise and reconnoitre, and in so doing, it may be,
serve the hunter's purpose.

The stalker, who flips the bits of moss, is using much the
same device as the stoat which plays its gymnastic antics.
It is certainly a common trick of the stoat's, though perhaps
not general, to tumble head over heels, to indulge in a

RED DEER

succession of queer leaps and dances before the spectators
whom he desires as victims. While the display is in progress
birds will come round and venture quite close, solely, one
would say, from a sort of fascinated curiosity. Among very
many animals the eye is the most easily deceived of the
senses. They do not see still things, and apparently they
do not distinguish the form or meaning of any moving
things. Seeing is not believing. Smelling or hearing are.
The faintest whiff of man's presence down the wind will send
the deer flying for miles ; that worst enemy of the stalker,
the old cock grouse, has trumpeted danger to hundreds of
deer, whose watchman he is.

For perfection of all the senses, especially of sight, one

WAYS OF THE HUNTED 263

must leave the ground animals, whose eyes are made for
near things, and watch the golden eagles, which are
becoming quite a common herd since the deer forests have
spread. They find in the ' forests ' the quiet and protection
they demand ; and carry in safety to their protected eyries
the grouse and rabbits and hares which are their proper
prey.

DAYS OF THE EVERGREEN

WHEN the last oak leaves fall in early December, the foliage
of the evergreen trees and shrubs sets a new note of colour
in the landscape. In spring and summer the dark tones of
holly and yew and pine subordinate them to the gayer verdure
of the deciduous trees ; and in autumn the deep evergreen
foliage chiefly serves as a foil to the more splendid hues of
the dying leaves, and attracts little independent notice. It
is not until the whole colour-scheme of nature is subdued to
its winter delicacy, that the strong and lustrous beauty of the
evergreen trees becomes dominant in the woods and hedge-
rows. In the short midwinter days, it is the most con-
spicuous feature of vegetable vitality ; and it stands as an
emblem and promise of the renewal of vigour in spring.

The beauty of evergreens at midwinter is perhaps seen
best of all in tracts of mixed and open woodland, where
clumps of well-grown hollies are scattered among beeches and
other deciduous trees. At other seasons the hollies seem
obscure and gloomy ; now they stand forth in the winter
light with a depth and brilliancy of verdure which is partly
due to the subdued tones of the surrounding vegetation in its
winter phases, and partly to the innumerable reflections from
the facets of their glossy leaves. The eye is now able to
appreciate, far better than in spring or summer, the essential

264

DAYS OF THE EVERGREEN 265

vitality of their dark, yet vivid verdure, and the aspect of
health and vigour which shines in them from root to topmost
twig. Where at other seasons they form part of the uncon-
sidered background, they are now the centre of the picture.
Their mass of deep green foliage forms a striking contrast
with the grey and silver of the beech trunks, the black arms
of the interlacing oaks, the delicate russet of withered
bracken, and the faded tussocks of heather and ling. In
years when their berries are abundant, their beauty is greatly
increased by the scarlet clusters shining in the winter sun-
light against the pale blue sky, or giving a welcome touch of
bright colour on the grey days. But the beauty of the
berries is largely due to the contrast with the deep green
leaves ; and even a berryless holly is a beautiful tree in its
mature winter vigour.

Hollies shed their leaves about midsummer, when they
have done flowering. Their appearance from spring to mid-
autumn is less lusty and burnished than in winter, owing to
the contrast between the tarnished leaves about to fall and
the young green shoots, and the gradual development from
blossom to ripe berry. All evergreen leaves have a tough,
smooth surface, which protects them from cold, and prevents
the free transpiration which would be fatal to them when the
roots ceased to supply them with an active flow of moisture
in winter. This toughness makes them far more durable
than the leaves of deciduous trees ; and in the case of the
holly in England, the leaves often last for four years. As
only a quarter, or less than a quarter, of the leaves drop in
any one season, the tree is always well clothed, and is fairly
called an evergreen. Decay comes very slowly after they
fall ; and it is usually at least two years before they are com-
pletely skeletonised. The prickles on the leaves are formed
by points of the tough marginal thread, which resists decay

266 AUTUMN AND WINTER

even after the inner veins and most of the lateral ribs have
disappeared ; and even after the leaves are two-thirds rotted,
they provide substantial nesting material for the thrushes and
blackbirds which so often build in hollies. The close clusters
of greenish-white flowers are usually almost overlooked amid
the profuse blossoms of early summer ; and we do not think
of the holly as a flowering shrub, as we probably should if it
blossomed in autumn, like the ivy, or very early in the year,
like the garden laurustinus.

The holly is one of the most typically English of all our
trees, and deservedly holds the first place among the ever-
greens which we associate with Christmas-time. Though it
bears up well enough against our English winters, it does
not like the dry air and severe frosts of continental climates.
It is scarce in central Europe ; and its place in Christmas
festivities is taken in Germany by the silver fir, which has
exactly opposite tastes, and does not flourish very well when
planted in England, because of the dampness. In the forests
of the Jura mountains in Switzerland, which are chiefly com-
posed of beech, and have a characteristically English appear-
ance as compared with those of the Alps, the holly is one of
the rarer shrubs. Where it grows in the outskirts of a village,
it is sometimes chosen as an appropriate shelter for a way-
side crucifix ; for the people still remember the tradition, now
almost obsolete in England, that the Cross was made of holly
wood, and that the red berries represent the drops of blood.
But although the commonness of the tree in our own country
has contributed to the disappearance of this old belief, there
is still a marked distinction between the associations of the
holly and those of the mistletoe. Holly is felt to be in
keeping with Christmas on its sacred side ; while mistletoe
is more purely secular. This distinction is no mere modern
convention, but is a survival from very ancient times. The

DAYS OF THE EVERGREEN

267

decoration of our homes and churches with evergreens at
Christmas was handed on from the old pagan rejoicings at
the winter solstice, when the sun began to rise from his long
descent, and the evergreen leaves were used to symbolise
his unconquered vitality. But while the holly was retained
without offence as a token of the same message of hope in
the Christian festival which superseded the pagan feast,

MISTLETOE

mistletoe was specially associated with the evil features of
Druid rites. The tradition of kissing under the mistletoe
is the last reflection of the savage orgy which accompanied
the midwinter feast of Druid sun-worship.

Mistletoe and not holly or any other evergreen was no
doubt given a special prominence in the rites of England in
old days, because of its singular parasitic growth. It is the
most conspicuous of all such evergreen symbols of natural
vitality, gleaming as it does on the bare winter boughs. In
Germany, where it is surrounded with none of our own

268 AUTUMN AND WINTER

associations, mistletoe sometimes grows on the Scots fir ;
but in England its effect is seldom, if ever, impaired in this
way, and the evergreen does not grow on an evergreen. It is
commonest on apple-trees, but also grows frequently on limes,
hawthorns, black poplars and maples, and much less often on
several other trees. The likeliest place to find mistletoe
bushes on an unusual host such as an ash or willow, is in the
hedges of large orchards where the apple-trees are full of
them. On oaks it is exceedingly rare, which is probably
the reason why it was venerated in this situation by the
Druids. Sometimes the seeds from the ripe berries may fall
on lower boughs of the same tree, and give rise to other
plants ; but birds are the usual means of distribution,
especially the missel or mistletoe thrush, which is fond of
the soft gelatinous berries, and begins to haunt orchards for
nesting in the early spring when they grow fully ripe. At
Christmas they are only just ripening, as can often be seen
by their tinge of green. The plant generally shoots from the
under side of a bough, as the seed tends to get washed down
to this position, and is better protected. Mistletoe plants
are true parasites ; they do not merely lodge on the trees
and drink the air, like many exotic orchids, nor simply
cling for support like ivy, but pierce the bark with their roots,
and subsist on the juices of the tree. They thus tend to
weaken it, and to lessen the crop in the case of apple-trees,
but there is seldom a very heavy growth of mistletoe on an
apple-tree until it has reached an age when its productivity
begins to decrease in any case.

Nowadays the common associations of the yew are very
different from those of the holly and mistletoe ; they are
sepulchral rather than festive, pointing not to immortality but
to decay. But in spite of the sombreness of its boughs it is
doubtful whether this was the original significance of the

DAYS OF THE EVERGREEN

269

choice of the yew for a graveyard tree. Though yew boughs
do not glitter cheerfully like those of the holly, and its berries
are far less bright, a yew on a winter day has an even more
striking suggestion of unconquerable vitality. The life which
its dark boughs and massive trunks suggest may be sombre,
but it is tremendously stubborn and enduring. The slow
growth and great longevity of the yew add to the same
impression. Very probably it was life and not death that

YEW IN SELBORNE CHURCHYARD

yews suggested to our unknown forerunners who first planted
them by their dead ; for the vitality of an old yew growing
away from churchyards on the chalk hillside is far more
conspicuous than its gloom. Yews are sometimes said to
have been planted in churchyards to provide a parish supply
of wood for bows. If this was ever an object it was probably
a subsequent and additional one ; the original association
with the spot seems far more likely to have been based on its
evergreen symbolism.

The great age often reached by the yew is closely con-

270 AUTUMN AND WINTER

nected with its exceptionally slow growth, and its tolerance
of shade. Yew-trees will grow in the shadow of deep woods,
though they do not actually require such dark and cool
situations, like many ferns. But the absence of sunlight in
these recesses prevents them from adding rapidly either to
their length or girth ; and the forces of vitality, being so
sparingly expended, may be prolonged for many centuries.
The age of none of the oldest yews in Britain is accurately
known, for they outrun all trustworthy records ; and it is im-
possible to tell the age of an old felled yew by counting the
rings in the wood, as additional rings are formed by the
enclosure of lateral shoots. The hollow trunk of many old
specimens is swollen and ribbed into curious shapes, as is the
case with many other old trees ; but the ribbed shell of some
old yews may not be the original trunk at all, but the amal-
gamated stems of young suckers which have sprouted from
the roots and the lower part of the trunk, and eventually en-
cased and concealed it. A thick growth of such suckers is
common in the case of comparatively young trees, though
some grow with a clean stem. The leaves, like those of
other evergreens, last for several years — it is said for as many
as eight ; and their scanty downfall combines with the thick
shade to keep the earth beneath a clump of yews extra-
ordinarily naked and desolate. Even the scanty brambles
which straggle about the floor of dry leaves in a beech-wood
are absent from the black earth of a thick grove of yews.
Birds habitually avoid the darkest woods, partly, as it seems,
from mere distaste at their mouldering dankness, but partly
because they foster comparatively little insect life. Occasion-
ally a titmouse can be heard cracking one of the hard yew-
seeds, by taking it in its bill, and hammering it repeatedly
on a bough ; but often the stillness is complete.

Yew-berries ripen in early autumn, when the hard green

DAYS OF THE EVERGREEN 271

seed is half hidden in a rosy gelatinous cup. This red jelly
is covered with a delicate bloom, like a plum, and is sweet
and rather pleasant to the taste. It is one of the fruits of
which missel-thrushes are exceedingly fond. The enclosed
seed contains the same alkaloid poison found in the leaves,
so that yew-berries have been prudently included among
poisonous berries in popular estimation, though the outer
pulp is harmless enough. The poisonous effect of the leaves
on horses, cattle and sheep is very erratic, and is not fully
understood. Sometimes the leaves prove very fatal, while
at other times the animals eat them without harm. It has
sometimes been held that cattle only suffer from eating the
leaves when they have been cut, and are withered and
prickly ; and that the fatal effect is not due to chemical
poisoning, but to mechanical irritation. But the effects seem
just as uncertain in the case of cut leaves. The evidence
tends generally to show that animals may often gnaw small
quantities of the foliage of yews growing just within their
reach without harm, but that the mischief follows a heavy
gorge, when clippings or cut boughs are left in their field,
or they break their way into a wood or garden where there
are abundant bushes or low boughs.

Ivy, like holly, gains a new brilliance of verdure in the
subdued winter landscapes. When the leaves have fallen,
the massive ivy bushes hanging in the heads of the hawthorns
and crab-apple trees, or clustering round the limbs of elm or
ash, gleam with a sober but vivid brightness among the bare
boughs above the carpet of withered leaves. Like mistletoe,
ivy shows the true evergreen spirit by bearing its berries at
midwinter ; and they form the favourite food of the wood-
pigeons in hard weather. On frosty days in December and
January there is the same heightening of colour in the blue
wings of the pigeons clapping out at the ring of our feet as in
« T

272 AUTUMN AND WINTER

the green crown from which they fly. The pigeon's plumage
is as pure and delicate in May, but it does not catch the eye
with its beauty in the same way when it flies out from the
tender luxuriance of spring verdure. Deeply satisfying as is
the colour of a bushy crown of ivy, there is more individual
beauty in the leaves on the climbing stems. Like the holly
the ivy changes the shape of its leaves as the plant grows
mature ; just as the holly loses most of its prickles, keeping
only a sharp terminal point, the many-pointed leaves of the
climbing ivy-spray change to a rounder outline as the end of
the journey is reached, and the plant spreads into a bush.
The leaves on a climbing or creeping stem are of a darker
and more beautifully mottled green ; it is shot with a purplish
bloom, and the veins are traced in buff and creamy white.
This change in the ivy leaves makes us wonder whether the
familiar protective explanation of the prickles of the holly
is valid after all. Prickles — so it is claimed — have been
acquired by the holly-tree so as to guard it in lowly youth
from being destroyed by grazing animals. When the tree
grows out of the reach of all beasts found in its haunts, it
ceases to need its armour, and the leaves lose every prickle
but one. According to the same theory, we ought either to
regard the jagged outline of the leaves of the young ivy as a
protective armament in the making, or possibly in decay, or
else we must regard the resemblance as purely fortuitous and
unmeaning. But the holly and ivy are so alike in this
respect that it is difficult to believe that they are not examples
of the same principle. And if we can find no protective
significance in the ivy's harmless points, there is a strong
suggestion that protection may have less to do than we
thought with the development of the sterner prickles of the
holly.

Ivy clings to the earth, trunk or wall, on which it creeps

DAYS OF THE EVERGREEN 273

by a fringe of rootlets which perform a double function.
They hold the stem firmly to its support, and they suck up
moisture, and help to nourish the plant. A stem of ivy,
growing on a wall facing a bank of earth, sometimes continues
to flourish for many years, even when it is severed from the
root. The moisture supplied by the lateral rootlets in such a
damp situation is sufficient to keep it vigorous. Even when
growing on a tree-trunk, a stem of ivy will sometimes
obstinately resist execution in the same way for a year or
two, though it seldom holds out longer. Trees with soft and
deeply furrowed bark, such as elms, provide the rootlets
with more sustenance in this way than smooth-barked trees,
such as beeches or sycamores. A thick growth of ivy is
undoubtedly harmful to the supporting tree, both by con-
stricting its growth and fouling and choking the bark. In
most cases it is also injurious to old masonry, by splitting it
asunder with its intrusive stems, and overbalancing it with its
heavy crowns. In some instances, however, it grows so as
positively to compact and strengthen the wall it embraces ;
and it need not be condemned without a careful examination.
Old ivy-bushes topping ruined walls make wonderful nur-
series of wild life. They are refuges for the owl and bat by
day, and for the dove and daw, and a multitude of smaller
birds by night. Even the fox will sometimes scramble into
their crown, and lie warm in the evergreen cover.

Firs and pines have never been natives of England in
historic times, though there are still some grand specimens
in a few Scots forests ; and thus in this country no such
ancient Christmas associations cling to the fir as in Germany,
though our adoption of the German Christmas-tree has
begun to implant them. But plantations of Scots pine and
spruce fir now cover so many thousand acres in Britain, and
clumps and isolated trees of both species stand so conspicu-

274 AUTUMN AND WINTER

ously on a thousand hills, that they have won a true place
among English evergreens. Though the whole of this
family of conifers is known as pines, within the family,
firs are distinguished from pines proper by the separate
growth of the needles, whereas pine-needles grow in tufts ;
and it is thus strictly correct to speak of the Scots pine,
and not of the Scots fir. The little bunches of needles
are a conspicuous feature of the boughs of an old pine, and
help to give it its clouded and mottled effect as seen against
the sky. The needles of the spruce fir are solitary, and are
arranged in a regular spiral on the twigs ; and this arrange-
ment, in addition to their comparative shortness and blunt-
ness, makes a young spruce the stiffest and primmest of all
the evergreens, and also makes it the most convenient of
little shrubs for decoration as a Christmas-tree. In the
silver fir, the needles stand out flatly on each side of the
spray, like the leaves of the yew — which are themselves
almost needles ; and in the Austrian pine, which is the
commonest conifer in plantations next to the Scots pine
and spruce and larch, the needles are borne in pairs as in
the Scots pine. But the greater length of the needles, and
the denser growth of the tufts, makes an Austrian pine so
much coarser and blacker to the eye that it is easily dis-
tinguished. In the Corsican pine, which is another variety
of the Austrian, this blackness and density are less con-
spicuous ; but the Corsican pine, like the Weymouth pine,
with its large cones, so apt for Christmas fires, begins to
lead us away from the heath and open woodland into the
garden of exotics.

Old spruces lose most of the primness and stiffness of
their youth, and sweep the ground with heavy down-curving
plumes which have a wild and melancholy beauty. Spruces
stand a wet soil better than the Scots pine or larch, and are

DAYS OF THE EVERGREEN 275

often planted in damp hollows of woods, or in other hollows
which they make into woods later on. The gloomy orna-
ments of old-fashioned hearses were copied from the droop-
ing branches of the spruce ; and the darkness and silence
underneath them are the heaviest in all the woods, except
only under dense yew boughs. But where the sunlight can
strike to the ground athwart their many upstretched fingers,
they are by no means a gloomy tree on a bright day. Their
foliage is of a distinct yellow-green, with a brighter and more
springlike tone in it than in the blue-green needles of the
pine. Moss grows freely on the earth and the fallen boughs in
such a little clearing, and the wood-sorrel will bloom there in
spring. Pines prefer drier soil, and the soil beneath them is
seldom mossy, though it may be thickly strewn in winter
with russet fern. In spite of the monotony of Scots pines
grown in a thick wood, no tree develops a grander indi-
viduality in old age than when it has had space to develop
freely and to wrestle for a generation with strong winds.
Probably no British tree combines strength and picturesque-
ness quite so perfectly as an ancient pine. Its trunk is like a
tower, the spring of its boughs seems to wrestle against all
the winds, and yet it is fledged with foliage as light as
wandering clouds.

There is the same wild beauty on a far smaller scale in
the least of the pines of Britain — the common juniper. The
juniper will grow on most soils ; but it is far commonest on
unploughed chalk downs and commons on a chalky soil. On
the bare downs it generally forms a small bush, three or four
feet high, except where it finds shelter from the wind among
other shrubs, when it grows occasionally to fifteen or twenty
feet. In bleak situations its boughs are dwarfed and blown
over by the prevailing wind, and its gnarled and lichened
stems wrought by straining with the blast, like those of the

276

AUTUMN AND WINTER

hill-top pines. Some steep slopes of the downs are as thickly
dappled with juniper-bushes as a mackerel sky with clouds ;
and when the white sheep go roaming among their dark and
motionless heads, they appear from a distance like clouds
fallen among them. Junipers in sheltered places form tall
bushes of graceful and curious outline, sometimes with the
columnar growth of the cypress, and sometimes recalling the
freakish shapes of the clipped yews in old-fashioned gardens.
The dark-green needles have a hoary bloom, especially when

JUNIPER-TREES ON THE CHALK DOWN

young, which gives a peculiar grace and freshness to the
foliage ; and the delicate contrast of colours is heightened
by the silver lichens studding the stringy, red bark. The
berries remain green for the first year, and then turn slaty-
blue, with a grey bloom like that of the young foliage.
Junipers are seldom found except on ancient turf that has
never been disturbed with spade or plough. They are relics
of primeval nature, rare and very interesting in a land where
man's traces are so deeply graven.

The box-tree is one of the scarcest of wild British ever-
greens, though it is so familiar in gardens. It is now con-
fined in a wild state to a few woods on chalk or oolitic
limestone, such as the well-known groves at Box Hill in the

DAYS OF THE EVERGREEN 277

Surrey Downs, some thickets in Chequers Park in the
Chiltern Hills, and a wood at Boxwell in the Gloucester-
shire Cotswolds. Its glossy foliage is distinctly lighter than
that of the holly and most other evergreens ; and the verdure
of a clump of boxes is doubly cheerful on grey winter days,
when the turf is clouded with rime. Furze and broom are as
common as the box is rare ; and the furze more than redeems

BUTCHER'S BROOM

the sombreness of its needles in midwinter by its occasional
gleams of bloom. The butcher's broom, or knee-holly, is a
curious little evergreen bush which, like many of the scarcer
shrubs, is most frequently found on a chalk soil. Its stiff,
sharp-pointed leaves add rather to the interest than to the
colour of the woods where it grows, for its green is dull and
uniform ; and though it has brilliant scarlet berries springing
curiously from the middle of the leaves, they are seldom
numerous enough to make any show. Butchers formerly
used its stiff sprays for sweeping their blocks ; while its

278 AUTUMN AND WINTER

height and prickliness explain its name of knee-holly. Brakes
and hedgerows on chalk soil are also the chief home of the
privet. Privet in a wild state is but a half-hearted evergreen.
It is often not much more thickly clothed with leaves at mid-
winter than the bramble, which is half-evergreen in our mild
English winters. Privet leaves last through the winter in
better heart and colour than the stained and tattered
bramble sprays ; but they have little of the glistening
luxuriance at Christmas- time which distinguishes the true
evergreens.

WINTER DRESS

MOST birds and animals are duller in colour in winter than
in summer ; and in some the change is very marked. There
is a remarkable difference between the fantastic breeding
plumage of the ruff, or the brilliantly contrasted colours of
the dotterel, and the modest greyish dress assumed after
the summer moult. Though this change is on the whole
most conspicuous in these and other members of the wader
tribe, it is very noticeable in some of the most familiar birds.
Cock house-sparrows lose their smart black bib, which
becomes blurred and almost obliterated. The dull spotted
plumage of the starling in autumn is so different from the
metallic gloss of its spring plumage
that birds in this phase are often
not recognised by eyes that know
them when they are busy with their
young. The brilliance of the cock
chaffinch's varied colours as spring-
approaches makes it a far finer bird
than in autumn ; and there is an
increase of freshness and bright-
ness in the markings even of such modestly dressed
species as the hedge-sparrow and coot. The change
extends in some cases from the feathers to the hornier
and fleshier parts ; the grotesque striped sheath which

179

SPARROW WITH BLACK BIB

28o AUTUMN AND WINTER

swells the puffin's beak in the breeding-season vanishes
after the moult, together with the wattle-like protuberances
round the eye, and the rough red skin of the face. In all
their typical cases, the dress in spring and early summer is
more brilliant and elaborate than the winter plumage. In
many animals there is a similar, though less marked, fading
of summer hues as winter comes in. The winter coat of
deer, hares, polecats and martens, and several kinds of mice

Saw M e R.

and voles, loses the reddish or tawny hues of summer and
becomes a duller dun or grey.

Many of the brightest colours and most elaborate orna-
ments of birds are special accompaniments of the nesting-
season, and disappear in the idle months of autumn and
winter. They are usually explained as being the results of
sexual selection, and as having been produced by perpetual
breeding from the stocks which most pleased the eyes of the
hen birds. In winter, when courtship loses its importance,
protective adaptation to some extent takes its place in con-
trolling the colours of birds' plumage and animals' pelts.
Though there is nothing very closely imitative of its sur-

WINTER DRESS

281

roundings in the greyish winter coat of a hart or a hare, on
the whole it is more in accordance with the faded vegetation
and the subdued light than the redder summer dress
would be.

A far more complete and striking change of colour is
that of those animals and birds which put on a winter dress
of white. The commonest of them is the stoat, which in
winter becomes the ermine, and provides the well-known
white skin flecked with the black tuft on the end of the tail.

A NEARLY WHITE STOAT

The market is supplied with ermine skins from Russia and
northern Canada, where stoats abound and the winter change
of colour is universal. Britain lies in regions of a more
temperate winter climate, and the consequent modification of
the stoat's change of colour is very curious. In Scotland the
complete white winter dress is common, and in the south
of England it is rare. Between the two, over the greater
part of England, stoats are often found in winter with
irregularly blotched skins of summer red and winter white,
while many do not adopt the winter dress at all, and a few
are found with it complete. Ireland has a well-marked race
of stoats of its own, which are usually distinguished as a
separate species ; and these are said never to turn white,
owing to the greater mildness of the Irish climate. Besides
the normal influence of geographical position and climate,

282 AUTUMN AND WINTER

the mildness or severity of each individual season has a
powerful effect in deciding whether these little creatures
shall be plain stoats in winter or ermines. White or partly
white specimens are much commoner in hard winters than
in mild ones. Even weasels occasionally become partly
white in spells of frost and snow ; but no cold weather can
change a weasel into an ermine, because the weasel has no
black tuft on its tail, and therefore lacks the ermine's essential
feature. To the gamekeeper stoats are always vermin,
whether they are ermines or not ; and it might be thought
that the two words are really the same. But the resemblance
comes by chance; ermine is the English form of an old
name for several such small fur-bearing beasts, while vermin
is derived from the Latin vermis, a worm, and came to be
applied to small unpleasant creatures in general.

The only other British quadruped which turns white in
winter is the mountain hare. This is a northern and Alpine
species, which spreads as far south as Scotland and Ireland,
but is not found in England. In summer it is grey, and it
is therefore often known as the grey or blue hare ; but in
winter it turns pure white, except for the black tips to the
ears. In Ireland it keeps its grey coat all the year round ;
and this is very illustrative of the position of our islands
just on the boundary-line of these winter changes proper
to a severe northern climate. It haunts the mountains
and high moors in summer, but descends to the lower
slopes in winter, like the grouse and deer which share
its home. As with the stoat, the character of the weather
has a powerful influence on its change of colour. In mild
autumns it changes much later than in cold ones.

In Britain we have no Polar bears or white snow-foxes
to help make up a really representative Arctic fauna ; but
the summits of some of the highest Scottish mountains still

WINTER DRESS 283

provide a breeding-place for the ptarmigan. Formerly the
ptarmigan bred on the mountains of the Lake District, and
probably also in Wales. In its summer plumage it has
a considerable admixture of white, which blends with its
mottled browns and greys so as to be very protective among
the last snow-patches or the white bleached stones which the
thawing snow leaves bare. In winter the bird turns com-
pletely white, except for its short black tail-feathers, and a
small black eye-stripe in the cock. Its general appearance
can be well seen in the so-called ptarmigan sold at the
poulterers' ; but the great majority of these birds are actually
willow-grouse or ' rype ' in winter plumage, and are imported
from Scandinavia and northern Russia. They are larger
than true ptarmigan, and the cocks have not the black eye-
stripe. These willow-grouse are the nearest representa-
tive abroad to our own red grouse — the only bird peculiar
to Britain, unless we choose to regard the St. Kilda variety
of wren as a true species. It is another pretty illustration
of the working of the British climate that the red grouse does
not turn white in winter, though the willow-grouse does.
The common ptarmigan is also found in Norway, but haunts
higher ground, and is a good deal scarcer, just as it is out-
numbered by the red grouse here.

Last of our little group of the white Arctic birds and
beasts comes the snow-bunting. It is rather an imperfect
specimen of the group, for its winter plumage is not pure
white ; but in its haunts and habits it is a true bird of the
snow-wastes. It breeds on the bleached, stony summits of
the highest Scottish mountains with the ptarmigan, and also
in the Shetlands. Its summer haunts extend far north to
Greenland. It arrives in England at irregular intervals in
considerable autumn and winter flocks, sometimes inter-
mingled with other species, and generally seen near the

284 AUTUMN AND WINTER

north and east coasts. At this season it varies a great
deal in appearance ; some young birds have few or no white
markings, while the amount of white in older specimens
largely depends on their age and sex. The hens are less
purely marked than the cocks ; but there is enough white
on the wings, head, and breast of most of the birds in a
flock to make them very conspicuous as they flit about the
marshes or winter cornfields. There seems nothing definitely
protective about their splashed plumage when they feed on
ground clear of snow, as they often find it in their winter
haunts. Even in a snow-covered landscape the large admix-
ture of reddish and greyish-brown feathers on the back and
wings prevents them from blending as completely with their
surroundings as the ptarmigan or mountain hare. Nor is
the protection apparently more complete in summer plumage.
Then the brownish mantle turns to jet-black in the cock,
and greyish-black in the hen, by the complete or partial
wearing off of the brown tips to the feathers. A Norwegian
naturalist describes the bold black-and-white plumage of the
cock as forming a striking contrast to the snowfields and
moorlands which it haunts ; and the pattern of the hen is
almost equally distinct. Although there is an obvious
similarity between the snow-buntings' white-splashed plumage
and the snowy landscapes which they chiefly haunt, the like-
ness has stopped far short of the close imitation seen in the
case of the ptarmigan or mountain hare.

The explanation of this degree of imitation seems partly
to be found in the snow-bunting's nesting habits. It builds
in cliffs and holes among stones ; and in these comparatively
sheltered situations the hen bird does not need to imitate
her surroundings so closely as the hen pheasant or wild duck
on their open nests among dry brown leaves and herbage.
A clue to the protective nature of many strongly contrasted

WINTER DRESS 285

markings is supplied by the small black spots or patches in
the white coats of all this group of Arctic birds and beasts.
The ermine has its black tail-tuft, the mountain hare its
black car-tips, and the ptarmigan its black tail-feathers and
eye-stripe. In every case there is some definite mark of
contrast to the general design. Patches of this kind are
sometimes explained as recognition marks, enabling one
bird or animal of a brood to catch sight of its companion
and follow it when hastily changing ground. But if it served
to make its wearer more conspicuous, it would be more likely
to endanger it than assist it. It seems more likely that the
real effect of these contrasted markings is to conceal the
whole outline of the bird or animal by concentrating the
attention upon one particular spot. In looking at a bird
sitting in an open nest, such as a nightjar or pheasant, the
eye is often caught by some particular spot or bar in the
plumage without realising that it is part of a living creature.
It looks like a stick or shadow or dry leaf; and when the
attention is localised in this way, it is less likely to recognise
the bird's complete outline. The same effect can often be
seen in a photograph. It is the same with large and
boldly contrasted markings as with the mottled plumage of
the pheasant. A sheldrake is an extremely conspicuous
bird as one sees it on an aviary pond ; but the eye can
easily miss it a hundred and fifty yards away on the mud-
banks or the water. The white parts in its plumage blend
with the reflected light on the mud or water, and the darker
patches are dispersed and suggest nothing like a bird. The
black and white markings of the ptarmigan and its com-
panions of the snowfields probably have a similar effect.
In most cases the small black marks are situated at or near
some extremity ; when they catch an enemy's eye on the
snow they would tend to prevent it from getting a general

286

AUTUMN AND WINTER

impression of the whole form. The ermine's tuft or hare's
ear-tip would appear like any dark stain or surface shadow
on the snow ; and the rest of the white form would blend
indistinguishably with its surroundings. In the case of the
snow-bunting the outline would be broken up in the same
way, though the dark patch of the bird's back might be more
noticeable. Though conspicuous when flying, its pied mark-
ings would hide it efficiently when at rest ; and no protection
pattern can do much to conceal a bird or animal when it runs
or flies.

JANUARY

* When biting Boreas, fell and doure,
Sharp shivers thro' the leafy bow'r ;
When Phoebus gies a short-hVd gloVr,

Far south the lift,

Dim-dark'ning thro' the flaky show'r
Or whirling drift.'

BURNS, A Winter Night.

THE COUNTRY CALENDAR

JANUARY is the coldest of all the months, and the most wintry in
weather, and is remarkable for ' a great barometric fluctuation.' But
* indications of spring ' soon multiply. The birds pair. An occa-
sional butterfly may appear ; bats and hedgehogs stir abroad now
and then. Marsham found the hawthorn in leaf on January 27th,
and noticed rooks building on January 7th. The crossbills always
and robins often begin to build. Some gardeners begin sowing
seeds of annuals, and as the days 'draw out' the sense of spring
may be felt at any interval in the frost. As many as twenty-five
varieties of flower have been found in Hertfordshire during the
month. It is a favourite saying :

* The blackest month of all the year
Is the month of Janiveer.'

And it is a true prophecy in most years that the cold will grow
stronger as the light grows longer.

Average temperature, . . . 38-6°.

Average rainfall, . . . . 1*89 inches.
On January ist, sun rises 8.8 a.m. and sets 3.59 p.m.

U

FROST AND SNOW

WHEN the sun goes down like a molten ball, its edge cut
clean, as if it were bound by a metal rim, we know that a
frost is falling. The mist has cut off all rays but the red
rays, and thus the sun has taken the tawny hue. Else the
sky is clear. Nothing between the surface of the earth and
infinity stops radiation. The heat of the day rises upward
and floats away undisturbed, bent neither this way nor that
by any wind. Every condition favours cold, except that,
though the sky is cloudless, much moisture hangs about the
earth. We shall have frost, but it will be hoar-frost. By
the morning every tree will be hung with a silver broidery,
as fine and delicate a foliage as spring itself can offer. The
land has been visited by a white frost. Another day you
feel, even before you see, that the world is hard and bitter.
The frost, heavy beyond its English wont, has left every-
where the very slightest sign of its arrival. Some signs it
must impress. A grass stem is cut so fine in blade and runs
to such a point, it lies so close to the radiating and evaporat-
ing earth that it chills the air to the dew-point, as official
reports say, even when the sum of moisture is small ; and
the dew freezes. Otherwise a really black frost leaves few
visible traces, except so far as hardness is apparent. The

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29o AUTUMN AND WINTER

roadway is a little bleached, the tops of the clods in the tilth
are just lightened like hair over the temple. The difference
between the white and the black frost is, of course, the
amount of moisture in the air — that and nothing more ; but
all the very hard frosts are black. Though a damp cold is
vastly more palpable, more penetrating to us, the thermo-
meter feels differently. Moisture is always a source of
warmth. It is a blanket to the earth. When clouds canopy
the earth heat cannot radiate far. It is conserved and frost
is discouraged. When mist and fog wrap the earth they
always hold heat from the earth, acting in some degree like
the clouds. So it comes about, though few country people
notice it or will believe it, that the worst sufferers from frost
are plants in the dry valleys. But the frosts of winter, as
opposed to those of spring, excel both in splendour and in
use. They are as beautiful as beneficent. No one has
described the wonder of frost with either the accuracy or
power of Francis Thompson, that unhappy genius, who, like
his namesake, and in much the same manner, destroyed in
London a power of observation meant for country life.

All frost and all snow are crystalline. There lies the
wonder, whether you look at them with a microscope or the
naked eye. It is a delight to watch the growing of frost. There
is no better place for seeing the crystals form than in the
corner seat of a railway carriage when frost is bearing. Your
breath is written in letters on the window-pane almost as you
breathe it. It is patterned out into a landscape of successive
crystals, each quite perfect in shape and symmetry. But the
sight is stranger on a sheet of water. Frost seizes the water
in delicate rays, and afterwards fits the filigree together, and
pieces out the pattern. As the cold falls below the freezing-
point you see a sort of shiver move along an undefined line
across the water, as a nerve vibrates under the skin ; and

FROST AND SNOW 291

then the line, the thin course of the movement, becomes
a rigid mark. A few minutes later you may pick up from
the water a delicate stick of crystal, that fades at once in
your hand. The tip falling, perhaps, on to a fellow-crystal
in the water beneath, tinkles out a thin and bell-like note,
which is one of the most distinct and memorable sounds of
any season. It is scientifically, perhaps, an unexpected fact,
and a very happy one, that water as it approaches the
freezing point swells. We are accustomed to cold associated
with condensation, but if it did not happen that water
swelled as it froze the world would be uninhabitable in many
countries. The ice would sink to the bottom, build itself up
from the bottom to the top, and remain permanently where
now it is quickly thawed. Those who lament their cracked
pipes have at least this consolation, that if frozen pipes were
not forced outwards by frost the whole world would suffer.

All that frost manufactures is ice. Hail and snow and
hoar frost and ' cat ice ' and icicles are as truly ice as the
smoothest and hardest and blackest that covers a pond. The
difference is that in snow and hoar frost or wherever the water
colour becomes opaque and bleaches, air is interposed. It
acts as oxygen on a fire to bring out the colour of cold as
the other of heat. It is the peculiar virtue of snow that
every particle holds air as firmly as does cotton-wool. The
corn or grasses that it covers, the animals that it may entomb
are not easily affected. The covering lies light, and between
and about every crystal pure air clings so that breathing is
possible in the medium. Squeeze air out of snow, as its own
weight may do, and ice appears. If the snow is very deep
and has lain long, the under part is clear, good solid ice.
This is the proper relic of an unchanged quality. The
attraction of snow is such that we all are inclined to regard
it as the characteristic mark of a season. It is of course

292 AUTUMN AND WINTER

comparatively rare in England. Not once in a generation is
it deep save where it is drifted, and a man may keep a
sledge for five years without the chance of using it for a day.
In such warm spots as the Isle of Wight, it is a notable
marvel if snow lies at all.

But no weather phenomenon so impresses the mind as
frost and snow. Their influence is such that people in the
South have as constant a belief that December is a cold and
snowy month as those who live in sight of the northern hills
which may be capped with snow from October onwards.
How vivid the sight is when falls

' The new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors,'

and how vividly snow pictures are left in literature. Jan
Ridd finding the sheep in the snowdrift is the best picture
in words ever painted by Blackmore, the novelist of south-
west England, where snow is rarest.

Did the Laureate in his warm and quiet Berkshire home
ever write a better description than in his poem of London
snow, though it was written chiefly as a metrical experiment ?

' When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town ;
Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing ;
Lazily and incessantly floating down and down ;
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof, and railing ;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,
Its clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven ;
And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare ;
The eye marvelled — marvelled at the dazzling whiteness,
The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air.'

SNOW
By HALDANE MACFALL

FROST AND SNOW 293

Snow, one may say, never does harm. It is the kindliest
and softest of all the frost visitations, though its thawing is
the most unpleasant of all weather incidents. The big
flakes come down like winnowed plumes or butterflies falling
from the tree-tops. Each flake is made of crystals identical
in form, so perfect is the process ; and when the storm is
over the matrix is broken ; and when next snow falls another
pattern, each crystal again identical with its neighbours, is
sent. Every accompaniment of snow is beautiful. A sunset
before snow takes on a smoky orange tint, which — or so it
seems to some — is among the very surest aids to prophecy.
It finds no place in the weather report or even in less official
prognostics ; but the colour is unmistakable ; distinct from
other sunset shades and always a herald of snow. The blue-
green light on evening snow, the spiral grooves planed out by
the wind, the layers of storied white on the pines, each and
every snow picture is irresistible. No wonder the makers of
Christmas cards cannot resist the temptation to persuade us
that England too is a Lady of the Snows.

East and west England, which differ not less than north
and south, each receive a quantum of snow ; but they are
sharply contrasted in their experience of frost. The frost
area of England is the fen country. It is a rarity if the
Cambridgeshire fenman does not put on his skates and take
a day along the dykes and meres. The flat and fertile land
is singularly cloudless, and lies open to the east wind.
What more is wanted to encourage frost. The meres are
shallow waters, and the dykes are unsheltered by trees,
except perhaps that here and there you may find a tree stand-
ing on aerial roots from which the drained land has fallen. A
few days of even moderate frost create a network of real
highways, by which you may skate if you will many scores
of miles. You may, for example — it was the last long skate

294

AUTUMN AND WINTER

that the writer made — step off the platform at Holme
Station, on the Great Northern Railway, just south of Peter-
borough, straight on to a dyke and make a forty- mile trip
along the various dykes. They are mathematically called in
the vernacular, from their breadth, the sixteen-foot and the
thirty-foot, and the rest. Such a journey through Chatteris
and March, and along the old Nene, gives a new picture
of England. The birds are different ; you may put up a
number of Brent geese and many mallards. The general
scene is pure plain broken by windmills, and the chief sound

BRENT GEESE

is the ring of the fenmen's skates. They travel often in com-
panies of six or eight, one close behind the other, swinging
in time like one machine.

A bearing frost, a condition in which most people except
hunting-folk delight, is not so harmless as snow. If it come
late and the season is warm, it may destroy wheat which
is winter-proud, perhaps kill winter beans and play havoc
among the tenderer roses of our garden. But its visitation
is beneficial on the whole. The moisture freezing and swell-
ing in the earth crumbles it into a fine seed-bed. The cold
keeps back growth and prevents that cardinal danger of the
English climate, an early spring. Weeds have always
sprung up in quantity since the autumn, and some of them
such as dandelions may begin to seed as early as February.

FROST AND SNOW 295

But the frost destroys the whole brood and restores their virtue
to the soil. English farmers have an almost mystic belief
in the frost and snow. They think that both, but snow
especially, give to the ground some definite fertility from
their own store. They will use the blessed word ' electric '
in discussing the question. It is true that a snowstorm is
always associated with some increase of electrical pheno-
mena ; but how this adds fertility to the soil passes
present powers of conjecture. Frost doubtless increases
fertility by its mechanical power of pulverising the soil. Its
effect is especially marked on chalk ; and as fertility is now
known to demand immensely on the amount of available
lime in the soil, frost may in this way actually add artificial
manure. It makes available what was locked up. If we
could always have snow and frost in December, January, or
even February, and subtracted from later months of the year,
our climate would be indeed gracious.

Birds suffer, but they alone, from hard frost. A week
of it does them little harm ; for against winter severity all
our own birds have a certain protection. In a lesser degree
they are like turtles which can live for months on their own
fat. As winter comes on the fat increases. Naturally and
by inclination they prefer to eat less in winter times, and it
is only when the frost is very long that hunger begins. Like
the trees, the later the frost the more the suffering. Their
appetite grows with the duration of light. A thrush is
twice as hungry in February as in December ; and when
the ground is too hard for a bill to penetrate, when the
worms are driven back from the surface and cockchafer
grubs unprocurable and berries grown scarcer — then the
thrush may die if the frost holds, though it may not be
severe. They suffer also from thirst. It is a very strange
thing that if you put out and keep open a bowl of water,

296

AUTUMN AND WINTER

birds will come greedily to it during frost. There may be
hoar frost thick on the ground, or even snow, but instinct
seems never to have taught them that either can quench
thirst. The fact bears witness to the comparative rarity
of the need.

• I

LIFE IN WINTER NIGHTS

EVEN in midwinter the fields and woods are full of activity
by night, and the darkness and long spells of silence hide the
restlessness of many different forms of life. Man is a diurnal
animal ; his eyes have little natural power of seeing in the
dark. If he had been framed in a savage state for the
nocturnal life which is natural to many other species, his eyes
would have been large and liquid like those of the lemurs, or
would have had the unattractive faculty of contracting the
pupil vertically like those of the cat or the fox. Long
civilisation has diminished even his original modest power of
nocturnal vision ; and so, though the more artificial his life
becomes, the more he carries on his activities by night, he
works and plays under a wealth of artificial light which is
strange and baffling to the wild life of the darkened woods.

Yet the use of light is natural to all the higher natural
organisms ; and most of the creatures which stir abroad at
night and sleep by day have inverted their normal habits
for some plain reason of self-interest. The innumerable
multitudes of rats, mice, voles, and shrews which swarm
unseen in the darkness have become nocturnal as a defence
against predatory diurnal creatures, including man. To this
certain species of birds and beasts of prey have responded
by becoming nocturnal also ; and so the old fight is fought
out on changed ground, in which the balance of advantage
remains with the weaker creatures which need concealment.

297

298 AUTUMN AND WINTER

Profound as seems the stillness of a calm winter's night
when we pause to listen in the garden or among the woods,
it is seldom long before we hear some significant sound.
Sometimes it is the cry of the hunter ; more often the subtle
rustling caused by the passage of its timid prey. The brown
owl halloos in the woods, or the white one screeches over
the cornfield ; at midwinter and early in the year, the bark
of the dog-fox comes down from the warm side of the brake.
Foxes bark when seeking mates, or when living in compara-
tively close attachment to them in the early months of the
year before the cubs are born. They hunt in skulking
silence ; but the bark of the fox is a sound full of meaning to
the keeper and to all others whose thoughts run on the wild
life of the countryside. The farmer thinks of his poultry,
and reminds himself to look to-morrow at the loose plank in
the side of the henhouse ; and the lover of wild life recalls
the litter of lithe and chubby cubs which he used to watch
playing by the mouth of their earth last Easter-time, and
thinks of the other secret woodland existences on which the
dog-fox is stealing in enmity to-night. Beneath the peace
and darkness of the night the eternal strife of Nature seems
always more intense by contrast with the overlying calm.
Death never comes more savagely than to the sparrow
caught from its sleep by the wood-owl's claws ; and even in
the quiet border the gardener knows what a scene of pillage
may meet him in the morning, if the wood-mice have already
discovered his sprouting crocus-bulbs.

Wood-mice have been said, and probably with truth, to be
the most numerous species of animal in Britain ; the only
likely rival to this pre-eminence would be the common rat.
But wood-mice abound in outlying woods and copses to which
rats seldom penetrate ; and they are also common in many
town gardens, though they do not compete with the rat in

LIFE IN WINTER NIGHTS 299

warehouses or sewers. The so-called ' Old English ' black
rat — which was merely an earlier immigrant — is a much
more attractive animal than the common brown one ; but the
wood-mouse is far more graceful and pleasing than the black
rat, as well as being so far free from any suspicion of
conveying plague. It is a rather larger and much shapelier
creature than the common house-mouse, with larger eyes and
ears ; and the reddish-brown fur of its upper parts is almost
as handsome as that of the dormouse. It has quite a
different build and expression from the thickset and blunt-
faced voles, which are commonly classed
with it under the name of field-mice, but
belong to a different family in the same
order of rodents. Shrews are often
regarded as field-mice also, but belong
to a completely different order (the
insectivora), which also includes the

XjjrTTrrr >v\ V t 't

mole and hedgehog. British species of

& to WOOD-MOUSE

mice include the house-mouse, harvest-
mouse and wood-mouse ; there are several local races of the
wood-mouse which are now usually regarded as sub-species.
The dormouse belongs to a separate family, with some
points of similarity to the squirrel ;. and besides these four
species, there are the bank and field voles (of the same
family as the water-vole or water-rat), with some local sub-
species like those of the wood-mouse. Shrews include three
species — the common shrew, the water shrew, and the lesser
shrew, which is the smallest British mammal except the
harvest-mouse. All this group of rodents and insect-eaters
are largely nocturnal ; but they are not all active in winter.
The sleep of the hedgehog is unbroken until the spring ; and
the dormouse only wakes for a few brief intervals, and
appears to make little use of the stores of nuts and seeds

300

AUTUMN AND WINTER

which it collects in a desultory manner near its winter nest.
The hibernation of the hedgehog is as thorough as that of
many animals in severer winter climates ; but it diminishes
in the case of many of the other insect-eaters and rodents to
a few prolonged sleeps during the sharpest spells of frost.
On mild winter nights the wood-mice are as active as in
October, when they collect and eat their heaps of berries in
old birds' nests, as was described in a former chapter. They
are among the most nocturnal species of their family and its

DORMOUSE

associates, as is indicated by the large size of their eyes and
ears — the eyes being large so as to make the most of the
scanty light, and the ears to supplement it by the sense of
hearing. Besides the fruits and berries which they heap
together in autumn, they will eat farm and garden seeds,
roots, leaves, bulbs, the stems of flowers, and the bark of
twigs and saplings. They also feed occasionally on insects.
Though the most numerous of species of their group, they
seem also to be one of the quietest. Now and then they are
found by day, running along a bough in a thick hedge, or
sitting up with their sensitive ears feeling the air ; but from

LIFE IN WINTER NIGHTS

301

the glimpses that often accompany the short dashes and
high - pitched squeaks of mouselike animals among the
herbage, these wayside disturbances are caused by voles and
shrews. Probably it is the same at night,
when the same sounds can often be heard
in long grass and on overgrown banks.

Harvest -mice are a comparatively
scarce species ; and their small size and
comparative drowsiness in winter would "xx^
in any case make them inconspicuous in
the life of the night. Bank-voles are
very numerous and active, and often do
a great deal of damage in gardens, though
less than the wood-mouse. They are a less strictly
nocturnal species, and can often be spied running about
the hedgebanks and across rough ground by day. This
species is the ' long-tailed vole ' as opposed to the ' short-
tailed vole ' or field- vole ; but their tail is very much
shorter than that of a mouse. Their colour is warm

WOOD-MOUSE

WOOD-MOUSE JUMPING

reddish-brown in summer, and a duller brown in winter.
Their heads are very different from those of mice ; the
ears and eyes are small, the muzzle blunt, and the hair of

302

AUTUMN AND WINTER

the broad cheeks rough and broken. They are pretty little
creatures, but without the gracefulness of the true mice.
Besides raiding garden beds, bank-voles are particularly fond
of bark, and sometimes do much damage to young saplings,
which are naturally not protected from these small creatures
by ordinary rabbit-netting. The marks of their fine teeth
can often be seen on peeled stems or twigs in plantations or
hedgerows towards the end of a hard winter. Field- voles
and wood-mice also eat bark, but less often.

Shrews hunt actively in winter, both by day and by night,
when the weather is not frosty enough to make them drowsy,

MOLE

and to cut off the supply of worm and insect food. In
normally mild weather, they hunt largely on the open surface
of the ground by night, and by day push among the leaves
and grass-roots along the runs made by themselves and by
mice and voles. In frosty weather, worms and insects are not
found above ground ; and the stiffened leaves and soil make
it hard to push along the runs. Their appetite is very large,
as is that of their relative the mole. Moles are also busily at
work in mild weather all through the winter ; even in moderate
spells of frost we can see each morning the fresh earth thrown
out by them on the banks of sheltered lanes and the warm
flanks of copses facing the south. The rat has no periods of
hibernation ; in the hardest frost it merely moves to more
sheltered quarters in buildings or rickyards, or the warmth

LIFE IN WINTER NIGHTS 303

and plenty of a corn-stack. Rats, like sparrows, cling to the
neighbourhood of man, but not so closely. Sparrows seldom
or never breed or roost many hundred yards away from a
human dwelling, or some such spot as a rickyard or rubbish-
tip, where they can thrive on the products or refuse
of man's labour. But rats at the beginning of summer
migrate in considerable numbers from houses into the arable
fields and copses, burrowing and breeding in the dry banks ;
and they do not all go back in winter. If we watch the
tunnelled bank of a lane or the edge of a dry pheasant-
covert on a moonlit night in December or January, the
number of the rats passing to and fro along their well-worn
runs gives us some slight idea of the enormous army of these
creatures in the whole country. For such spots are merely
their outlying settlements ; the mixed living that they pick
up on and about the corn and root fields, and the pheasant
food scattered in the copses, represent only a few minor items
in the vast bill of fare from which they pick their diet.
There is unusual point in the scientific Latin name of this
species — decumanus, the tithe-collector; but the brown rat
often takes much more than a tithe of the vegetable and
animal produce of a spot where it abounds. It has a
versatility and ingenuity which would be admirable if they
were not so mischievous ; and it seems able to adapt its
tastes and habits to all conditions which promise it an
adequate living. In the copses and cornfields and rickyards
it seems to love dry soil for its burrows as much as a rabbit ;
yet it luxuriates in drains and sewers, and regularly haunts
wet streamsides, and the oozy banks of tidal creeks and
lagoons. This adaptiveness to varying conditions is one of
the characteristics which have enabled it in the last two
centuries to usurp the position formerly held by the black
rat, and to spread to the remotest islands. The black rat

304

AUTUMN AND WINTER

clings more closely to dwellings, and has not the capacity of
the brown rat for getting a living in country as well as town.
It is by no means almost extinct, as is sometimes thought.
It is fairly common in a good many seaports, where its
numbers are no doubt reinforced from time to time by

BLACK RAT

recruits brought by vessels from the Levant and the Far
East, which are its headquarters. It also still holds its own
in a few remote spots where the brown rat does not seem yet
to have succeeded in ousting it. It scarcely deserves the
sympathy sometimes lavished on it as a respectable old
British animal crowded out of existence by immigrant aliens ;
for it is undoubtedly an alien itself, which made its way to
Britain a few centuries before its successor and oppressor.
Even its more modest greed and temperate rapacity are to a

LIFE IN WINTER NIGHTS 305

great extent outbalanced by its sinister responsibility as the
principal agent in the dissemination of bubonic plague. It
is the chief host of the plague-bearing flea, because it is
peculiarly the rat of human habitations in India and China,
where plague is most prevalent. But the original source of
plague is believed to be a central Asiatic marmot ; and the
flea which conveys the infection is known to be harboured by
the brown rat also. In the recent cases of plague in Suffolk
the evidence strongly pointed to infection having been
conveyed by rabbits. If a serious epidemic of plague were
to break out in Britain in our own time, it would be much
more likely to be disseminated by the brown rat or rabbit, or
some of the common voles or mice, than by the scarce black
rat. Possibly the future may bring us some new immigrant
rodent which will oust the brown rat as effectually as the
brown rat has dispossessed the black one. Such a ' super-
rat ' would be an absolutely appalling pest to industry and
agriculture, and we can only hope that in the development of
the brown rat and the occasional local plagues of field and
bank voles, the evolution of the rodents has reached its
crowning triumphs.

Even rats have not entire immunity at Nature's hands ;
and they pay their own tithes to owls, and foxes, and otters
on every winter's night. The chief food of otters is eels ;
and it is on them rather than on any kind of fish that they feed
at all times of year, and especially in winter. In summer
they eat large quantities of frogs ; but this form of diet is cut
off in winter, until March wakes the frogs from their lairs in
the mud, and sends them swarming to the riverside ditches.
Young or weakly rats and water-voles form a considerable
minor element in the otter's diet. Barn or white owls kill an
enormous number of young and half-grown rats, as well as of
mice, voles, and shrews ; and the scarcer long-eared owl is

306 AUTUMN AND WINTER

also a great ratter and mouser, especially in spring when it
has young. Brown or wood owls prey chiefly in winter on
small birds caught up from the roost, though they too kill a
small number of rats and mice. Foxes destroy rats and
field-voles in large numbers ; some seem to hunt them in
preference to rabbits, which in most cases form the largest
part of their varied diet. Foxes will eat almost anything of
an animal nature, whether dead or living; just as otters
living by the sea will eat shellfish and even lobsters, foxes
within reach of tidal marshes feed on crabs and the dead
bodies of birds washed up by the tide. Pheasants in their
roosts on the branches to which they flitted crowing at dusk,
are normally out of their reach ; but now and then the cry of a
cock bird rings loudly from the hollow woods, and tells how a
fox has sprung at a pheasant roosting on some lower bough.
Rabbits and hares are both active on winter nights ; in
order to estimate how busily they run to and fro under
concealment of darkness, it is necessary to spend a morning
in following their traces after a fall of snow the previous
afternoon. They scrape away a thin layer of snow to feed
on the roots and blades of the herbage ; and when the snow
is too thick on the level ground to make this convenient,
rabbits dig by the sides of bushes and among rough herbage
where the snow lies hollow and bridged. By sunrise, when
the birds are feeding again after the long and hungry night,
only the footprints of the hares and rabbits remain. Except
at the mating-time in late February, March, and April, hares
are strictly nocturnal animals, lying up by day in their forms ;
when we see them by day at other times of year, they have
been disturbed from their hiding - places. Rabbits are
also a mainly nocturnal species, though being much more
plentiful and confident, they move about more freely by day
when they have shelter close at hand. A night when the

LIFE IN WINTER NIGHTS 307

ground is covered with hard-frozen snow is their chief time
for attacking the bark of young trees.

In autumn the cries and calls of migrating birds often
stream downward by night from the upper air, especially in
foggy weather, when the birds become confused and restless.
In midwinter these cries are heard seldom ; and the great
passages of birds which often follow a sharp spell of frost
about Christmas take place by daylight. But certain kinds
of water-fowl and game-birds feed by night ; we hear their
notes on lakes and from the wide harbour flats, and see the
holes dibbled by their bills in the mire. Mallard, teal, and
wigeon are habitual night-feeders ; the intense whistle of the
wigeon travels a great way over the water in the hush of the
darkness, and draws attention to the lower quacking of the
mallard. Geese seem by nature to be day-feeders ; and the
ducks also have the small eye which distinguishes day-birds
from those which feed by twilight or night. But geese as
well as ducks have become partly nocturnal for protection,
where their feeding-grounds are too exposed by day. Grey
geese flight over to the inland fields before sunrise, so as to
take up a safe position under cover of the dawn ; and mallard
pass to their favourite feeding-grounds at dusk. Snipe and
woodcock are more purely nocturnal, and have the large
nocturnal eye. Both feed chiefly after dusk, and the
woodcock almost exclusively so. Snipe in hard weather can
sometimes be seen feeding by day ; but both they and the
woodcock are birds which learnt self-protection by conceal-
ment in order to escape such foes as foxes and the larger
hawks, and are confirmed in the same habits by the persecu-
tion of man.

Winged insect life is rare in the winter nights ; and the
bats which prey on it in summer are all hibernating in
houses, and caves, and hollow trees. The pipistrelle — our

3o8 AUTUMN AND WINTER

commonest small bat — may often be seen hawking for insects
on mild winter days, especially towards sunset ; but it does
not stay out long after dark. The supply of insects is then
too scanty for it ; and yet there are moths abroad on mild
nights all through the winter. It is remarkable that some of
the frailest and feeblest of all our British moths are hatched
in the nights of November, January, and February. They
belong to the light-winged and thin-bodied group of
geometers, and include the winter moth, a well-known
orchard pest. The male winter moth is winged, though a
feeble flyer ; but the wings of the female are so stunted as to
be useless for flight, and the moth on emerging from the
pupa in the earth, creeps up the stem of the fruit-tree on
which she was bred, lays her eggs there, and dies. This
inability of the female to wander is doubtless the safeguard
of the species, and enables it to survive the storms and rain
of the unkindly season when the moths emerge. From peril
of frost they are protected automatically, since cold retards
their emergence, and keeps them sealed in the pupa until a
mild spell of weather arrives. Besides the winter moth,
specially so called, this group of moths which appear in
winter and have wingless females includes several other
species, which appear between October and March. They
seem the most helpless of nature's sacrifices to winter's rage,
as we see the male's filmy wings outspread on the small
roadside puddle where it was dashed and drowned, or
sticking to the side of a newly tarred telegraph post. Yet
none of the stronger forms of life abroad in the winter nights
give so vivid a promise of spring as these little grey moths.
They bring visibly before our eyes the tender life hidden
deep in the bosom of nature through the winter, and show
that the time is coming when a multitude of brightly coloured
wings will shimmer in the soft spring nights.

THE NEW YEAR WIND

OUR fields and woods' undergrowths and the wild life in
them, even the greater features of our British landscape itself,
are vitally influenced by the west and south-west wind which
blows during one hundred and fifty-two days of each year.
Indeed the whole of our climate is due to this prevalence. We
talk of the Gulf Stream as warming England out of the
winter which should be the due of her northern latitude. But
there is also a Gulf Stream on the other side of the Atlantic
which has no such beneficent effect. The truth is that in
the warming system of equable England the Gulf Stream
is the fire and the west wind serves for the pipes that carry
the warmth to all the pleasant rooms. It would be of small
service that the Gulf Stream should warm the air that lies
upon it if a contrary wind carried the warmth out to sea.

In this respect the south-west wind does service to all
England alike ; but in its more obvious appearances it is a
very different wind on the two sides of England. It makes
the one broad regional contrast that we can discover in this
various island. This wind has a particular preference for
January. At this season over a great region to the south of
Iceland the air suffers depression, and towards this expanding
area other air makes in the spiral manner that is peculiar
to it.

The wind blows south-west on the average for one hundred

3io AUTUMN AND WINTER

and three days in the year, but at no time except in July is it
more regular than at the opening of the year. It becomes
almost a trade wind, and makes its way to the north-east for
just such a reason as the Trades make towards the equator.
But this south-west wind is more prevalent for some reason
along our western border than elsewhere. There is indeed a
little pocket represented by the Eastern Counties where the
winds behave rather differently, have a different period of pre-
valence. Once again the east and west — ' and never the
twain do meet ' — are sharply divided. A low glass or period
of low pressure always portends the south-west wind. With
the first symptoms of a shift to north or east the glass rises
with extreme rapidity, whether it is going to be fine or not.
It is neglect to notice these qualities in the two winds that
prevents many people from reading the barometer, out of
which the most amateur prophet may extract daily interest.
After a warm and charming day of early spring, which
has brought us out into the garden to marvel at premature
events : the humming of bees, the long catkins on the hazel,
the flowering periwinkle, the buds on the gooseberry, the
spring song of the tit, perhaps the appearance of a queen
wasp or hibernated butterfly — after such a day as this, when
the glass ought, it is often held, to acknowledge the fairness,
you will see the mercury which was low mount and mount.
The next day you believe will surely be something more
perfect still — r extravagance du parfait. The hope is rarely
fulfilled. It is not unlikely that you wake to the rattle
of a hailstorm, and are aware of the chill of very winter
in the air.

One cannot exaggerate the infinite variety of England,
its unexpectedness, the quick contrasts. There are no two
counties which can be called similar. Huntingdon, one of
the very smallest and in general regard almost the least

THE NEW YEAR WIND 311

remarkable, has stretches of the most fertile black soil in
England, on which you can see the rows of spring corn
run as regular as the ruled lines on foolscap. It has stretches
of marsh, where the reeds rustle in the winds and the snipe
bleat as in the days when Hereward, the last of the Saxons,
kept his remnant safe on the Isle of Ely. It has a great
wood, where only certain rare butterflies are to be found. It
has deep clay wolds which are the paradise of the fox-
hunter.

In 'this England' where all things differ, where even
parts of a county, as in South Devon, have their peculiar
breeds of stocks, nevertheless one great and distinct division
may be made. ' East is east and west is west.' The whole
of the west coast differs profoundly in every respect from
the whole of the east. It differs in its plants and in its
animal life hardly less than in its visible features. For the
cause we look to the wind. It may almost be said that
England has only two divisions, east and west, and only
two winds, east and west. South winds are but a part of
the west wind, and north winds of the east. We all know
the west wind as it affects our feelings and as it builds our
sky scenery. At its coming the barometer falls. The more
wildly it blows the lower falls the glass. But at its worst,
even when it comes with snow in its embrace, it confesses
to a certain softness and a certain waywardness. It usually
brightens the sky as soon as ever the clouds have emptied

themselves.

1 Day of the cloud in fleets : O day
Of wedded white and blue,'

could only have been addressed to a day when the wind
was westerly. Its most characteristic painting is a flock of
clouds like great sheep of the plains. They are white and
woolly. They turn a silver lining to the light, and there is

3i2 AUTUMN AND WINTER

plenty of room for dark hues too, to be caught in the hollows.
It brings the sunsets which are the glory of the countries
that suffer from a dry soil ; sunsets in which the clouds are
twisted into rough fantastic forms, that blaze and smoulder
and blacken all at once in the west, like whin in a heath
fire. Slips of sky between them lie like strips of downland
grass. The riot of colour sends a mild vibration across to
the east, where clouds, flying from a wind that at the sunset
hour begins to fail in the pursuit, are suffused with an even
and gentle colour. With colour and brightness the wind

THE PEAKS OF CADER IDRIS

itself seems to be endowed, just as the east wind with
the monotony of colourless clouds on unbroken skies.

If we probe for reasons, the reason lies in the dews that
come from the west. The jagged highlands of the Lake
Country, the peaks of Cader Idris and Snowdon, comb out
of the west wind the mass of its moisture. The rain is
deposited from the moment the wind meets the first land,
or even the viewless islands to which the Irish people of
Clare and Galway gaze in some strange and mystic faith.
When it passes these lands and moves across eastern
England it holds nothing more heavy than showers. Over
the flat plain of the Eastern Counties it passes almost dry-
shod.

THE NEW YEAR WIND 313

Some of the effects of this favouritism of the west wind
are obvious enough. Any one may see them from the
window of an express train. That green is the national
colour of Ireland is thus due to the west wind. Under
the gift of perpetual rain the lush meadows are so rich,
where the land permits, that they will fatten a bullock to
the acre, a thing unheard of east of Rugby. In the wet
districts grass and stock take the place of crops. The
people are born with the gift for tending and indeed for
selling animals ; and the small farmer can use the labour

'THE STONES OF THE BANKS ARE ENCRUSTED'

of his wife and the smallest of his children in looking after
them. Like Ireland are the beautiful little grass valleys
that curl with the rippling streams about the western fringe
of South Wales. As you leave your express train for a
closer view you find the print of the rain-bearing wind on
everything. The stones of the banks are encrusted with
moss, just as in the Lakes every broken twig of birch carries
a burden of mushroom or fungus growth. The grass begins
to sprout when spring is very young, even in January, and
in the late summer the folk are cutting an aftermath. The
cornfields are never free from rank weeds ; and heavy
lichens and mosses cling to the healthy trees. Only to the
trees is the wind unkind. They often crowd together for

3H AUTUMN AND WINTER

protection ; those to the west no bigger than bushes ; and
behind them the sheltered ranks gradually and regularly
slope upwards as if preparing to receive cavalry.

All wind is an enemy to the growth of trees and bushes.
It is indeed the worst of all enemies, as few realise except
the real gardeners. The winds are more cruel than frosts
to young growth. They tear the cells, rock the trunk so
that the roots oscillate and the rootlets lose that close and
intimate touch with the soil on which vigour of growth
depends. The wind-screen is the first necessity of every
garden if fruit is to be grown, as even Government depart-
ments understand where their officials deal with areas on the
west coast. Often in vain has the endeavour been made to
grow forest trees about the hills on the west coast of Ireland.
The west wind will not now permit it, although in the bogs
of this district lies abundant proof that years ago the trees
conquered the wind. When he sees recovered from the
black ooze great trunks of oak, parts of a vanished forest of
flourishing wood, the heart of every afforester burns to
restore the extinct scenery. So his effort is now to establish
screens of spruce, as the nurseryman grows hedges of beech
and hornbeam and alder, that behind the acclivity of these
ranks planed by the west wind the forest may re-arise over
the barren slopes. That patriarchal board, under whose
governance is placed all that part of Ireland which is subject
to the first brunt of the west wind, provides the little
farmers with ' screen ' trees as well as fruit-trees. But
those who most feel the west wind understand it least, and
great is the ridicule this very necessary defence arouses
in the minds of those who have regarded their coast as
barren and open to the west by the ordinance of insuperable
powers.

Winds of the western seas are as kindly to grass as

THE NEW YEAR WIND 315

they are severe upon trees. Wherever the west wind blows
off the sea and shakes its moisture down month after month,
there grass flourishes if there is any kindliness at all in
the soil. So it is due to the west wind that the milk
supply of London is controlled by the Welsh, and that the
social regeneration of Ireland has been promoted more by
the multitude of creameries that have sprung up than by
any other influence less closely allied with the native clime.
The student of weather could indeed infer a priori from the
incidence of the wind a quantity of the social conditions,
almost as certainly as the geologist from a knowledge of
the strata and seams. The whole of eastern England lies
behind such a wind-screen as the nurserymen or afforesters
design ; for the westward is high and rugged, the east a
plain or gentle valley inclining into the shallow sea and
re-emerging in Holland. But the screen is most notably
effective in robbing the eastern clouds of rain ; and on the
whole giving England as good a proportion of rain as any
country could desire.

From December the months begin to grow drier, and the
west wind gives place to the rival winds, that mark the
depths of winter cold as well as the steady sunshine of
spring. In a discussion on the effect of wet, a most in-
genious case was made out by Mr. Cornish, who had a very
wide knowledge of natural history, in favour of the drier
regions against the wetter. He argued that wet is bad for
all animals, indeed that it is the worst of all their enemies.
It lames the sheep, it kills even young ducks, it drowns
partridges, it depreciates vitality in every young thing.
There are exceptions that he did not name. Some vermin
flourish best when rain is heaviest ; but in general, if we
were to make a census of the wild animals of England, we
should find that the dry eastern half of England vastly

3i6 AUTUMN AND WINTER

surpassed the population of the west of Ireland. On a map
duly coloured to represent density of animal population,
Norfolk would take on a very deep hue and Westmorland
or Merioneth or Leitrim would pale. This is the more
curious as moisture is favourable to insects, and birds
multiply round standing water and by the side of streams.
The wet makes some of the western islands almost poisonous
to domestic animals in winter. The traveller from Skye in
October will find it quite difficult to escape from the island
in any comfort by reason of the herds of sheep with which
every passenger steamer is at this season crowded. The
sheep pine and die if left on the island during the winter
months ; and this is due less to the food than to the climate
and the untempered winds blowing salt off the Atlantic.

It is not well to push a theory to its utmost. The west
is of course the special home of some of the birds, who find
kindly open lands not offered by the east. The great
westerners are snipe and woodcock. In September you
may find wisps of snipe almost within the London suburbs.
Along the water meadows of the Wey, within twenty miles
of London, the writer has seen more snipe than at any winter
expeditions in the extremest west. You may flush there
wisps of sixty to eighty birds. They get up like finches in
the stackyard. At any other little marshes, old brick pits, or
rush-beds, scattered about the counties, you may at this
season find some odd snipe, a few of which have nested in
the country. But later, when winter comes, the birds are
gone. In January or February you may walk about eastern
fenlands, where the snipe abounded in November, and never
find a bird. They are all away west, as far west as they can
fetch. One winter day, on a South Welsh moor, you put up
snipe every twenty yards or so ; and local sportsmen have
shot fifty couple. The next nine-tenths are gone across the

THE NEW YEAR WIND 317

channel to be found later perhaps on the snipe hags of Clare.
To them the west wind has no terrors ; and they discover an
ideal home in the Outer Hebrides, from which other animals
shrink.

It is a common mock against the Englishman that what-
ever subjects may be broached he will in the sequel return

ATTITUDES OF SNIPE

to the weather. Perhaps after all it is among the most im-
portant of all conversational subjects. But talk about the
west wind has risen to the very highest summit of which
expression and feeling are capable. Shelley's ' Ode to the
West Wind ' is supreme among odes ; and if we must com-
pare it with other odes on my subject, Keats's ' Ode to
Autumn,' another conversation on the weather, will come
next it. In his childlike and ingenuous way Shelley con-

Y

3i8 AUTUMN AND WINTER

fessed, to his pride, that one stanza of this ode was an almost
perfect weather prophecy. The storm fell as he foretold in
the manner he foretold. Throughout the poem the analysis
of the effects of the wind is not the less sharp and precise
because the ode emerges from a depth of feeling rare even
in poetry. It opens, we all remember, with autumn :

' O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being ;
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red ' ;

and it ends with spring, when the east wind takes its place.

' If winter comes can spring be far behind ? ' We feel in
England of the west wind, even while it whirls the sere leaves
to decay, that the promise of near spring is conveyed in the
warmth of the air that it sweeps across the land off the
surface of the western Gulf Stream.

FIELDFARES

THE STRUGGLE WITH COLD
(i) BY LAND

IT is a pretty belief of the country people, and it is general,
that many berries mean a hard winter. Such a thing is not
impossible. It could be that weather of the sort to produce
much fruit is a cause of other weather that includes frost ;
but there is no evidence for the truth of the belief. One
year of astounding berry weather in this century was
followed by a winter of quite unusual mildness. As often
with country people, inherent teleology has been stronger
than observation. The truth is that in England the harvest
of berries is always large ; and often lasts on until every
fear is gone of the dearth that goes with heavy frost.
But however open the winter, the favourite berries are
always cleared off, and generally there comes a day when
hunger or laziness compels an attack on the more bitter fruit.
Every winter within the writer's experience a certain clump
of holly bushes has been attacked and cleared of berries by
a sudden onslaught in January. Several trees of the clump
are female hollies, and thanks to their juxtaposition to the
males they usually bear heavily. The groups of coral
berries stand out very clearly from the metallic leaves, so
clearly indeed that emissaries from Covent Garden, who now
range the country at a radius of a hundred miles from

319

320 AUTUMN AND WINTER

London collecting for the Christmas market, see them from
afar and beg leave to purchase. But the berries are not
designed for Covent Garden.

In the early winter not a single berry is touched, so far
as one can see. Perhaps now and again a blackbird picks
one off — a probability enhanced by the discovery of holly
seedlings in one of the blackbird's favourite haunts. But
the cardinal harvest remains apparently intact till a particular
day. It is then attacked furiously by the fieldfares, and the
whole cleared off in a day or two. It is difficult to determine
the reasons of the sudden attacks. No doubt the holly-berry
is bitter as compared with the hip, which is therefore
preferred before it. But whether the birds are forced by
necessity to take the less savoury food, or whether they wait
till the berries are matured is another question. All the wild
berries are softened and sweetened by frost and much
weather. At Christmas the holly-berries are hard and shiny.
After a week's good frost they mature, like celery, and the
first birds to fall upon them are the congregated fieldfares,
which travel further than our native birds in quest of food,
and are much more dependent on berries.

All the thrush tribe are great berry-eaters ; but the thrush
itself is much more carnivorous than missel-thrushes,
blackbirds and fieldfares. In fields where the May bushes
are frequent you may almost catch blackbirds with your
hands, so greedy are they for the hips. The time is a
perfect one for watching the birds ; you have only to stand
still against the trunk or series of trunks of some thorn and
watch. If it is very cold the fieldfares will crowd on the
bush over your head, now and again dropping to the ground
almost at your feet to pick up fallen fruit. Missel-thrushes
prefer above all other food the berries of the yew or one of
its varieties. Any one who plants a Japanese yew in his

THE STRUGGLE WITH COLD 321

garden may make quite sure of attracting the missel-thrushes.
They make for the fruit more greedily than a tit for a cocoa-
nut. The tree is a peculiarly difficult tree to perch upon,
and in their greed they work noisily and clumsily. The
only way they can pluck the berry is by fluttering violently
opposite it, and now and again steadying themselves with
their claws, but never perching. The difficulty is almost as
great to them as to starlings which have been seen
imitating the gulls in their art of picking food from the
surface of the water. As they catch each berry they almost
tumble down to the foot of the bush in their hurry to devour
this most delicious food, as sweet to the human palate as to
the birds. It is a lesson in aeronautics to watch the extreme
difficulty experienced by the bird in flying straight upwards.
The wings move at a frantic pace, and the whole effect is
strangely laborious ; but the greed for the berry is too great
to allow the bird a thought of flying even a few yards off the
tree.

Naturalists have not very closely studied the feeding habits
of our birds, or indeed other animals in winter, except in
cases where they have some very apparent effect on cultivated
crops. The Board of Agriculture itself has come forward to
impress upon the community that the plover is the best of
the farmer's friends, and that the starling is very little less
useful. The crops of thousands of unfortunate pigeons have
been examined ; and though it has been proved against them
that they will eat their fill of clover and succulent green stuff,
they also swallow a good number of the bulbous buttercup
roots and arrest the spread of most pernicious weeds. The
Hungarian Government, through its well-equipped bird
department, has justified the rook, that valiant destroyer of
the click beetle, but confessed that when the numbers grow
excessive the birds may degenerate, just as children in our

322 AUTUMN AND WINTER

slums develop a taste for pickles. Indeed, birds very rapidly
change their feeding habits if there is pressure. They will
imitate, too, an individual who may show some morbid taste.
Little colonies of rooks, as of brown squirrels, may turn into
eaters of carrion.

It is curious that more is not known of the food of birds
since classification began on the lines of the dietary. For as
birds feed, so are their beaks shaped ; nor is there any part
of the bird which has been so affected by locality and habit.
Compare the spillikin beak of the wren with the pearl pincers
of the hawfinch, or the aquiline hawk with the rook, or the

HAWFINCH

broad-based mouth of the nightjar with the awl of the wood-
pecker. In all these, and yet more clearly in the snipe and
avocet, you could infer the feeding habits a priori. But the
knowledge lacks precision as the aviculturists or keepers of
captive birds have realised. Few field observers care to be
aviculturists, but they are inferior to the keeper of caged
birds in this department of knowledge.

We may be sure that the country would be overrun with
certain weeds if many birds did not live principally on seeds.
A type of the insect feeder is the goldfinch ; and once again,
after the lovely bird has nearly vanished, we begin to see
their flocks swarming among the thistles. They become
again part of the autumn landscape. Less conspicuously,
but as surely, the other finches, the buntings, and our one
warbler, the hedge-sparrow, are at work in thinning the

SHEEPFOLD
(CLOSE OF A WINTER'S DAY)

By HARRY BECKER

THE STRUGGLE WITH COLD

323

KESTREL

myriad seeds that are to be found in every single square inch
of earth of open country. Other animals save their lives by
reducing vitality. But birds, though they store fat within
their bodies, and can thus bear
some temporary starvation, must
live the active life though the
ground is iron with frost or
blanketed with snow.

Among the birds that suffer
most from want of winter food
are partridges, though their case
is seldom if ever quoted. All game
preservers feed their pheasants, spending often unheard of
sums in this way ; and of course the artificial multiplication
of these wild fowl makes this quite necessary. But com-
paratively few pay this attention to the partridges, which
deserve it more since they do little if any harm, while

the pheasants do much.
The partridge is essen-
tially the bird of culti-
vated fields : the better
the farming, the more
the birds, it is said.

The stubbles are
their feeding-ground, the
grasses their sleeping-
place, the south side of
the hedgerows their
siesta couch, the dust
of the roads their bath. When the stubbles are well
gleaned and birds plentiful, partridges begin to suffer
seriously towards the end of January. The theory is a
personal one ; but the dogma may be broached that scatter-

ROOK

324

AUTUMN AND WINTER

ing food for partridges through January, when the spring
hunger begins, would do more to multiply the stock than
many of the troublesome and expensive breeding systems.
The partridge is a very heavy bird. It does not demand
quite so much sustenance as the woodcock, which will eat
its own weight of food in twenty-four hours ; but it needs
much food and has a wonderful instinct for its discovery.
Not even a green woodpecker has a finer taste in ants and
their grubs. In a district almost denuded of partridges by
several wet Junes one field was found packed with birds,
the day after a number of ant-hills had been cut open ; and

NIGHTJAR

GREATER SPOTTED WOOD-
PECKER

the birds remained clearing up the relics for many weeks.
It is an odd fact, established by some very thorough investiga-
tions, that partridges living on chalk land are distinctly bigger
and stronger on the wing than others.

The bird that, if one may say so, ought to suffer more
than most others, but does suffer less, is the sparrow. It is
essentially a grain eater. It does not care for fruit, and
only eats live things during one of the spring months, but it
is saved by its affection for the haunts of men and by the
stackyards, where there is always grain. In the yards it
is always associated with finches. Any one who likes to
conceal himself in loose straw can watch the finches from a
few yards or even feet ; and if there were more stackyard

THE STRUGGLE WITH COLD

325

observations, there would be less written of the exceeding
scarcity of certain birds. In Hertfordshire, for example, the
brambling or mountain finch is usually common every winter.
Large flocks appear in the fields now and then, but there
are some specimens in the stackyards every year. Haw-
finches, too, are common. Indeed, every finch is common,

SNIPE

the goldfinch and especially the bullfinch ; and it goes
without saying that greenfinches swarm. But none of them

AVOCET

except the greenfinch have the sparrow's fondness for
human houses.

The most pleasing of all birds to watch in winter time
is the jenny wren, though many people who enjoy their tits
and robins immensely seem to forget all about it. The
little things are even fonder of houses than sparrows or
robins. With the slightest encouragement they will come
into the warm rooms whenever the weather is severe, and
they rejoice especially in a greenhouse. They creep in and
about a honeysuckle on the wall, greenhouse plants, or the

326 AUTUMN AND WINTER

base of a hedge, very much like mice, quick, quiet and busy.
At every step or two of their running about they peck at
the branches or plants, finding food quite invisible to our
eyes. The little black eyes and the beautifully fine
beak, pointed as an etching pen, discover and seize what
no other bird cares about ; and this form of food exists
even in the hardest weather. If any twig is carefully
studied with a huge magnifying glass you can find pieces
of dead insects and animalculae, disjecta membra of incom-
parable minuteness, caught in the roughness, the crevasses
of the bark, or stuck in the oozy resin of the fir twigs. The
number of dead remnants of creatures is probably much
greater in any glass-house, and the fact will account for the
wren's noted preference for this winter feeding-ground.
And the wren is prettier than any of the greenhouse plants.
The delicate browns and greys of the bird outdo in comeli-
ness the flame of the climbing geranium, through which it
threads its dainty course. The black eye has a glint
beyond the eye of the flower ; and the sudden energy of its
bouts of song in wintry weather have the impetus of a
Shelley lyric.

Robins save themselves as sparrows do ; but their case
is worse. Above all other birds they are flesh feeders.
Their courage and energy are the courage and energy that,
as some philosophers consider, are a consequence of a flesh
diet. Insects and grubs and worms are harder to come by
even than grain, when winter lies heavy on the land. So
it comes about that each robin absolutely demands an area
to himself. He will not permit any other robin, even his
own child or parent, within that area ; such is the stark law
of self-preservation. It is therefore quite difficult, however
thorough the supply of food, to attract to your window more
than a robin or two, while as many tits will come as you find

THE STRUGGLE WITH COLD 327

supplies for. Of all the birds that fly the robin is perhaps
the most solitary.

The least solitary are the starlings, whose vast throngs,
shifting the light as they manoeuvre this way and that, are
one of the most familiar of winter sights. It is always laid
down as a maxim that birds congregate and mass for the
sake of food-supplies. It is true enough that partridges
pack most in years when food is scarcest ; but it is difficult
to understand why each bird finds it easier to discover food
when he is one of a great pack. Starlings and larks, which
cover our fields in winter, have rather changed their feeding
habits since they became so numerous. You may see fields
in Norfolk where the starlings have fairly devoured the
whole crop of wheat. They scratch at the foot of the blade
and bite it off about a quarter of an inch below the top of
the bleached part. Where birds, taken with a fancy for
this unlikely food, have descended in a harpy spirit, farmers
have been forced to sow the field over again. So here and
there, walking over the winter fields, one may find patches
scrabbled over as though a hen had been scratching, and
the wheat over the patch looking a rather melancholy
spectacle. It finally recovers to some extent, but it is not
a sight that helps the farmer to appreciate his birds. The
offender in this manner is always the lark, whose numbers
after the winter migration are portentous. But both birds,
especially the starling, are, like most other birds, notable
benefactors. What they prefer to eat are the grubs that
live at the bases of the plants. They are scavengers and
sterilisers, a potent ally, except when the numbers grow
excessive. Both the starlings and larks suffer excessively
in very hard weather ; and multiply exceedingly after a
course of open winters.

328

AUTUMN AND WINTER

(2) BY THE SEA

Few birds have more difficulty in getting food than the
gulls. They seem to have no proper home. The black-
headed gulls, the species chiefly frequenting London, cannot
get a living at sea, which is their proper home ; and they
do not seem particularly well fitted for life on land. They
flock to the ploughs as soon as harvest is over, tumbling
over one another in their greed, and often fluttering and
'scrabbling' within a yard or two of the ploughman's back.

'THE GULLS PRESS AND SCRAMBLE CLOSE BEHIND THE PLOUGH'

They come yearly in greater numbers to the river-side towns,
and though one regards them by the sea as the wildest of
birds, expressing wildness in the strange cry that seems
taken from the tempest, they are grown so tame that they
will feed from the hand and can be captured — experto crede —
by the hand. One may say that the whole tribe of gulls are
in a manner parasite. The skua gull, of course, largely lives
by stealing, by robbing other birds of the fish they have
caught, just as in America the eagle will rob the fish hawk.
The greater black-backed gull is a murderer. In the realm
of nature it is seldom if ever that a more brutal sight is
vouchsafed than this gull attacking a laggard or a wounded
duck. There is savagery in the impetus of the onset. The
beak is driven as if it were a sword into the screaming bird,

THE STRUGGLE WITH COLD 329

and the feast is begun before the bird is dead. Round the
harbours every variety of gull is busy picking up any refuse ;
and perhaps after all the proper work of the gull in the
economy of things is to scavenge, to eat up scraps, even to
play the vulture. For this task they are made omnivorous.
They swallow the bread we give them on London embank-
ments as eagerly as they pick garbage on the river.

But the gulls, a various crowd of great multitude, are best
seen at their work of scavenging along the coast. It is the
great feeding-ground of winter, and its importance may best
be realised when the great shoals of fish begin to approach
the land, especially when, late in autumn, there come into east
coast waters huge shoals of silvery herrings, and sea-going
fishermen begin the harvest of the sea. It is a pleasant
sight when the day is bright to see the long processions of
sturdy steam luggers passing in and out the harbour.
Those with catches push their way vigorously towards the
port. Others just away from the wharves and quaysides,
slushed down and freshly cleared of fish scales and the
bloody drip of yesterday's catch, race each other to the
herring grounds, with nets ready to be shot for the night's
fishing.

On just such days as these the waves fling upon the strand
queer things which have dropped from the nets, besides
strange creatures churned up from the depths. Above the
waters flocks of gulls scan with keen yellow eye the flotsam
flung from wave to wave. These welcome morsels may be
broken fishes, or sea anemones ripped from weed-grown
wreckage sunk in the shallows hard by some treacherous
sandbank. Often the larger gulls snatch up from the sea
the bedraggled carcase of some small drowned migrant bird
— a skylark or a chaffinch, overcome by an adverse wind,
or starling, maimed by striking a lightship's lantern. The

330 AUTUMN AND WINTER

gulls are of many varieties : the dark mantled greater black-
backed gull, the blue-legged common gull, the smaller black-
head, distinguished now only by two dark ear spots, and by
its bill and legs of crimson, and the herring gull, with pale
blue back and pinky feet. But young birds of the year, of
the larger species, clad in freckled greys, muster up in vastly
larger numbers.

There is often much of interest to be noted at the tide-
mark. You may find the long ribbon-like streamers of the
sea-tangle, the olive-brown fronds of the serrated wrack, the
bladdercd fucus and the oar weed — this last often attached
to a valve of the horse mussel ; whilst star fishes, the weed-
like corallines and zoophites, lumps of the egg-cases of the
whelk and feebly struggling pear-crabs, with rarer and even
more interesting products of the sea, go to swell this ' margin
of all things vile.' Sometimes the scouring underwash lays
bare the delicately brown shells of the radiated trough shell,
the long fingerlike razor valves, and hermit crabs robed in
discarded shells of whelk, casting them up with the rest to
the delight of the sea birds. Amongst the debris one often
finds numbers of herrings, the more or less putrid carcases of
the largest fish, whose weight caused them to drop back from
the meshes of the nets. With them dull-eyed mackerel,
victims also of the nets, and, maybe, weevers, and here and
there a whiting, and among them the picked or spiked dog-
fishes. Often we find the wicked grey eye of this little
shark still glistening. It is an interesting experiment to
dissect them. As often as not you may turn out from a
sea-dog's stomach, chestnut-shaped pieces of herring — always
of the largest and best, the fisherfolk will tell you — which
they had bitten from the dead fishes as they hung sus-
pended in the vertical nets.

That large-eyed fish, the scad, or horse mackerel, often

THE STRUGGLE WITH COLD 331

as fresh as if but just dead, may be found stranded on the
shore. Neither fisherfolk nor landfolk in East Anglia seem
to care for him, though he is attractive to the eye, with
cuirass-like scales adorning his lateral line, and with his
great bright eyes. But the hooded crow does not despise
him. Planting a big black foot upon the stranded fish, he
gouges out first one eye, and then the other, and as deftly
disembowels it. A few pieces are snatched from the back,
when a fellow-bird calls to its companion. Away flies the
crow to help a comrade who has just discovered a cast up
baby porpoise, another derelict from the fishers' nets. At
times the crows find food in plenty, for nature is cruel as
well as kindly, and the bird is by no means dainty. When
the night has been boisterous, and poor little migrants have
been beaten into the sea, next morning's tide, or a tide or
two after, sees their carcases flung on the sands : larks,
blackbirds, thrushes, linnets and many others, may be among
them. Even rooks so perish. It is quite a common thing
in late autumn to find the breast bones of various birds
clean picked a few hours after some sea-storm. One has
found the gull and the gannet, and many a guillemot,
razorbill, and little auk's skeleton entirely fleshless, with
perhaps only the wings intact, and when they are hard
pressed by hunger the crows have been again at these sorry
remnants, striping off the tougher muscles of the wings that
they had rejected. At a pinch the candle ends and dead
rats and mice from the sewers are greedily devoured, nor
will the hungry tribe despise a stranded turnip or a broken
cocoanut, soft and putrid though they be by long sub-
mersion.

When the east wind long continues, and the sea-fishes
leave the shallows for deeper waters, the commoner auks,
the guillemot and razorbill, fare badly. These birds revel in

z

332 AUTUMN AND WINTER

the herring shoals far out at sea, and with gannets that
plunge, and cormorants and shags that dive, they share the
fishing-grounds with the fisherfolks and the gulls. The
gannets may need ten fishes a day, the cormorants as many,
and the auks can safely do with half a dozen. The gulls
by thousands harass the shoals, unable to dive, depending
more upon the fishes gilled high up in the drifting nets, to
the disgust of the rightful owners. Often these various birds
gill themselves in the nets and are drowned. But when the
herrings swim low, the guillemots especially suffer sadly ;

SCOTERS

and, flung from wave to wave, after becoming wearied out
by constant diving, and by plunging through the rollers, by
and by the breakers cast them dead or dying on the beach.
It is no uncommon thing for the rambler on the shore to
find a guillemot bunched up as if sleeping just above the
margin of the highest wave, and, on stooping to pick it up,
to find it dead and stiffened. More rarely the razorbill
suffers with it. Life is harder for the birds of the sea, though
the sea is unfrozen, than the birds of the land. For by the
sea there is always the winter of heavy winds. But not only
sea birds come for a space to find food by the sea shore.

Among the least restful flocks are scaups, wigeon, tufted
ducks, and shelducks. The black-plumaged scoter, the
* mussel duck ' of the east coast fowler, hardy and vigorous

THE STRUGGLE WITH COLD 333

of wing and foot, seems not to heed so much the fury of the
elements. Its home is on the sea, its food abundant in the
quieter deeps below : it is an excellent diver, and searches
diligently for the fat, brittle-shelled trough-shell and the
smaller mussels, nor are small crabs and kindred crustaceans
despised by them.

Running nimbly along the moistened sands various shore
birds hunt for such fragmentary or minuter forms as the
larger birds reject Dunlins trot in zig:zag fashion up and
down the wet
sands. Here
they snap up
small crusta-
ceans : — gam-
marus, hyperia, ^r
corophium, and
crangon, and
tiny fragments
of other animal

, ,. THE PURPLE SANDPIPER . . . WILL RUN DOWN A

DOUieS. RETREATING WAVE-WASH, THIGH DEEP

Occasionally

the purple sandpiper may be met with : preferring rocky
beaches and the neighbourhood of fucus-decorated piles
and boulders, they will search the flattened stretches of
sands, and, being daring, will run down a retreating
wave-wash, thigh deep, in order to snatch up any tempt-
ing morsel. One seldom sees two together, less often
a trio of this solitary species. Knots tamely prick about
among the weeds and shingle, hoping for sand-hoppers.
Ringed plovers in scattered companies search the drier
stretches above the tide-mark, and occasionally a parcel of
grey plovers, now clad in wintry vests of white, drop in to
share the findings of the smaller birds.

334

AUTUMN AND WINTER

On the shingle patches high above the highest wave-sweep
of the spring tides flocks of snow buntings, tinkling their
bell-like note as they flit from spot to spot, explore the
brown sands. Their quest is the buried and unburied seeds
of the dune-plants that the wind and the drift sand play hide-
and-seek with, — the seeds of maram and sand-sedge and
the low-growing vegetation that bloomed and seeded last
autumn, and dispersed, leaving an earnest of vegetation for
the spring to follow. The naturalist and the bird-catcher

who lays his nets hard by the sand dunes recognise
occasionally among their flocks the hardy Lapland bunting,
the snow-bird, and the shore-lark. Happily these bird-
catchers, the greatest of all enemies of our rarer birds, are
beginning to decrease. Then there are grey linnets trooping
southwards, resting and feeding as they travel, twites and
redpoles — the lesser and the mealy — appearing in twittering,
dancing flocks, keeping to the coastline, having arrived,
perhaps but a day or two since, on the Norfolk coast. In
January 1895 a later migration sped them in astonishing
numbers before a spell of exceedingly wintry weather. It is
horrible to record that one bird-catcher netted 70, 130, 220,
330 linnets in four successive days. When bad weather set

THE STRUGGLE WITH COLD 335

in in the winter 1900-1 another netter captured 140 siskins
one morning before breakfast on a decayed lettuce patch

GREY PLOVERS ON MIGRATION

within rifle shot of the sea. It is on this coast that we most
need the efforts of the Royal Bird Protection Society.

WOOD-PIGEONS

BIRDS IN LONDON

BIRD life in towns is proportionately much richer in winter
than in summer. Few spots in towns can provide even the
bolder and hardier species of birds with the privacy which
they require at the nesting-season, or a sufficient supply of
insect food for their young. On the other hand, towns in
winter are warmer than the open country, and are better
provided with many kinds of food. The scraps thrown out
from houses, whether accidentally or in deliberate charity to
the birds, are naturally more abundant ; and even in days
when motor traffic is so largely ousting the horse there is still
a good deal of corn to be picked up by pigeons and hard-
billed birds of the finch tribe in mews and stableyards and
about cab-ranks.

The larger the town, the greater is the difference in the
richness of bird life at the different seasons ; and it is greatest
of all in London. There, for the last twenty years, the
winter birds have increased even more remarkably than the
summer birds have diminished. As the suburbs spread
annually wider and wider, the summer migrants seem less
and less inclined to penetrate their murky barrier into the
parks and gardens of the centre ; and for a long time past
the trees and undergrowth in their old haunts have been

BIRDS IN LONDON 337

growing sicklier and more decayed. It is doubtful, for
example, whether the spotted flycatcher has nested in Hyde
Park or Kensington Gardens for some years past, though
it did so until quite recently ; and the same process of dimin-
ution or disappearance is noticeable in the case of the summer
migrants almost everywhere in the metropolitan area. Birds
which visit London in winter, on the other hand, have grown
far more numerous ; and in some cases they are not only
winter visitors, but residents all the year round. The regular
arrival of large flocks of black-headed gulls in autumn dates
from the great frost of 1895; and the increase of wood-
pigeons, with the remarkable change in their habits which
town life produces, has been more and more noticeable
during the same period. So it comes about that in London
the ordinary contrast between the seasons is precisely
inverted. Londoners see the first gulls return to the river
in autumn with the same sense of anticipative pleasure that
countrymen feel when they see the first swallow in spring.
The gulls begin to return to London in considerable numbers
about the third week in October, though a few immature or
unmated birds may be seen as stragglers in August, or even
earlier. Their date of migration to their winter home is thus
about a week later than that of the swallow and many other
summer migrants ; but it is part of the same great movement.
By November they have fairly settled down for the winter ;
and they depart about the third week in March, or a little
earlier in a very open season, leaving a few stragglers behind
them. Their numbers vary a good deal according to the
weather; after hard frosts or violent gales, the flocks
wheeling and screaming at the parapet of the Thames
Embankment are twice as numerous, and twice as hungry,
as in spells of calm. They feed to a great extent on what
they can find on the surface of the river and its foreshores,

338

AUTUMN AND WINTER

and on the lakes in the various parks. But their skill in
catching bread or fish thrown to them in mid-air makes them
favourite pets with Londoners ; and a flock of gulls wheeling
with harsh screams in an endless circle past a figure on the
wet grey embankment is one of the most characteristic
pictures of outdoor London life. They will alight a moment
on the parapet with wary eyes, and carry away a crust to
consume as they float on the stream ; and sometimes they
will even feed from the hand.

Black-headed gulls make up the vast majority of the
birds of their tribe which visit London. Occasionally the

much larger herring gull is seen floating warily in mid-stream,
or a common gull flits among the barges on the river ; but
neither, so far as we have seen, is ever confident enough to
come and catch food thrown from the Embankment, far less to
take it from human hands. Herring gulls in the adult plumage
of soft grey and white are much scarcer on the Thames than
young birds in mottled suits of grey and brown. Among
the black-headed gulls there are always a large proportion
of birds in similar mottled plumage ; and it is not until the
early weeks of the new year that the old birds gradually
assume the sepia mask of their spring plumage which gives
them their commonest name. Earlier in the season they
have only two faint dark bars on the head, one across the

BIRDS IN LONDON 339

orifices of the ears, and one further forward. The dark
patch is confined to the front part of the head, and does not
extend over the crown to the nape of the neck, as is the
case with the jet-black caps of terns. Black-headed gulls
are also called laughing gulls, from the resemblance of their
repeated cries to sharp laughter when they grow violently
excited at any disturbance of their nesting colonies, or when
they are being fed on the Embankment. All the gulls are
eager and aggressive birds ; but only the black-headed gulls
have so far adapted themselves with confidence to London
life. Their aggressiveness is very conspicuously displayed
towards the ducks in St. James's Park. When food is thrown
from the bridge to the mixed flock of waterfowl beneath,
the gulls hover with threatening cries above the swimming
pochard and wigeon, and often force them to drop what they
have secured. Beneath the water the diving ducks are their
masters ; but we have seen a tufted duck bring up sprat
after sprat from the shallow bottom of the lake, only to be
robbed of them by the gulls as soon as it appeared on the
surface. The gulls play pirate with the ducks' lawful gains,
much like Arctic skuas with the earnings of other gulls. It is
surprising to see the ducks victimised so easily by smaller
and lighter birds ; but the gulls win by sheer force of courage,
though it is courage in an unamiable shape. The courage
and intelligence displayed by the black-headed gulls in
London is only one form of the vitality and adaptiveness
which characterises their whole family. Gulls are a rising
race ; in many parts of the country various species are
multiplying greatly under the protection of the Acts, extend-
ing their range to districts where they were formerly unknown,
and developing new and mischievous tastes in diet.

In all these respects the wood-pigeon is the gull's counter-
part on dry land. Wood-pigeons also have enormously

340 AUTUMN AND WINTER

multiplied, have followed the spread of plantation into new
districts, have become a positive curse to the farmer, and
have added themselves as a new and delightful feature to
London life. London has had its wild house-pigeons
probably from time immemorial ; Stowe, the Elizabethan
antiquary, shows us how they were household words in his
day by his story of how the boys of St. Anthony's Hospital
used to call ' Paul's pigeons ' after the St. Paul's boys in the
street. They would respond with a cry of 'Anthony pigs/
and then both sides naturally fell to fighting. But the white-
necked, portly London wood-pigeon is a colonist of much
more modern date. London wood-pigeons are believed all
to be descended from a few pairs turned out in the grounds
of Buckingham Palace by the late King when Prince of
Wales. In the country they are among the wariest of birds ;
in London they show the same intelligence by presuming to
an almost ludicrous extent on man's friendliness. Swollen
to an enormous size by inactivity and good living, they will
scarcely step out of the way of the nursemaids' perambulators
in the parks. Yet they have not lost their cunning, when
it is needed. We have watched a half-grown Persian cat
stalking a large and placid wood-pigeon in a little garden
abutting on one of the London parks, until it seemed as if
the cat's fierce concentration must win its prize, and the
pigeon's indifference prove fatal ; yet just at the right moment,
with one more sidelong glance of the complacent eyes, the
bird flapped gently over the fence, and the cat was left
petrified and glaring.

It is remarkable how the distinction in the natural habits
of the two kinds of common London pigeons still persists
in spite of the great change in the birds' present life and
surroundings. The pigeons of St. Paul's and the Royal
Exchange and many other London buildings are descendants

BIRDS IN LONDON 341

of escaped house- pigeons, and thus ultimately of the wild
blue rock-dove, which still haunts some of the wildest cliffs
and caves on the coast and inland. They nest and roost,
accordingly, in the streets which are like deep ravines, and
on the tall buildings which recall the lofty cliffs. The roar
and flow of traffic far beneath them is curiously like the
movement and murmur of the sea, when heard and seen from
one of their lofty watch-towers. Wood-pigeons, on the other
hand, are seldom or never to be seen out of sight of a park
or garden, or at least of one of the trees which break the
line of so many London streets. House-pigeons feed more
freely in the parks and squares than wood-pigeons in the
streets ; but they never nest in trees, whereas wood-pigeons
have already so far modified their ancestral habits as to nest
now and then in a window-box on an upper floor, which is a
site more recalling a ledge on one of the rock-dove's cliffs.
Every group of London's half-wild house-pigeons recalls
Darwin's famous experiments with the many varieties of
their one species, by the diverse gradations of plumage
between the standard pattern of the fanciers and the original
wild stock with its characteristic dark wing-bars. The
perpetual tendency is to revert to the original type ; and if
it were not for perpetual new recruits of strange hues and
shapes from the pigeon-cotes, in a very few years the whole race
of London house-pigeons would become pure blue rocks again.
Grey wagtails are far less numerous than black-headed
gulls, but equally regular as winter visitors. Wagtails
are often badly named ; the name of yellow wagtail is
reserved for a summer migrant, and the name of grey
wagtail is given to a bird in which yellow is even more
conspicuous, while the common grey member of the family
is called the pied wagtail. Pied wagtails may be seen now
and then in the parks or along the river at most times of

342 AUTUMN AND WINTER

year, but especially at the two migration times, when they
sometimes appear in little flocks. Grey wagtails, with their
beautiful glint of sulphur yellow beneath the tail, are winter
birds in London and other parts of the south and east of
England, whither they almost all migrate in late summer
from the hill streams of the west and north, where they
breed. They may be seen along the Thames in London
from about the beginning of September to early March.

GREY WAGTAILS

Occasionally they are found resting in some City garden or
churchyard, or on some high ledge of a building in the middle
of the most densely overbuilt areas. Sometimes they appear
in pairs, even in the autumn and early winter months, when
birds' family ties appear loosest ; but usually we see single
birds scattered here and there along favourite reaches of the
river. One of their most frequented haunts is off the Chelsea
Embankment, where they can find rest on certain floating
timbers when the shore-line is submerged at high water. At
all states of the tide they can often be seen flirting their
yellow tails, or flitting with their sharp double call-note,

BIRDS IN LONDON 343

along the riverside at Chiswick Mall or Strand-on-the- Green.
Unable to rest on the water, like the gulls, they are less at
home on the river between Westminster and St. Paul's ; the
noise of the traffic and the absence of any convenient resting-
place at high water keeps them restless and timorous, and
they flit uneasily over the plane-trees and across the river
with an anxious cry. Often this familiar call first draws
attention to their slender forms as they waver across the
wide brown channel of the river. There is a strange contrast
between these London scenes and the shores of the mountain
torrents where they are familiar in the summer half of the
year.

Brown owls are chiefly winter visitors to the more central
parts of London, though one or two pairs may possibly still
remain to breed. They are sometimes heard in spring and
summer within a mile of St. Paul's ; but these may be unmated
birds. For many years in succession a large hollow elm in
the northern part of Kensington Gardens was tenanted every
winter by a brown owl, which arrived in autumn and left
again in spring. The ground beneath the tree was littered
with numerous undigested pellets, each of which contained
the bones and feathers of a sparrow neatly packed up. For
the last few seasons there has been no sign of this tree being
tenanted ; but owls are still often to be heard in Kensington
Gardens and Holland Park, and are occasionally seen perched
among the branches by day. Brown owls feed chiefly on
small birds, and thus find a plentiful source of subsistence in
the London sparrow-flocks ; but white or barn owls live
chiefly on mice and young rats, caught in the open, and are
therefore seldom seen or heard in the central parts of London,
though they are not very uncommon in the suburbs. The
peril of owls in the dark may be one reason why London
sparrows are fond of roosting in trees which are lit up all

344 AUTUMN AND WINTER

night long by the full glare of the street lamps. One such
roosting-place is in a group of three plane-trees on the little
plot called Knightsbridge Green, at the eastern end of the
Brompton Road. Here they assemble every night to sleep
in a situation which would effectually banish slumber from
birds less inured to city life. For many hours the full roar
of the traffic of one of the most crowded London thorough-
fares rises just beneath them ; and in winter, when the boughs
are bare, the arc-lights dot the pavement with the shadows
of the birds' clustered forms. Large flocks of sparrows also
roost in thick clumps of trees in some of the parks. Here
they find protection from marauding owls among the dense
boughs, as well as shelter from the cold in winter. The
chorus of harsh chirping with which they settle down for the
night is a peculiar sound at twilight in the parks, where the
comparative silence makes it most conspicuous.

Often the same roosting-place is frequented by a flock of
starlings ; and then the chirping of the sparrows is almost
drowned by the starlings' more strident cries. By day the
starling is far less conspicuous than the sparrow in central
London ; it principally feeds on the turf of the parks and
suburban fields, and has not the capacity of the sparrow for
picking up a living in any gutter or alley. But certain spots
in the middle of London have been chosen by starlings for
the site of their great nocturnal gatherings ; and their
assembly a little before sunset is a most remarkable feature of
London bird life. In October and early November, before the
leaves fall, one of their chief stations is among the planes of
the Temple ; but the most interesting sight of all is to watch
them alight on the capital of the Nelson Column in Trafalgar
Square. As dusk begins to fall, every few seconds flocks
and small parties of starlings come flying in high above the
house-tops to their lofty perch beneath Nelson's statue, chiefly

BIRDS IN LONDON 345

from some northerly quarter. Hundreds of birds vanish

among the carved foliage of the capital ; but only a small

number leave this cold and windy height, and seek a shelter

more in accordance with their usual habits in the thickets on

the island in St. James's Park, which is another of their

favourite roosting-places.

By the time that the sky

is dark, and the glare of

lights rises from the streets

beneath, the movement of

the flocks has ceased ; and

to all appearance the great

majority of the birds spend

the night in this lofty

watch-tower.

Many people who know
birds well in the country
are astonished at the com-
monness of the carrion
crow in the whole London
area. It has an air of
wildness which seems to
make it unsuitable for
London life ; but in reality
its habits are better

adapted to life in towns and suburban market-gardens
where there is no game and few lambs or poultry, than to the
modern countryside. In many rural regions the carrion crow
is now practically extinct. These are the districts where
game-preserving is strictest. There is no such intelligent
and ruthless enemy of the eggs and young of most other
species of birds as the ' corbie ' ; and his habit of attacking
young or weakly lambs makes him as well hated by the

346 AUTUMN AND WINTER

shepherd as by the gamekeeper or the poultry-farmer. Both
the bird and its nest are conspicuous, and it is not difficult
to banish the species from any well-watched region. But in
London and its suburbs the carrion crow has few enemies ;
and his boding caw and lean sinewy form are familiar from
the centre of London to its furthest outskirts. True to its
name, the carrion crow chiefly feeds in London on the garbage
of ash-heaps and rubbish-tips in suburban wastes, and on the

dead animal matter which
it finds on the shores of
the river and the large
suburban reservoirs. It
will also steal eggs or kill
f, young birds when it can.
bxr The prevalence of the
carrion crow in London is
one reason of the diminu-

mJ$jFfJIJ' ^SSF tion of its more peaceable

cousin, the rook, just as
CARRION CROW the diminution of crows

has led to the multiplica-
tion of rookeries. Though the rook sometimes develops
the carrion crow's marauding tricks, it is no match for
the crow in a family tussle ; and crows are dangerous
pests in the neighbourhood of any rookery. Rooks are now
very scarce in central London ; besides the small rookery
in Connaught Square, on the north side of Hyde Park,
which is only irregularly occupied, their only surviving
colony is the famous rookery in Gray's Inn. A few years
ago this was nearly wiped out by the raids of carrion crows,
and the rooks were only saved by the forcible expulsion of
the robbers. But crows incur little hostility elsewhere in
London ; they occasionally breed even in Kensington Gar-

BIRDS IN LONDON 347

dens, and often in the oaks and elms of suburban fields.
They are long-lived birds, so that their numbers are not
dependent on numerous families ; and it is probable that
they are recruited from time to time by refugees from the
country. Their snarling caw is a very familiar sound in all
parts of London, especially in early spring, when they wander
about the town in quest of attractive nesting-quarters. The
jackdaws which still frequent one corner of Kensington
Gardens are manifestly afraid of them ; and they are great
pests to the waterfowl which breed on the lakes in the parks.
But they are a bold and interesting feature of wild life in
London ; and their lean forms hunched on a tree-top bring
welcome associations of the lonely marsh and mountain to
many prosaic squares and dull riverside fields.

Missel-thrushes are common now in London in the same
weeks of early spring when the crows go cawing and wander-
ing from park to square. They have a regular habit of
settling close to houses for the nesting season, apparently for
the purpose of seeking protection from the crows. In the
country crows usually avoid the near neighbourhood of man ;
and the discovery that this rule does not apply to London is
very likely the reason why missel-thrushes seem never to
nest in the central parks and gardens, though they often
appear in them for a few days in early spring. They visit
Hyde Park from time to time, and almost outsing the song-
thrushes ; and at the end of March 1909 a missel-thrush settled
for two or three days in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and sang so
loud and sweetly at dawn that wondering sleepers put out their
heads to listen. But the singer found no mate, and departed
for fields which were wider. Song-thrushes and blackbirds
are permanent residents in all the parks and many of the
larger London gardens, and sing with as much freedom as
the birds on any country lawn. Birds attached to a single

2 A

348 AUTUMN AND WINTER

spot generally sing earlier and more vigorously than their
wandering kindred ; they are free from the hardships and
distractions of a vagabond life, and pair and breed earlier in
spring. The song of the thrushes in December fills Hyde
Park with a sense of spring in spite of its grey fogs ; and they
are unusually musical in and about the Zoological Gardens,
where they can pick comfortably among the pens and shrub-
beries, and prosper on fragments of bun. Blackbirds are
heard in London in March more often in proportion to their
numbers than in the country. The plague of cats makes it
difficult for London thrushes and blackbirds to bring up a
brood in safety, but otherwise their life is a comfortable one.
Robins are bolder birds than thrushes and blackbirds ; but
they are less numerous in London owing to the scarcity of
secure nesting-places. They naturally build in open holes
on sloping banks, within a few feet of the ground ; and such
sites in London are perpetually exposed to the attacks both
of cats and rats. Robins are birds of woodland tastes,
for all their familiarity with man, and cannot make them-
selves at home among chimney-pots and paving-stones, as
the sparrows do. Hedge-sparrows are rather commoner than
robins in the London parks ; and this seems due to their
habit of nesting in thick bushes, which protect them better
from their four-footed enemies. From early autumn until
summer, the sweetly piercing song of the robin can be heard
sparingly in the more thickly grown portions of the London
parks, and in some of the gardens and squares ; but it is less
constant, especially from January onwards, than the shriller
and more laboured ditty of the hedge-sparrow. Chaffinches
are no more than occasional visitors to central London ;
though they are not uncommonly seen or heard among the
park trees, they are unlikely to be found in the same place
next day. Since they abound in almost every country district,

BIRDS IN LONDON

349

and thrive in high-lying villages which even the sparrows

avoid, it seems curious that they do not settle in London.

But they are so fresh and dainty in their plumage, and the

fashion of their nests, and all their movements and ways,

that one suspects that they cannot tolerate the London

grime. Titmice, and especially the great and blue tits, are

common in many small gardens as well as in the parks.

Their searching ways make them at home in a small plot,

while they nest safely in small holes either in trees or

walls, or even in iron lamp-posts. They are also among the

easiest birds to feed in winter,

and grow attached to many

gardens in this way. The

see-saw call of the great tit,

and the blue tit's tinkling

chime, are sure signs of spring

in London gardens, and may

be expected in January or

early February between the

songs of the song-thrush and

blackbird. The little grey cole tit, with his white stripe

dividing his black cap, is less common in central London

than towards the outer fringe.

Besides the birds which are residents or common visitors,
it is surprising how many others can be seen from time to
time even in the more central districts. The great oppor-
tunity for seeing rarities is in the early morning in the parks,
especially during the spring and autumn migrations. King-
fishers, sandpipers, wheatears, reed warblers, and many other
fairly scarce or local species are frequently reported in this
way from Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. As the
morning stream of workers begins to pour along the paths,
most birds grow scared and pass on, so that they are seldom

BLUE TIT

350

AUTUMN AND WINTER

to be seen later in the day. The moorhens and dabchicks
and mallard on the park waters are recruited on the spring
migration by wild birds, so that it is by this time hard to say
whether the park stocks should be regarded as wild or tame.
These three species have certainly a better title as wild birds
than the city house-pigeons ; and it seems likely that some of
the tufted ducks on park waters are wild birds from some of
the lakes and reservoirs where they are yearly growing more
numerous. Sheets of water are an attraction to most birds
on migration, from the food of all kinds usually to be found

RAZORBILLS

in, beside, and above them. In bitterly cold springs, large
parties of swallows and house-martins and sand-martins are
sometimes seen circling for flies above the Round Pond and
Serpentine, though it is to be feared that they find little to
feed on. The same species, and also swifts, hunt now and
then in wet and stormy Septembers along the plane-trees on
the Chelsea Embankment. But swifts and birds of the
swallow tribe are now only visitors, though not rare visitors,
to central London. House-martins clung for a long time to
nesting-haunts in a few of the airier streets, but have left
them for many years. We do not wake in London to hear
the screaming swifts betoken a sunny morning, as one does
under the purer skies of Paris, though they can sometimes
be seen in fine summer weather. But London gains many

BIRDS IN LONDON 351

unusual visitors from its position near the mouth of a wide
tidal river. When the north-westerly gales overfill the
North Sea and drive up the high tides in the Thames, there
is always a chance of finding some unusual wanderer among
the gulls between Lambeth and Blackfriars, within sight of
the trains rumbling in to Charing Cross. Last autumn a
flock of razorbills were watched by curious Londoners strug-
gling and diving in the tide, equally frightened of the noise
of the huge double-decked tramcars on the Embankment and
of the dark arch of Blackfriars Bridge, to which the strong
ebb was sweeping them. More recently, a dark sea-duck
was seen skimming straight and low up the river under
Westminster Bridge, and settling on the water in a quiet
spot just opposite the House of Lords. As far as could be
seen from the gardens further along the river-bank, it was
a female scoter. Close by a pair of mallard were quietly
paddling and preening themselves in the shallow water at
the mouth of one of the old buried rivers, which now flow
through culverts into the Thames. Such are some of the
unexpected windfalls among the wild birds of London ; and
they add the perpetual anticipation of novelty to the constant
interest of the life of the residents and regular visitors.

A DARK SEA-DUCK . . . FEMALE SCOTER

BY THE SIDE OF THE WATERS1

WINTER is much more like winter on the east than the west
of England, but only the natives appreciate it. Among the
many who loiter in summer among the placid lagoons or on
the reed-margined pathways of Broadland, few care to return
there when the winds and hailstorms of mid-winter play
havoc among acres of dead reeds and rushes. No one but
the naturalist and the wild-fowler then find excuse for haunting
the Broads, though the season is in most ways the best of
all. For the wild-fowl are many. They may be watched
bobbing up and down on the troubled waters, until only
narrow ' wakes/ kept open by the swans and the punts of the
Broadmen, are left between the ice-sheets approaching from
either shore. When the waters are coated with the ice, there
are mallard and teal and wigeon and many others to be seen
restlessly flitting from one Broad to another, to make at
length for the salter estuaries and the open sea. In their
passing, the flocks pay a too heavy toll to the local sportsman,
whose bag will often contain a surprising variety of species.

In these rare winters of severe frosts, when the Broads are
locked in ice, there would be silence as profound as that of
the pine-woods, except for the ring of many skates. The
croak of the moorhen and the click of the coot is no longer
heard — the one has gone begging around the precincts of the

1 Most of the notes on Norfolk are contributed by Mr. A. H. Patterson.

352

BY THE SIDE OF THE WATERS 353

farm premises, and the other betaken itself to the tidal
estuary, to feast upon the zostera, or sea-wrack, growing
luxuriantly upon the mud-flats, sharing it with the wigeon,
which so delights in it as to have given it the expressive
cognomen of * wigeon grass.'

Often there are winters that the B roadmen call 'open,'
when for the briefest possible periods the Broads are covered
by the merest ' slub/ through which the punt goes crackling
and rasping her way ; while on average days the clouds drop
sleet or disperse an uncomfortable and persistent drizzle. On
these days the fowl are wilder and more alert : the pochard
warily feeds among the towy potamogeton, with sentinels
always on the alert against danger. Even the coots, tame
enough in summer days, are vigilant and suspicious, and
make for the reeds on the least alarm, although, somehow,
they seem to discriminate between the man with the gun and
the man who angles. The persevering pike-fisher, to whom
the wintry Broads are as delectable as his summer roach-
swims, inspires them with no disquietude.

A short winter day's pottering in Broadland, to the man
who can conquer a disinclination to face a drizzly rain and a
spiteful wind, is as full of incident as a spring day at its best.
One Broad is as wintry as another, and a curious likeness marks
them all. The sea-winds hustle over the sand-cliffs, sweeping
along the water whose margins are ill defined by sedges and
reeds and marshy stubble : swampy levels and tussocky
, ronds, like South Sea atolls, push their way into the view :
and land and lagoon seem akin.

The low banks of some such river as the Thurne are bare
now of iris and pink willow-herb, and sweet-scented sedges :
the B roadman has left nothing but the stubble of the
* gladden/ There are many sterner attractions. A stunted
willow here and there breaks the level of the banks, and a

354 AUTUMN AND WINTER

laden wherry now and then passes along with its red-capped
wherryman shouting a greeting, or offering a comment on the
weather. At first perhaps, as you pass up the river, there is
little bird-life observable on the waters, an unhappy moorhen
croaks discontent from a ditch behind the banks, a hungry
gull or two silently pursue the bend of the river, hoping to
find something edible in the shape of a small dead bird or the
carcase of a tiny drowned mammal. A few meadow pipits
cheep mournfully as they take to erratic flight from the
herbage, and a flock of grey linnets rise from a patch of

white goosefoot, a plant
which grows abundantly on
newly thrown marsh soil,
and assumes a creeping
habit. Odd snow buntings
are disturbed from that same
favourite weed, which even
attracts to the waterside the
covert -haunting pheasants.

Lapwings, wailing on the marsh-lands, are fairly numerous,
and an occasional bunch of golden plovers is seen. But
the merry reed and sedge warblers, so familiar from their
confidential manners and pleasant snatches of song to
yachting folk in summer days, are absent. The ' visping ' of
the snipe, the babbling voices of the wild-fowl, and the harsh
grating notes of the hooded crows, prowling around, like
camp followers, seeking to despoil the dead and wounded,
become familiar, and are, perhaps, more in keeping with the
rougher spirit of winter. The creaking of the pump-mills
and the sighing of the winds through the reed beds make
appropriate wintry music. Let any one who wishes to see a
characteristic winter scene visit such a place as the * Sounds,'
where dark pools, reflecting the sombre cloud, nestle among

BY THE SIDE OF THE WATERS 355

the acres of brown reed, and bulrush stems, where the over-
ripe ' pokers ' of the reed-mace nod and dance to the rough
hustling of the north wind. Floating on these pools, some
asleep, some preening their feathers, and others pulling at
the sodden vegetation beneath them, are scores of mallard
with glossy green heads and their more sober mates. Maybe
a shoveller or a bunch of teal come into view, or a diving
bird pops up into notice. Now and again you may see the
grebe, — the great-crested grebe, more abundant during the
summer, and the gossander. Any one living in the neigh-
bourhood, who follows up these waters from day to day, may
see — and too often shoots — even less commonplace visitors,
some vagrant buzzard or peregrine falcon keenly bent on
harrying the wild-fowl ; some wing-wearied northern diver, or
a rare gull, a Bewick's swan, or a skulking bittern. Rigor-
ously protected by the riparian owners and their gamekeepers
from the more vulgar guns of the ' irregular musketeers,' the
' outside ' village gunners, most of these unfortunate rarer
birds fall to the share of these so-called protectors, and
become candidates for niches in collections.

One of these Broadland gamekeepers punting around will
discourse of sundry ' rare 'uns ' that have visited his beat
since wintry weather obtained. There were flocks of wild
swan among them, a half dozen little auks driven in, weary,
from the sea. A velvet scoter has been hobnobbing with
a parcel of ' mussel ducks ' (common scoters), and had appa-
rently been diving for small swan-mussels or ' clams ' as he
calls them ; a couple of ' sawyers ' (red-breasted mergansers)
have successfully evaded him, although a 'sawbill' (goosander)
had not been so fortunate ; a flock of pintail ducks had
joined themselves to the 'duck' (mallard), and he had put
up a bunch of golden-eye only that morning as he came
'athort Hicklin" Broad. He had observed a 'game-hawk'

356 AUTUMN AND WINTER

(peregrine) the day before strike down a ' smee ' (wigeon),
while a small gaggle of white-faced Bernacle geese had been
using the ' Sounds ' for over a week, ' though there ha'n't bin
one kilt as yet, they was so shy,' as if that killing were the
final cause of the appearance of the bird.

The Broadland naturalist, like his kindred elsewhere,
should be apt at concealing his person and at holding his
tongue, for quietude and inconspicuity are essential to bird-
watching. These accomplishments, acquired by constant
practice, help us to-day : a parcel of bearded tits, most
characteristic of Broadland, restless and ever on the move,
keeping close to the limited habitat, flit into view, and com-
mence to climb and play the acrobat upon the tall stems of the
reed-mace, digging their tweezer-like mandibles sharply into
the brown over-ripe velvety tufts, from which downy particles
float away on the wind. Unable to find tiny mollusca upon
the moister stems below, as in summer days, this bird is
happy enough in having at hand a goodly supply of ' pokers '
and the seed of the common reed. The bearded tit is as
merry now as ever, and frequently utters its clear, metallic
'ping ping,' which can be exactly imitated by balancing
a penny on the tip of each forefinger and tapping them
smartly together. It is a jolly family party that flits to and
fro to-day, regardless of unpleasant weather, and will be
merry still when the snowflakes dance in the chill air, and
the ravenous pike unhappily dart hither and thither under the
clear ice.

Emboldened by quietude, a moorhen or two scuttle along,
lightly supported by their long clinging toes, on the matted
debris at the base of the reeds, seeking food ; and several
coots paddle about, diving at intervals and coming up again
with a juicy bit of plant root, which, after a preliminary shake
of the head, is bolted. Peering from between a tuft of rush

BY THE SIDE OF THE WATERS

357

stems, the dark brown head of a crested grebe is observed.
The rich brown tippet and earlike crest has long been
moulted, and will not be replaced until the mating time.
The bird shuffles up on to a lump
of matted leaves, sits bolt upright,
standing indeed on its
flat feet, and begins to _^
rearrange a few ruffled

o

feathers. Then his
keen eye catches sight of us, and
with a quick header down into the
water he goes, leaving scarcely a
ripple behind him ; nor does he
reappear again within the area of
our pool. We are more fortunate in
watching a dun-headed goosander
which repeatedly dives, reappearing
perhaps with a small roach between
its mandibles. Fresh-water fishes
are as readily devoured by the
' sawbill ' as marine species. From
the crop of one shot in the Broads
some years since, seventeen small
roach were recovered, a goodly
meal indeed.

Now and again a long spell
of frosty weather locks up the

Broads and rivers beneath a, thick coating of ice, when
the wherries are unable to leave their moorings for weeks
together. Then are the wild creatures sadly put to for their
means of subsistence, the tail-flicking moorhens sneak into
the neighbourhood of the farmsteads, the coots flock to the
tidal estuaries, where the ice breaks above the sinuous creeks

BEARDED TITS

358

AUTUMN AND WINTER

between the mud-flats, and jostles in great jagged slabs on
the ebbtide to the sea. Here with various wild-fowl they
share the food to be found in the open * wakes ' and on the
bared mud-flats, from which the tide has dragged and drifted
the more rotten ice. To such a place as Breydon Waters,
with its vast acres of ooze, flock various waders. To
Breydon, the one great salt-water Broad, in severe weather
crowd thousands of grey dunlins, with grey plovers, knots,
curlews, and many other waders, and where there is any

open water
there drop in
' hard fowl ' in
flocks — poch-
ards, tufted
ducks, scaups,
scoters, and
often smews >
and dabchicks,
white - fronted
geese, ' Scotch brents,' shelducks, whooper swans, driven
south by the wintry snows.

But it is in the days that the ice first ' lays ' on the fresh-
water Broads, and the snow lies deep on the marshes and
fenny places, that to those waters come the greatest crowd
of fowl. It is then that the privileged native sportsman takes
heavy toll, and even the labouring gunner may earn a meal
from their flocks as they pass uneasily from one unfriendly
lagoon to another, should they pass over the ' free shooting '
corners where it is still his right to sport.

On such a day, when the heavy black squalls, pushed
along from the north by the howling wind, dissolve them-
selves in snow, like wool, and others follow on charged with
stinging hail, it is out of the question save for the hardiest

GREAT-CRESTED GREBE

BY THE SIDE OF THE WATERS 359

native sportsman to get afloat. On such a day a few
minutes' view, from one of the little one-arched bridges that
cross the small neck of water which often joins one Broad
to another, will suffice to gather a good impression of what
Broadland on the whole is like. The dense reed clumps at
the margin bend beneath their burden of snow, every leaf-
bare twig and spray has its touch of white that shoots off in
a powdery shower as some hungry bird darts. There is
a tinkling sound as the ice crystals on the reed stems chafe
in the breeze. One may perchance see a skein of fowl
circling round the Broad, or a parcel of them bathing in
an open spot in the centre, with others hunched up,
sleeping or preening their feathers on the icy margin hard
by them.

The starlings, now hard put to it, pry around for any-
thing edible. A black-headed gull disconsolately eyes the
open patches of water, eager for a morsel of food ; or its
larger relative, the grey gull, a junior of the herring gull
or the black-backed species, searches for carrion. Dead
redwings, starved to a mere bunch of skin and bones, suit
them well, or at a pinch any living dunlin or weakened bird
they can overtake or seize. The snipe, hard pressed, goes
bleating overhead and is off westward in quest of some
'spring beck/ where the snow melts as it falls on moving
water, or where, under an overhanging bank, the frost has so
far overlooked the still soft larvae-tenanted ooze. From far
overhead come the clanging voices of the bean or the pink-
footed goose as they fly in wedge form ahead of the storm ;
and it is quite likely one may discern a skein or two of wild
swans, forced to flit from their northern homes, speeding
along with outstretched necks, their white plumage made
brilliant by contrast with the leaden storm-clouds behind
them.

360

AUTUMN AND WINTER

We may still hear the tinkling of the bearded tits, which
find it no great task to shake the snow dust from the reed
tufts in order to lay bare for their profit the ripe seed-heads.

At these times bird and beast are put to great shifts for a
bare living. Out there by the edge of a pine clump is a
gaunt heron watching hard by a water-vole's burrow ; if the
vole but show itself the bird's stiletto of a bill will pierce its
skull as by a lightning stroke. Let the frost 'give' but
an hour or two, crows will be seen inspecting the freshly
cast mole-heaps showing black above the snow. A batch of

WILD SWANS

a few heavier feathers — the rest have been scattered by
the wind — and a red tinge of blood on the snow is all
that is left of a little tragedy of the earlier morning. A
parcel of hooded crows had found a wounded pochard lying
against this grassy tussock. It had escaped the aim of the
fowler to fall into the tender mercies of the crows. There
may have been two, or even four or five at work ; anyway,
they did their work quickly and well, for only the breastbone,
brought to view by a thrust of the foot against the snow,
remains of it. Probably the head and other parts were
snatched up by these ghouls to be discussed elsewhere.

One may now often drop across the remains of a big
bream, or a jack, or even the relics of a coot, the debris

BY THE SIDE OF THE WATERS

361

^

left by a prowling otter, for flesh as well as fish do not come
amiss to him when hard pressed by hunger. Nor are rooks
particular when food is scarce. A Norfolk naturalist once
came across a score of rooks busily at work on the carcase of
a dead sheep, tearing like so many vultures.

The land birds too are hard pressed. The fieldfare finds
his hawthorn berries sadly diminishing, the redwings fluff up
their feathers to keep their starved little bodies warm, and
soon perish in numbers
if the snow and frost
are slow to go ; larks
leave the buried wheat-
fields and sneak into the
market gardens to raid
the cabbage patches,
and the wood-pigeons
skulk for provender
where they are by no
means desired.

A sudden rush of
winter may disturb and distress the whole population of
seaside birds. From Scottish lochs and Norwegian fiords
are driven great hosts along the eastern seaboard of
England. On one such occasion as many as seventy Brent
geese dashing south were counted in a solid flock. Little
auks, driven inland, wearied and hungered, fell helplessly in
the pools and meadows, numbers being picked up a little later
on dying and dead. One of the Hickling keepers reported
that on one single morning he observed no fewer than fifty
shelducks, eleven goosanders, two black-throated divers, a
red-throated diver, two smews, one being that very rare
visitor, an adult male bird, besides golden-eyes, curlews,
dunlins, ringed plovers, and sanderlings. A flock of long-

OTTER

362 AUTUMN AND WINTER

tailed ducks were noted by another observer. The men
with guns slew without much mercy or compunction. Three
bitterns, a bird that at last has begun to nest again in Eng-
land, were slain, and many wild-fowl. In the Saturday's
market in an east coast town hung from every other stall
bunches of lapwings, mallard and duck, smews, starlings,
wigeon, and here and there a goose of one sort or another.

With a continuance of the frost and winds the fowl went
farther afield, not finding a rest anywhere. Beast and bird
and fish longed for the springtime warmth. For the days
are hard when

' the snow

Looks cheerless on the fields below ;
And cheerlessly the leafless trees
Toss their dark branches in the breeze/

FEBRUARY

' And lastly came cold February, sitting
In an old wagon, for he coud not ride,
Drawne of two fishes for the season fitting,
Which through the flood before did softly slyde
And swim away ; yet had he by his side
His plough and harnass fit to till the ground,
And tools to prune the trees, before the pride
Of hasting Prime did make them burgein round.
So past the twelve months forth, and their dew places found.'

SPENSER, Mutabilitie.

' O quick praevernal power

That signalled punctual through the sleepy mould
The snowdrop's time to flower.

Oh, Baby spring,

That flutterest sudden 'neath the breast of earth

A month before the birth.'

COVENTRY PATMORE, Saint Valentines Day.

THE COUNTRY CALENDAR

FEBRUARY is almost the coldest and the driest month in the year,
though it is called Fill-Dyke. Coventry Patmore and Spenser repre-
sent the two views. The longer days begin to bring a hundred indi-
cations of spring. Especially noticeable, though little noticed, is the
flower of the elm and wych-elm, and many other trees. Birds sing
and build, leaves bud, a few insects and hibernating animals appear,
and sowing begins in farms and in gardens. Marsham recorded the
leafing of hornbeam on February 8th

2 B

364

AUTUMN AND WINTER

February 2nd, Candlemas Day, is one of the most important in
the calendar. The popular verse for this date runs thus :

' If Candlemas Day be fair and bright
Winter will have another flight.
But if Candlemas Day be cloud and rain,
Then winter will not come again.'

But the day has a score of maxims attached to it in weather lore.
The point of most of them is that if Candlemas be mild we shall
suffer for it later on. Rod-fishing begins on some rivers. The
close season for birds begins.

February 7th to loth is put down as one of the regular cold
periods, of which there are five others in the year, and it is astonish-
ing how true most of them are to date.

February i^th. — St. Valentine's Day.

Average temperature, . » * 39'5°-
Average rainfall, . . . ' . 1*42 inches.
On February ist, sunrises 7.43 a.m. and sets 4.45 p.m.

HAILING FAR SUMMER

IN February wild plants and flowers make a noticeable step
towards spring. Half- evergreen weeds which linger through
winter, with a few stained blossoms, begin to put forth
greener and fresher shoots ; and in many sheltered corners of
the lanes and woods new stems thrust up through the mould.
The earliest flowers of the year are in full bloom in a normal
season by the beginning of February, and are quickly
followed by a small but conspicuous group. The yellow
aconite is the earliest garden blossom, often thrusting
through the soil in mild seasons by New Year's Day. It is
not a native British plant, but here and there has become
fully acclimatised, and has taken its place among wild
flowers.

The snowdrop follows it in a fortnight or three weeks'
time, and is an even more typical flower of the earliest
spring days that are slipped in between the coldest and
bleakest spells of winter weather. It is very true of the
English climate that 'as the days lengthen, so the frosts
strengthen ' ; and the courage of the snowdrop in flowering
under the coldest skies of the year makes it as attractive as
its graceful purity. Its snow-white petals tipped with lurk-
ing green are a beautifully appropriate symbol of the renas-
cence of vegetation among the winter's frost and snow ; and
the whiteness of the snowdrop has more than a merely

365

366 AUTUMN AND WINTER

superficial appropriateness to the season, but is in harmony
with the whole progress of the year's blossoms. The general
colour scheme of flowers deepens as the year goes on ; white
and pale blue and bright yellow are the prevailing colours in
the earlier months, while after midsummer these lighter hues
become much scarcer, and are replaced by various shades of
purple, and deeper orange yellows. Thus the pure white of
the snowdrop's hanging blossom seems the starting-point for
the whole floral progress of the year ; and its hidden green
is a visible promise of all the verdure to come. The garden
snowflake of April and the water snowflake, or Loddon lily,
which blooms in May, are both flowers of much the same
habit and appearance ; but the snowdrop is far more shy and
graceful. The snowflakes are much taller plants, growing to
a foot or eighteen inches in height, and therefore needing
calmer weather and the protection of taller herbage round
them. Snowdrops could only afford to lift their heads so
high in the protection of thick brambles and withered
herbage ; and in that case they would get little light in the
short, dark days when they first thrust from the soil, and their
blooming would be long delayed. Sometimes a snowdrop is
found flowering as late as the end of March in the midst of
dry grass and brambles, through which it has had to thrust
its way in order to reach the light. In such an exceptional
situation its stem may be eight inches long ; but by the time
when it flowers, primroses, anemones, violets, and many other
blossoms are blooming abundantly round it, and it is no
longer the herald of the year. The two snowflakes are
tipped with green on the external sepals, which deprives
them of that air of shy promise which is part of the snow-
drop's charm. Snowdrops are often found in spots where
heaps of moss-grown stones or the slight ridge of a vanished
wall indicate the site of an ancient dwelling. This associa-

HAILING FAR SUMMER 367

tion, and their comparative scarcity in woods and thickets,
far from inhabited sites, has laid them under suspicion of
being early escapes from gardens, like the aconite, and not
original natives of England. This is very doubtful, and in
any case can never now be proved ; while the snowdrop has
so long bloomed in complete independence of human cultiva-
tion that it is now a genuine wild-flower, whatever may be its
ancestry.

Exaggerated importance is often given to the discussion
whether well-established plants are native or introduced
species ; and the arguments for a foreign origin are some-
times pushed unreasonably far. The black or stinking
hellebore, or bear's-foot, which blooms in January or early
February, is also sometimes said to be an introduced species,
chiefly because it is a rather scarce and local plant, which was
formerly used in medicine. The same argument would cut
out from the British list many other species which no one
would seriously deny to be natives. It is also claimed that
this hellebore clings to the site of old houses, like the snow-
drops ; but the statement is less true. Its characteristic
haunt is on stony, bushy hillsides, usually of limestone ;
and it is found in just the same situations of this kind in
England, where its native right is questioned, as in Switzer-
land, which belongs to the central European region where
it is admitted to be at home. The truth is that it likes
loose limestone hillsides with plenty of protection from rough
and nipping winds ; and such situations are rare enough to
make it scarce and local. It is easy to distinguish from the
green hellebore, which flowers about four weeks later, at the
end of February or the beginning of March. The black
hellebore is a tough, bushy plant about two feet high, bear-
ing dark, tattered, half-evergreen leaves, as well as younger
and fresher ones of new winter growth. Its leaves are

368

AUTUMN AND WINTER

palmate, or spreading like the fingers of a hand. The green,
rank-smelling flowers grow in a cluster at the top of one or
more stems. The green hellebore also grows in woods, but

BLACK HELLEBORE

in less stony situations. It is a smaller and slighter plant,
about nine inches high, and without the dark and tattered
half-evergreen growth of the other species. It bears a
smaller cluster of larger blossoms, which are of almost the
same tinge of green as the fresh leaves, whereas those of the

HAILING FAR SUMMER 369

black hellebore are pale, and look paler by contrast with the
dark leaves of the old season's growth. The black hellebore
is a curious and interesting plant, but hardly beautiful ; but
the green hellebore has real grace, when it thrusts abun-
dantly from the carpet of dry brown leaves in a chalky

V

GREEN HELLEBORE

beech-wood. These plants are close relatives of the garden
Christmas rose.

Another early-blooming plant, often found on the same
soils as the hellebores, is the spurge laurel. It is a sparse,
woody plant, growing from one to four feet high, with ever-
green leaves much like those of the Portugal laurel, but
narrower. It is a close relative of the rare and beautiful

370 AUTUMN AND WINTER

mezereon, which blooms on almost leafless shoots in cottage
gardens in early spring. But it bears green flowers instead
of pink, and is chiefly attractive for its lustrous leaves and
the interest of its curious blossoms. All green blossoms
have a kind of fascination, since green is the familiar colour
of stems and leaves, but not of flowers ; and the spurge
laurel's blossoms are remarkable for their abundant secretion
of nectar, which gives them a semi-transparent appearance,
and is very attractive to many kinds of flies. Flies are also
attracted by the blossoms of the hellebores. Spurge laurel
can sometimes be found in bud as early as December ; it
is usually in blossom by the latter part of February, and
continues blooming into March.

Most of the young green shoots in the February woods
are those of another green-flowered plant — the dog's
mercury. This is the abundant and vivid plant, a few inches
high, with pointed leaves and strings of green blossom,
which is seen almost everywhere on earthy hedge-banks and
about the edges of copses and woods. It is one of the most
precocious spring plants, and pushes its way up in sheltered
places from Christmas onwards, spreading in February a
vivid mantle under the hazel and hawthorn stems. It will
not grow in the darkest recesses of the woods and gorges,
and prefers a fairly rich loamy soil, disliking sands ; but,
given these conditions, it seems entirely independent of
sunshine, and flourishes on moisture and west wind. The
longer strings of blossom are borne by the male plants.
The flowers also attract and are fertilised by flies. The
dog's mercury blooms plentifully by the end of a mild
February, and reaches its fullest growth in March and early
April. Far on in May, when it is out-topped by newer
herbage, and its February vividness is tarnished, the female
plant bears round rough seeds under the heavy shadows of

HAILING FAR SUMMER

the wood. The lesser celandine is another plant which
blooms on the threshold of spring under boughs which May
will darken. In the warm south-western counties the
children's buttercup is sometimes to be found flowering even
in January ; and in February it shows itself in most places

PRIMROSE, BLUEBELL LEAVES, LESSER CELANDINE, AND DOG'S MERCURY

on warm banks and in sheltered meadows. Its habit of
blossoming on ground overshadowed by later vegetation is
seen most strikingly where it grows under the spreading
boughs of a lime or sycamore, or other spreading deciduous
tree in a cattle-pasture. All through the summer the dense
foliage keeps the grass scanty beneath it ; and the cattle
sheltering in the dog-days trample the last blades away.
When early spring comes round, the tree-trunks are sur-

372 AUTUMN AND WINTER

rounded by a wide circle of bare earth on which the sunshine
falls almost unhindered by the leafless boughs. On this
open bed the celandines cluster thickly, flattening their
marbled leaves on the bare soil, and lifting their rayed faces
to the sun. Late February and early March are their hey-
day ; as the foliage expands and the shadow deepens, they
fade ; and by the silent days of August the circle is worn bare
again, and all has perished except their buried tubers.

The colour of primroses is midway between the green of
dog's mercury or hellebore blossoms and that of the true
yellow flowers, such as buttercups or dandelions. Green is
the most restful of all colours to the eye ; and part of the
peculiar attraction of primrose blossoms is probably due to
this admixture of green. How far this colour is from a true
yellow can be seen when we view from a little distance a
bank sprinkled with primroses and dandelions. By the side
of the golden dandelions the primroses are pale against the
background of grass. The contrast of the primrose with its
near relative the cowslip is scarcely less marked, and is
often displayed in the same way under a hedge-bank or at
the border of a field. Primroses are extremely persistent in
growth ; in sheltered situations and a mild climate they often
begin to form succulent leaves and flower-buds in early
autumn, and bloom in any month from September onwards.
Their flower-time corresponds less closely to that of most
spring flowers than to the song-time of such birds as the
song-thrush and robin. They begin their songs after the
drowsy season of late summer, and continue it in mild weather
all through winter, increasing in vigour as spring approaches.
Substituting growth for song, this is precisely the way
of the primrose. But snowdrops do not appear above
ground until a short time before they bloom ; and several
other flowers which can be found in the winter days are

HAILING FAR SUMMER 373

straggling survivals of the past summer. Red and white
dead nettles still bloom on strips of waste ground and by the
ditches ; creeping speedwell opens its blue eyes on heaps of
• earth and rubbish and undisturbed garden-beds where chick-
weed keeps a few dull white blossoms stained by frost and
rain. Dandelions put out tarnished and half-closed blossoms
from among the old coarse leaves, which die away to give
place to the tender blades of spring. The common gorse
and the daisy flower in winter in a more occasional and
spasmodic way than the primrose, but with a fresher and
more vigorous growth than the bygone summer's weeds.
By the end of November the orange-yellow blossom of the
dwarf autumn gorse has faded ; but from that time onwards
sprays of the taller common gorse can be found in bloom
here and there, until the approach of spring gradually sets
it blossoming far and wide. It does not reach the height
of its flower-time until May. Daisies bloom on in much
the same irregular way, until April sprinkles them every-
where.

It does not need actual blossom to give a sense of life
and promise to the hedges and woods in February. In
every mild corner spears and tufts of verdure are thrusting
and unfolding to the west wind's caressing touch ; they are
vivid with the luxuriance of spring. Furled arum leaves
wax and widen daily above the leaf-mould in the hedge-
bottoms and on the floor of the copses ; they and the spikes
formed by the young bluebell leaves before they fall apart
have the firmest and most lustrous texture of all the green
things swelling towards spring. Pushing bluebell spikes
will pierce a dry oak or beech leaf which obstructs them,
and rise with it girdling their middle ; sometimes they poke
their head into a nut gnawed by a dormouse or squirrel,
and lift it several inches into the air. It is fascinating to

374

AUTUMN AND WINTER

study a hedge-bank full of those thrusting points and to
observe their various experiences in making their way into
the world. The strength with which they will thrust up a
dry clod is surprising. After they are fairly through the
ground, and have done their work of penetration, the spikes
fall apart into their component leaves, among which the
flower-stem will rise later. By the hollow sides of flowing

ditches the marsh marigold lifts its firm
but miniature leaves and buds, which
will gradually swell till the time of
flowering is come. Cow-parsley multi-
plies in the drier ditches its heads of
fine-cut foliage, as luxuriant as the
more solid shoots of the marigold and
arum. The rings of little blue-green
leaves which have hung since Christmas
on the ropelike honeysuckle stems
grow very gradually larger as the
weeks of February draw on ; and the
sparse rods of the elder begin to show

the dark buds give birth to bright leaf-

tufts. A new spring lustre comes to the grass on the
warm banks and in the sheltered corners of the fields;
the beauty of mere grass is often ignored, yet no plant
is more delicate and lustrous, or more characteristic of
Nature in England. The front of the hedge is hung
with hazel-catkins brightening as the days go by, and
growing mealier and brighter as the scales open and show
the pollen stored beneath them. Far back in August
and early September the catkins of the coming year were
beginning to swell in the shadow of the still untarnished
leaves. By Christmas in mild corners of the lanes they

HAILING FAR SUMMER 375

were already lengthening into the ' lambs' tails ' that attract
children's eyes ; but they do not grow ripe with pollen-dust
until some time in February. The hour when they need
their pollen is when the minute but vivid crimson blossom
thrusts out from the end of the leaf buds to receive it, shaken
by the wind ; and the female blossom of the hazel does
not usually appear until March, though it can be found in
February in very early seasons. The pollen of the catkins is
ready a little beforehand, and in many places is ripe before
the end of February for the March winds to sow broadcast
among the twigs set with fertile stars.

PAIRING AND EARLY SONG

EARLY in February there is a rapid increase in the number
of birds in song ; and at the same time they begin to pair
and settle down in their nesting-quarters. The traditional
date for the pairing of birds is St. Valentine's Day ; and this
is as accurate as any one day that could be named for a
process which extends over many weeks, and is largely
influenced by the openness or severity of the season. By
February 13 in a normal year separate pairs of birds begin
to be conspicuous in lanes and sheltered gardens and in the
open fields ; and this new feature in their distribution gives
a promise that the nesting season is at hand, though for six
weeks longer the wandering winter flocks of many species
are to be seen side by side with the newly mated couples.
Not all birds choose fresh mates every spring. Many of
the larger species, such as the birds of prey and the crow
tribe, apparently mate for life ; and for them the pairing
season merely means closer companionship and a more con-
stant attachment to their nesting-place, which in many cases is
also a permanent one. It is likely, though it is still unproved,
that mating for life is the general rule among small birds
also, though there are probably many exceptions. Cock and
hen birds of migratory species may meet again in their

376

PAIRING AND EARLY SONG 377

accustomed spring haunts, and resume the partnership which
their winter wanderings have interrupted. So far as the
adult birds are concerned, the winter flocks may be an
aggregate of pairs rather than of individuals : and many
pairs may keep together through all their wanderings, and
be ready to settle down either in the old haunt or in some
new one when the weather begins to grow springlike.
Chaffinches separate in autumn into flocks composed almost
exclusively either of cocks or hens ; and in their case the
chance of the same pair meeting again might seem small.
Yet even in their case there would be little difficulty about
it, if each bird returned to its last year's home ; and the
records of marked birds of other species show that this
happens sufficiently often to make it probable as a general
rule.

The first birds to settle down in couples are naturally
those which have been most stationary during the winter.
Conspicuous among these are the hedge-sparrows, house-
sparrows, robins, song-thrushes, blackbirds, wrens, pied
wagtails, and a few other species which haunt gardens and
other sheltered spots. With most of the species just named
the resident birds are only a small minority. The most
stationary species are the house and hedge sparrows and the
wren ; but even they indulge a proportion of wanderers,
which pair and settle down a good deal later than the
regular dwellers in our gardens. By early February, and
often earlier, the usually unobtrusive hedge-sparrows are
beginning to chase each other along the hedges and
through the shrubberies with shrill pipings, and to show
watchful interest in the particular corner where they intend
to nest. Blackbirds drift apart into special clumps in the
shrubberies ; and timid hen thrushes are seen in the shelter
of the bushes where the cocks sing more and more loudly

378

AUTUMN AND WINTER

from the boughs. The wren's mate follows him as he slips,
mouselike, through the chinks in the faggot-pile or along
the eaves of the old thatched shed ; and the impetuous
scrimmaging of the cock sparrows increases as their black
throat-patch becomes more clear. Neither the song nor the
fighting of the cock birds of various species has probably so
definite a purpose of winning a new mate as is often supposed.
Both their song and their combativeness are natural ebulli-
tions of a spirit fired by spring ; they sing from increased
vitality, and fight more or less promiscuously from the same
incentive. Young birds still unmated may gain their brides
by force of arms or vigour as expressed in song ; but the
old birds sing as vigorously as the young, and if they fight,
it is less often to win a mate than to warn off an unmated
intruder.

Carrion crows are winged Ishmaelites which have often
to travel far before they can find a spot where they can nest
in safety ; and when we see how closely
they cling together on their wanderings,
habitual constancy among migratory birds
seems more probable. Before the end
of February pairs of carrion crows begin
to wander about the country in search of
suitable nesting-places, and attract atten-
tion by their loud caws — more hoarse and
snarling than those of the rook —
and by their way of posting them-
selves conspicuously on some lofty
perch. They settle early in the
place where they intend to nest, but do not naturally begin to
build until the end of March on early in April. If they are
left in peace, they will often nest in the same wood or clump
of trees for many years in succession ; and then they are less

COCK PARTRIDGE CALLING

PAIRING AND EARLY SONG

379

GREAT TIT

conspicuous in February and March, since they are not

forced to hunt for a new home. Pairing is equally con-

spicuous in February with the partridges, which are among

the most sedentary of our birds. Instead of the packs or

shrunken coveys in which

partridges are generally

seen as the winter goes on,

early in February we see

them start up from the

grass and stubble in pairs.

The time of the first

pairs varies not only ac-

cording to the weather

of the season but to

some extent with the

height and climate of the spot. On a ridge of hills the

partridges may still be living in packs in early February,

when they are paired in the fields lying below. From the

wheatfields in the lengthening evening twilight comes the

call of the cock partridge mounted upon a clod ; and this

note of spring mingles pleasantly with the song-thrush's

music, and the spring cry of the great tit in the apple-trees.

This 'saw-sharpening' cry of the great tit is one of the
most typical spring notes, and one of the most distinctive of
the many different notes of the titmouse tribe. It is a shrill,
rasping double note, repeated with see-saw persistence more
and more regularly as spring draws near. It is not seldom
heard in January, but begins to be common as pairing- time
in February comes on. Bright sunny mornings will draw
forth the spring cry of the great tit, as of many other birds,
even after frosty nights ; but it is likeliest to be heard in calm
mild weather. The great tit calls so boldly that it is not
difficult to trace the crude song to the singer, which is easily

2 c

38o

AUTUMN AND WINTER

recognisable with its black crown, dark stripe down a vivid
yellow-green breast, and the conspicuous white cheek-
patches which have given it its name of oxeye, much as the
large moon-daisy is called the oxeye daisy. A little later

than the great tit,
the blue tit also
begins its spring
song. This is more
musical than other
notes uttered by
this tribe of birds ;
tits' notes have
generally a twang-
ing or metallic ring
which makes them
easily attributable
to one species of
the tribe, though
their variety makes

it often hard to identify them more particularly without
careful observation. The blue tit's spring song consists of
two or three plaintive calls followed by a tinkling peal —
much like a small silver bell sharply pulled and echoing
out its peal. This song is constantly uttered by the cock
bird as it hunts among the twigs in acrobatic attitudes, often
with its mate in attendance.

Missel-thrushes are sometimes heard singing as early as
December ; but their free song is usually first heard from
some lofty bough on a morning or evening in February,
when there is a noticeable increase in the light as compared
with the short dark days. It is more like the blackbird's
and ring-ousel's song than that of the song-thrush ; and it is
often mistaken for the blackbird's when heard early in the

GREAT TIT

PAIRING AND EARLY SONG 381

year. It consists of a phrase of three sweet notes, deeper
and richer than the song-thrush's, and repeated with little
variation often for a great length of time. On a February
or March morning, with a bright light and a strong wind
that bends the boughs, the missel-thrush will often sing
almost uninterruptedly hour after hour on some lofty perch
in a poplar or elm. It makes little
difference to the bird's spirit and
enjoyment if a driving north-west
wind brings showers of cold rain or
hail. The bird's apparent delight in
boisterous weather has given it the
common country name of storm-
cock. Blackbirds dislike such riotous
weather ; if they are heard in Feb-
ruary, it is generally on some morn- i
ing of premature sunshine, when
the crocuses in the south borders are
yawning their utmost to the bees, or

at sunset on some unusually mild evening. Often they are
not heard until March. With a little practice it is not hard
to distinguish the two birds' songs. The missel-thrush's is
much more limited and monotonous ; and sweet as it is, it has
not the richness of the full notes that the blackbird seems to
turn over in its throat. Shyer and wilder than either the
song-thrush or the blackbird, its sweet but unskilled music
seems truly to fit its nature ; and the tireless song streaming
from aloft on some turbulent February morning is one of the
most satisfying of all sounds which tell of the oncoming of
spring. As missel-thrushes pair and search for nesting-
places, they very often draw closer to gardens and houses
than is their habit at other times of the year. This seems to
be due to their fear of carrion crows, which are inveterate

MISSEL-THRUSH

382 AUTUMN AND WINTER

stealers of eggs, and must often find an easy prey in the
missel-thrush's conspicuous nest when it is built in open
hedgerows and copses. Crows usually avoid the close
neighbourhood of houses, where they expect to find
enemies with guns; and the missel-thrush's shyness of
mankind is overcome by its mistrust of the crow. It is
probably owing to the same reason that rookeries are so
often built close to man's dwellings. Crows are great
robbers of rooks' nests, though rooks are their own close
kin. As rookeries are usually in warm and sheltered places,
rooks are some of the earliest birds to pair and nest.
Ravens also nest from year to year in the same site, and are
as early breeders as the earliest rooks, though they haunt
wilder and bleaker regions. But crows do not build until
late March or early April ; and this seems to be due at least
in part to their being usually prevented from settling per-
manently in one spot, and compelled to discover a retreat
where there seems a chance of being undisturbed.

Another step forward in the year's progress towards
spring is marked by the first singing of the chaffinch. So
large a part of the whole volume of song in England is
supplied by this most plentiful and animated bird that the
chorus before its singing-time is necessarily thin. Before
the middle of February the gay and vivacious ditty begins to
ripple from the orchard fruit-trees or the hedgerow elms ;
sometimes, when an exceptionally bright and warm morning
follows a long spell of gloom and cold, the song of the
chaffinches seems to break out in a positive torrent. But
the song is not always complete at once. It consists of a
run of rapid notes ending in a kind of flourish or twirl ; and
when the chaffinch first begins to sing, he cannot always
accomplish it perfectly. The notes become slurred and
confused, and the bird stops in the middle, tripping over its

PAIRING AND EARLY SONG 383

own music ; and sometimes it seems to break off from sheer
insufficiency of vitality to attempt the difficult final passage.
It is very interesting to listen to two or three cock chaffinches
singing within earshot of one another on a warm February
morning, and gradually improving in delivery under the
stimulus of practice in competition. One bird is generally
more perfect than the others ; he may sing the song perfectly
nearly every time, while the others do it seldom. The
instinct of rivalry keeps them sedulously to their song ; and
as the day advances they are often noticeably more perfect
than a few hours before. A day or two later, they execute
their roulade so spiritedly and smoothly that one might think
they could never have felt any difficulty about it. Yet it is
impossible not to recognise that they have a force of inertia
and unfamiliarity to overcome at the beginning, though the
spirit which impels them may be an almost completely
unconscious instinct of vitality, and no such deliberate and
critical purpose as directs a human singer. Chaffinches'
songs vary a good deal ; one bird's song differs from
another's, and the general type of song seems to be different
in different districts. But its general character is the same
always ; there is the rapid preliminary run and the final
ascending flourish, which makes the difficulty for the bird
when it first begins to sing.

Only a song with a definite and rather elaborate pattern
allows us clearly to mark the stages by which the bird reaches
its full spring skill. The yellowhammer sings a song of much
the same kind, and begins it at about the same date. It is
a plaintive song, as the chaffinch's is emphatically a gay
one ; instead of a rising flourish, it ends with two lower notes.
But there is the change from the opening notes in each case,
and the consequent difficulty for the bird when it begins to
sing in February. The yellowhammer's song can be well

384 AUTUMN AND WINTER

memorised by the country version of it — ' A very, very little
bit of bread and no cheese.' The last two words represent
the two lower notes at the end ; and these at first the bird is
often unable to deliver. The February sunshine falls on the
golden bloom in the hillside furze-brake, and on the golden
feathers of the birds perched above ; and they answer one
another with the halting and incomplete notes soon to
develop into the ditty that echoes so persistently by the
sun-smitten highways late into August and September.
Perhaps one yellowhammer gets the full song about once in
three times, another delivers the first and most emphatic of
the two final notes, and a third does not get more than half-
way. Before they begin to utter even the easier early notes
of their song, yellowhammers display the rudiments of the
impulse to sing in a curious and noticeable way. About
sunset at the beginning of February they mount to the same
conspicuous perches in the hedges and gorse-brakes where
they afterwards sing, and utter a laboured chirp with an air
of emphasis and challenge. It is an exceedingly rudimentary
method of expression ; but the bird's whole demeanour indi-
cates strongly that it is meant as an effort at song, and as
a vindication of its right to that particular stretch of the
hedgerow or thicket. This stage does not last long ; ten
days or a fortnight after the yellowhammer has begun to
act in this way it usually begins to sing, and in a week or
a fortnight more the well-known ditty is complete.

There is little or no similarity of tone between the yellow-
hammer's rudimentary chirp and the notes of its song ; nor
has the chaffinch's song any noticeable likeness to its common
cries and call-notes. But the development of the green
woodpecker's full notes as spring approaches is an interesting
example of expansion from the normal winter cry. The loud
laughing note of the ' yaffle ' or ' ecle ' — as the green wood-

PAIRING AND EARLY SONG 385

pecker is often called — is very familiar in the spring woods, and
begins to be heard in a complete form in February, if the season
is early and open. It is a shout rather than a song; but it seems
clearly to be a shout of gladness, and therefore closely akin to
song in spirit and origin. Yet if we startle a woodpecker as
it feeds on the ground under the winter hedgerows, it often
utters a cry which is merely its spring laugh cut down to two
or three notes, as it shoots up and undulates across the field.
Snipe begin to drum in mild seasons in the south of
England in the second or third week in February, when they
pair and settle down in the marshy fields where they nest
early in April. Their drumming or bleating note sounds
extremely like the baa of a young lamb, and is even closer
to the bleat of a kid. It is the snipe's equivalent for song,
though it is not produced vocally, but by the vibration of
the web of the two outer feathers of the tail. This is
peculiarly stiff, and produces the bleating note whenever the
snipe drops slanting downwards in the course of its long
flights over the nesting-ground. It winds swiftly about the
sky within a space of about a quarter of a mile, and every
few moments drops obliquely downwards, when the bleating
note is almost immediately heard. It ceases as soon as the
bird reaches the bottom of its descent, and again shoots up.
The sound has been reproduced by binding the snipe's outer
tail-feathers to the shaft of an arrow, and shooting it into the
air ; the sound began when it descended. It is remarkable
that while some American and African species of snipe drum
in the same way as the common snipe, great or double snipe
do not drum, but display before the hens much like the
blackcock. The jack snipe has yet another method of
nuptial expression. It makes in the air a sound described as
being like the galloping of a horse over a hard road ; and it is
thought that this is vocal, though the point is still undetermined.

THE SALMON'S JOURNEY

A RESTLESSNESS following the longer hours of light, and that
tide in the flow of life which is beyond explanation, begins
to overtake one set of creatures prematurely. In February
most hibernating things stir from their winter's sleep : and
the farmer grows eager to ' get on the land/ The world is
full of stir. The wheatear and chiffchaffs have begun their
oversea journeys, and our native birds are building. The
buds on chestnuts, cherries, quicks, and hornbeams show
greenness. A hundred instances may be noted during the
month, and but very few a month earlier.

The salmon is an exception. He is pioneer. In the
waters winter is spring, and in them no animal is more
invincibly determined to share in the free play of life than
the salmon, and as his life history is now at last being traced
out, the knowledge of his energetic vitality grows. A score
of small problems remain to be solved. We are not sure
how far afield the salmon journeys when he leaves the river.
We are not sure how often a salmon may spawn in its life.
We do not know how complete is the clearance from the
river, or whether the spent fish follow a regular impulse like
the rest. But we have no more abundant evidence about
any creature than the spring return of the salmon from sea
to river. Over the whole domain of natural history is no
more vivid evidence of the force of the migrating impulse,

THE SALMON'S JOURNEY 387

the passion of movement from one home to another. Nor
in any other animal can you see more distinctly the joy and
zest with which the return is associated. If one may use
such words, the movement is passionate and exultant.
Perhaps no one who has repeatedly watched salmon entering
a river will quarrel with such words.

There is a salmon river on the west coast of Ireland
which is peculiarly 'early,' and rivers differ much more than
land in the qualities which both fishermen and farmers call
early and late. The waters which are neither very broad

A SALMON RIVER

nor deep tumble into the sea over a great stretch of loose
shingle where they lose their depth, even in spate and at
high tide. If you watch well this space between river and
shore on a favourable day in a favourable season you may
see, even as early as January, the pioneers of the salmon
migrants rolling and scrambling and scraping their scales
over the shingle. They looked as if they exulted in the
struggle, as if it were a sort of obstacle race for a great prize.
When the migration is at its height you may see scores of
fish, appearing and disappearing from the shallow water,
some seeming to be stranded, but all making with astonishing
impetus over the obstacles to the goal of the river or lake
behind the river. Poachers have before now trained dogs to

388 AUTUMN AND WINTER

catch the fish as they come over the shallows. Often the
fish are so obvious that it is difficult to prevent a retriever
from dashing in and pulling them out. It is usual in scores
of rivers to net the fish as they enter the mouth. The river
is contracted into narrow channels, and by a few simple
mechanical contrivances every fish that rushes up can be
easily netted. The very best and keenest sportsmen, whose
favourite among all sports is salmon fishing with a fly, share
in this netting, which may be very lucrative, especially on the
early rivers. It may be imagined that it would not require
the capture of many 20 Ib. fish to pay a dividend when the
price is 53. a pound. The fishing in many districts has to be
watched with extraordinary closeness, as these Irish poachers
will get the better even of a man posted at the very spot, and
armed with a gun or pistol. The fishing on some rivers
has been ruined because there has been regular poaching
at the mouth on the morning and night of Sunday, which is
recognised as the closed day for fish as for game-birds in
England.

Other countries differ in this respect. In Belgium there
is enacted the curious law that certain kinds of fish may only
be caught on Sunday. The law was passed of course in the
interests of democracy. Fishing is a national amusement.
Every river in the country is in the common phrase 'trop
battue,' or ' threshed to death,' but the populace can only find
leisure on Sundays for their favourite amusement, and on
their behalf the right to take out from the rivers some of the
coarser fish is strictly confined to Sunday. Preservation is
most successfully maintained by the system of sanctuaries.
It is forbidden to fish entre les bois. Wherever the woods
come down to the streams, that stretch is government
property, and if any unwitting visitor wanders on to the
forbidden ground, some woodsman, caparisoned like a

THE SALMON'S JOURNEY 389

follower of Robin Hood, will descend from the covert and
explain the law with firm courtesy. His courtesy would be
more hardly strained if he were acting on such government
instructions along the rivers of Sligo or Clare, or even in
Scotland. But in Scotland the halcyon days of the poacher
are over, and it would be difficult to find a to-day's parallel to
the great scene between Mr. Geddes, that warlike man of
peace, and the banded poachers in Redgauntlet. It would
be less difficult in Ireland to find modern instances of the
sort. The daring and the endurance of the West of Ireland
man is almost inconceivable. He will on occasion swim down
the river in the coldest winter night to adjust the net aright
and enclose a likely fish. Many indeed kill themselves from
recurrent exposure.

All salmon, it is now proved or almost proved, have a
true instinct for their own river, and thanks to it the early
rivers are not more crowded with fish than the late. It is
astonishing how greatly rivers in the same locality vary. One
of the earliest of all the rivers empties into the sea at Sligo.
The fresh-run fish will begin to run up in December. In the
Erne, a few miles more north, the salmon come with the
other events of the spring, with the cuckoo, and swallow, and
bluebells. And the rivers differ in different years — there are
early years and late years. The reasons are more simple and
obvious than we can usually find to account for migration.
Where the falls are heavy and steep as in the Erne the
water must be of just such a volume as the ascent re-
quires. One of the most glorious and surprising of natural
spectacles is a salmon jumping up a fall. The heavy narrow
channel at the point where the salmon are netted often looks
over-powerful for even a fish, and many of the falls look
impossible. But the salmon will curl itself into the likeness
of a steel spring and give way with equal force. He rushes

390 AUTUMN AND WINTER

the obstacle, he storms the wall with a commanding impetus,
with dash of the utmost desire, using with incredible agility
the fulcrum both of rock and water. The ascending salmon
also requires water of a certain temperature. If the snows
have melted in the hills and are coming down in curdled
rigour the salmon wait in the sea till the utter chill is gone.
They wait if the wind is driving Atlantic combers against the
mouth of the river, and they wait also, as the best prophets
find, from instinctive senses of fitness which no man can
penetrate. The leaping of the falls and so-called salmon-
ladders, set to make feasible the more difficult and impassable
falls, is one of the supreme sights ; but for sheer joyfulness
it is perhaps surpassed by the preliminary leap or two taken
in the first pool when the difficulties are surmounted. It is
often the introduction to a straight and clean run from the
mouth to the lake or upper reaches, the salmon's version of
' altiora peto.' Fishermen on the lower reaches may have the
pleasure of the sight long before they have the pleasure of
feeling the fish on the line. Quaint devices are tried,
sometimes with conspicuous success, to prevent this race.
Over the fish's sense of hearing and colour sense a great
controversy rages, but there is no doubt about the salmon's
nose and sight. Something may be done to stop the mad
race up the river by swinging in the river any considerable
object of an unusual sort ; but there is nothing so effective as
a piece of rotting fish swaying in midstream. It gives the
salmon pause, and that pause, which may be prolonged, is the
fisherman's opportunity.

How many sportsmen say that there is no pleasure in
sport comparable with the landing of the first clean-run fish
of the year. There are men so eager that they will thrash the
water for many hours of many days before any sign of a
salmon has been seen. It is odds that in this while they will

THE SALMON'S JOURNEY 391

have pulled out one or two spent fish, lean and lank, and in
a sense unshapely and ugly. It seems likely that the fish
which have exhausted themselves in spawning lose the
native instinct with the interest in life. They may seek the
sea, to be renovated with silver scales and perhaps again
after a while to attain a perfection, fitting them for maternity,
or they may stay half alive in the river with their bright
cleanliness and firm outlines departed. Even the man who
has never thrown a line can imagine the extreme delight of the
fisher who has endured days of vain casting in January when
'winds and ways are foul,' who has felt the full excitement of
striking a big fish, only to land that unfishlike thing, a spent
salmon, and who at last sees the silver gleam and feels the
kick of a good fresh-run fish regenerated in the sea, and to
know it to be the forerunner of many another. From Sligo
to Scandinavia there is no sporting event to rival this.

The salmon is the king of fish, and his ways are more
noble than those of his subjects in river or sea. Very few
fish come much under regular observation apart from their
readiness or reluctance to take the fly or swallow the bait.
But no one, however little a fisherman, should fail, if the
chance offers, to watch trout at spawning-time. Autumn is
their spring. They spawn in the autumn months and at the
time when the ewes of the Dorset Horn sheep have their
young. The persistent, careful and unchanged action of the
fish in preparing the bed for the spawn seems to bring them
into the common scheme of things. They become not so
much unlike the moths who lay their eggs in the bark or
the birds that make soft places for their eggs. One might
compare them with the wild duck or the rabbit. They do
not tear out their scales to make a nest ; but they are ready,
even eager, to lacerate themselves to provide a fit place for
the eggs. It is a very wonderful example of the maternal

392 AUTUMN AND WINTER

instinct, this burrowing of the mother fish. On any favour-
able gravel patch in a trout stream you may easily watch
the fish — it may be, first, fighting for the right of possession —
scrape and wriggle and butt against the gravel with half-
frenzied energy, until a hollow is scooped of just the due
depth, where the waters shall keep fresh the eggs but not
remove them, and all the requisites of incubation be perfectly
served. The uniformity of the mother's choice of a cradle
and her energy in preparation contrast strangely with the
incalculable mortality. If ever there is reckless expenditure
it is in the ova of a fish. The Tennyson line ' of myriads
brings not one to birth ' might attach as truly to the fish as
the sallow. All that one can say, here, as in the fields, is
that in the scheme of things expenditure is not waste. The
eggs and the young fish, to repeat a comparison, are as the
wheat of the fields. They are produced not only to the
welfare of their own race.

But the tribes of fish that spend much time in the sea,
and like the salmon make periodically for inland waters,
are much larger and more various than is usually understood.
Millions of various species make their way to fresher waters
in order to carry out the universal instinct of multiplying
their kind. When this is accomplished they leisurely find
their way back to the sea. Among them are the smelt, the
lamprey or lampern, sea trout, grey mullet, and many others.
Some come up in such numbers as to make their capture
profitable. A number of men in East Anglia devote their
time during these periodic migrations to nothing else but
their capture. The smelt is a notable instance. Others come
upstream in so unobtrusive or so irregular a manner as to be
seldom sought after, although on occasion their numbers may
be so great as to astonish their captor. Some years ago a
man who had set an eel-net in the Waveney, after one night's

THE SALMON'S JOURNEY 393

fishing was astonished to find, beside a certain quantity of
eels, no less than 5 cwt. of sea lampreys. On another
occasion an eel-catcher made a haul of a ton of river
lampreys.

The plump, wary grey mullet, that very rarely takes a
hook in the East Anglian waters, used at one time to crowd
in shoals to the Norfolk Broads, but now seldom comes in.
Fifty years ago mullet-nets were in the hands of quite a
dozen lots of fishermen, and payable quantities were taken.
Of late years the sewage- polluted rivers have checked the
movements of this species. It remains yet to be really
discovered that the species has lessened in numbers, or that
some still obscure physical causes have deterred its incoming.
No fisherman, anyway, now fishes especially for it.

It is not so with that tiny member of the Salmonida,
the smelt. In spring and autumn when on its way up river
to spawn, or when returning to the sea — both leisurely
movements, considerably affected by the want or the abund-
ance of freshets — there is still an army of men waiting to
intercept the migration. Strangely enough, although smelts
will travel to Norwich to spawn, a distance of over twenty
miles, very rarely has one been taken on the Broads, at an
equal distance, notwithstanding the fact that large catches
are made several miles up the river Bure.

Flounders abound on the east coast, both on the Broads
and some way up the rivers. They enjoy brackish waters,
and even resort to reaches where the salt waters reach them
on the flood and the fresher waters on the ebb. The herons
from a neighbouring heronry capture bushels of small ones.
The larger flounders live well : the common sand-shrimp is
pursued with avidity, and on a still night one can hear the
flapping of these flat fishes in the shallow creeks as they
dash after the crustaceans or over the mud-flats. With these

394

AUTUMN AND WINTER

congregate myriads of three-spined sticklebacks, themselves
drawn down by the surplus waters drained through the
sluices into the river. To the sea perpetually drift these
most vigorous of fishes ; and when the draw-netters sweep in
their captures of longshore herrings, codlings, smelts and
other marine species outside the harbour, these come ashore
kicking merrily and yet viciously, for they are as much at

'FLOUNDERS ABOUND ON THE EAST COAST

home in salt as in fresh waters. When winter locks the
shallow ditches it is more than probable the stickleback
pokes himself into the ooze, and even when it is more or
less hard frozen remains alive.

In colder weather many eels disappear into the soft ooze.
Some are of immense size, and sometimes you may come
upon a * bed ' of them. But the greater mystery of the eel is
its migration. They usually move in September to the sea,
often in very compact bodies, and strangely little is known
of their subsequent movements. But they are only less
gregarious at this season than when they hibernate through

THE SALMON'S JOURNEY 395

winter and early spring in the soft mud. Here they lie so
close that a stone or more may be taken in a square yard or
two of ooze. Most east coast waters are still rich fishing-
grounds ; but the salmon has vanished. East Anglia was
never a great salmon haunt. Sir Thomas Browne could
say that though ' no common fish in our rivers, many are
taken in the Ouse,' and there are records in some of the old
registers of stranded salmon up the Midland brooks, but for
the salmon, fishermen always went north and west.

2 D

THE STACKYARD POPULATION

FOR farmer, or naturalist, or artist, with all who know any-
thing of the country and, not least, country children, a stack-
yard is a place to rejoice in above most. It is a part of the
scenery of the country. It is a sanctuary. It is full of
life and movement at any hour of the day or night. The
farmer perhaps rejoices less than he once did. Not so
many years ago the wheatstacks, which were thatched with
old-time thoroughness, stood ' foursquare to all the winds that
blow ' through autumn and winter into the spring. There is
a case of an old farmer — he deserved more than a local
name — who kept his stack fifty years. He swore a great
oath that he would not sell until wheat was again £$ a
quarter. Every two years his stacks were rethatched with
the care that old port wine is recorked ; and they were not
taken down till a student interested in the life of seed asked
leave of the executors to seek for a vital grain, if peradventure
one was left. But like their master every one had died. It
was not uncommon for a rick to remain unthreshed till the
eve of the coming harvest. To-day it is quite uncommon
to find a full, even a half-full, rickyard as late as Feb-
ruary. Something more than a picturesque and satisfying
diagram of plenty has been wiped out ; for in these days
this natural reserve of corn is cut clean away, and when
February leads to spring, little corn but what is being

THE STACKYARD POPULATION 397

imported from overseas lies between the people and cereal
starvation.

But the picture still remains of the old farmer walking
every Sunday morning from his homestead on the hill
to admire his rickyard, every rick raised on strong
stone pillars with flat heads to keep off rats and mice. A
miser telling his gold is an unlovely sight. The old farmer
gloating with deep satisfaction over his golden grain, inspect-
ing the trim pentagon ends, the straw eaves over the
well walled length, or the exact circle of other stacks piled
by a veteran artist in a dying craft — this picture raises the
miser to a height of stalwart merit. A haystack represents
wealth in a form that gives wonderful satisfaction to its owner,
especially when the cutter begins to work and you see the
virtue you always believed in announced in the solid wall,
smelling of the meadows, with the ' bouquet ' of a vintage.
A trim stack, whether of hay or corn, is indeed a very
satisfying object. The pity is that the biggest and finest
groups of cornstacks disappear first for a very real reason
in rural economy. All the threshing nowadays is done by
travelling engines. The paraphernalia are very considerable.
The better machines sort and guide all that comes to them : the
good grain falls into one sack, the tails into another, dust and
husks of different quality into others, and the straw is thrown
out. A gang of men is required. The engine is heavy and
valuable, needing a skilled mechanic ; and the machinery,
though wonderfully strong, is intricate. Now that many
farms take trouble to grow pure varieties of oats and wheat,
very often selling seed, or, at any rate, growing their own,
the machine must be very clean. The whole work of thresh-
ing depends on the imported men and machinery. The
threshers indeed are now become quite a little craft of their
own. They are almost houseless during the winter months.

398 AUTUMN AND WINTER

They often cook their food like gipsies on fires in open-air
encampments. They sleep on occasion in the straw from
which they have threshed the grain. They are coming to
possess some of the gipsy qualities. In the exercise of their
profession they usually give the preference to the bigger
farmers, with the result on the country landscape that the
bigger yards disappear first : sometimes, if wheat is chiefly
grown, within a few weeks of the ending of harvest. The
small men, who never dream of resorting to old methods,
have to wait for the machines till they can get them. A
small holder may find his stack half devoured before he can
get it threshed. The rats have harboured in it and made
excursions against his poultry and eggs ; and he has to wait
for the money which probably he seriously needs. In
Ireland, a country of small holders, the haystacks are a
feature of the landscape, very eloquent of the hand-to-mouth
life of the people. As winter advances the round stacks
gradually become thinner and thinner at the base, till
finally they resemble mushrooms. They have served ever
since winter began as a browsing-place and a shelter for the
stock who thus eat rations never served out, as the poor do
in London slums, where it is not the custom to have meal-
times. In the end, the stacks as often as not topple over,
having become too heavy in the head. You may see them
in every state, from the dwindling but erect stack to the
leaning tower, to the collapse. No emblem tells a more
graphic tale of the state of the country than its stacks. The
greatest contrast is between these tottering haystacks or
amorphous cornstacks of the small freeholder, and the tight,
well-clipped, geometric stacks, round or rectangular with
pentagon ends and projecting eaves, such as you see on the
great fen farms of Cambridgeshire, or indeed in any English
county. Both seem quite integral to the landscape.

THE STACKYARD POPULATION

399

A haystack, however, has small virtue, as compared with
a wheat or oat stack, for farmer or naturalist. It may house
a few rabbits underneath, if it has been set on logs, and
some birds may roost in its eaves of a chilly night, but there
is an end. A cornstack is full of surprises from the blue
shadows, which the impressionists quite rightly painted to it,
to the astounding families of animals which inhabit its interior

'WELL-CLIPPED GEOMETRIC STACKS

among the ears, so carefully hidden from common view.
The time to visit a stackyard is at night, if you dare, for it
is a strange and exciting place, more strange in its excite-
ment than any wood. We all have felt a sort of fear or
nervous tension on entering a deep wood at midnight, as if
you might disturb things and be punished for your sacrilege.
George Meredith, in a great naturalist's poem, has put the
sensation into fit words :

1 Enter these enchanted woods
You who dare.

Up the pine where sits the star
Rattles deep the moth-winged jar.
Each has business of his own ;
But should you distrust a tone,
Then beware.

400 AUTUMN AND WINTER

Shudder all the haunted roods,
All the eyeballs under hoods,

Shroud you in their glare.
Enter these enchanted woods
You who dare.'

The stackyard at night demands more daring. It re-
quires more than a little nerve to avoid a start, which would
quite spoil the game, when a great owl slipping unseen on
velvet wing from behind the stack gives a screech just over
your head as you stand glued against the stack or sit hidden
under loose straw. Every night of their lives, it seems likely,
the barndoor owls visit the stackyard. They usually wait till
it is quite dark, and are often anticipated by the little Spanish
owls, which come there soon after sundown, after they have
been hawking along the hedgerow. But now and again you
may find the great owls in the stack, apparently half asleep,
in the daytime. They will fly there for refuge. A curious
incident in the writer's garden illustrated this. One
bright summer day an owl was seen roosting in a crab-apple
tree, an unusual spot to select. But into the crab had grown
up a tall and very free-flowering spiraea. The owl was
perched right against the end of one of the long heads of
blossoms ; and it was quite difficult till you came within a
short distance to tell where the flower ended and the owl
began. The concealment was as near perfect as could be
so far as adaptation to colour was concerned. As soon as he
perceived himself discovered the owl flew straight off to a
strawstack quite close by, and disappeared altogether in some
loose straw. However at night the owls do not stay long :
they come and catch their mouse and go. It is supposed
that the shriek is uttered to startle the prey and make him
disclose his place by a sudden movement ; but it is a question
whether the theory is sound. Observation in the stackyard
does not support it. The whole place creaks and rustles

THE STACKYARD POPULATION

401

with life. You hear something moving close by you every
minute. Beady eyes glint out of the straw within hand's
reach. Brown forms make shadowy passages across the
strips of moonlight, and disappear into the black shadows
cut clean as if one were land and the other water. On the
pent roof, after long rustling, the rats look out at first
cautiously before they scamper about. Clearly the owls' cue
here is silence ; and from observation one would say that the
shriek was quite independent of the strategy of hunting,
though American observers maintain that its object is to
make the victim proclaim its presence by movement.

The stackyard is fuller of life than any place in the
countryside. When things go hard foxes and stoats come
there as well as owls, intent on the same pursuit. The
sparrows and finches which may be seen there by day in
their hosts bear no comparison in numbers to the mammals.
To understand how vast is
this population, you must
see a stack threshed out. As
the men on the disappear-
ing stack pull out neatly with
their forks each uppermost
sheaf and toss it to the re-
ceivers on the top of the
thresher, mice will tumble
down in showers. They are
breeding in hosts at any
time between November and
February ; and each brood

is at least half a dozen. If a stack is left long and is not raised
above reach, the mice and rats will devour much more
than their tithe. The bottom layers will be just chaff, not
worth the labour of the threshing-machine. The greediest

LONG-TAILED FIELD-MOUSE

402 AUTUMN AND WINTER

devourers are perhaps the rats. But their number in a stack
is usually, but by no means always, small compared with the
mice, who on the average do vastly more damage. The
young mice, even if grown to full vitality, seem to be quite
without fear, the only young things perhaps that are. They
show no signs of alarm when you handle them ; they will
allow themselves to be recaught at will. Sometimes, so it
seems by their manner, they are quite dazed by the light.
They have been bred in the very depth of the stack where
light is even more conspicuously absent than air. Their antics
recall those of the young calves when first let out from the

FIELD-MOUSE

dark hovels in which they are often kept, especially in Wales.
As soon as they are free they dart ahead wildly, pulling them-
selves up with extraordinary abruptness right against any
chance obstacles, like a motor-car suddenly stopped by cross
traffic. They see men as trees walking. The spectacle is both
pitiful and ludicrous. The young mice run in just such an
aimless way ; but they are not, like the calves, frightened.
The new objects simply stop them ; and the man is too big
to be frightening, if his hands are warm and comforting.

You will seldom see a stack threshed without the
appearance of many boys with sticks and men with terriers.
But not even English boys and fox-terriers are more ruth-
less to the escaping rats than are the domestic hens to the

THE STACKYARD POPULATION 403

escaping mice. If there is a considerable flock of farmyard
hens, not a mouse will escape. They seem to be filled with
a killing fury, and they kill with astonishing precision. One
peck is usually enough to kill the mouse, which is a curiously
tender animal in some respects. Most of the hens are con-
tent with killing ; but a certain number attempt to eat the mice,
usually suffering severely if the attempt is at all successful.
The spectacle is thoroughly repulsive ; and it is difficult to
account for this instinct in hens. Mice are certainly not their

FIELD-MOUSE

natural food ; and though hens in winter have a certain crav-
ing for animal food, the mouse Is not the form in which they
might be expected to take it. They are usually punished for
their unnatural craving by a fit of sickness. But the hens are
more eager to kill than animals to whom the mice is proper
prey. One has seen a cat sitting utterly regardless of the
escaping mice, which were pursued a outrance by the hens.

It is comparatively easy to clear a standing stack of rats.
It is impossible to clear out the mice. The rats make runs
within the stack from floor to roof. If ferrets are put into a
stack, you will as a rule first see the rats appear on the very
roof or high up in the stack. A common method of destroy-

404 AUTUMN AND WINTER

ing them is to put a dozen ferrets or so into a stack and
shoot the rats as they appear on the roof. In thresh-
ing, the rats, which are as clever and courageous as any
animal, will lurk in the bottom of the stack till the very
last moment ; and many escape in this way. If a thin layer
of the stack is left over at night, the ' falling house ' will be
completely deserted the next morning.

A stackyard full of fine ricks in October is often a green
meadow at the end of February. If the spring has been
open, corn and grass seed will have sprouted in brilliant
luxuriance. Not all the rats and mice, and sparrows and
finches, have destroyed the loose seed, which always seem to
grow up of a peculiarly vivid hue in such places. But the
grass gets the better of the corn. The one is incomparable
in the success of its struggle for life, the other makes a very
poor endeavour. If no corn were sown, but the crops left to
seed themselves, the plant would be almost extinct in a year
or two. One experiment, made at Rothamsted in Hertford-
shire, suggested that the plant would be completely exter-
minated by the third year. How different is the vigour oi
the grass. Where it finds itself there it abides. Along virgin
railways in a grassless country spring up, as it were, strips oi
meadow on either side the rails. The strips expand into any
open country that lies alongside, so that in a few years, as has
happened in parts of Newfoundland, fair pasture has sprung
from the few seeds of Timothy grass dropped from passing
loads of hay on the open trucks. One regrets this early ex-
tinction of the stackyards which rose so proudly in October ;
but the levelled yard and the green floor do not give a sense
of desolation such as the stackyard, seen not seldom in the
west, where the roofs are green. The corn sprouts through
the thatch, and the whole edifice appears to be mouldering
away. Thence too even the rats and mice depart.

INDEX

ACONITE, the, 365.

Alder buckthorn, 115.

Alder-tree in winter, 245.

Anticyclones, 150, 151.

Arum, wild, 373.

Ash, autumn foliage of, 100 ;
winter form of, 244.

Aspens in winter, 244.

Auks, winter food of, 331, 332.
See also Little auk.

Austrian pine, the, 274.

Autumn, flowers of, 79 ; foli-
age, 16,92, 195; melancholy
of, 17, 19; signs of spring
in, 14.

Avocet, beak of, 322, 324.

BADGER, the, 251, 254.

Balsam seed, 41.

Bark moth, the, 128, 146.

Bats in winter, 131, 308.

Beaks of birds, adaptation of,
322.

Bearberry, the, 123, 124.

Bearded tits, 356, 360.

Beech-mast, 35.

Beeches, autumn foliage of,
TOO, 101, 195; winter form
of, 239.

Bees, 15, 16, 131, 146.

Belgium, fishing laws of, 388.

Bcrberis, 94.

Bernacle geese on Norfolk
Broads, 356.

Berries, autumn, 112, 195,
319; definition of term, 119.

Bilberries, 114, 123, 124.

Birch, winter form of, 245.

Birds, adaptability of beaks to
dietary, 322 ; autumn migra-
tions to south, 104, 181 ;
death during migration, 331 ;
distances traversed by, 1 06
etseq. ; feeding of, 223-230 ;
flocking of, 70 ; pairing and
early song of, 376-385; in
London, 336 ; sufferings
from frost, 295 ; wet climate
favoured by, 316 ; winter
dress of, 279, 280 ; winter
feeding habits by sea and
land, 319, 328 ; winter
song of, 372, 376; winter
visitors or birds of passage,
169-183.

Bittern, the, 31, 355, 362.
Blackberries, 102, 116.
Blackbirds, 114, 117, 182, 347,

348, 377, 381-
Black-headed gulls, 108, 328,

337-339-
Bluebell, young spikes of, 373,

374-

Blue butterflies, 60.
Blue tits, 225, 349, 380.
Box-tree, the, 276.
Bracken in autumn, 101, 102,

196.

Bramble in winter, the, 278.
Brambling, the, 171, 325.
Brent geese, 294, 361.
Breydon, 182, 358.
Brightwen, Mrs., 3, 224.
Brimstone butterflies, 58.
Broom in winter, 277.
Bryony-berries, 115, 116.
Buff-tip moth, caterpillar of,

66, 67.
Bulbs and tubers in autumn,

17-

Bullfinches, 117, 325.
Buntings, 322.
Burlepsch, Baron, method of

feeding birds, 226 et seq.
Burrs, 43.

Butchers' broom, 277.
Butterflies, 53, 60, 129, 145,

147.
Buzzards, 178, 355.

CABBAGE-WHITE BUTTERFLY,

cocoon of, 145.
Cader Idris, peaks of, 313.
Camberwell-beauty butterfly,

Campanulas, 195.
Canadian autumn, the, 14, 95.
Candlemas Day, 364.
Carrion crows, 345, 578.
Caterpillars in autumn, 63, 68.
Catkins, 20.
Celandine, lesser, 371.
Centaury, common, 83.
Chaffinches, 73, 178, 279, 348,

382.

Cherry-trees, 95, 96, 100, 248.
Chestnut-trees, winter forms

of, 248, 249.
Chicory, 195.
Chiffchaffs, migrations of, 218.

Chough, the, in.
Chrysalides, 145, 147.
Clematis, wild, 38, 40, 41.
Cloudberry, 124, 125.
Clouded-yellow butterflies, 59.
Clover, 21, 22, 43, 44.
Cockchafer, the, 147.
Cocoons, 145.
Cole tits, 228, 329.
Colouring matter in autumn

foliage, 96, 97.
Comma butterfly, 55, 56, 58.
Coots, 279, 352, 353, 357.
Copper butterflies, small, 60,

197.
Cormorants, winter food of,

332.

Corn marigold, the, 88, 195.
Corncrake, the, 15, 16, 30, 31.
Corsican pine, the, 274.
Coursing of hares, 259.
'Covey system,' among birds,

23-

Cowberry, the, 123, 124.
Cow-parsley in February, 374«
Crack willow in winter, 244.
Cranberry, the, 124, 125.
Crossbills, 72, 218, 287.
Crowberries, 123, 124.
Crows, 178, 182, 331, 345,

36o, 376, 377.
Cub-hunting, 184, 186.
Cuckoo, the, 26, 67, 104, 177.
Cuckoo-pint berries, 121.
Curlew-sandpiper, 107.
Curlews, 171, 176, 361.
Cyclones, 150, 151.

DABCHICKS ON LONDON

PONDS, 350.

Daisy in winter, the, 373.
Dandelion, 39, 40, 373.
Dead nettles, 373.
Deadly nightshade, 113, 115.
Death's - head hawk moth,

caterpillar of, 65, 66.
December, calendar of, 221.
Deer, British, 201, 261.
Devil's- bit scabious, 81, 82.
Dewberry, 125.
Divers, 181, 361.
Dogfish, the, 330.
Dog's mercury, 370.
Dormouse, hibernation of, 134,

299 ; nuts gnawed by, 118.

405

406

AUTUMN AND WINTER

Dragon-flies, 2, 137.

Drupe, definition of term, 1 19.

Duck, wild, as winter visitors,

179 et seq.
Dunlins, 72, 176, 333, 361.

EAST COAST, winter on, 352.
'Ecle,'or green woodpecker,

385- .

Eels, migration of, 394.
Elder-berries, 114, 115.
Elephant hawk caterpillars,

65-

Elk, the Irish, 207.
Elms, autumn colouring of, 96,

98, 99, 198 ; flowers of, 363;

winter forms of, 237.
English counties, the varied

character of, 310.
Equinoctial storms, 149.
Ermine, winter dress of, 281,

285 ; hare hunted by, 260.
Erne, the, 389.
Euston system of partridge

hatching, 27.

Evergreens in winter, 264-278.
Exmoor stags, 202, 203.

FABRE, M., 143.
Faery rings, 163, 165.
Fallow deer, 201, 204.
February, calendar of, 363.
Feeding of birds in winter,

224 et seq.

Fen country, frost in, 293.
Fieldfares, no, 169, 170, 320.
Field-mice, 299, 401.
Field-voles, 305, 306.
Finches, winter feeding of,

324, 325-

Firs in winter, 273.
Fishes, December spawning

of, 216 ; migrations of, 392 ;

self-burial by, 134, 135.
Flies, hibernation of, 129, 130.
Flocking of birds, the, 70.
Floods, autumn, 156.
Flounders, 393.
Flowers of autumn, 79; of

winter, 365.
Flycatchers, 105, 337.
Fogs, 47.
Foliage in autumn, 93-103,

195 et seq.

Fox, the, 184, 187, 298, 306.
Fox-hounds, 190.
Fox-hunting, 167, 184, 188 et

seq., 251.

Fox moth caterpillar, 68.
French partridges, 25, 42.
Frogs, 134, 135, 305.
Frost, 213, 218, 289, 293, 295.
Fungi in autumn, 91, 160.

GAME-BIRDS, night feeding of,

307-

Gamma moth, 61.

Gannets, 180, 332.

Geese, wild, 179, 307, 359,
361.

Gentian, autumn, 82, 83.

Geraniums, 42.

Gladden, the, 122.

Glow-worms in autumn, 197.

Goat hawk moth, the grub of,
145.

Godwit, black-tailed, the, 177.

Goldcrests, 15, 137, 139, 178,
179.

Golden eagle, 262.

Golden-eyes in winter, 355,
361.

Goldfinches, 74, 322, 325.

Goosanders in winter on Nor-
folk Broads, 355, 357, 361.

Gorse in winter, 80, 86, 91,

373-

Gossamer, 137.
Grass of Parnassus, 87.
Grebe in winter on Norfolk

Broads, 355>.357-
Greenfinch, winter food of,

325-
Grey plovers, winter feeding

habits of, 333.
Grey wagtail in London, 341,

342.

Grouse, 23, 283.
Guelder-berries, 114, 195.
Guillemots, 181, 331, 332.
Gulls, 108, 162, 328-332, 337,

354, 359-

HARES, activity during winter
nights, 306 ; coursing of,
185, 251, 259; winter dress
of, 127, 282.

Harebell, 82, 195.

Harvest-mice, 299, 301.

Harvest moon, the, 9.

Hawfinches, 119, 322, 325.

Hawk, beak of, 322, 323.

Hawk moth caterpillars, 63.

Hawkweed, 80 ; small copper
butterflies on, 197.

Haws, H2, 117.

Heather, 80, 124.

Hedge-maple in winter, 242.

Hedgehog, 133, 254, 299, 300.

Hedgerows in autumn, 112.

Hellebore, 367, 368, 369.

Hemp agrimony, 80.

Hemp nettle, 87, 88.

Hens, stackyard mice as prey
of, 402.

Hepatica, method of deposit-
ing seeds, 44.

Herald moth, the, 62.
Herons in winter, 360.
Herring gull, the, 238, 330.
Hibernation of animals, 128.
Hickling, birds in winter at,

361.

Hips as food of birds, 320.
Hoar frost, 289.
Hollies in winter, 264.
Holly-berries as winter food,

3!9-
Honeysuckle in winter, 19, 20,

195, 214, 221, 374.
Hooded crows, 173, 330.
Hop dogs, 67.
Hopbine, bridge-building by,

I, 142.
Hornbeam, the, 101, 103;

seed of, 38, 39 ; winter form

of, 239.
Horse-chestnut, the, 99, 249,

250.

Horse mackerel, 330.
House-martins in London,

350.
Hummingbird hawk moth, 53,

61.
Hunted beasts and their ways,

251.
Hunting Days, 184.

ICE, 291.

Ichneumon flies, 68.
Indian Summer, the, 193.
Insects, 3, 307.
Ireland, salmon rivers of, 389 ;
westerly winds of, 312, 313,

3H.

Iris, stinking, 122.
Ivy, 9, 46, 129, 271-273.

JACKDAWS, 71, 78, 79, 347.
January, calendar of, 287 ;

south-west winds in, 309.
Juniper, the, 275.

KERNER, on continental

autumn, 94.
Kestrel, beak of, 323.
Kex, 20, 98, 101.
Kingfishers in London, 349.
Knee holly, 277.
Knots, 107, 333, 334.

LADY'S-TRKSSES ORCHID, 85.
Lampreys, migration of, 393.
Lapland bunting, the, 334.
Lapwings, 182, 354.
Larks in winter, 327. 361.
Lichens in winter, 161, 217.
Lime hawk moth, 63.
Lime-tree, winter form of, 248,

249.
Ling, 80, 124.

INDEX

407

Linnets, 72, 74, 182, 245, 247,

331, 334-

Little auks, 181, 355, 361.
Little owl, the, 28, 177.
Loddon lily, the, 366.
London birds in winter, 366.
Looper caterpillars, 63.
Loosestrife, 80.

MAGPIE MUSHROOM, 163.
Mallard, the, 179, 182, 294,

307,350, 351,355-
Mangrove, seeding of, 44.
Maples, Canadian, 14, 93 ;

English, 92 ; hedge, 242.
Marsh marigold, the, 374.
Marsham records, the, 167,

221, 287, 363.
Martinmas, 194, 168, 198.
Martins, 105, 106, 350.
Mayweed, 89, 195.
Meadow pipit, the, 354.
Meadow saffron, 84.
Meadowsweet, 79.
Mergansers on Norfolk Broads

in winter, 355.
Mice, activity in winter nights,

299 ; in the stackyard, 401.
Michaelmas Day, 10.
Migration of birds in autumn,

104, 106, 181, 331 ; of

gossamer, 140 ; of sap, 98,

140.

Milfoil, 80.
Mint, 80.
Missel-thrushes, 113,114,170,

171, 271, 320, 321.
Mistletoe, 266, 267.
Mists of autumn, 15, 47.
Moles in winter, 302.
Moorhens, 350, 352, 354, 356,

357-

Mosses, winter seeding of, 217.
Moths in autumn, 16, 53, 128,

145, 308.
Mountain-ash, winter form of,

247.
Mountain finch. See Bram-

bling.

Mountain hare, the, 285.
Mullet, grey, migrations of,

392, 393-
Mushrooms, 160.
Musk mallow, 88.
Mussel duck. See Scoter.

NAILBOURNES, 158.
Nature poets, the, 4.
Nelson Column, starlings'

roosting-places upon, 344.
Nesting of birds, early, 376.
Newfoundland, autumn in, 14,

15,98.

New Year, south-west winds

of, 309.

Nightjar, 105, 285, 322, 324.
Nocturnal animals in winter,

297.
Norfolk Broads in winter, the,

352.

November, calendar of, 167.
Nuthatch, 118, 228.
Nuts, as food of birds and

animals, nS.

OAKS, 199, 232, 237.

Oar weed, 330.

Oats, seed dispersal of, 44.

October, calendar of, 91.

Orange-tip butterflies, 129.

Orchises, autumn, 85.

Osier beds, 199.

Otters, diet of, 305, 306, 361.

Owls, activity in winter nights,
298, 305 ; as winter birds of
passage, 177; in London,
343 ; in the stackyard, 400.

Oyster-catchers, 177.

Oyster mushroom, the, 163.

PAINTED-LADY BUTTERFLY,
55, 56, 58.

Pairing of birds, the, 376.

Pale tussock moth, caterpillar
of, 67, 68.

Partridges, enemies of, 28, 29 ;
family affection of, 23, 25-
28 ; feeding of, 229 ; pairing
in February, 379 ; seed dis-
persal by, 42 ; shooting, 21 ;
sufferings in winter, 323.

Pasteur and Fabre, 143.

Peacock butterfly, the, 54, 58.

Peregrine falcon, the, 355, 356.

Pheasants, 167, 285.

Pigeons, 71, 271, 321,340.

Pines, 273.

Pintail ducks, 355.

Plague, disseminated by rats
and rabbits, 305.

Plane-trees, winter forms of,

234.

Ploughing, II.
Plovers, 71, 108, 176, 321,

333,361.

Pochard, the, 179, 353, 360.
Polecats, 30.

Poplars, winter forms of, 243.
Poppies, 13, 89, 195.
Potamogeton, the, 353.
Primroses, early, 213,221,372.
Privet, in winter, 278 ; berries,

112, 115.

Privet hawk moth, caterpillar

of, 64.
Ptarmigan, winter plumage of,

127, 283, 285.

Puff-balls, 163.
Puffins, 181, 280.

QUAIL, the, 30.

RABBITS, 257, 306, 307.

Ragwort, 80.

Rain in autumn, 149 ; effect

on wild animals, 315.
Rainfall of England, 155.
Rats, 299, 302-304, 401, 403.
Raven, the, 218.
Razorbills, 181, 331, 332, 350.
Red-Admiral butterflies, 56,

57, 58, 197.
Red deer, 201, 261.
Red grouse, 283.
Redpolls, 245, 247.
Redshanks, 72, 177.
Red-underwing moth, 72.
Redwings, iio, 169, 170, 182,

361.

Reed bunting, the, 31.
Reed warbler in London parks,

349-

Rhus, 95.

Ring ousel, the, 114.
Robins, 107, ill, 196, 200,

230, 287, 326, 327, 348, 377.
Roe deer, 201, 208.
Rooks, 75, 77, 178, 182, 321,

323, 346, 361, 382.
Rose haws, as food of birds,

117.

Rowan-berries, 195.
Rowan-tree, winter form of,

247.

'Royston' crow, the, 174.
Ruff, as winter bird of passage,

177.
< Rype,' 283.

ST. KlLDA WREN, 283.

St. Luke's Summer, 91, 92,

193, 194, 195-

St. Martin's Summer, 17, 193,

194, 198.

St. Valentine's Day, 364, 376.
Salmon, 386, 388, 390.
Sanderlings, 107, 361.
Sandpipers, migration of, 107,

in, 333, 349-
Sap, migration of, 98, 140.
Scad, the, 330, 331.
Scaup, the, 332.
Scorpions, breeding habits,

146.

Scoter, the, 180, 332, 351, 355.
Scots pine, the, 273-275.
Sea buckthorn, berries of, 122.
Seashore in winter, the, 329,

330, 352 et seq.
Seeds, dispersal of, 32.

408

AUTUMN AND WINTER

September, calendar of, 9.
Sheldrakes in winter, 285, 332,

36i.

Shepherd's needle, 87.
Shooting stars, 167.
Shore lark, 334.
Shrews, 299, 302.
Silk, autumn production by

insects, 139, 142.
Silkworm, 142, 145, 147.
Silkworm moths, breeding

habits of, 146.
Silver-Y moth, 61.
Siskins, 170, 335.
Skua gull, the, 328.
Skylarks, 75, 178.
Sloeberries, 119, 120.
Smelt, migrations of, 292, 293.
Snail, hibernation of, 136.
Snipe, 176, 307, 316, 317,

322, 324, 354, 359, 385.
Snow, 291, 361, 362.
Snow bird, the, 334.
Snow bunting, the, 283, 286,

334-
Snowdrops in winter, 213, 221,

365> 372.
Snowflake, garden and water,

366.
Song-thrushes, 170, 171, 197,

199, 347, 348.

Spanish chestnut-tree in win-
ter, 248, 249, 250.
Sparrows, 279, 303, 323, 324,

344, 348.
Speedwell, 373.
Spiders, 137, 140, 146, 147.
Spindle -tree, 96, 98, 101 ;

berries of, 122.

Spring flowers.colouring of,366.
Spruce firs, 273, 274, 275.
Spurge laurel, 369.
Squill, autumn, 85.
Squirrel, 33,35,118, 134,253.
Stackyard, population of the,

396.
Starlings, 75, 76, 108, 200,

229, 230, 279, 321, 327,

344, 359-
Sticklebacks, 394.
Stinking Iris, fruit of, 122.
Stoats, 29, 30, 127, 254, 257,

262, 281.

Stonecrop, seeding of, 42.
Storks, migratory journeys of,

1 06.

Strut, the little, 107.
Succory, 89.
Sumach, 94, 95.

Swallows, 105, 106, 350.
Swans, wild, 355, 359.
Swifts, 104, 350.
Sycamore, seeds of, 37, 38 ;
winter form of, 241.

TEAL, 179, 307, 355.

Teasel, 43.

Terns, 26.

Thaw and frost, 219.

Thistledown, 36, 199.

Threshing of corn by machine,

397-

Thrushes, 34, 108, in, 169,
170, 197, 199, 221, 295, 320,
347, 348. See also Missel-
thrushes and Song-thrushes.

Tit, bearded, 356, 360 ; blue,
225,349,380; cole,228,329;
great, 117 ; long-tailed, 24.

Tits, 75, in, 118, 227, 228,
245, 270, 349, 379-

Toadflax, 44, 87, 88.

Toads, hibernation of, 135.

Toadstool, 1 60.

Tortoiseshell butterfly, the
small, 53, 54, 58.

Treecreeper, the, 227.

Trees, forms in winter, 231-
250 ; migration of sap in,
98, 140.

Trout, spawning of, 391, 392.

Truffles, 91.

Tufted duck, 180, 332, 350.

Tulip-tree, the, 96.

UMBER MOTHS, 63.

VANESSA, the, 53.
Vapourer moth, 61.
Venus's comb, 87.
Vermin, 254, 282.
Voles, 299, 301, 302; plague,
177.

WADERS, migrations of, 107.
Wagtails, 107, ill, 341, 342.
Walnut - tree, bark of, 237 ;

winter form of, 233.
Wapiti, the, 202.
Warblers, in, 322.
Wasps, 15, 128, 129.
Water-fowl, 307, 350.
Weasel, 255, 282.
Weather system of England,

ISO-

West winds, the, 311.
Wet climate, effect on animals,

3I5-
Wheat sowing in autumn, 14.

Wheatears in London, 349.
1 Whimbrels, as winter birds of

passage, 177.
I Whinberries, 123.
I Whins, seed dispersal of, 44.
Whitebeam-berry, 117, 118,

119.

Whitethroat, nest of, 12, 13.
Whortleberry, 123.
Wigeon, 170, 182, 188, 307,

332, 353-

Wild arum, the, 14.
Wild cats, 30.
Wild-fowl, as winter visitors,

179, 354-

Willow grouse, 283.
Willowherb, 36, 80.
Willows in winter, 244.
Winds of autumn, 149 ; of

New Year, 309.
Winter, 213-220; flowers of,

366 ; indications of spring

in, 213, 221 ; life in nights

of, 297 ; on Norfolk Broads,

352 ; struggle with, 319.
Winterbournes, 158.
Winter dress of animals, 127,

279.

Winter moth, the, 308.
Wires as enemy of birds, 29.
Witches' brooms, 162, 242,

248.

Woodcock, in, 174, 307.
Woodcock owl, the, 177.
Woodlark, October song of,

197.
Wood -mice, 117, 118, 298,

300, 302.
Woodpecker, 216, 322, 324,

384.
Wood-pigeons, 178, 337, 339,

361.
Woody - nightshade berries,

H3, "5-
Worms, 14, 156.
Wren, the, 322, 365, 377, 378.
Wryneck, as cuckoo's mate,

177 ; feeding of, 229.
Wych-elm, 239, 240, 363.

'YAFFLE' or green wood-
pecker, 384.

Yarrow, 80.

Yellowhammer, song of, 383.

Yellow wagtail, 341.

Yew, in winter, the, 268-271 ;
berries, 117, 271, 320, 321.

ZOSTERA, 182, 353.

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