The country month by month

\l82c

MONTH BY MONTH

J. A, OWEN

AND

PROF. G.S.BOULGER
FLS., F.C.S.

Ex Libris
C. K. OGDEN

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

THE COUNTRY
MONTH BY MONTH

The Country

Month by Month

J. A. OWEN,

AUTHOR OF " FOREST, FIELD, AND FELL ; "
AND

PROFESSOR G. S. BOULGER, F.L.S., F.G.S.

AUTHOR OF

"FAMILIAR TREES;" "THE USES OF PLANTS;" ETC.

COVER DESIGN BY d. LOCKWOOD KIPLING.

LONDON:
BLISS, SANDS AND FOSTER,

CRAVEN STREET, STRAND.
1894.

QH
VSl-c

V.I

PREFACE.

T N the little monthly books, of which this is
•*- the first, we do not pretend to fine writing
or essentially picturesque description. Our object
is to try to direct the observation of lovers of
Nature, busy dwellers in towns more especially,
by telling them of some of the sights — we cannot,
of course, in our small space enumerate all —
that they may expect to find in their country
wanderings month by month. If we are able to
do this in any satisfactory measure we shall be
glad.

THE AUTHORS.

1 GS6533

CONTENTS.

PAGE

MARCH . . . . ... 9

THE PLANT-WORLD IN MARCH-
BY BANK AND COPSE . . . . n
IN THE RIVER MEADS . . . 35
ON A CHALK SUBSOIL . . . . 37

WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED . . 39

APPENDIX ... .61

The Country Month by Month.
MARCH.

AS we can still gather from the numerical names of the
last four months in our calendar, the ancient Roman
year began with March, and there is much to be said in
favour of this old arrangement. In towns or suburbs we
may only have noticed that the rains of February have
washed some of the soot from the bark of our trees, and
that, now all continuous frost is over, the ground is soft
and moist ; but in the country there is a general feeling of
renewed life. It is not that a few evergreens or brightly-
coloured fruits console us with the thought that as winter
was preceded by summer so also will summer come again :
it is not that the chill-looking snowdrops, those "fair
maids of February," peep through snow or dead leaves ;
but, as Miss Rossetti says —

" Life's alive in everything."

The boughs still look bare as they sway in the brisk wind;
but this very swaying may assist in pumping up the sap in
the stem; and the buds, though still covered with their
brown winter scales, are swelling to the bursting. March
winds may be keen ; but they seem to make the blood flow
more swiftly in our veins. We no longer feel the dank

io THE COUNTRY MONTH BY MONTH.

mists of November presaging the nipping hopelessness of
winter : we are surrounded by hope ; and at our feet, if
not so obviously above our heads, there is already a wealth
of greenness and even of flower, if we will but look for it,
a wealth undreamt of by many "in populous city pent."
The fox-hunter knows the woodlands in March, and only
the most bigoted of his kind will blame the violets for
spoiling the scent. The permanent resident in the country
cannot fail to see many an early blossom by the roadside,
whilst the cottage garden soon becomes gay with flowers ;
but the townsman knows little or nothing of the country
in March. He may have visited it amid the snows of
Christmas ; but he rarely thinks of a country ramble before
Easter as presenting any possibilities of enjoyment. Let
us tempt the dweller in the country to wander yet further
afield, and the citizen

" Here in this roaring moon of daffodil
And crocus, to put forth and brave the blast."

As we start we may speculate as to whether the ancients,
in dedicating this month to Mars, that somewhat blustering
god, had any thought of the appropriateness of their act
from the meteorological point of view ; or as to who would
be the purchaser of this cloud of March dust, if we were
to gather it, at the market rate of a guinea a peck or a
king's ransom per bushel. Let us go then to

"... feel the bluff North blow again

And mark the sprouting thistle
Set up on waste patch of the lane

Its green and tender bristle,
And spy the scarce-blown violet-banks,

Crisp primrose-leaves and others,
And watch the lambs leap at their pranks,

And butt their patient mothers."

THE PLANT-WORLD IN MARCH.

BY BANK AND COPSE.

" Young leaves clothe early hedgerow trees ;
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
Swollen with sap, put forth their shoots ;
Curled-headed ferns sprout in the lane ;
Birds sing and pair again." — CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.

THE March sun has not much strength; so that we
are not likely to find many flowers as yet in the
denser thickets of a wood, or on any bank facing the
north. By the sunny roadside hedgerow, or among the
open coppice not long felled, we shall find the greatest
number of the flowers of March. Whether our ramble
be in the Midland or the South-Eastern counties, or in the
earlier Norfolk or South -West, or in the later North of
higher ground in Wales, will make a difference of from
one to three weeks in the dates of Nature's year, on either
side of what we may term the Midland and South-Eastern
average. So too, if we repeat our ramble over the same
ground after an interval of two or three weeks, we shall find
a marked advance. What was then in bursting bud is now
in leaf : what was in leaf may now be in flower : flowers,

12 THE PLANT-WORLD IN MARCH.

then few, now abound : flowers, then fully out, are now
fading to their disappearance. If then "the season's
difference," or the early date of our visit, disappoint us of
some beauty which we were led to expect, it will often only
be necessary for us to go again, and, so going, we may rest
assured that, if we use our eyes and ears, many another
beauty, though unexpected, will be ours.

At the outset of our walk perhaps we come to a roadside
farm with apple-orchard and old-fashioned garden. Here
on some veteran tree, of no great value for its fruit, hangs a
reminder of Christmas, a bunch of mistletoe conspicuous
midst the bare grey crooked apple-boughs in its vivid
yellow-green. It is now in flower ; but its insignificant
greenish blossoms, though presenting some points of
interest to the botanist, are less familiar than its pearly
berries. If the bunch happen to be a male one (for in
this species the sexes are on different plants) the little four-
cleft flowers will well repay examination, for each segment
bears on its surface a honeycomb-like stamen, which
discharges its pollen in this unusual way through many
openings. As the bough hangs, growing, unlike most
plants, mainly in a downward direction, one is reminded
that from this fact, according to the quaint old-world
medical doctrine of signatures, mistletoe was looked upon
as a specific for giddiness or epilepsy, the "falling
sickness " of our ancestors,

From the short grass beneath the apple-trees spreads a
wide patch of the glossy green frills of the winter
aconite; but its golden stars of blossom have nearly all
been washed away by the rain. Close by rise in the
stiffness of their youth the narrow grey-green leaves of a
tuft of daffodils, among which a few flower-stalks bear

BY BANK AND COPSE. 13

pointed yellow-tinged buds, already swollen beyond the
restraint of the shrivelling membranous sheath that
enclosed them. Their plumpness suggests, or perhaps one
or two just-opened flowers may reveal, that these are the
double garden variety. Its blossoms exhibit an endless
succession of closely-packed strips of alternating yellow
and orange, the one with cut edge, the other simply
pointed, representing respectively the leaves of the
perianth and the tubular coronet, indefinitely repeated
by that splitting process which French botanists well
term dedoublement.

The garden in front of the house, though with ridged
rows of celery, many lanky Brussels sprouts, and much else
of a strictly utilitarian character, yet is bright with many a
homely flower, recalling Perdita's catalogue in the Winter's
Tale—

" Daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,

Or Cytherea's breath ; pale primroses,

That die unmarried, ere they can behold

Bright Phoebus in his strength ; bold oxlips, and

The crown imperial ; lilies of all kinds."

The straight gravel walk has perhaps an edging of double
crimson daisies, and the border, narrowed by the demand
for vegetables, may yet be gay with scarlet or purple
anemones with their black centres, or with clumps of
crocuses, golden, purple, and white. Even an early Van
Thol tulip may blaze among its sober grey-green foliage,
and the rosy clusters may hang from amid the young green
fans of the Ribes leaves. Though this so-called " flowering
currant," introduced from North America within the present

i4 THE PLANT -WORLD IN MARCH.

century, has become familiar in the garden even of the
cottager, and is recognised as a currant even by children,
the Latin name common to the whole group still clings
more particularly to it, as does Trifolium to the crimson
clover. Close by, its humbler, but more useful kinsfolk, the
red currant and the gooseberry, droop their greenish
clusters from twigs whose opening buds breathe the first
scent of spring, now, however, eclipsed in fragrance by
the "leafless pink mezereons" beside them. We shall
indeed be fortunate if, when our early spring rambles take
us into some wood on a limestone soil, we light upon this
rarest of our native shrubs, humble in its growth, bare as
yet of leaves, but "thick beset with blushing wreaths" of
the sweetest pink tubular flowerets. If we try to gather
it without a knife the toughness of its flexible shoots will
remind us of its kinship to the lace -barks of the tropics,
which furnish stout bast for the rope-maker.

If the owner love the old-fashioned favourites of our
fathers, the curious hen-and-chickens daisy may be here,
with early polyanthus and the grape- and cluster-hyacinths.
From beneath the main head of minute florets, the outer
ones strap-shaped and white or pink-tipped, the inner ones
tubular and yellow, which the botanist with his pocket lens
will show us constitutes a daisy, peep several little stalks,
each bearing a daisy in miniature, suggesting newly-hatched
nestlings just leaving the wing of the brooding hen. A
little searching in our woodlands in spring will reveal
primroses that are not only the pale yellow hue that
suggests to our poets nothing but thoughts of unloved
sorrow, but of almost every shade from purest white to
pink and even bright red. Many of these may also vary
in having a long common stalk to their flowers, like the

BY BANK AND COPSE. 15

cowslip ; and, if transplanted in November, will originate
fresh stocks of polyanthuses in our gardens, as no doubt
the first of their varied kind originated. These quaintly
stiff little plants, with numerous little globular blue flowers
clustered together at the upper end of a glossy green stalk,
are the starch- or cluster- and grape-hyacinths, and, though
often not in flower till May, and not truly wild, may
sometimes be met with in situations where they have
probably escaped from cultivation.

The fragrant charms of the mezereon, and the gold and
purple glories of the crocuses, are, after all, but very
transient, whilst the crown imperial has in the March
flower-bed a dignity all its own. Its stout stems, with their
bright, luxuriant leaves, rise two feet or more from the bulb;
and, though its tulip-like blossoms of pale lemon-yellow or
deep brownish-red do hang downwards, their number and
size seem fully to justify its name. A native of Persia,
Afghanistan, and Cashmere, we shall find its more lowly
congener the fritillary, as a wilding in our meadows a little
later in the year. Chapman, a contemporary of Shakespere,

calls it—

" Fair crown imperial, emperor of flowers ; "

and John Parkinson, but a few years later, in his Paradisus
Terrestris, says that it "for its stately beautifulnesse de-
serveth the first place in this our garden of delight, to be
entreated of before all other Lillies." Most of the varieties
we have now, some of which have leaves striped with white
or yellow, existed in his time. But let us look a little more
closely at the flower itself, and if we lift one of the blossoms
what we see within cannot be better described than it was
by Gerard in 1597. " In the bottome of each of the bells,"
he says, "there is placed six drops of most cleere shining

16 THE PLANT-WORLD IN MARCH.

sweet water, in taste like sugar, resembling in shew faire
Orient pearles, the which drops if you take away there do
immediately appeare the like; notwithstanding, if they be
suffered to stand still in the floure according to his owne
nature, they wil never fall away, no, not if you strike
the plant untill it be broken." It is probable that in the
native country of this interesting plant these drops of
nectar, secreted in conspicuous white hollows at the bases
of the perianth-leaves, serve to attract insects which are
useful in transporting the pollen to another flower. The
interesting observation has, however, been made that these
nectariferous glands, as also those of the grass of Parnassus,
and of the Christmas roses and other hellebores, have a
power of absorbing nitrogenous food, their cells undergoing
a characteristic internal change on their doing so. It has
therefore been suggested that the glands are insectivorous
organs ; but this is improbable in the case of a floral
structure, flowers being concerned with seed -production
rather than with feeding ; and it may be suggested that the
delicate walls of the cells of such glands, though normally
excretive, are capable under abnormal conditions of what
may be called reversal of function. Leaving scientific
questions, however, we may recall a pretty German legend,
which tells us that these flowers were originally erect and
white ; but that when our Lord passed through the garden
of Gethsemane on the night of the agony, and all the
other flowers bent in sorrowing worship, they alone
remained unmoved until sorrow and shame overcame
pride, and they have ever since had bending heads,
blushing faces, and flowing tears.

But we must not linger longer, even among the fascina-
tions of a rustic garden; for we are in search of the

BY BANK AND COPSE. 17

beauties of wild Nature this morning. The garden flowers
of spring are too precious, or too beautiful as they grow,
for us to gather them, and their owner moreover is absent.
He has much to engage his attention just at present.
Passing through his plough land, where perchance there
is already the first gleaming shimmer of young wheat in
the fitful sunlight, we may find him sowing oats, or,
mindful of the adage —

" David and Chad,
Sow peas, good or bad :
If they 're not in by Benedick,
They had better stop in the rick,"

hastening, whatever the weather, to get both peas and
beans into the ground between the first two days and the
twenty-first of the month. He may be rolling his grass,
planting a few willow cuttings as a fence round his pond,
or setting quick along some new hedge-row.

We have not far to go along this lane before we come to
a wild plant in flower. True, it is but a weed, its blossoms
are of the smallest, they are white, and you may find them
almost anywhere during nine months out of the twelve, yet
it is not without interest. It is the little "shepherd's-purse,"
as it is called in most European languages, the "pick-
purse," " pick-pocket," " mother's heart," or, more tragically,
"pick your mother's heart out," of some of our country
children. Here it is growing under a wall in the dust of
the footpath, its tuft of jagged root-leaves already be-
smirched with the first dust of the year. Some of the
little cruciform flowers are already over, and, as the main
flower-stalk has lengthened, carrying up its close, flat
terminal cluster of buds, these first flowers are represented
by the heart-shaped pods to which the plant owes most of

1 8 THE PLANT-WORLD IN MARCH.

its names. A mediaeval shepherd may have carried a
leathern pouch of this form, and he would have been
fortunate if it held as many pence as this pod does seeds.
The plant is now looked upon merely as a prolific weed ;
but formerly it was supposed to have many merits, and
" poor man's parmacetie " was among its numerous names.
Wild throughout the North of the Old World, it has
followed civilization into every temperate region, and
presents several varieties which the botanical student may
do well to study for practice in nice discrimination. One
of them has no petals, but ten stamens, instead of the
normal six.

As our gaze is directed at this bit of wall, a more minute
flowering plant attracts our attention, as it springs from
among the velvety cushions of moss in the crevices whence
the mortar has long perished. Here on the top of the
wall it grows, the spring whitlow-grass. For its description
we will once more refer to John Gerard, " Master in
Chirurgerie " of three hundred years ago. " It is," he
says, " a very slender plant, having a few small leaves like
the least chick-weede, growing in little tufts, from the midst
whereof rises up a small stalk, nine inches long, on whose
top do growe verie little white flowers ; which being past,
there come in place small, flat pouches, composed of three
films ; which being ripe, the two outsides fall away, leaving
the middle part standing long time after, which is like
white satin." Its stalk is less often nine inches high than
two or three ; but otherwise this account is strikingly
graphic. The plant is very acrid, as are so many of the
mustard and cress family, to which it and the shepherd's-
purse alike belong, and this acridity was formerly believed
to be good for that painful disease of the nail known as a

BY BANK AND COPSE. 19

whitlow, to which the plant was applied with milk. For
this reason it was also sometimes called " nail-wort," nearly
all our plants which have popular names ending in " wort "
being old herbalist's remedies. The little plant varies very
much, in the shape of its satiny pods and in other minor
points ; so that a French botanist has actually described no
less than seventy forms, which he finds remain distinct when
cultivated.

Growing with this tiny fairy-like plant on the wall, or
spreading perhaps with it to the adjoining bank, we may
find, though not yet in flower, another curious little annual,
the three-fingered saxifrage, a reddish plant, but a few
inches high, with three-fingered leaves, sticky, as is the
whole plant, with minute red-knobbed hairs, adhering to
which we may even already discover some unfortunate
small insects.

A suggestion of green is now seen all along the hedge-
rows. Both quick-set and blackthorn are still bare; but
here and there the stout, brown, warty shoots of the elder
are putting out tufts of leaves : the wild briars are already
well clothed with their delicate and vivid foliage ; and in
places we may perhaps see one of the guelder-roses un-
folding its pleated leaves. A gust of the keen spring air
is driving before it the bright white clouds : the sun bursts
out momentarily with unwonted power, and we see flying
gaily before us, with its characteristic zigzag flight, a brilliant
vision of life, of resurrection. It settles for a moment on
the bank, and as it closes its sulphur wings it reveals the
beautiful curves of their angular outlines. It is the Brim-
stone butterfly ; but, though its caterpillar fed on some
buckthorn bush not far from here, this lovely insect left its
green chrysalis late last autumn, and after flying about for

20 THE PLANT-WORLD IN MARCH.

a day or two, passed into that winter sleep from which
to-day's sunshine has awakened it. If this sunshine con-
tinues, its warmth intensified towards the afternoon, we
may meet several other kinds of butterflies ; but all of
them at this season will probably be similarly hibernated
specimens. Since the wonderful invasion of a few years
back, we may even live in hopes of viewing upon the wing
that grand insect the Camberwell Beauty, with white-
bordered, claret-coloured wings stretching three inches and
a half, which it is so difficult for us to associate with the
trim villadom of Camberwell, though it was caught there
less than fifty years ago. Probably every schoolboy who
ever started a collection has anxiously scanned many an
old and ragged small tortoise-shell in the hopes of capturing
a Comma; and does familiarity ever breed contempt of
such beautiful objects as a Painted Lady or a Red Admiral?
The butterflies of the tropics may be larger and more
lustrous with metallic sheen ; but they cannot surpass the
delicacy of colouring of the under surface of the one, or
the rich velvet tints of the other, of these British insects.
Their names are homely, but their tints seem suggestive of
some palace in fairyland.

The sight of the bright spot of yellow fluff disporting in
the sunshine has for the moment set us thinking that the
wild flowers we have come across in our walk have as yet
been merely white. True, we have only gone a few yards
and here is another little white blossom in the bank beside
us. No, it is not a strawberry. It is the humble poor
relation of the strawberry, known generally as the barren
strawberry. Its little leaves are not unlike those of its
more sought-after relative, but more silky, with fine hairs,
and so less self-assertive. Its blossoms too are very

BY BANK AND COPSE. 21

strawberry-like, though smaller and with notched petals ;
but it may be at once distinguished at this season by its
slender, drooping stalk, which seems to say, " My fruit will
be small, dry, and uninteresting to you, not the richly-
flavoured berry of my proud and stiff-stalked cousin."
Here, at last, however, the sunshine seems to have
awakened some sympathetic brightness in the plant-world,
for the whole hedgerow before us is a sparkling blaze with
the many-pointed rays of the lesser celandine — Words-
worth's lesser celandine — shining among its own glossy
leaves. There are plenty of green unopened buds among
these burnished golden stars, however; but some of the
blossoms bear unmistakable signs of February's rains.
We might have gathered them a month ago j now they are
bleached to a whitish pallor that makes their gold seem as
dross.

We dart forward with a shout of joy to the first violets
of spring. Is not the bank covered with them, standing
before us in unusual prominence and size ? Alas ! no.
We have been so deceived before, and may often be so
again. The wish was father to the thought, and we may
very probably detect the modest violet presently by its
perfume before it discloses itself to our eyes ; but this is
only ground-ivy. Only ground-ivy ! And yet, though
common enough, and with a perfume rather unpleasant
than fragrant, it is a pretty little plant, and a plant with a
history. It is not much like an ivy ; and, though its
leaves are rounded and softly downy, their many indenta-
tions are not very suggestive of a cat's-foot, though cat's-
foot is one of its many popular names. Its deep violet
flowers are in groups of three in the angle between each
leaf and the reddish prostrate stem ; and, when we come

22 THE PLANT-WORLD IN MARCH.

to look at them at closer quarters, are not the least violet-
like in form. They are little trumpet-shaped tubes with
two lobes on one side of their mouths and three spread
out on the other. "Blue-runner," "Robin run in the
hedge," or " Gill go by the ground," are names the ap-
plication of which is obvious ; but some explanation is
perhaps necessary of the fact of so humble a plant having
so many popular appellations, and this explanation we get
in the two additional names "Ale-hoof" and "Tun-foot."
This now despised plant was the predecessor of the hop
in Old English brewing, having an aromatic bitter taste;
and the leaves were compared by our ancestors to a foot
or hoof, as were those of dozens of other plants.

If the season be an early one we may hope to find either
the field scorpion-grass, or more probably the yet earlier
species, the scientific name of which (collina) implies
inaccurately that it is specially characteristic of hills. Both
these dry land representatives of the more attractive forget-
me-not have minute blue flowers, only an eighth or a sixth
of an inch across; but perhaps the most obvious distinctions
between them are that the former (the field species) has
its leaves stalked and each flower furnished with a stalk
several times longer than itself, whilst the early species
has hardly any stalk to the leaves, the separate flower-
stalks not longer than the flowers themselves, and (most
easily recognised of characters) one little flower some
distance below the rest. Whilst the Latin name of the
genus (Myosotis), meaning " mouse-ear," applies to their
downy leaves, the old English name, "scorpion -grass,"
refers probably to the way in which the stalk of flowers
is rolled up in the bud, suggesting the tail of a scorpion.
This, as also the surface rough with hairs, is, however,

BY BANK: AND COPSE. 23

characteristic of almost all the borage family, to which
these plants belong.

A patch of waste land or common here separates us from
yonder wood. A hobbled donkey is searching vainly for
young shoots round a close-grazed furze-bush, and a few
geese are paddling round the sides of a small and dirty
pond. The soil hereabouts is stiff. An old and straggling
bush of "the never bloomless furze," tangled with a
hawthorn above the reach of the donkey, bears a few of its
golden blossoms. Norse folk-lore is credited with terming
March " the lengthening month that wakes the adder and
blooms the whin " ; and, though we might in the South
find a few flowers on the furze in February, in the North,
where more particularly it is called whin, the saying is
undoubtedly true. On an exceptionally warm day we may
perhaps find an adder sunning himself on some such spot
as this ; but he is likely to be still but half emerged from
his winter torpor. This large-growing furze, and the dwarf
allied forms between them, keep up that constant succession
of blossom that leads to the adage that " kissing is out of
season when the furze is out of blossom " ; but the dwarf
species are more common on sand, while this larger one
loves the clay. We cannot resist, in this season when floral
perfumes are still scarce, gathering a few of the bright
blossoms with their soft, woolly, two-lipped coats, to rub
them in our hands, and sniff their rich apricot-like
fragrance. As we step aside to do so we light upon a
whole assemblage of weedy plants that have evidently been
some time in bloom. Here the deep pink gaping flowers
of the red dead-nettle peep out between its crowded red-
tinged leaves : the despised groundsel, a degraded Cineraria
without the bright ray-florets of its relatives, is growing side

24 THE PLANT -WORLD IN MARCH.

by side with some chickweed, alike patronised by the
keepers of pet birds; and perhaps an early dandelion is
eclipsing the brightness of a group of leafless coltsfoot.
We may note the deeply-notched white petals of the chick-
weed, each looking like two, and the single row of minute
hairs along its stem, which curiously shifts its position from
one side of the stem to the other at every pair of leaves.
The dandelion springs from a rosette of the deeply-toothed
leaves to which it owes its name, its smooth and hollow
milky stalk surmounted with recurved green bracts or
scales below the head of strap-shaped florets. The coltsfoot
on the other hand, like many another flower of spring,
produces its flowers in advance of the leaves, and thus is
now seen only as a flower-stalk, woolly, and bearing
numerous small leafy scales, surmounted by its paler
yellow, thistle-like head of florets, of which only the outer
ones are long and narrow.

From the gold at our feet we look up to gold over our
heads. Here the hedgerow has become the rendezvous
for quite a crowd of busily humming bees, the first we have
noticed abroad this year ; for here a large sallow is in all
the glory of its golden palm. So too, we now notice, are
a group of little prostrate forms, with trailing wiry stems
of glossy brown, in the swampy ground near the pond.
The low-growing shrub is the hedgerow-tree in miniature.
They have burst their brown bud -scales, and the oval
cushion of silver fur now appears thickly studded with the
gold-headed threads, among which the bees are so hard at
work. The legs of the insects are so laden with the golden
pollen that they seem hardly able to fly ; yet if we watch
them we may trace some of them to another tree yonder,
which at once strikes us as different. Instead of the plump,

BY BANK AND COPSE. 25

oval, gold-studded balls, each with something of an upward
growth, it bears longer catkins, with a more horizontal
direction, and clad in more sober silver-grey without a
particle of gold. These are the " silver pussy palms " of
the children, and it is they only that will bear fruit in
summer, when the golden palms of the other tree have
faded into nothingness; for the former are collections of
flowers, each consisting of a downy ovary with a sticky
stigma, to which the bees or the wind carry the fertilising
pollen from the other trees. Yonder " hedgerow elm " and
the hazels we can see from here at the edge of the wood,
alike illustrate this production of flowers before the leaves
in the windy season. The boughs of the elm waving in
their lace -like tracery against the sky catch a rich claret
hue in the fleeting sunlight. This is from their clusters of
flowers, which have red anthers, as those of the willow have
golden ones; but in this case pollen-bearing anthers and
stigma-bearing ovary are in the same little flower, and
perhaps it only requires a little March breeze to shake
the pollen from the one on to the sticky surface of the
other.

To reach the wood there is yet a field for us to cross.
A gate stands open for a horse-drill that is working in one
part of the field, and as we pass it we are greeted with the
wished-for perfume. Now it is violets in earnest, the sweet
violets of the end of March, that may be found as early as
the middle of February, but too often are not out before
the equinox — here they are, purple and white ones growing
together in the grass of this hedge-row bank, so fragrant
and so beautiful that we expect to be called profane if we
do not abandon ourselves to simple admiration. But
knowledge, and not ignorance, is the true parent of

26 THE PLANT -WORLD IN MARCH.

reverential wonder. Our appreciation of the beauty of a
flower is heightened and not lessened by the knowledge
that each curve in its outline, and each spot of colour on
its petal has a definite utility in the plant economy. We
love violets; but we do not for that reason refrain from
studying them. The green leaves of the calyx are parted
to make room for the spur of the corolla, and the petals
are marked with finely-ruled lines leading to the mouth
of this spur. Each of the five stamens splits in two
lines down its inner surface to discharge its pollen, and
each is furnished with a curious little rusty-brown triangular
tip. Two out of the five have also tail-like appendages
which extend backwards into the spur, and secrete
the honey with which it is filled ; and finally above
the ovary rises a curious hooded style, like a bird's
head, with a hole at the side, in which is the stigma.
Judging by other plants we should say that we have in the
violet an elaborate series of contrivances for what botanists
call insect cross-pollination, i.e., the conveyance of pollen
by insect agency from one flower to another. Here is the
pollen : here is the attractive scent : here is the rewarding
honey and the " honey-guides," as the fine lines are termed,
to lead the insect visitor ; but the insect visitor hardly ever
comes, and it is not these elaborately-contrived flowers
that produce the large crop of seed on our violet-beds in
autumn. Later in the season, on shorter stalks, incon-
spicuous bud-like flowers will appear, but will not open.
They will have neither perfume nor honey, nor will any
insect enter them; but they it is that bear the well-filled
seed-capsules of autumn. The production of these " cleis-
togene" flowers, as they are termed, is still one of the
puzzles of the biologist. Nature seems to have altered her

BY BANK AND COPSE. 27

mind. The elaborately contrived and perfumed flower
may fulfil its appointed end by securing an occasional
cross, or it may have become a failure from the scarcity of
insect life in early March ; but the fact remains that it is
the violets, rather than the primroses, " that die unmarried,"
as Shakespeare puts it.

I can already see primroses beneath the coppice in the
wood across the field, so we will hasten over the ploughed
land as best we may to reach them ; but spring flowers are
too few for us to pass them by, and here at our feet, in the
furrows that have stood fallow during the winter, is a dainty
little creeping plant, with pale blue blossoms, that seem to
reflect the spring-tide heavens. It is the ivy-leaved speed-
well, the first of its race to greet the year, though it will
continue to flower till midsummer. Its rather fleshy pale-
green leaves have five or seven lobes, and are thus not
unlike the ivy. The entirely blue colour of its little flowers
— they are but the sixth of an inch across — distinguishes it
from some of its near allies ; and you may already find
perhaps one of its distinctly two-lobed capsules.

We have reached the ditch surrounding the wood, over
which hang the hazel-bushes we saw from the other side of
the field. It is not so choked with vegetation as it will be
a few months hence. Some "leaf-nested primroses" are
ensconced under the gnarled roots of the hazels, but they
are out of our reach as yet. The carpet of dog's mercury,
with its vivid green, is neither so thick nor so deep as it
will be ; but many plants from it too have found their way
through the hedge, and we can see a variety of budding
flowers among it. We must, however, just stop to gather
and examine a catkin from these hazel - bushes. It is
swaying in the breeze, and sending out clouds of golden

28 THE PLANT-WORLD IN MARCH.

dust. It hangs down fully two inches in length, slightly
tapering, and no doubt suggesting a little cat's tail, the
origin of our word " catkin."

The books tell us that a catkin is a deciduous spike ; but
let us see for ourselves. If we take one of these fully-
developed examples, and not those dull brown sausage-like
buds at the end of yonder bough, we see it has a number
of little scales, and under each of these a pocket lens will
show us two smaller ones or " bracteoles," each with two
forked stamens between it and the central stalk. Thus, as
each stamen bifurcates, every catkin-scale or " bract " covers
eight of the anthers that are now so busily discharging their
pollen. This structure is explained by comparison with
other catkins as representing two flowers below each bract,
a central one being undeveloped ; so that the entire catkin
is more complex in its structure than a spike, in which the
flowers are typically arranged in a single linear, or rather
spiral, series. When the wind has blown all their pollen
away these catkins will have exchanged their present almost
primrose hue for one decidedly greener ; but what will have
become of the pollen ? There are no leaves on the trees to
obstruct it, and that which is to come to anything must
probably go to another tree. It is true that here, on the
upper side of this same branch, are several of the little egg-
shaped female catkins, with their few overlapping scales
topped 'with clustering crimson points; but these stigmas
are not yet sticky, so that pollen will not adhere to
them.

We can wait no longer, but are busily filling our baskets
with primroses. Their crinkled leaves are still small, and
all their stalks blush with the pink of youth. The
'• rathe," or early primrose of Milton, is short moreover in

BY BANK AND COPSE. 29

the stalk ; but in the bunch their perfume is as delicate as
it will ever be, and dotted about here and there in the
open coppice they are perhaps more picturesque than when
carpeting an entire bank. Only perhaps in inner recesses
of the wood shall we find the drawn-up specimens with
several flowers borne aloft on a single stalk, which most
country folk erroneously know as "oxlips," and which serve
to explain the apparent difference in the arrangement of the
flowers in primrose and in cowslip. Each primrose flower
has, it is true, a long and slender stalk, far longer than is
the case in the cowslip, and these stalks rise deep down
among the bases of the leaves; but there we shall find
them united on a common stalk, as are those of the
cowslip, only that here the conditions are reversed, and
this "peduncle," or footstalk, as it is termed, is long
in the cowslip, and, as a rule, extremely short in the
primrose.

We have gathered a large bunch, picking at the same
time a few of the delicate drooping wood-anemones,
blushing pink over the contrasting dark green of the three
cut leaves that spring from the middle of their flower-
stalks. As we have been so engaged we have seen that
the dog's-mercury is in flower ; that there is many a patch
of lesser celandine, and perhaps the little verdigris oil-
beetle feeding on its leaves ; that the firm and polished
green spears of the wild hyacinths are piercing their way
up through the dead leaves, often carrying aloft in triumph
a withered transfixed victim; but that they have not yet
reached the flowering stage. Several other plants also we
may have noticed. The stout crimson stalks and blue-
green leaves of the wood-spurge, now hanging drooping
heads, are conspicuous, though less so perhaps than they

3o THE PLANT-WORLD IN MARCH.

will be when they rise erect to flower. Here and there a
pointed glossy-green shoot, well wrapped round with its
leaves, marks the coming of the cuckoo-pint, or lords-and-
ladies, next month ; and perhaps a spreading rosette of
polished leaves, irregularly blotched snake -like with
purplish red, may similarly herald the early purple orchis.
From tawny heaps of decaying leaves the curled fronds of
ferns are beginning to show themselves, and we find in this
and other respects considerable difference between the
open coppice where we are standing, which was felled in
the autumn before last, and the denser thickets where the
spring sun has not yet made itself felt.

Here, however, at our feet, is an interesting little plant
which we were nearly overlooking, among dog's-mercury
and wood-anemones. Its little leaves resemble in form those
of the latter, but are of a brighter and lighter green. Its
flower-stalk bears two leafy bracts, like the three in the
anemone, and its little head of green flowers at first sight
looks like the fruit of the anemone when the flowers have
fallen. It is the moschatel, musk crowfoot, musk-root,
hollow root, or bulbous fumitory, so called from its musky
odour, which is strongest at evening, and its thick white
hollow underground stem. It is difficult to think of it as
the near ally of the elder and the honeysuckle; but its
little flowers are well worth looking at. There are five of
them, forming five sides of a cube of which the stalk
occupies the base: the upper flower has four little green
petals and eight stamens, and the four side ones have each
five petals and five deeply two-forked stamens, the whole
forming a cube hardly half an inch in diameter. Close to
it is growing the hairy wood-rush, which differs from the
true rushes in having flat, grass-like leaves, and grows

BY BANK AND COPSE. 31

nearly a foot high, its slender stem bearing long, scattered
hairs, and each branch ending in a solitary chestnut-brown,
rush-like flower. Rushes seem indeed to be but fallen
representatives of the grand lily tribe; but by a happy
accident we light hard by upon two far less common and
nearer representatives of that group. This little yellow
star-of-Bethlehem is decidedly lily-like. It has a little bulb
(though the plant is so rare I should be sorry to pull it up
to demonstrate the fact), one long narrow sheathing
hyacinth-like leaf and a little umbel of six-rayed greenish-
yellow stars. These greenish-yellow flower-leaves are, it has
been suggested, an ancient survival, the ancestral type of
how the first petals arose from altered yellow stamens.
But if this little plant be a lily, what shall we say to this
sturdy prickly little shrub ? My friends will hardly believe
me when I say that this butcher's-broom too is a lily. Yet
so it is. Its tough green stems, the only woody ones
among British members, not only of the lily family, but of
the great class of which that family is but a small part, are
simply palm stems in little, and afford interesting proof of
this under the microscope. Butchers still use it as a broom
in some country towns ; and in the New Forest, where it is
plentiful, it is known as knee-holm or knee-holly from its
height, its evergreen character, and its prickly points. The
little greenish flowers you see are in the centre of the broad
flat pointed leaf-like structure, though botanists tell us that
flowers never grow on leaves ; but those are not the leaves :
they are the minute scales you see below each of these
leaf-like branches. Here one of last winter's scarlet berries
remains, like that of the lily of the valley or the asparagus,
and this last-mentioned plant is indeed one of the nearest
allies of the butcher's-broom.

32 THE PLANT-WORLD IN MARCH.

Let us hasten on. A companion who knows the locality
has yet a treat in store. We push our way under the
ghostly dead-seeming boughs of some young larches, and
come out at the head of a slope facing south, a different
side of the wood from that on which we entered, and
there before us waves a sea of glorious daffodils. I know
few, if any, keener pleasure in store for the lover of wild
flowers, the whole year through. We may find many a
rarer plant than the Lent lily, as it is often called, — the
yellow star-of-Bethlehem, for instance, is far less common ; —
but there is but little comparison between the joyous glee
with which this sight fills one, and the merely intellectual
pleasure of a " rare find." Wordsworth's poem rises to our
lips, for this is the time for poetry and not for science ;
and, familiar as it is, we make no excuse for quoting it in
full. It is the verses of Wordsworth, the lover of nature,
that endear themselves to us rather than the courtly
conceits of Herrick, who could walk through the lovely
Devonshire lanes round his home at Dean Prior, lanes
draped in ferns and primroses, and complain of " this
dull Devonshire."

" I wander'd lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,

Beside the lake beneath the trees

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

" Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky-way,
They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay :
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

BY BANK AND COPSE. 33

1 The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee : —
A poet could not but be gay

In such a jocund company !
I gazed — and gazed — but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought ;

1 For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude ;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."

We recall too that it was of daffodils that Keats wrote
the now too hackneyed line, " A thing of beauty is a joy
for ever"; and the deliberate utterance of Mahomet, "He
that has two cakes of bread, let him sell one of them for
some flower of the narcissus ; for bread is the food of the
body; but narcissus is food for the soul." Then, when
our emotional ardour has a little cooled, we may discuss
the many names of our favourite, such as "Lent rose,"
"crown bells," "chalice-flower," and "daffadowndilly,"
and whether this last be but a playful modification of
daffodil, or, as is credibly alleged, a corruption of saffron
lily. Then too the question arises whether this beautiful
flower is truly wild, and we note that its leaves have less
grey bloom upon them than those of the cultivated form ;
that the six floral leaves are of a paler yellow, and that the
lovely deep golden coronet in their centre has rectangular,
instead of rounded, lobings to its gracefully recurved
margin. Bulbous plants often spread far, and it is hard to
say where there may not have been a monastic garden or
the orchard of a mediaeval grange ; but the daffodil would
c

34 THE PLANT-WORLD IN MARCH.

never perhaps have been doubted to be a truly British
plant did not its very beauty suggest a sunnier clime as
the land of its birth. Now, alas ! it is being ruthlessly
sacrificed to our smoky towns, not flowers only, but even
the roots. Too truly,

" Now fair Daffodilla is coming to town
In a yellow petticoat and a green gown,"

and so perhaps must we, though less gaily bedecked.

IN THE RIVER MEADS.

" In the wind of windy March

The catkins drop down,
Curly, caterpillar-like,

Curious green and brown." — ROSSETTI.

THESE lines recur to my mind as, on a blustering day
about the vernal equinox, I start on a short stroll
through some water-meadows to a withy eyot close to the
river bank. The yet leafless boughs of some tall aspens
are waving to and fro overhead, and now and again a big
wine-red catkin, which has not yet begun to shed its pollen,
is torn off by the breeze and flung at my feet. The day is
overcast, and at this season the entomologist thinks rather
of hunting for larvae under dead leaves than of capturing
the perfect insect. A good deal may still be done by that
judicious blending of green treacle and rum, mixed on the
spot, that has superseded the " sugaring " of the last half-
century. The March Dagger moth may now be met with
on stems, and the Light Orange-underwing, the Early
Grey, the Clouded Drab and the Hebrew-character moth,
especially on willows. The dark grey stems of the alders
in this swampy piece of ground seem to accord well with
the dull sky, and can hardly be said to be relieved by the
dull green of their short, globose catkins, which swing

36 IN THE RIVER MEADS.

among the woody, cone-like remains of those of previous
years. But here at their feet is a relief from the dull
monotony of their colouring. We find we are standing on
peat, veritable peat, which a walking-stick assures us is at
least three feet in depth, but which is composed almost
entirely, not of bog-moss, but of the tiny golden saxifrages,
both species growing together, the one with its little bright
green and fleshy round leaves in pairs, the other bearing
them singly, and both with flat clusters of tiny golden
flowers. I said "almost entirely," for there are scattered
bunches of the far larger marsh-marigold, the "water-blobs"
of our Surrey childhood, flaunting their sturdier growth, as
if proud of the wealth of gold they are now beginning to
display in their unfolding sepals. It is certainly a curious
point in structural botany that these brilliantly metallic
charms, so like the petals of the buttercup, should yet
correspond in origin rather with the green external leaves
of the latter flower, though both are nearly related in other
points. Yellow is certainly the chief floral colour we shall
meet with to-day; for here the willows are in bloom,
especially the purple osier with its polished red-purple
stems. These stems are almost as commonly used for
basket-making as the more silky common osier, which
will not be in flower for another month. Here comes the
rain, however, and there seems but little prospect of variety
at present among water-side plants, so we will abandon the
quest.

ON A CHALK SUBSOIL.

NO right-thinking person will wish to do anything by
word or deed that may lead to the extermination
of any of our British plants, so we do not propose to
describe in detail any visit to the homes of our chief
rarities. We might go at this season to the lonely ruins
of Pennard Castle in the peninsula of Gower, about eight
miles from Swansea, where in almost inaccessible security
grows the yellow Alpine whitlow -grass ; whilst on neigh-
bouring limestone cliffs we might light upon the somewhat
less uncommon rock hutchinsia, a pretty little relative of
the homely shepherd's -purse, with "pinnate" or feather-
like divisions to its leaves. We will however go less far
afield. There are at all seasons of the year a considerable
number of interesting plants that, requiring a well-drained
and warm subsoil, grow preferably upon limestone, or in
the South-East of England on our prevalent earthy lime-
stone, the chalk. We may go to the gloomy shade of the
box-trees on Box-hill in Surrey, and no doubt we shall find
thereabouts the scentless hairy violet growing in the open
pastures; or we may visit the ever-beautiful slopes of
Cliefden, where the aged yew-trees overshadow the luridly
poisonous hellebores ; but there is a special reason why we
should choose some part of Essex, Suffolk, Cambridge-
shire, or Hertfordshire, approximately between Bishop
Stortford, Haverhill, Linton, and Saffron Walden. Here
in the roadside ditches we shall see the fern-like foliage

38 ON A CHALK SUBSOIL.

and perhaps the just-opening white umbels of the cow-
parsley, which we were too preoccupied with other interests
to notice in our previous ramble. Now too perhaps the
wood violet, then only in bud, may be in flower, as
also in shady spots the pale veined flowers of the wood-
sorrel amid its first delicate pink - stalked and silky
leaves. Yes, it is to the woods we must go, and there
we shall find, perhaps with one exception, all the
plants of our previous expedition, and some others
as well. Here the yew trees are bearing their curious
male catkins; and their young green seeds, each termi-
nating a twig, have a drop of sticky liquid at their
apex to receive the pollen. We may find also upon them
the artichoke-gall produced by the puncture of a special
gnat. Here too the green hellebore, and the darker-hued
evergreen stinking hellebore, with reddish blotches on its
green sepals, are now bearing their little tubular petals
filled with poisonous honey; and here in the recesses of
some wood we may meet with the leathery bright green
clustering leaves and the tough stalks of the spurge-
laurel, the evergreen congener of the gay mezereon we saw
in the farmhouse garden. Its greenish and inconspicuous
tubular flowers have been open for some time, and may
have lost both fragrance and honey; but its foliage is
always attractive. Primroses may perhaps be absent ; but
their place is abundantly filled by the characteristic plant
of the district, the true oxlip, or, as it is locally called, the
"paigle." With leaves and peduncle much like those of
the cowslip, and flowers not as broad as those of the
primrose, it has a creamy tint of colour and an apricot-like
perfume which are both peculiarly its own ; and, unlike
many rarities, in this district, where alone in the British
Isles it does occur, it is abundant.

WILD LIFE:

FURRED AND FEATHERED.

A LTHOUGH the rude winds of March may cause the
-ii- feebler wayfarers, whose blood runs slowly, to pu
plaid or cloak more closely about their sensitive frames,
they are propitious to the observer of life out of doors,
whether this be in the form of biped or quadruped. There
is a clearness of atmosphere which brings distant objects
nearer, and makes our observations more exact ; besides
which the great cloud masses get broken up and driven, in
all their varied tones of grey and pearly white, swiftly over
hill and dale, bringing about ever-varying effects of light
and shade. These keep a lover of nature in that pleasant
expectant attitude of mind that dispels all mental vapours,
and promotes a healthful light-hearted vigour of mind and
body which is eminently suited to the "going out for to
see " what may be stirring under the changeful skies.

Rough blasts cause hawks, jackdaws, and owls to seek a
shelter ; and this varies with different localities. In Surrey,
for instance, they find it to perfection in old workings that
have been abandoned, in the chalk hills where lime was
once burned ; cracks and rents in these lonely corners suit
the birds exactly. And the wild gusts cause the rooks to

40 WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED.

gather thickly in the old trees, where they have been nesting
from time immemorial. They assemble in great numbers
to hold noisy confabulations about the mischief and damage
that rude Boreas is likely to do amongst their nests, which
are built so high up in the swaying branches. They croak
and flap and caw in a great state of excitement. The new
nests are constructed of green pliant twigs, which are laced
into the forked and highest branches of the trees, so that
the whole affair can swing freely to and fro as the wind
blows. Now and again a fiercer gale than usual will blow
some of them out of the trees bodily, but as a rule they
can stand a great deal. It is too early to watch the birds
in their busy domesticities ; a little later on and father rook
will have an active time of it, for he is a most attentive
husband and parent ; and not only does he provide amply,
but he cackles pleasantly the while he feeds his mate,
thus surely — to judge from humans and their ways in like
case — making the morsels sweeter to the stay-at-home
female bird.

Although, as I have said, windy March favours the general
observer, yet this is not one of the best months for the bird
lover, because it is the season when our winter visitors have
either left or are thinking of leaving us. The woodcock,
for instance, after having paired, will, the majority of them,
take flight now, in order to nest in the vast forests of
Scandinavia and Russia. Still, the numbers that remain
with us are, owing to the great increase of plantations in
large portions of our land — especially of the fir species —
yearly becoming greater; but few of the spring migrants
have as yet arrived. The exact time of the coming of
these latter varies, of course, in different localities, as may
be seen very clearly in the naturalist's calendar, which is

WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED. 41

appended to some editions of White's Natural History of
Selborne, where the earliest and latest dates on which that
ardent lover of nature in Hampshire noted their arrivals
and departures, stand opposite to Markwick's notes of the
same, as recorded near Battle, in Sussex. The weather,
which often varies much in different localities, also
influences the movements of birds greatly, and so the
varied statements as to the comings and goings of migrants
are easily accounted for.

About the slopes of the South Down hills myriads of
small snails are now providing food for numbers of birds,
appearing and vanishing according to the changes in the
weather. These snails have remained in a torpid state
during the winter, in holes of walls, under large stones,
and in the ground, making their appearance only if the
weather became very mild. Snails are said to have existed
hidden away where no egress was possible, without food of
any kind, for two and even three years. And speaking of
snails, it is strange that they are not in more common use
amongst us as an article of diet, since the Romans
introduced the one called helix pomatia into our country,
as a luxury of which they were fond. They are in great
request in some parts of the Continent When the
mornings and evenings are moist and warm, the snails are
everywhere, and worms show up also in great quantities
that delight the plover.

The great plover, stone curlew, or thicknee, may be
found on the downs and in the greater fields ; his peculiar
wild call note betrays his presence often, and you hear
him "clamour" when you cannot catch a sight of him.
The lonely shepherd on the Downs is not fond of his
peculiar cry.

42 WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED.

Lapwings or pewits are very active during the month of
March, running hither and thither in search of suitable
nesting places. Father pewit flaps his broad wings, sticks
up his pretty crest, fusses about his mate, and together they
peer into any little depression in the ground where bits of
grass, twigs, and other unconsidered trifles have been
blown. Or together with large companies of their kind
they flap and wheel about in all directions over the upland
pastures.

Crows are keenly looking out, for this is the time for
them to pounce and feast on any unfortunate little lamb
that may be disabled or helpless. The raven too has his
mate to provide for just now, and woe betide any venture-
some young rats that fall under his keen eyes. He is
becoming rare excepting along our more rocky southern
coasts, and in parts of the New Forest. Although he may
be welcomed as a destroyer of rats, he is too fond of game,
and, like the crow, of weakly ewes and lambs, to be
welcome everywhere. His nest, if you are lucky enough
to come on one of the old raven trees where the birds have
nested year after year, you will find lined with deer's hair,
rabbit's fur, and soft wool.

Not many of our birds nest in March; but the blackbirds
are busy, in and out of the evergreens in our shrubberies,
and in the country hedgerows, where they add egg to egg
till they have four, five, or six. By the end of the month
their broods will, many of them, be hatched out. The young
of the early broods sometimes help the parents to feed the
second brood of the season. With a noisy note of alarm,
which the bird rattles out as you approach his nesting
place, he flits from bush to bush, and with a characteristic
habit of quickly raising his tail when he perches that makes

WILD LIFE : FURRED AND FEA THERE D. 43

him easily distinguished, even at dusk. In the South he is
commoner than the thrush, but in the North I think the
latter bird, which emulates the blackbird in the richness
of his note, is the more often noted about the gardens.
Both birds should be welcomed, on account of the slugs,
snails, and insects, with their laroe, that they devour. Later
on they may steal some fruit, but " the labourer is worthy
of his hire," and man is often only too selfish in his cha-
racter of ruler over the beasts of the field and the fowls
of the air.

Chack ! chack ! cries the wheatear as he flits along the
hillocky pastures, having arrived early, to spend his summer
with us. On open ground, on warrens, and the poorer
land near the coast you will find him ; and especially in
numbers about our South Downs. Owing to that jerky
white tail of his, he gets the name everywhere of "white-
rump." A blue-grey back and rich rufous-coloured breast,
dark wings, and broad, black tips to his white tail, make
the wheatear a very noticeable bird. He is wary and shy to
a degree, however, and next month at your approach he will
flit uneasily from place to place, in order to divert your
attention from the nest that will be so cautiously formed
right up some old rabbit burrow, or hidden in a peat stack
or the deep crevice of a stone wall. The eggs, of which
you may see as many as seven in a nest, are of a very
lovely pale blue, sometimes having tiny purple spots on
them.

A Son of the Marshes says of the wheatear, "A timid
creature and gentle, the shadow of a crow's wing thrown
on the turf as the bird flies overhead, is enough to make
him crouch and run for shelter. The shepherd and his
lads know his weakness ; and when he runs to hide from

44 WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED.

the cloud shadows that alarm him they cut a turf and form
a little lean-to shelter, and set a horsehair noose, into
which the bird runs." Great quantities of the wheatear
are captured in this manner and sold for the table.

The lively stonechat stays with us throughout the year.
A scolding little fellow he is, and he shows his dislike of
the intruding stranger by uttering his note, h-weet, jur, jur !
as he darts from one furze bush to another. A black head,
white neck, and reddish breast and quick motions, make
him a bright conspicuous object. "Little Jacky Blacky-
topper" I have heard him called. A labourer on the
roads just above Brighton was followed in his work along
the ditches for many days during a hard frosty spell, by a
pair of these birds. They picked up small trifles as he
worked, and crumbs when he fed. And at last they
became so tame that when the weather grew more than
usually severe, the female bird would allow the man to put
her in his pocket for a while, now and again, evidently-
enjoying the warmth. When it grew milder again the
birds disappeared. The stonechat does not begin to build
his nest till early in April.

If you hang a bone or two upon a garden tree, especially
if your home chance to be not far from the woods, you
may observe some of the tit species well. Close to the
window of a cottage in Surrey, where I stayed last March, I
used to delight in feeding these beautiful little birds. The
great titmouse is a very handsome fellow, and one who
makes himself easily at home; he will even frequent our
gardens in the centre of London. Mr. Howard Saunders
tells of an inverted flowerpot in the British Museum having
contained three new nests. I know of an invalid lady who
had a pole hung out from her bedroom window, at the end

WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED. 45

of which the half of a cocoa-nut shell was hung. In this
a pair of tits nested, and she had great enjoyment in
watching their pretty movements from the bed on which
she lay. The great titmouse, the coal tit, the marsh tit,
and the lovely little blue tit, all came to the tree where I
hung my bone or bits of suet. The coal tit is not so often
met with as the great tit and the blue tit, but you may
happen to find his nest, lined with wool and moss and
rabbit's fur, jn an old mouse burrow in a bank — more often
though in a hole of a tree stem or a crevice in a wall.
Not till April, although that of the great tit is found earlier.
The blue tit is called locally Billy-biter, owing to her
plucky way of defending her young ; she will peck at the
fingers of the thief as she sits on her eggs, and hiss like a
snake. These pretty little creatures ought to be encouraged
in gardens, for they feed their young with the larvae off
our gooseberry bushes, and with aphides that infest the
trees, whilst the parent birds devour the grubs of wood-
boring beetles, maggots, spiders, and other insects. The
marsh tit is supposed to be much less common than the
two last mentioned, yet he may often be seen near rivers,
about the alder trees and pollarded willows, and in orchards
and gardens.

Another interesting bird to note, although more difficult
to observe, is the tree creeper. It might almost be taken
for some other creature instead of a bird, owing to the way
it moves upwards, downwards, and round about the trunk
of the old tree, on which it hunts for spiders and other
insects that are to be found in the crevices of the bark.
Its long curved claws help it in climbing, and the tail
feathers being then depressed, the colouring of the bird too
being brown and of a buff-white, it is not readily dis-

46 WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED.

tinguishable from the lichen-marked tree trunk or branch.
His shrill little song during this month may guide you
to his whereabouts, but his nest will not be found till
later on.

Tiniest of all our British birds is the bright little golden-
crested wren, and these wrens arrive in great flocks on our
east coast, of late years in increasing numbers, also owing
to the larger cultivation of larches and fir trees. You may
see them at such times like swarms of bees on, bushes near
the coast, and the weary little travellers on their migrating
flight rest often in numbers about the rigging of fishing
craft. During this month the male's little song is heard
continually when the weather is fine; and he builds now
his beautiful nest, of soft moss as a rule, underneath the
branch of a yew, a cedar, fir, or perhaps one of your
garden evergreens. It is cunningly felted with spider's
webs, a little lichen, and soft wool, with a few tiny
feathers. In this from five to ten mottled eggs will be
laid. In the company of tits and creepers this bird may
be seen looking for its insect food in the woods and
spinneys.

The willow wren has arrived, and we hear a few faint
little notes that seem to say he has not yet regained his
strength and full song, being perhaps weary after his long
flight to our shores. In April his voice will be stronger,
and indeed he may not appear at all until early next month.
A delicately-shaped greenish-yellow bird he is, the com-
monest of the warblers of his kind that visit us in the time
of the vernal migration. Owing to the shape of his domed
nest, which is made of dry grass lined with feathers, this
bird, with the others of his species, is called the oven-bird,
and to the willow wren is given also the name of hay-bird.

WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED. 47

Its song consists only of a few reiterated notes, but soon it
will take on quite a gay tone and make itself heard in
every little grove.

Few birds are so beautifully marked, or rather we
should say so delicately pencilled, as is the wryneck, the
cuckoo's mate or herald, which comes to us always a few
days in advance of the latter. "The merry pee bird"
the song calls him. Pee-pee-pee he cries from the end of
March right on till Midsummer. This is a bird that
eludes observation ; its short undulating flight makes it
also difficult to observe. The name wryneck has been
given to it owing to the peculiar way it has of twisting its
neck round as it sits; it will hiss loudly too when
disturbed on its nest, so that it is often called the snake
bird. Country children hail its pee-pee-pee or pay-pay-
pay, for the cuckoo is coming, they say, as they hear it ;
and somehow all children of smaller or larger growth are
glad to note the first shoutings of the cuckoo. The
wryneck's nest, with its pure white thin-shelled eggs, will
be found generally in some hole in a tree-trunk, not far
from the ground, and sometimes in a sandbank; but that
will not be for nearly two months yet.

Now is the time to go and sit in some quiet nook
of one of our Surrey woods, to listen for the yikeing laugh
of the green woodpecker. Rain-bird he is called in some
districts, because his loud pleu-pleu-pleu is supposed to
tell that we may expect wet weather. Yaffle, too, is a
name given to him, and a most startling effect his
laughing-like notes have, falling, as they often do, on the
still evening air. The yaffle makes a new hole for his nest
each season, but he uses the old holes as a sleeping-place.
The greater and lesser spotted woodpeckers too, you may

48 WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED.

hear ; the latter is common enough not far from London ;
in the Thames valley for instance. From some old giant
of the woods sounds this tap-tap-tap of the yaffingale,
another name for the green woodpecker, as he works
for his daily living on the tree-trunk, working his way
up with short jerky movements in an oblique direction.
His colouring of olive-green on the back, shading into
yellow, with crimson crown and nape, attracts attention.
His knowing-looking head appears for a moment round
the trunk on which he is busy, on hearing the breaking of
a dry twig beneath our feet; it startles and drives him
with dipping flight to a more distant tree. Soon he will be
hewing a neat round hole in a branch or bough of some
softer wooded tree, and little chips of wood scattered about
may guide you to one of these. His relative, the greater
spotted woodpecker, is not so industrious ; he will enlarge
some natural cavity in an old decayed bough until it is
of a size and shape that please him.

The nuthatch seeks for a suitable hole in the same
fashion, in the branch of a tree or in some old wall.
There it builds in much more scientific fashion than do the
last-named birds, blocking up the entrance to its nest by
skilful bird masonry, using as its materials for this purpose
small stones and clay. A small opening is left for the
birds' outgoings and incomings. The male utters a liquid
flute-like note ; during this month it is a shrill tui-tui-tui !
Mr. F. Bond gave a nuthatch's nest to the British Museum,
the weight of the clay used in the bird's work on this
particular one being eleven pounds. It had been taken
from a haystack ; its measurements were thirteen inches by
eight. The length of the bird itself is about five inches,
and as it moves up and down a tree trunk with wonderfully

WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED. 49

quick motions, you might mistake its short, compact body
for that of a mouse. The insects about the bark supply it
with food, but in the autumn it enjoys hazel and beech-nuts.
After picking one up among fallen leaves the little bird
will carry it to a branch, where it rests it between the
grooves of the bark, to hammer at it until the shell splits,
and the kernel is laid bare.

The woodlark is not a very common bird, and it is most
frequently found in our southern counties, such as Hamp-
shire, Devon, and Dorset, also on the wooded sides of the
Thames Valley. The tree pipit is mistaken by many for
this bird. Its eggs will be laid by the middle of this
month ; they are of white or greenish-white, spotted and
sometimes barred with a violet-grey and warm brown. The
nest is firmly built of grass and some moss, lined with fine
bents, and will be found in a depression of the ground,
under some low bush, or now and again just in the smooth,
open turf. The bird's song is sweet and liquid in its notes,
and it is uttered pretty much throughout the year. You
may be fortunate enough to watch the pretty performance
of the woodlark, as it ascends from a branch on which it
may have perched, singing as it mounts; it hovers in the
air, suspended as it seems, and descends again, still singing,
in a spiral direction, its wings half closed as though in the
very ecstasy of its little song, on to the same branch from
which it mounted.

The little chiff-chaff is the earliest of our spring visitors,
and he utters his small song of chiff-cheff-cheef-chif !
chevy-chevy-chevy ! before the leaves are on the trees in
sheltered willow holts, though he also frequents the
branches of high trees, especially those of tall elms. He
resembles his relative the willow wren, but may be distin-
D

50 WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED.

guished from the latter by being smaller in size, and of
duller tones of colouring, also by his more rounded wing.
Male and female have the same plumage, the yellow tint
being always brighter after the moulting season in the
autumn. His nest is an oval, dome-shaped, the opening
being rather to the top than the middle ; it is composed of
dry grass, leaves and moss, well lined with feathers. Some-
times this is placed in evergreens and other bushes, but
usually amongst grasses and ferns, not far above the
ground.

In the woods overhead the wood-pigeons or ring-doves
are all alive, cooing, clapping their wings, spreading out
their tails, and floating about. Their breeding season has
begun ; you may watch the birds coming and going to their
slightly- built nests, which are composed of twigs laid
crosswise in the larch-trees, or almost any kind of tree.
Sometimes these are placed on the hollowed places where
other birds have nested, or which squirrels have used.
Grain of all sorts, peas, leaves, and bulbs of turnips form
their diet, with beech-nuts and berries in their seasons.
Farmers complain terribly of these voracious birds, but
in writing of them a Son of the Marshes, whom it would
be difficult for me to refrain from quoting, states that the
Surrey farmer will grumble and say, " They comes to the
fields, they gits in the corn, they gits all over the place, an'
they spiles the turmits." I myself received a very well-
written protest against these hungry birds from a young lady,
the daughter of a large farmer on the higher lands above
the Thames, fully endorsing the above-quoted complaints.
Yet we learn further from the naturalist that two of the wild
plants which are the farmers' worst foes are charlock and
the wild mustard plant, and that the pigeons search out and

WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED. 51

feed on these as well as on other ill weeds, which is, as one
may say, " a stone in the other pocket." Pigeons are very
good to eat, and they may be a small source of revenue.
Turtle-doves, which, however, are only summer visitors to
our islands, and arrive some six weeks later on, are accused
too of stealing (?) the farmers' oats ; but in point of fact
they are extremely fond of a small vetch that grows plenti-
fully at the roots of the oats. As a rule wild pigeons get
their living in the woods and from the outskirts only of
the fields.

The brown, tawny, or wood owls hoot in the woods, for
this is their nesting season, and you may hear their
uncanny cries during the daytime, although you will not
easily distinguish the bird, as he will draw himself up
closely to the tree-trunk, where he had perched on hearing
the step of an intruder ; and his tones of colouring, varied
shades of ashen grey, mottled with brown, buffish white,
and dark brown streaks, with large spots of white,
harmonise so perfectly with the tones of the moss and
lichen-covered bark, that the creature is to all intents
and purposes invisible. He likes best to build in a hollow
in some decayed old tree, pleasantly shadowed over by
sprays of ivy. If you are wary and silent in your obser-
vations you may catch a glimpse of him as' he settles on a
shallow of some woodland stream, where he will enjoy
a bath to the full, shaking the water out in all direc-
tions. The wood owl has the noble trait of constancy
in his character, for he is said to mate for life, and the
birds return each year to the same hole in the tree to nest.
As soon as the first egg is laid they begin to sit, so that
young and eggs are to be found together in one nest.
Voles, rats, mice, moles, and shrews, form the greater part

52 WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED.

of their food, so they must be looked upon as great
friends of the agriculturalist. Strange that ignorant
superstition as to the habits and nature of this really
fine bird should for so long have placed him under the
ban of dislike and fear.

Unfortunately for that brilliantly-coloured bird the king-
fisher, which lends such interest to the sides of our
running brooks and streams — where the trout are now
beginning to rise — as he flashes past with his shrill note
of tit-tit-tit — a piping, rattle-like sound, his bright feathers
have a good value in the market, where they are sold
for the manufacture of artificial flies. So he is not
abundant, in consequence, as he used to be, and the banks
of lakes, ponds, and streams have lost many of these most
picturesque fishers. Still the patient observer may,
especially if he use a field-glass, note this bird as he sits
perched with exemplary patience on a convenient bough
projecting over the water, whence he darts with sudden
plunge as soon as his keen eye has marked its prey.
Upon a little layer of fish-bones his nest is to be found,
or simply on the earth of some dry sandpit, or now
and again in an old wall. Roundish glossy eggs will
be laid there during this month — six, and even as many
as ten of them sometimes. They have been hatched out
frequently before the middle of the month. Besides
taking small fishes, the kingfisher lives on crustaceans,
dragon-flies, and water -beetles, of which he can stow
away a marvellous quantity.

First of the swallow family to revisit our shores comes
the cosy-looking little sand-martin, which we expect to-
wards the end of March. He is the first of his tribe to
come, and the first to leave us. A colony of sand-martins

WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED. 53

nesting in tunnels in the reddish -yellow sandstone of
Surrey, is a pretty sight; they nest also in earth cliffs by
the riverside, or in railway cuttings and gravel quarries,
boring galleries which slant somewhat upwards, and
making the nest in an enlarged space at the end of dry
grass and plenty of feathers. Their eggs are pure white,
four to six in number. Their song is only a faint twitter ;
gnats and other small insects compose their diet.

The ring-ousel is by no means a common bird, and he is
the only bird of the thrush family that leaves us altogether
during the winter. He may be with us at the end of this
month, or may not appear until early in April. His comings
and goings are irregular, and he is looked upon by the
rustics in our Southern counties as a somewhat mysterious
visitant. As a rule this bird prefers to haunt the banks of
Northern streams, and the wild, hilly parts of Devon,
Cornwall, the Welsh hills, and other high districts, where it
feeds on the berries of the mountain-ash and the autumn
moorland berries; worms, slugs, and insects satisfy it earlier,
and what it can pick up in gardens near its haunts. Its
motions are very different to those of the other thrushes,
and these arrest the eye quickly, before one can distinguish
the bird rightly. On the Surrey moors, which he visits at
times only, sometimes singly, sometimes in flocks, where
junipers abound, he feeds on those berries, but those of the
mountain-ash he much prefers. On ledges of the rock or
in the banks near the stream sides the ring-ousel — white-
throated blackbird the country folks call him — likes to
make his nest, although he has it also at times in the
tall ling on the moors. Although you may see the bird
this month, you will not find his nest so early.

54 WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED.

In copses and spinneys the pheasant will be crowing and
strutting about, with ear-tufts erect, puffed-out crimson
cheek and burnished breast. He makes a brave picture,
both as he steps along so daintily, and also as he shoots
through the keen air of early spring, with his tail spread
out, its central feathers swaying, fully deserving his name
of rocketer — nearly four miles at one flight he has been
known to take. The males are more than usually lively
during the month of March, as they now put on their war
paint in order to fight for the possession of the hen birds.
They are useful in eating up a great quantity of wire worms,
and other hurtful insects; later on they feed their young
on ants and their larvae. So do the partridges, which are
now pairing. And as the black ants (formica nigra) appear
first this month, I may be allowed to quote again from a
Son of the Marshes an interesting statement as to these
insects, as regards their furnishing food for the game birds
just mentioned —

" Two very different kinds of ant hills supply the eggs or
ant-pupse to the young of game birds, and of partridges in
particular. First, there are the common emmet heaps, or
ant hills, which are scattered all over the land. These the
birds scratch and break up, picking out the eggs as they
fall from the light soil of the heaps, . . . But the ant
eggs proper come from the nests or heaps of the great
wood ants, either the black or the red ants."

The black appear in March, the red ones in April
commonly. These heaps of the black ant are mounds of
fir-needles, being in many instances as large at the bottom
in circumference as a waggon-wheel, and from two to three
feet in height — even larger where they are very old ones.
They are found in fir woods, on the warm sunny slopes,

WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED. 55

under the trees as a rule, close to the stems of the trees.
The partridges and their chicks do not visit these heaps,
for they would get bitten to death by the ferocious
creatures. The keepers and their lads procure their eggs ;
a wood-pick, a sack, and a shovel are the implements used.
Round the men's gaiters or trousers leather straps are
tightly buckled to prevent, if possible, the great ants
from fixing on them, as they will try to do, like bull-dogs,
when the heaps are harried. The top of the heap is
shovelled off, laying open the domestic arrangements
of the ant heap, and showing also the alarmed and furious
ants trying to carry off their large eggs to a place of
safety; but it is all in vain — eggs and all, they go into
the sack. In spite of every precaution the ant egg getters
are bitten, often severely. The ants spit their strong
acid out most venomously. You may know when a lot
of heaps have been harried by the smell that greets your
nostrils as you walk near, as though some coarse kind
of aromatic vinegar had been poured out under the trees.
Then too you may see thousands of the creatures raised
up on their legs, their bodies bent under and forwards as
they spray formic acid in all directions. If you are foolish
enough to place your hand over the hollow in the heap
you will not soon forget it.

The moorhen, or waterhen, disports himself now, in and
out of the dead sedges, clucking and flirting up his pert-
looking tail. He is thinking about nesting, and his mate
will not be far from him. The cock moorhen has put on
his breeding plumage, and although it is not a gaily-

56 WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED.

coloured one, it is rich in its tones if you can observe it
closely. His legs are brightly coloured, a greenish yellow,
having a red band above the tarsal joint, and he has a scarlet
shield above the base of the bill. Together the pair will
pick and poke about, clucking the while, until they have
found a spot to their liking.

In our southern counties the mallards, or common wild
ducks, will be hatching out their young. Their nests, made
of grass and lined with down, are usually near fresh water,
on the ground, but there is no rule as to this, for they may
be found in hedgerows, in cornfields, and even in the for-
saken nests of other birds up in the trees. Some have
nested in the high trees near the Round Pond in Kensing-
ton Gardens ; a very wise plan, as their eggs and young are
safe there from thieving bipeds and quadrupeds. The
fluffy little birds are soon able to take care of themselves,
and the mallards do not trouble at all to provide for them.
A friend of mine found one of their nests on the top of a
hayrick, and they will also build in the farmer's faggot
stacks.

And now is the time to watch for the fussy little grebe
or dabchick, making arrangements for the family he intends
to bring out from his damp nest. It is his time for amusing
himself with his mate in and on the reedy stream or open
pond, and it will nest on some of our waters in the London
parks even. The dabchicks feed on small fish, insects,
and vegetable matter. Their note is whit-whit. Later on
the bird will be seen carrying its young on its back to and
from the nest, that is moored to some aquatic plants.

Among the river tangle water-rails slip in and out, and
the male seems to be bolder at this time than is his wont ;
for he shows himself openly as he walks along the edges of

WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED. 57

the reed-fringed pool, or runs here and there grunting and
squeaking. Like the moorhens, he would be less noisy
if he had his family with him ; just now he has little to
fear.

And now a few words as to the reptiles we may possibly
get a sight of in our wanderings this month. You may be
— shall I say fortunate or unfortunate enough (?) to come
across a viper — the common viper or adder, which is the
only poisonous reptile of our country side. Its colour
varies much, but if the creature you take for one has a row
of zig-zag markings down the whole length of its back, there
will be no mistake about its identity. About the centre of
its head also you will note a clearly defined V-shaped dark
mark. I know personally very many, not usually cowards,
who love the country, yet whose walks are spoiled by a
terror of straying into its most charming nooks lest they get
bitten by a viper. Such an accident rarely happens; still
it is as well, if you are in search of the wild white violet and
the sweet primrose, to look round, if the spot you have
chosen be a grassy bank, warmed by the sun that comes out
on those days when blusterous March is going out meekly
like the proverbial lamb. If you do not happen to touch
the reptile with foot or hand as you stoop, he will never
harm you. The viper is useful in its way, not because it
still enables many a one to gain a little money by collecting
what they call " adder-ile," but on account of its great
proclivity for the young of mice, for which it hunts most
assiduously — mice which, as many of them as are allowed
to grow, would not only rob the bees of honey, but kill and
eat up the bees themselves.

58 WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED.

Coluber natrix, or the common grass snake, a perfectly
harmless creature, will appear about the end of the month.
Specimens from three to four feet in length are very
common, sometimes they are as long as six feet when found
in waste places near woods where gravel has been dug out.
There, in and near little pools of water, the snake finds his
food — small rabbits, mice, frogs, birds, and birds' eggs ;
that is, those of such as build on the ground among the
brambles and wild tangle, satisfy him. You may see the
creature glide in and out among the bushes and slender
tree branches, or hanging head downwards from one
apparently lifeless ; till at your nearer approach the snake
draws itself up in a moment, to shoot like a flash over
and through the twigs. In colour this common snake
is grey-green, lighter or darker, dotted over with black
spots, having at the back of the head a yellow mark,
bordered with black ; it is yellow generally underneath,
with black markings.

The frogs that were croaking last month are spawning
now. If you take some of this spawn home with you
and place it in water in a fish globe on your lawn, or
in the town garden, it will give you much interest and
amusement, as you watch its gradual development into
little frogs. These will presently hop out all over your
garden, where they will only do good. The snake leaves
its coverts when the frogs spawn, and comes to the ditches
to feed on them. The otter too will be glad to add them
to his diet, so will stoats and weasels ; as to the ducks, they
had been raking out the frogs that had lain buried under

WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED. 59

the mud all the winter, and filling themselves with frog for
some time past.

Then there is our common toad, now busy destroying
great quantities of insect life; the bee-keeper dreads his
proximity to the hives and kills him without remorse. Yet
he is a good friend to the gardener, and he will remain
long in some shady corner, doing only good by his presence.
In melon and cucumber frames, and where grapes are
grown, he is very useful. The natterjack toad differs from
his more common relative by having a bright buff line
down the middle of his back, and his movements are
quicker than those of the first-mentioned.

The hare is liveliest in the month of March. The proverb
that maligns by calling him mad at once recurs to the
mind. His antics and gestures have caused him also to be
styled " the merry-hearted brown hare." The fox and the
stoat seek after his life, but puss is generally a match for
these. Many other foes too he has, and of these man is
the chief. He has his seat on the borders of woods, as
well as on the hillside. Again on the wild marshlands he
grows to a large size, and is very numerous. Nor is he
actually timid, as another proverb asserts ; and as he can
swim and jump with such agility, not to mention his feats
in boxing, we must certainly give him credit for some
accomplishments.

The wild rabbits are busy with their young, and in many
a coppice you will see the gamekeeper's lads about with the
ferrets. The female rabbits go to the ploughed fields often
now to make their stops, where they rear their young in

60 WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED,

less fear than if they stayed about the warrens, where the
males are apt to harass, and foes take tithe of the small
bunnies.

All these things, and much more of which we have
not space to tell, we may observe in March —

"... whose kindly days, and dry,
Make April ready for the throstle's song."

Or, as Leigh Hunt said, in the beautiful chorus of the
flowers, "the March winds pipe to make our passage
clear."

APPENDIX.

PLANTS MENTIONED UNDER MARCH.

Aconite, Winter .

Alder

Anemone .

Anemone, Wood .

Apple

Aspen

Beans

Blackthorn .

Box

Briar

Brussels Sprouts .

Buckthorn .

Butcher's Broom .

Celandine, Lesser .

Celery

Chickweed .

Coltsfoot .

Cowslip

Cow-parsley

Crocus

Crown Imperial .

Cuckoo Pint

Currant, Red

Eranthis hyemalis.
Alnus glutinosa.
Anemone hortensis.
A. nemorosa.
Pyrus Malus.
Populus tremula.
Faba vulgaris.
Prunus spinosa.
Buxus sempervirens.
Rosa canina.

Brassica oleracea gemmifera.
Rhamnus catharticus.
Ruscus aculeatus.
Ranunculus Ficaria.
Apium graveolens.
Slellaria media.
Tussilago Farfara.
Primula veris.
Anthriscus sylvestris.
Crocus vernus, verstcolor, &c.
Fritillaria imperialis.
Arum maculatum.
Ribes rubrum.

62

APPENDIX.

Daisy

. Bellis perennis.

Daffodil .

. Narcissus Pseudo-narcissus.

Dandelion .

. Taraxacum officinale.

Dead Nettle, Red .

. Lamium purpureum.

Dog's Mercury

. Mercurialis perennis.

Elm, Wych

Ulmus montana.

Elder

. Sambucus nigra.

Furze, Common .

Ulex europceus.

Furze, Dwarf

. U. nanus & U. Gallii.

Gooseberry

. Ribes Grossularia.

Ground Ivy

. Nepeta Glechoma.

Groundsel

. Senecio vulgaris.

Guelder Rose

Viburnum.

Hazel

. Corylus A ve liana.

Hellebore, Green .

. Helleborus viridis.

Hellebore, Stinking

. H. fcetidus.

Hutchinsia, Rock .

. Hutchinsia petrcea.

Hyacinth, Cluster .

. Muscari racemosum.

Hyacinth, Grape .

. M. botryoides.

Hyacinth, Starch .

. Muscari.

Hyacinth, Wild .

. Scilla nutans.

Larch

. Larix europcea.

Marsh Marigold .

. Caltha palustris.

Mezereon .

. Daphne mezereum.

Mistletoe .

Viscum album.

Moschatel .

. Adoxa Moschatellina.

Oxlip

. Primula elatior.

Oats

. A vena sativa.

Orchis, Early Purple

. Orchis mascula.

Peas, Field

. Pisum arvense.

Poplar, White

. Populus alba.

Poplar, Hoary

. P. canescens.

Primrose .

. Primula vulgaris.

Quick

. Cratcegus Oxyacantha.

Ribes

. Ribes sanguineum.

APPENDIX.

Sallow

Sallow, Great

Saxifrage, Three-fingered .

Saxifrage, Golden .

Scorpion Grass, Early

Scorpion Grass, Field

Shepherd's Purse .

Snowdrop .

Speedwell, Ivy-leaved . .

Spurge Laurel . .

Spurge, Wood

Strawberry, Barren

Trifolium .

Tulip

Violet

Violet, Hairy

Violet, Wood

Wheat

Whitlow Grass, Spring

Whitlow Grass, Yellow Alpine

Willow, Dwarf .

Willow, Purple .

Yellow Star of Bethlehem

Yew

Salix cinerea.

S. Caprea.

Saxifraga tridactylites.
j Chrysosplenium alternifolium
\ £ C. oppositifolium.

Myosotis collina.

M. arvensis.

Capsella Bursa-pastoris.

Galanthus nivalis.

Veronica hedercefolia.

Daphne Laureola.

Euphorbia amygdaloides.

Potentilla Fragariastrum.

Trifolium incarnatum.

Tulipa Gesneriana.

Viola odorata.

V. hirta.

V. sylvatica.

Triticum vulgare.

Erophila vulgaris.

Draba aizoides.

Salix repens.

Salix purpurea.

Gagea fascicularis.

Taxus baccata.

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