Chapter IV: Part 4

In a blackthorn bush, whose armed sprays are lightly touched with blossom as with new fallen snow, two wrens alight; two tiny figures, mere balls of brown feather, so near that every line of the wavy, shell-like marking on their backs is plain to see. Now one of them, poised on a briar stem, breaks suddenly into song, turning from side to side, his wings parted, his atom of a tail expanded to the full. The brief lyric ended, he flies down to join his mate, who waits demurely in the bush below, and for a minute or two they flutter and play, and whisper to each other soft notes of fond endearment--the sweetest bit of love-making imaginable.

Farther on, in a young oak tree in the hedge-row, two blackbirds have alighted. Not lovers, nothing like it, paying no manner of heed to each other's presence. One of them flies down--a splendid figure, with his new black coat, with the bright golden orange of his bill. Instantly the other is down too, in front of him. A moment they stand thus, motionless. Then, with loud notes of challenge, they tilt headlong at each other, beaks down, wings and tail spread wide, their whole dark plumage rough with rage. Again and again they meet in the shock of battle, rushing each on the other's weapon, rising at last into the air, fluttering and fighting, the snapping of their bills heard plainly fifty yards away. Five minutes only the conflict lasts. More than one historic field has been lost and won in time as brief. It is all over. The victor stands alone upon the grass. His beaten rival is in full flight far down the hedge-row. A moment later the queen of beauty, who from her perch among the blackthorns has watched the tournament unseen, flies down to the hero of her choice. It is the old story; a tale far older than the days of Thais--"None but the brave, none but the brave, none but the brave deserves the fair."

Here in this happy valley there has not been, for weeks past, one clouded hour. March has shown, all through, the temper of the lamb; nor now, in his last hours, does he show signs of changing mood. To seaward it is true the haze deepens to a cold grey fog, and the sullen booming of the distant fog guns is sounding faintly, at intervals, even now. On the hill the lapwings are calling, their plaintive voices softened by the distance, and at times their dark figures show against the pale blue sky, as they rise and fall above the limestone cliffs that skirt the hill.

Yonder crow, drifting up the slope, keeping low down, as if fearing to be seen, is making for his fastness among the fir-trees on the hill-crest higher up. He may well keep out of sight. Only last week two lambs were found in a field near the crow's nest, dying, with their eyes torn out. And the magpie, chuckling now and then in doubtful tone, somewhere at the foot of the orchard, has here a reputation almost as much blown upon. Terrible fellows, both of them, in lambing time or in the poultry yard. But they have been working hard and honestly enough all the rest of the year. Some people seem to think that the destruction of a chicken or two, or the theft of a few eggs, far outweighs a whole year of good deeds--the slaughter of unnumbered grubs, wire-worms, mice, and beetles.

At regular intervals, a few seconds apart, there sounds from a tall ash tree in the hollow the drone of a greenfinch, monotonous and unmusical. Was there ever such a drowsy sound? And yet when he breaks off presently in a stave of his own wild song, his voice is one of the sweetest of sweet sounds, a light and breezy ripple of love and sun and happiness. Pleasant, too, are the notes of the chaffinches that flit in and out of the hedgerow. And never surely was there sweeter blackbird's song than that wild lyric sounding now among the trees that overhang the well. In the top of the great elm that leans over the orchard stile there is such a chorus of tongues, such a babel of linnet and blackbird, of sparrow and jackdaw, with intervals of untuneful chattering, whistling, piping, that you fancy twenty performers at the least. But it is only a starling telling all the world in his quaint way of his joy in this unwonted sunshine. Now he breaks off into the song of a swallow, copied from the life. He may have heard it this very morning. Or it may be merely that the impulse of the spring time rouses in his heart a memory of the long absent wanderer, just as on rough days of autumn you may hear him mock the curlew's cry because the wind is roaring like the sea.

A very real note of spring is the hum of that burly bumble-bee sailing along the hedge-row in search of some convenient hollow, some abandoned mouse-hole it may be, in which to build her nest. Her nest, not his, or theirs. She has no mate. He died in the autumn, and on her alone devolves the labour of rearing the new generation.

Among the stones that years of patient toil have heaped under this straggling hedge-row, the long-hidden slaves of Nature are broad awake and busy, revelling in the brightness of these delightful days. A crowd of insects, flies, and bees, and beetles are coming out of their long hiding to sun their stiffened limbs. Butterflies flit lightly down the hedge-row, some newly waked from sleep, and some that have but just broken the dry husk of their chrysalis condition, and are spreading for the first time their beautiful wings.

To the lover of the sights and sounds of Nature, life has few better things to offer than a quiet hour, some bright spring morning, under the shadow of a green arch of blossomed boughs, in company with gentle, beautiful, sweet-voiced poets of the air, glad, like him, in the sunshine and the fragrance. Is it a mere flight of fancy that the feathered architects, no less than the ballad singers, of this out-of-the-way corner of the world are masters of their art above the birds of less favoured regions? Look at this chaffinch's nest, cradled in the end of an apple-bough, so dexterously woven in among the twigs in which it rests, so daintily touched with silvery points of lichen, so perfect a harmony with its surroundings that one might well fancy it had grown there, some strange product of the tree. While just above it, an apple bough in bloom, the rich gold of clustered stamens just showing through the white and pink of still half-open flowers, lends the crowning touch of beauty.

Few birds, perhaps, have employed more curious decoration than a pair of hedge sparrows, who, this spring, attached to their nest with strands of bass a label, bearing in large letters the legend, "Early English." In a crevice of the old wall, just outside the orchard, is the work of another master-builder, a wren. The dry grass and skeleton leaves of its framework match exactly with the weather-worn and lichen-stained masonry about it. And slender sprays of ivy, clinging to the rough surface of the stone, spread round it their beautiful young leaves. Another wren's nest, in an old stump, just filling a space among great grey ivy stems, is built wholly of moss, so fresh and green, so true a copy of the natural growths on the dead wood, that the eye would hardly have discovered it, had not the little architect itself betrayed it. But there is a third wren's nest, in the old cart-shed in the corner of the orchard, that surpasses even these. It is built of dry grass, in the straw of the thatch, framed by the rough rafters, and around it, and over it, there hang down as if to hide it the threshed-out ears that have been left upon the straw. And within the small round entrance is the builder's tiny head, her bright eyes showing plainly in the ring of shadow. Wrens are among the shyest and most fastidious of birds. Many a one has abandoned her nest, and all the eggs in it, because some curious passer-by has touched it in her absence, never so gently. But this one, as if confiding in the honour of her visitors, sits on unmoved. There is a ringdove's nest quite low down in a holly tree in the orchard hedge, and not only will the bird allow you to stand beneath and watch her, but when, a few days since, a ladder was placed against the tree, she waited until she was within arm's reach before she left her nest. She made a fine picture as she sat there, proudly unconscious of the intruders, not even deigning to turn her head to look at them, the soft lavender of her beautiful plumage relieved by the clouding of white feathers on her neck. At length she could bear it no longer. She went crashing off through the holly twigs, her great wings clattering as she flew. So shallow and insecure was the frail platform on which she had been sitting, that her sudden start threw one of her two nestlings over the side. It was handed up again, apparently none the worse for its adventure; and the two youngsters crouched trembling in the slight hollow; two blind, helpless, hideous, evil-looking little creatures; a whole world of difference between them and the stately, fearless bird who, a minute before, had covered them with the shadow of her wings.

More fearless still is a blue-tit that has her dwelling in a crevice in the wall some fifty yards further on. It is a tiny hole, and the nest is far in, but you can see her sitting there, her pretty head and one of her bright eyes just showing over the mossy rim. She is not in the least shy of being looked at. Indeed, if you touch her nest with a straw she will spar at it and hiss, making a noise for all the world like the spitting of an angry kitten, even coming to the door to storm at the intruder, but without the least idea of leaving her unprotected offspring to his mercy.

But other tenants of the hollow revel in the sunshine besides the birds and the bees and the butterflies. These straggling hedge-rows are the haunt of finch and blackbird. Crow and magpie and squirrel hide their homes among the thick foliage of the firs. Nightjars love this quiet corner, and the nuthatch and the wryneck find sanctuary in the hollows of the trees. But the stony bank along the hedge, sweet now with violets, and strewn with stars of celandine spreading wide their golden petals to the sun, is of all spots the viper's favourite haunt.

All along the bank and far in among the thickets are heaped fragments of red sandstone that by slow degrees have been cleared from these sterile pastures. The sun is on them from dawn till sunset. They are quite hot to the touch. Here, then, the viper loves to lie, warming his cold heart upon the heated stone. On a day like this he is wide awake, quick in his movements, and off like a flash, especially if once alarmed. Slowly, silently, with stealthy steps must you approach his haunt.

There he is, loosely coiled against a flat slab of sandstone, his cold, unwinking eye set in a fixed stare, looking straight this way. The broad zigzag stripe along his back is boldly drawn on the pale brown of his coat. Plain even at this distance is the V-like mark upon his head. But he has begun to move. Before you can reach him he has vanished among the stones. There is nothing for it but to sit down a few yards away, hidden by a dwarf blackthorn bush, and wait patiently for his re-appearing. How quiet it all is. The hamlet on the hill-slope yonder--

"One of those little places that have run
Half up the hill beneath a burning sun,
And then sat down to rest, as if to say,
'I climb no further upward, come what may'"--

looms faintly through the haze. The white houses scattered through the valley melt away into the mist. But the sun is still warm. The cones of the old firs crackle in the sunshine. Still sweeter grows the faint perfume of the gorse, still more beautiful its radiant gold. A bullfinch settles in a tree hard by. There is no colour in Nature more beautiful than the exquisite flush of crimson on his breast. Quite in keeping with his beauty is the soft sweetness of the tender love note that now and then he whispers to his mate, who, in colours far less bright than his, sits just below him on a lichened apple bough. Hark! a faint sound among the dry brambles on the bank, a long rustle, and then through the blackthorn stems the slender shape of the viper glides softly down to the warm stones.

Here he comes, gliding boldly from his harbour in the bank. His brown mail glistens in the sun, his red eyes glance swiftly right and left, his long tongue flickers through his fast shut lips. He coils his long body round between two stones, whose warm red seems warmer still to-day, fitting himself comfortably in the angle of the stones, there he lies motionless. Small beetles creep over him unseen and unregarded. He pays no heed when a butterfly settles close by him to sun its splendid wings. But he is broad awake.

Now move slowly towards the spot. Some sound startles him. He lifts his head and gives a swift glance this way. He is going. Twitch him out on the grass with your stick, hold him down a moment, and then, watching your opportunity, take him up by the tail. An angry beast he is, hissing and struggling, making vain attempts to reach his captor's hand. He can only lift his head a few inches, and there is no fear at all of his doing any harm. There is no doubt about the harm he can do. A viper's bite, especially in hot weather, is painful enough, though seldom dangerous. But the farmer who comes up at this moment eyes the captive with grim satisfaction. Heifers, he says, are often bitten, even horses. "Doän't 'ee let un go," he adds anxiously; "I doän't like none o' they beasts about."

THE GREENWOOD TREE.

It is a very blaze of sunshine that fills the open spaces of the wood. The tall ash saplings that join hands across the path, now almost lost among the briar sprays, the trailing woodbine, and the long arms of wandering bryony, sway slowly in the hot and heavy air. But the stir of the leaves that flutter lightly overhead, their green lacework all dark against the summer sky, is a restful, soothing sound.

It is a pleasant relief to turn aside a little from the pathway, to wade breast high through the green jungle of the underwood to a little place out of the sunshine, a hollow walled half way round by a line of low grey rocks, almost hidden by thick tapestries of ivy. Two noble trees that stand on either side, two stately Spanish chestnuts, spread their arms over it, as if in benediction. Overhead, their

"... dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves.
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move."

A cool and quiet spot. Like the poet who found it pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat, "To see the tumult and not feel the stir," we too, from the kindly shadow of these great chestnut trees, can look out on the woodland in its pride of summer glory, with its flowers and its fragrance and its greenness, nor feel the heat and glare and the pitiless weight of the sunshine.

Day after day, week after week, there has been

"... that nameless splendour everywhere
That makes the passers in the city street
Congratulate each other as they meet."

Yet perhaps the full beauty of such weather, its wealth of flowers and foliage, its abundance of bird and insect life, above all its half-tropic heat, is for the country rather than the town. Among stone walls and pavements summer days are too often weariness, and summer nights but stifling. In the country the glare of noon is tempered by cool winds, softened by grass and foliage. There, too, the hot air of night is sweetened with the breath of honeysuckle and jasmine; and through wide open windows the scent of the roses floats up to us

"Like sweet thoughts in a dream."

If the town is close and sultry, woodland and green lane are at their best and sweetest. In the country at any rate--

"There is no price set on the lavish summer,
And June may be had by the poorest comer."

Though the flowers of May have passed into a proverb, it is June after all that gives to the fields and by ways their crowning grace and beauty. May draped all the trees with fresh young foliage, deepened April's mist of bluebells, and whitened the hedge-rows with blossoming hawthorn. May was a month of broad effects and lavish colouring. Here she silvered a whole field with daisies, as with a light fall of snow. And here, like a cunning alchemist, she changed with her buttercups the green of a rich pasture-land to a blaze of living gold. But there is yet more of beauty in the fields of June. Even in the Tropics, travellers tell us, there is nothing so superbly beautiful as an English midsummer meadow--whether an upland pasture, with its hawkweed and lotus, its scented grasses and sweet clover blooms; or a low-lying field along some loitering stream, where, in the swampy soil, among the tasselled sedges, spring fiery spikes of orchis, foamy meadow-sweet, and tall flower-de-luce.

If June is the most flowery of months, May is certainly the most musical. The days are drawing near when there will settle on the green world of woods and lanes and meadows the silence of the summer. The grey dawn is still almost as full as ever of sweet sounds. The songs of thrush and blackbird are still glorious in the evening twilight. Wren and robin still sing to us at intervals from dawn to sunset. But through the long hours of daylight we miss already the notes of many a wandering singer, for whom June is the limit of the season. Already the cuckoo's voice is breaking. We have but another week, at the farthest, of the nightingale's song. His is a superb and matchless melody. Many a time, it is true, have the notes of thrush or blackcap, or even of sedge-warbler, been mistaken for it. Sweet singers, all of them. Yet it is strange that anyone who has ever fairly listened to the chief of song could confuse with his magnificent strains the note of the most musical of thrushes.

But it is to singers less skilled and less famous than the nightingale that the woodland owes its greatest charm: light wingèd dryads of the trees, without whose songs and call notes, and mere life and movement, the lover of Nature thinks that "summer is not summer, nor can be." The willow-warbler's song, a little careless cadence of soft notes that at intervals seems to filter lightly down among the branches, is the very soul of sunshine and sweet air. The wood wren's call is like no other sylvan sound. Its plaintive, long-drawn, monotonous notes, often growing louder towards the close, are sometimes so sonorous and far-reaching that it is hard to credit they can come from so diminutive a singer. His actual song is a little gush of simple notes again and again repeated, from his perch on the end of some leafless bough high up among the trees. It is not remarkable for melody, though now and then there is a very real touch of sweetness in it, and after the first rather deliberate beginning it is so hurried as to give the listener the impression that the bird is trying to crowd twenty notes into a single beat.

The whitethroat is another hasty singer, but he has a greater gift of music, and his manner of singing--sometimes taking short flights into the air the while, and then diving back into the thicket--his quick movements, the almost luminous whiteness of his swelling throat, rank him among the most charming of woodlanders. Yet his haunt is rather on the skirts of the wood than in the heart of it. He is still more a roadside singer, and greatly given to building his frail nest of grass in the thorny depths of some old hedge-row, or even among the nettles on the bank.

But of all the sylvan minstrels the blackcap has, after the nightingale, the most silvery tongue, and we hear so much more of him in the country generally--not only is he more widely distributed, but he sings again when his brood are fledged and flown, which the nightingale never does--that to most of us he is much the more familiar, perhaps we might even say he is more highly prized than the acknowledged chief of song himself. Watch him now, before household cares have for the time taken up all his care and attention. See him balanced, with his breast of tender grey, his black crest slightly lifted, on a spray of briar that, swaying underneath his weight, trembles with the energy of his wild and mellow notes--now clear and loud, and reaching, it may be, far beyond the limits of the wood; now tender and soft and low, and low and lower yet, until at a yard's distance hardly heard. A beautiful song. A song that to White of Selborne, as doubtless to many a Nature lover since his day, always brought back with its wild sweetness the lines of Amien's song:

"Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat:
Come hither, come hither, come hither."

A bird flies into the tree near by. A blue-tit, smartest of his race. He stands a moment on the edge of a hole in the level bough, looks round twice, then dives in and disappears. And out of that stronghold of his, snugly lined with moss, and hair, and feathers, he will not stir for you or any man. But yonder is a figure, in a tree some twenty yards away, from which perhaps even the bold blue-tit would fly in terror. A lithe brown creature is climbing leisurely out of a hole high up in the trunk--a weasel, searching for eggs, no doubt. Up the tree he goes, more lightly even than a squirrel, right to the very topmost branches. Now down he comes again, head first, and makes his way to another tree. As he canters lightly through the long grass he pauses now and then to rear on his hind legs and peer sharply round over the green jungle, looking for the moment, quite bird-like. Two more trees he climbs, searching every likely spot among the boughs, prying into every hole and cranny--clearly a birds'-nester born. A master of woodcraft, too, for when you move nearer for a better view, he vanishes. He is there all right, lying close behind some branch, no doubt; but he is as completely screened from sight as if he wore the magic cap of Perseus. He is a tiny figure at the most. The birds take no notice of him. The yellow-hammer goes on with his sleepy tune, and the greenfinch in the elm above him with his yet sleepier drawl, while a linnet in the tree near by sings undisturbed his sweet and dainty song, that in itself is like a gleam of sunshine.

The whole woodland is astir with life and movement and sweet sounds of song. Look at that bullfinch yonder, balanced on a spray of woodbine, that swings lightly beneath his weight. Leaning forward a little, with his black head turned slightly on one side, he picks off, as if in pure mischief, the dainty tufts that cluster on the branches near him, while the ruined leaves fall in a very shower. A beautiful figure. There is not in Nature a hue more lovely than the exquisite flush of crimson on his breast. Close by him, as if by way of foil to his perfect beauty, sit two sober-clad companions, dull and grey and colourless, yet to the full as mischievous as he.

Sunny spaces in the wood are filled with hovering insects, whose tiny figures rise and fall like motes in the warm air; beetles for the most part, not flies; small, black, long-bodied beetles, the very same that give us such annoyance by getting in our eyes in the twilight.

Butterflies cross and recross the clearing--some so brilliant in their whiteness that they almost suggest yet brighter gleams of sunshine. Some, again, are dark and sombre, and like patches of moving shadow. Now one brave in black and scarlet flashes past. Now one on wings of golden brown sails leisurely along. And some there are, small, sylph-like figures, that float lightly by, as blue as the unclouded heaven overhead. Some moths, too, are abroad, even at this hour and in this fierce sunshine--moths clad in the very softest tints, the most ethereal tones of fawn and grey, of brown and yellow. Some are without a mark on their pure colouring, and some are daintily pencilled with shell-like lines and bars. To and fro in the sunbeams, whose misty shafts slant through the thickets, hover a crowd of winged things--of great bees, black or yellow or tipped with fiery red, flies of many hues, beetles light and dark--and the sound of their multitudinous wings seems to fill the hot summer air. Insects make up no small part, perhaps even the larger part, of the life of the woodland.

The woods just now are swarming with caterpillars, many of which, perhaps even the majority, belong to the class called geometers, from the curious way in which they move along, arching their bodies in a fashion that reminds the observer of a man measuring a distance by "spanning" it with his hand. A much more curious point about them is their wonderful mimicry of the twigs of the tree on which they live: a fact which has earned for them the name of "stick" caterpillars. Their skins are the colour of the bark, their bodies have knots and markings exactly like twigs. And when one of them waits motionless, standing erect on its hinder set of feet--an attitude it can preserve for hours together, it looks so like a piece of stick that even a naturalist has related how he was about to prune a twig from one of his fruit trees, and had even touched it with his knife before he saw that it was not vegetable at all, but one of these "stick" caterpillars. One cannot help wondering if birds are taken in too.

The curious movements of these geometers are due to their comparatively scant supply of legs. There is an amusing ballad called "The Bishop and the Caterpillar," which describes, after the manner of "Ingoldsby," how a great dignitary of the Church inspected a village school. The children acquitted themselves well:--

"For the Bishop, to his great pleasure, found
That they knew the date when our Queen was crowned.
And the number of pence which make up a pound;

And the oceans and seas which our island bound;
That the earth is nearly, but not quite, round;
Their orthography, also, was equally sound."

The gratified examiner, declaring that it was only fair for the scholars to have their turn, proposed they should question him. A small boy in the audience, unawed even by a Bishop, instantly

"... raised his head
And abruptly said:
How many legs has a caterpillar got?"

Here was a poser indeed. Kings of Israel, now, his lordship might have known; very likely the date of the Second Punic War; perhaps even some of the counties of England. But caterpillars were beyond his ken. It was to no purpose that he privately invoked, under cover of making a speech, the aid of the rector, of the curates, of the schoolmaster. Not one of them knew. In vain was the beadle sent out in hot haste to interrogate passers-by. He returned disconsolate, and whispered to the anxious Bishop "Nobody knows." In the end the questioner himself supplied the information, and

"... with a countenance gay,
Said 'Six, for I counted 'em yesterday.'"

It rather spoils the point of the story that, although caterpillars have indeed, on one-half of the body, the six legs of the perfect or winged condition, most of them have ten more, very substantial ones too, on the other half, making not six, but sixteen. Some, indeed, have only fourteen; while these geometers are driven to adopt the attitudes they do because they have to shuffle along as best they can, on no more than ten legs altogether.

There are few points of brighter colour among the world of green. Not many brilliant flowers grow well in the very heart of the woods. Along the paths there is a fringe of hawkweed and crowfoot and yellow cistus. And where the sunlight is less broken by the trees there are patches of red lychnis and tall crowns of white cow parsley. In the clearings strawberries run riot, in flower still, but with scantier harvest than usual of the small sweet fruit, in whose pleasant flavour is a dash of woodland wildness. There is honeysuckle everywhere, trailing on the ground, creeping among the bushes, and climbing up out of the green tangle, laying hold of trees and saplings to help it to the light. And as it climbs it twines with fatal clasp about the friendly stems, slowly tightening its embrace, sometimes cutting deep into the wood, sometimes even killing the branch outright, and going up until at times a green canopy of it crowns boughs thirty feet above the ground, while its flowery clusters scent the woodland. And as evening darkens, "What time the blackbird pipes to vespers from his perch," when the heat of the long summer day gives place to the cooler, sweeter air of night, the fragrance grows until the whole glade is conscious of its subtle charm. Briar bushes there are in plenty, and some of them are lightly set with delicate blossoms. But the dog-roses are at their best, not here, but on the skirts of the wood, where the long, swaying sprays are crowded with those sweetest flowers of June.

But the glory of the woodland is in its trees; in its sturdy oaks, and stately beeches, its old Scotch firs and graceful larch trees. There is no season when the larch is without some charm. It is beautiful in the springtime, when its sprays are set with exquisite red blossoms, like fairy jewel-work. It is beautiful when among soft tufts of green the brown cones harden in the pleasant sun of May. It is beautiful now, when the flowing, feathery plumes wear the soberer hue of summer. Nor is the beauty greatly less when, in the chill autumn days, that hue changes slowly into yellow. Nor is it wholly lost, even in the dead of winter, when, in the frosty sunshine, the bare boughs seem to glow like gold against the pale blue sky.

The mist of bluebells, that lingered here so late, has vanished. The fiery spikes of early orchis are all spent and faded. The 'lords and ladies' have given place to little clusters of green berries, that these sunny days will swiftly ripen to red beads of coral. Yet there are other flowers, with even more of beauty, that love the greater heat of summer. Few are more lovely than the white butterfly orchis; fewer still more fragrant. It has allies that mimic with marvellous faithfulness the forms of bees and flies and spiders. They are plants of the heath, of the sunny meadow, and the open hill. But here is one, perhaps the least striking of the clan, that will flourish in the shadow, and that grows well even here in the half twilight of the trees. The quiet-coloured petals of the tway-blade are not like fly or bee or any insect. Each floweret on its plain, unscented spike is the little green figure of a man, a man with outstretched arms. One might almost fancy that the plant was copying shapes long lost to our dulled vision; that this quiet nook was not alone

"... for pretty cares
With mate and nest,
A lurking-place of tender airs
From south and west;"

but that it was peopled still by the green-clad gnomes of old belief; that these woodland aisles were even now a place

"Where elves hold midnight revel,
And fairies linger still."

CHILL OCTOBER.

It is the heavy rain no less than the chilly air, the wet days as well as the frosty nights, which have earned for October its added name, and which mark this month so clearly as the real end of a season. We often get a long spell of warm weather in September; it may linger even over the opening of October; but it is October that sets for good and all its fiery seal upon the ruins of the summer. Yet October has been a delightful month; a month of golden dawns, bright days, and fiery sunsets. And it is closing with quiet moonlight nights under whose gauzy veil the landscape lies transfigured, and far hills show faintly as through mists of dreamland. This is St. Martin's Summer:

"The summer and the winter here
Midway a truce are holding.
A soft, consenting atmosphere
Their tents of peace enfolding."

The colours of the leaves, that so long seemed cold and sullen, are swiftly changing in the sharpening air of night. Among the tattered foliage there broaden, day after day, gleams of that fiery splendour that in a few weeks will flare through the length and breadth of the woodland, like the afterglow of summer. The few last leaves of the wild cherry shine like fire in the coppice, and the horse chestnuts in the meadow are all gold from base to crown. Dead leaves lie thick upon the rustling pathway, where brown of oakleaf, crimson of beech, russet of maple, and gold of elm, lends each its own particular note of colour to the splendid carpet; while the foliage of the sycamore, still clinging to its brilliant stalks, is painted with such varied tints, such greens and browns, such inky blacks and flaming yellows, that one might almost fancy some young dryad had been wandering through the woodland with her brush and had tried her colours on the leaves.

So bright the days have been, so warm is the lingering sunshine, that even the thrush has been trying over his old sweet songs, yet to airs so quiet and subdued that they seemed but a reverie of springtime. All day the robin sings. He is the minstrel of the autumn. Now when other birds are silent his voice rings clear through the deserted woods, and we realise more fully how passing sweet are his familiar melodies.

There are few signs of life among the autumn trees. The jays wrangle as they gather the acorns, and at times a troop of fieldfares chatter as they pass. But the sounds of the October woodland are the patter of falling leaves--now filling the air like rain, and now whirled along the path in fiery eddy; the rush of the wind among the rocking tops; and now and then the creak of branches interlocked, that chafe and fret almost with a cry of pain, such as in old days, ere Pan was dead, startled the woodcutter on the slopes of Apennine.

We wander in the woods, however, with senses unattuned to sights and sounds about us. Had we but eyes we could not fail to see some life stirring even now. Were our ears but trained aright we should be aware of ceaseless sounds of movement. The birds are here, had we but the gift to see them. If no ringdove coos in the shadow of the pines, we may hear as our footsteps rustle on the leafy ways, the crash of wings among distant branches. If no woodpecker's shout breaks in upon the stillness, we may watch the silent figure of the forester in green close crouched against the giant elm. If no magpie chatters in the tree-tops we may at least catch a glimpse of black and white plumage as the wary old campaigner dives into the thickets. This old fir just off the pathway, with its close growing foliage and its canopies of ivy and woodbine, is a screen at once from the wind and the keen eyes of the woodlanders. In its shadow we may stand aside and watch the life of the woods go by, perhaps even overhear some of the secrets of the

"Light wingèd dryads of the trees."

Jays, that just now were busy over the acorns, are moving leisurely down the slope, absorbed in gossip, wholly unconscious of any spectator of their movements. There is a wide difference between the quick, impetuous actions of a startled jay, on the look-out for danger, and his lazy, loitering manner when he is quite at his ease, and thinks no one is watching him. Now, as they come nearer, they break into a chorus of loud, harsh notes, mingling with their own wild sylvan speech scraps borrowed from magpie and missel-thrush. Now one mimics the hoarse cry of a crow just sailing over. Now they all join in a babel of odd, inarticulate, indescribable sounds. Still nearer they come. Suddenly one alights close by, three yards off at farthest. He is off again in a moment, too scared to speak. Here comes another. He, too, settles near, but notices nothing. What a handsome fellow he is! What a splendid touch of blue there is in his wing--a blue such as no sapphire or lapis or turquoise could really rival for a moment. His crest is slightly lifted; the sunlight glistens on his polished bill. Easily he sways on a tall ash sapling, looking idly round. Suddenly he starts--is gone. One by one his comrades reach the tree. One after one the startled birds take wing again and vanish in the thickets. The rustle of their quick movements dies away. Their clamorous cries grow fainter, and then cease. Silence settles down once more--the silence of a sleep.

The sharp touch of winter in October has changed the whole face of things. Cold and wind and wet have set their mark alike on woodland and on garden border. Everywhere there is change. The birds of summer have all left us. No bee or wasp is stirring. In this pallid sunshine are no gnats to poise in cloudy column. No moths hover on quivering wings among the ruined flowers. Of the shy four-footed creatures of whose lives we know so little, some are still broad awake and busy, caring nothing for the cold; but some have already entered on their winter sleep. The dormouse is rolled in his snug ball of moss, the hedgehog is buried in his bed of leaves. Grass-snake and viper have crawled away into warm hiding places in banks or among the roots of trees. The frog has buried himself in his cold bed of mud at the bottom of the pond. The toad has squeezed his burly figure into a hole in a tree stump, or under some sheltering stone. It is the fondness of the toad for hiding in holes and corners--not only in winter, but to some extent all the year--which has given rise to so many marvellous tales of the discovery of toads in the heart of trees or in solid blocks of marble. Toads may often be found in holes. But never yet was one found living in any cavity whatsoever where there was no communication with the outer world, no chink through which insects might make their way after the manner of the fly into the parlour of the spider.

Long before the frosts of October, and while the weather was still warm and sunny, snails were to be seen collected in hundreds on the fences of fields and lanes--on their way, no doubt, to winter quarters. Though whether they expected to find suitable lodgings up there at the tops of the palings, or whether they were only sunning themselves for the last time before crawling down to earth to bury themselves in the holes into which the posts were driven, is perhaps less clear.

Some few snails are provided already with close-fitting doors. Others will seal up their gates with a temporary barricade, behind which they will sleep until the trumpet-call of spring shall break on their dull senses. Do they dream, these snails? Do visions of plump cabbages and brilliant dahlias flit through their molluscous minds? Do they in slumber enjoy again the midnight raid upon the marrow-bed, or cry havoc on the choicest lilies of the garden?

There is a strange stillness in the woods these autumn days; a mournful silence, as of regret for the lost summer. The birds are quiet; the insects, whose life and beauty lent so much to the brightness of the summer, are dying in the sharpening air, or are creeping away to hide themselves for the winter. October is a fatal month for the lower forms of life. The different species of our native insects are numbered by tens of thousands, and of the myriads of these with which the air of August, and even of September, teemed, only a few, a very few, will survive the chillier dawns and sunsets of this month, which marks the limit of their lives. At the best their lives are brief. The lives of insects, in their perfect condition, are more often numbered only by months, or even weeks: while the little sad-coloured stone-flies that haunt the banks of streams, entering on their last stage without mouths, spend only a few days of strange existence; and there are other flies which, born after sunset and dying before sunrise, never see the full light of day at all.

Those insects which survive the winter do so as a rule by retiring into the shelter of buildings, into crevices in walls, or into hollow trees, and there remaining, motionless and apparently lifeless, all through the cold season, coming out again at the return of spring. Some butterflies are especially fond of taking up their quarters for the winter in the roofs of houses; and the cornices of unoccupied rooms seem particularly favourite resting-places. There is a case on record in which a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly, having entered a church during service-time one Sunday in August, settled calmly on a rafter over the heads of the congregation, closed its wings, and then and there took up its quarters for the season. It was happily beyond the reach of the verger's broom, though under the eyes of the clergyman,--himself a naturalist, and there it hung, week after week, all the winter through. At length, on a warm Sunday in May, after a sleep of just nine months' duration, the little creature opened its wings again and fluttered down from its perch, "apparently as fresh in colour and condition as if just out of the chrysalis".

In the same way another of the race flew into a sitting-room in a little country town, one day during the hot weather of September, and finally established itself in the cornice, where for six long months it hung motionless. One fine morning in the following March it was fluttering at the window. The sash was lifted. The little creature dashed out into the sunshine, almost with the speed of a swallow.

A striking feature of the autumn garden some years is the multitude of sober-coloured moths hovering among the flower-beds, morning, noon, and night. The moths themselves not only do no harm in the garden, but are of no small service to the gardener by carrying pollen on their tufted heads from flower to flower, and thus unconsciously fertilising many a blossom that might otherwise have borne no seed at all. But it is quite otherwise with the caterpillars, insignificant but noxious little grubs, which, in some seasons, appear in such hosts as to devastate whole fields. In Germany it has been found necessary to use a machine, drawn by horses, to sweep up these caterpillars, which are collected from it in sacks and then destroyed.

The perfect insect, the commonest perhaps of all the moths, is a beautiful little creature, though there is nothing striking in its colouring. It is known as the "Silver Y," from a conspicuous mark on each of its front wings. Its scientific name of "Gamma" has been given to it from another and more learned reading of the letter.

It has been found very difficult to bestow a rational English "popular name" on each of the two thousand species of moths that inhabit these islands. Some of the names, indeed, appear almost, if not quite, meaningless, while some, on the other hand, are highly appropriate. The Humming-bird Hawk moth is marvellously like the bird whose name it bears, as every one must admit who watches it poise with outstretched trunk before a flower, on wings that move so swiftly that they show like a halo round it. Two other Hawk moths are called Elephants, but this is because of the strange-looking head of the caterpillar, which can be extended like a sort of dwarf proboscis. Another moth, the Death's Head, bears a skull and cross-bones on its back.

The moths of the large class known as Geometers are so called because the caterpillars, as they loop themselves along, have the air of measuring the space they traverse, as a man might span it with his hand. The Tiger is a moth of brilliant colouring. The Widow and the Old Lady are clad in sombre hues. The Quakers are mostly dressed in soft shades of sober brown, while the sixteen varieties of Footmen wear among them almost as many varieties of livery.

Such names might, indeed, give rise to misconception. We can well understand the feelings of the old market-woman who, toiling up the steep path through the wood with her eggs and butter, overheard a party of schoolboys talking over their captures of the day. We can picture her dismay as she heard one youngster describe how he had chased a small Elephant through the wood, and just missed capturing a Tiger. We can imagine her alarm at hearing another boy boast of having killed two Quakers and a Footman. And how, at a distant shout from another member of the party that he had just knocked down an Old Lady, she dropped her basket and fled for her life.

But of all the signs in Nature's calendar that mark, like figures on a dial, the movement of the seasons, there is none more certain, none more full of mournful augury, than the passing of the birds.

Their going is secret, silent; they vanish unseen and unheard. We have learnt much in recent years with regard to migration. With one single exception, we know where every one of the summer migrants goes to rear its brood. The haunt of one only--the curlew-sandpiper--still defies discovery. But there is as much cause for wonder as ever that the stork and the swallow observe the time of their coming. And how some birds contrive to find their way over vast stretches of unbroken sea is as great a mystery as when Anacreon saw the

"Cranes from hoary winter fly,
To flutter in a kinder sky;"

or when the Hebrew watched the wandering hawk stretch her wings toward the south.

Among the few sounds that break the stillness of the autumn night is a faint and hurried cry, that at times may be heard out of the darkness--the note of some bird passing over unseen. It is the cry of the redwing--a feeble note, and yet the very trumpet-call of coming winter. In the spring the sight of the first swallow raises hopes of better times, of sunshine and warm weather. In autumn this voice calling out of the dark is a warning that cold and hunger are driving the redwing from its Northern home, that the Arctic night is settling down among the Norway hills.

Vast indeed is the array of these feathered fugitives. And if most of us see but little of plover or wild duck, of goose or swan or sandpiper, we may perhaps hear them as they pass. Often in the silence of these autumn nights, or even when the wind is blowing, we may hear the swift flight of the mallard overhead, or the musical voices of plovers; perhaps at times the trumpet-notes of geese, or even the whistling of the whooper's wings. Now and then, too, there floats down out of the starlit stillness the wild call of some unknown bird, the voice of some nameless stranger crying in the dark:

"And with no language but a cry."

TURF MOOR: A HAPPY HUNTING GROUND.

The traveller who at this season of the year is whirled along the iron highway of the northern part of Somersetshire will perhaps be led to form but a poor opinion of West Country scenery, for he sees little from the rail of the heath-covered heights of Exmoor, of the wooded glens of Quantock, or of the green heart of Mendip. The line is laid for many miles across a wide stretch of low-lying moorland--so low that it would be flooded each high tide were it not for the old sea wall by the shore. There are parts of the monotonous expanse that may well remind the wayfarer of the opening lines of one of Ingoldsby's ballads:

"O, Salisbury Plain is bleak and bare,
At least so I've heard many people declare,
For I fairly confess that I never was there.
Not a shrub nor a tree, nor a bush can you see,
No hedges, no ditches, no gates, no stiles,
Much less a house or a cottage for miles."

There are indeed parts of this great plain that are almost absolutely bare of timber save for a few scanty rows of pollard willow trees. There are hardly any hedge-rows, there are few gates, and fewer stiles. The cottages are far apart, built only on the low risings--once islands in the Severn sea, which the moorfolk fondly call "hills," because they are not "drownded out" in flood time.

Yet there is one striking difference. The Somersetshire marshes--far more level than the green waves of the great Wiltshire Down--are cut up by a network of innumerable ditches, narrow indeed, yet not always easily passed, as the little army of King Monmouth proved only too well. These "rhines," as they are called in the West Country, take the place of hedge-rows, and serve also to drain away into the sluggish moorland stream the water which in rainy seasons would collect on the low ground. Turf Moor is a strange looking country, with its interminable stacks of black peat, its great hollows from which turf has been taken, its miles of straight-cut dykes by which the water is drained away into the rivers. The sombre hue of the great plain is relieved by picturesque groups of turf-cutters, by dense masses of noble Scotch firs--trees that flourish well in the peaty soil--and by an occasional belt of coppice that runs in among the peat workings--a jungle of reeds and bulrushes, of bracken and tall royal fern, a sort of No-Man's Land, a very paradise for beast and bird.

The moormen happen on strange things sometimes when they are digging in the peat. It is no very rare thing for the turf-cutter's tool to clash on pottery or rude weapons far below the present level of the moor. Some years since a bow was thus discovered, whose once heavy yew wood was so altered by its long soaking that it was as light as cork. At one place an iron anchor was found, at another the paddle of an old canoe.

There is a tradition in the marshes that, years ago, whenever after a dry summer the water was low in one of the great rhines, a boat became visible, embedded in the bank. "Squire Phippen's Big Ship," as it was called, has long been lost sight of, but in more recent times another canoe has been found on the moor, which happily has met with the attention it deserves.