POISONOUS PLANTS

A friend informs me that he has found a quantity of woad growing on the Chilterns above the Thame, enough to stain blue a whole tribe of ancient Britons, and also that on a wall by the roadside between Reading and Pangbourne he discovered several plants of the deadly nightshade, or "dwale." This word is said to be derived from Old French deuil, mourning; but its present form looks very English. The only cases of plant poisoning now common among grown-up people are those caused by mistaking fungi for mushrooms, or by making rash experiments in cooking the former, of which Gerard quaintly says: "Beware of licking honey among the thorns, lest the sweetness of the one do not countervail the sharpness and pricking of the other." But with such a list of toxic plants as our flora can show there is always danger from certain species whose properties are quite unknown to ordinary mortals. Are they equally unknown to the herbalists and that mysterious trade-union of country-women and collectors of herbs by the roadside who deal with them? Probably the trade in poisons not used for serious purposes, but for what used in some parts of England to be called "giving a dose," a punishment for unfaithful, unkind, or drunken husbands, still exists as it did some forty years ago. The collectors of medicinal plants cut from the roadside and rubbish heaps, plants whose "operations" for good are quite well known, and have been handed down by tradition for centuries, cannot be absolutely ignorant of the other side of the picture, the toxic properties which other plants, or sometimes even the same plants, contain. Foxglove, for instance, from which digitalis used as a medicine is extracted, is a good example of these kill-or-cure plants. Every portion of the plant is poisonous, leaves, flowers, stalks, and berries. It affects the heart, and though useful in cases in which the pulsations are abnormal, its symptoms when taken by persons in ordinary health are those of heart failure. Thus foxglove is not only a dangerous but a "subtle" poison.

Among other plants which may cause serious mischief, but are seldom suspected, are such harmless-looking flowers as the meadowsweet, herb-paris, the common fool's-parsley, found growing in quantities in the gardens of unlet houses and neglected ground which has been in cultivation, mezereon, columbine, and laburnum. Meadowsweet has the following set against its name: "A few years since two young men went from London to one of the Southern counties on a holiday excursion, on the last day of which they gathered two very large sheafs of meadowsweet to bring home with them. These they placed in their bedroom at the village inn where they had to put up. In the course of the night they were taken violently ill, and the doctor who was called in stated that they were suffering from the poisonous prussic-acid fumes of the meadowsweet flowers, which he said almost overpowered him when he came into the room. The flowers were at once removed, and the young men, treated with suitable restoratives, were by next morning sufficiently recovered to undertake the journey home." [1] Without knowing what the young men had had for supper, it seems perhaps rather hasty to blame the meadowsweet. But the other flowers mentioned above have a bad record. To take them in order. Herb-paris, which grows in woods and shady places, with four even-sized leaves in a star at the top of the stem, all growing out opposite each other, bears a large, green solitary flower, and a bluish-black berry later. All parts of the plant are poisonous, the berries especially. Fool's-parsley, an unpleasantly smelling, very common plant, which leaves its odour on the hand if the seeds are squeezed or drawn through it, is said to cause numbers of deaths by being mistaken for common parsley and cooked. In the case of poisoning by this plant, it is recommended that milk should be given, the body sponged with vinegar, and mustard poultices put on the sufferer's legs. It is reckoned that one plant produced six thousand and eighty seeds—an unpleasant degree of fecundity for a poisonous weed. Columbine, which is a wild plant with blue or white flowers, as well as a domesticated one, has a toxic principle like that of the monkshood, more especially in the seeds; and the pretty red berries of the mezereon are responsible for the deaths or illness of children nearly every autumn. They are like cherries, and easily picked from the low bushes on which they grow. A dozen are said to be enough to cause death, though this must probably depend on the state of the eater's health. The laburnum, with its golden rain, is potentially a kind of upas tree. The writer has only known of two deaths of children caused by eating the beans in the green pods, but it is said to be a frequent cause of death every year on the Continent, where, possibly, children are less naturally careful about poisonous plants than those in England, to whom risks of this kind are usually and properly made part of the "black list" of the nursery-book of "Don'ts." The seeds will even poison poultry, if they pick them up after they have dropped from the pod. Laburnum is of comparatively recent introduction into Britain, or it would probably earlier have been accorded a place among the severely poisonous plants, dreaded by all.

Of these the deadly nightshade and hemlock are the best known in story, while the yew is most dangerous because far more common. In one case the Rector of a Berkshire village was made very ill by eating honey which had been partly gathered from yew flowers. Green hellebore and monkshood are also classed in the list of the ranker poisons. Deadly nightshade is rather a rare plant, yet it may be seen often enough on the sides of woods where there are old walls. It is poisonous throughout. The flowers are large, single, purple bells, and the berries black and shiny like a black cherry. It is said of this dangerous plant that the roots are computed to be five times more poisonous than the berries, that human beings have been found more susceptible to it than animals, and carnivorous animals more so than others. Children suffer more in proportion to the quantity of poison taken than do adults. But cases of nightshade poisoning are very rare, though two were reported some three years ago. Possibly the berries often fail to ripen, and so are less attractive in appearance. The poisonous hemlocks are two, one of which, the common hemlock, is said to have been the plant from which the Athenians prepared their poison for executing citizens condemned to death; and the other, the water-hemlock, or cowbane, is particularly deadly when eaten by cattle, to which it is fatal in a very few hours. Another plant, used for preparing poison in India, which produces a drug used by some tribes of Thugs for procuring the death of their victims, datura or stramonium, has now found a place amongst our wild flowers. It has an English name, thorn-apple, and is said to have been naturalised by the gipsies, who used the seeds as a medicine and narcotic, and carried them about with them in their wanderings. Like henbane, it is often seen on rubbish-heaps and in old brickfields. The leaf is very handsome, and the flower white and trumpet-shaped. Both this plant and the henbane retain their poisonous properties even when dried in hay, and stalled cows have been known to be poisoned by fodder containing a mixture of the latter plant.

Cattle have a delicate sense of smell which warns them of the danger of most poisonous English herbs, though apparently this warning odour is absent from the plants which kill so many horses when the grass grows on the South African veld, and also from our English yew. Yew was anciently employed as a poison in Europe, much as is the curari to-day in Central America. Dr. W.T. Fernie, the author of "Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Use," says that its juice is a rapidly fatal poison, that it was used for poisoning arrows, and that the symptoms correspond in a very remarkable way with those which follow the bites of venomous snakes. It is believed that in India there is a poison which produces the same effect. An Indian Rajah once desired that a notice should be put in a well-known paper that he did not intend to raise his rents on his accession to the estates. The proprietor of the paper asked him his reasons for wishing for such an advertisement. The Rajah said that his grandfather had raised the rents, and had died of snake-bite; that his father had done the same, and had also died of snake-bite; and that he concluded that there was some connection of cause and effect. The notice was inserted, and this Rajah did not die of snake-bite, or rather of the poison which simulates it.

[1] "Farm and Home" Year Book for 1902.



ANCIENT THAMES MILLS

Almost the greatest loss to country scenery is the decay of the ancient windmills and water-mills. The first has robbed the hilltops of a most picturesque feature, while in the valleys and little glens the roaring, creaking, dripping wheel sounds no longer, except in favoured spots where it still pays to grind the corn in the old way. The old town and city mills often survived longer than the country ones, and those on the Thames longer than those on smaller rivers. The corn and barley which was taken to market in the town was easily transferred to the town mill, and thence by water to the place of consumption. Every Wykehamist remembers the ancient and picturesque mills of Winchester, with the mill-stream bridged by the main street. At Oxford some of the most ancient mills remain to this day, while others have only recently been destroyed, or have undergone a curious conversion into dwelling-houses, beneath which the mill-stream still rushes. One of these houses stands near Folly Bridge; another old mill has just undergone the same process, that close to Holywell Church. Some of these mills are the most ancient surviving institutions in Oxford, far older than the colleges—older even than any of the churches except perhaps one. Some of these—the Castle Mill, for instance—have ground corn for centuries since the abbeys, for whose use they were founded, utterly disappeared. Others were standing long before abbeys or colleges were founded, and were part of their endowments. They are the oldest link between town life and country life left in Oxford, or indeed in England. For a thousand years the corn grown on the hills beyond the Thames meadows has been drawn to their doors. Saxon churls dragged wheat there on sledges, Danes rowed up the river to Oseney and stole the flour when they sacked the abbey, Norman bishops stole the mills themselves. That iniquitous Roger of Salisbury was "in" this, as we might guess. Roger, who knew that attention to detail is the soul of business, commandeered this particular mill with others in these parts, and, when forced to let it go, with a fine sense of humour made it over to the Godstone nunnery as a pious donor.

The Knights Templars had another mill at Cowley, and the king himself one on the Cherwell, which was given to the Hospital of St. John, who "swapped" it with Merton. Later on these mills helped King Charles's army vastly, for all the flour needed for the Oxford garrison was ground inside or close to the walls.

At present the Thames is mainly visited as a source of rest and refreshment to tens of thousands of men "in cities pent," and of pleasure rather than profit. In a secondary degree it is useful as a commercial highway, the barge traffic being really useful to the people on its banks, where coal, stone for road-mending, wood, flour, and other heavy and necessary goods are delivered on the staithes almost at their doors. But when the old mills were first founded, and for eight centuries onwards, it was as a source of power, a substitute for steam, that the river was valued. The times will probably alter, and the Thames currents turn mill wheels again to generate electric light for the towns and villages on its banks. The chance of this coming about is enough to make any one who owns a mill right on the water keep it, even though not useful at present. First the old roads with auto-cars, then the old mills with hydraulic lighting and low-power dynamos will come to the front again. Whereof take the old story of the Oxford river as full and sufficient witness, and Antony Wood for storyteller. "Oxford," he says, "owed its prosperity to its rivers," of which there were apparently as many branches and streams then as now.

The rivers were "beneficial to the inhabitants, as anon shall be showed," though the Cherwell was "more like a tide" than a common river sometimes, and once nearly overflowed all the physic garden. That garden stands there still. So does the Cherwell still behave "more like a tide than a river," and the scene at the torpid races a few years ago is evidence that the rivers have not diminished in volume. What, then, was the "great commodity" given by them to the city? First and least, a water which was good for dyeing cloth and for tanning leather; secondly, and by far the greatest benefit, it turned the wheels of at least a dozen important mills. As mills were always a monopoly, as much opposition was raised to the making of a new one as would now be evoked by the proposal to construct a new railway.

It was meddling with vested interests of a powerful kind, but there were so many rivers at Oxford that each turned one or two mills without injuring any one's water rights.

Of all these mills, the greatest advantage to the city came from the Castle Mill. Notwithstanding its name, this was not the property of the Castle of Oxford, though it stood within arrow-shot of its towers, and was thus protected from pillage in time of war. It stands under the remaining tower, the water tower, of the castle still, and on exactly the same site, and on the branch of the Thames which from the most ancient days has been the waterway by which barges and merchandise came from the country to the city, bringing goods from Abingdon or corn and fuel from the upper river. And it is still called by its old name of the Weir Stream. "There is one river called Weyre, where hath bin an Hythe, at which place boatmen unload their vessels, which also maketh that antient mill under the castle seldom or never to faile from going, to the great convenience of the inhabitants." So says Antony Wood, adding that it stood before the Norman conquest. After that it was forfeited to the Norman kings, and then held in half shares by the burgesses of the town and the abbots of Oseney, that once wealthy and now vanished abbey, which stood close by where the railway station now is. They shared the fishery also, and apparently this partnership prevented friction between the town and the monks, as each could undersell the other, and prices for flour and fish were kept down at a reasonable figure.

Henry VIII. gave the abbey's share to the new bishopric of Oxford, but the funds of the bishopric were embezzled by some means, and the town ultimately bought the mill for L566.

St. George's Tower, the only remaining fragment of the castle, is built of stones and mortar, so compact that though the walls have stood since Robert d'Oily reared it, late in the reign of the Conqueror, the stones and mortar had to be cut out as if from a mass of rock when a water-pipe was recently taken through the walls. It is now the water tower which holds the supply for Oxford prison.

Old Holywell Mill was on a branch of the Cherwell, and stood just behind Magdalen Walks, whence a charming view was had of its wheel and lasher. It belonged to the Abbey of Oseney, who gave it to Merton College in exchange for value. Now it is a handsome dwelling-house, below which the mill stream rushes.



Merton College seems to have had a fancy for owning mills, for it also acquired by exchange the King's Mill. Only the house and lasher are left to show where this old mill stood. It had a narrow but very strong mill stream, which in winter used to come down in a sheet of solid water like green jade, a beautiful object among the walks and willows of Mesopotamia. It was an outpost of the King's forces when Oxford was held for the Royalists.

Botley Mill, though on the westernmost of the many streams into which the Thames divides at Oxford, was outside the walls. It dates from before the Conquest. This belonged to the Abbey of Abingdon, in the chronicles of which are some records of an injury done to the "aqueduct, which is vulgarly called the lake." This name is still the local term for all side streams and artificial cuts from the Upper Thames. The men of a now vanished village of Seckworth broke the banks of the "lake" when Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, was being besieged in Rochester Castle. The lord of the manor was subsequently sued for this by the abbot of Abingdon, and had to pay ten shillings damages. Doubtless the men of Seckworth had to contribute to pay for their indulgence in this mischief, but it looks as if the abbot's miller had been cheating them.



THE BIRDS THAT STAY

In the Vision of the Lots and Lives, when the souls chose their careers on a fresh register before taking another chance in the world above, Ulysses chose that of a stay-at-home proprietor, with a resolve, born of experience, never again to roam. If Plato had made a Myth of the Birds, he might have alleged some such reason to explain how it is that while most of them are incessant wanderers, ever flitting uncertain between momentary points of rest, so few remain fixed and constant, as if they had sworn at some distant date never more to make trial of the wine-dark sea. In the still, November woods, when the vapours curl like smoke among the dripping boughs, leaving a diamond on each sprouting bud where next year's leaf is hid; by the moorland river, on bright December mornings, when the grayling are lying on the shallows below the ripple where the rock breaks the surface; by the frozen shore where the land-springs lie fast, drawn into icicles or smeared in slippery slabs on the cliff faces, and hoar frost powders the black sea-wrack; on the lawns of gardens, where the winter roses linger and open dew-drenched and rain-washed in the watery sunbeams—there we see, hear, and welcome the birds that stay. Then and there we note their fewness, their lameness, and feel that they are really fellow-countrymen, native to the soil. The list of these home-loving birds is short; and those commonly seen are only a few of the total. In a winter stroll by the upper Thames, the absence of the birds which flocked along the banks in summer and spring, when the May was in blossom and the willow covered with cotton fleck, is among the first seasonal changes noticed. The chiff-chaffs, turtledoves, sedge-warblers, whitethroats, coots, sandpipers, and all the little river birds are gone. So are the greater number of the blackbirds, thrushes and missel-thrushes. All the fisherman sees, his daily companions by the deserted river, are the wren creeping in the flood-drift, the tits working over the alder bushes to see if any seeds are left in the cones, and the kingfishers. The grayling fisherman on the Northern streams has the water ousels for his constant and charming companions, true to the mountain river as in the days of Merlin and Vivien, busy as big black-and-white bees as they flit up-stream and down-stream, flying boldly into the waterfalls, dropping silently from mossy stones into the clear brown eddies, singing when the sunbeams shine and warm the crag-tops, and even floating and singing on the water, like aquatic robins. The ousels must have been the sacred birds of Tana, the Water Goddess, the ever attached votaries of her dripping and rustic shrines.

By the winter shore, untrodden by any but the fisher going down at the ebb to seek king-crab for bait, or by his children, gathering driftwood on the stones, one little bird stays ever faithful to the same short range of shore. This is the rock-pipit—the "sea-lark" of Browning's verse. But that is a summer song. It is not only when the cliff—

"Sets his bones, To bask i' the sun,"

but in the short winter days, that the sea-lark keeps constant to the fringe of ocean. It is the most narrowly local and stay-at-home of all birds, never leaving the very fringe and margin, not of sea, but of land, haunting only the last edge and precipice of the coast, nesting on those upright walls of granite or chalk, and creeping, flying, and twittering among the crumbling stones, the water-worn boulders, and the tufts of sea-pink and samphire. When the winter storms slam the roaring billows against the cliff faces and the spray flies up a hundred feet from the exploding mass, the little sea-larks only mount to higher levels of the cliff, never coming inland or forsaking its salt-spattered resting-place. Compared with these home-loving birds, all the gulls are wanderers, even though they do not desert our shores and come fifty miles up the Thames. Of the rock-fowl, the puffins fly straight away to the Mediterranean, and the guillemots and razorbills go out to sea and leave their nesting crags. Only the cormorants stay at home, flying in to roost on the same lofty crag every autumn and winter night, from the fishing grounds which the sea-crows have frequented for longer years even than the "many-wintered crow" of inland rookeries has his fat and smiling fields.

The discovery that rooks, with their reputation for staunch attachment to locality, are regular and irrepressible migrants, crossing from Denmark and Holland to England, and from England to Ireland, has been followed by other curious revelations about the mobility of what were believed to be stationary birds. Our own beloved garden robin, whom we feed till he becomes a sturdy beggar, though he pays us with a song, stays with us, as we know, because he applies regularly for his rations. But he sends all his children away to seek their fortunes elsewhere, and on our coasts flights of migrant robins, whom either their parents, or the bad weather, have sent from Norway over the foam, arrive all through the autumn. Even the jenny-wrens migrate to some extent.

Because we see birds of certain kinds near our farms, gardens, and hedges it does not follow that these are those which were there in summer and spring. Such common finches as the greenfinches and chaffinches migrate in immense flocks, and over vast distances, considering their short wings and small size. In the gardens and shrubberies round the houses the parent robins stay. So do some of the blackbirds, the thrushes (except in very hard weather), the hedge-sparrow, the nuthatch (more in evidence in winter than at any other time, and a firm believer in eleemosynary nuts), all the tits, except the long-tailed tit, a little gipsy bird wandering in family hordes, and the crested and marsh tits (dwellers in the pine forest and sedge-beds), and the wood pigeon. Occasionally that shy bird, the hawfinch, is seen on a wet, quiet day picking up white-beam kernels and seeds. Except this, every one of the garden birds comes to be fed, and is well known and appreciated. It is in the woods and the hedges of the rain-soaked meadows that the general absence of bird life in winter is most marked, and the presence of the few which stay most appreciated. Those who, on sport intent, go round the hedges in November and December, or wait in rides while the woods are driven, or lie up quietly in the big covers for a shot at wood pigeons in the evening, are almost startled by the tameness and indifference of the birds, eagerly feeding so as to make the most of the short, dark days. When the hedges are beaten for rabbits the bullfinches appear in families, their beautiful grey backs and exquisite rosy breasts looking their very best against the dark-brown, purply twigs. Another home-staying bird of the hedgerows, or rather of the hedgerow timber, is the tree-creeper. It has no local habitation, being a bird which migrates in a drifting way from tree to tree, and so bound by no ties to mother-earth. But it is in the woods that the stay-at-home birds are most in evidence in winter. There they find abundant food, and there they make their home. The woodpeckers, the magpie, and the jay, the brown owl, the sparrow-hawk, the kestrel, the pheasant, the long-tailed tit, and all the rest of the tribe; and in the clearings where the teazle grows, the goldfinches feed. The barn owl and brown owl both stay with us. So does the long-eared owl. But the short-eared owl is a regular migrant, coming over in flights like woodcock. No one has satisfactorily answered the question why there are sedentary species and migratory species so closely allied in habits and food that the quest for a living must be ruled as outside the motive for migration.

If the long-eared owl can remain and find a living all the year round in the copses on the downs, why should not the short-eared owl make a practice of what is its occasional custom, and nest in the fens and marshes? If the kingfisher can find a living and abundant fish in our rivers and brooks, why does the dabchick migrate? The migration is only a partial one, for many remain on the Thames all the year round, especially near the eyots by Tilehurst; but it vanishes from most of the Northern pools and returns almost on the same date. Perhaps a conclusion might be hazarded from the behaviour of wild migratory birds which have become semi-domesticated. In Canada, the largest and best known of the wild geese is the black-necked Canadian goose. It is a regular migrant. The Indians believe it brings little birds on its back when it comes. At Holkham, where a large flock of these is acclimatised, but lives under perfectly wild conditions, the Canadian geese never attempt to migrate, though they often fly out on to the sands at ebb-tide. They show less disposition to leave the estate than the herons in the park. Yet during the winter they feed every day with flocks of wild geese in the marshes. These geese fly every spring away to the Lapland mountains or the tundras, and could show the Canada geese the way northwards if they wished to follow. The conclusion is that the Canada geese have no desire for change; and the reason that other birds do not migrate is probably the same.



ANCIENT HEDGES

In the upper Thames valley, both in May and autumn, one of the prettiest sights is the great hedges which divide the meadows. In spring, those above Oxford look as though covered with snow, and in early October they are loaded with hips and haws, just turned red, with blackberries, elderberries (though the starlings have eaten most of these), with crab apples, with hazel nuts, scarlet wild guelder-rose berries, dog-wood berries, and sloes. Except the fields themselves, our hedges are almost the oldest feature with which Englishmen adorned rural England. They have gone on making them until the last parish "enclosures," some of which were made as late as thirty years ago, and when made they have always been regarded as property of a valuable kind. When Christ's Hospital was founded in Ipswich in Tudor days, partly as a reformatory for bad characters, "hedge-breakers" were more particularly specified as eligible for temporary domicile and discipline. "Hedges even pleached" were always a symbol of prosperity, care, and order. "Her fruit trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined," a token that something was amiss in our country economy.

One untidy habit, which the writer remembers as very common, has been discontinued in this connection. Twenty years ago the linen drying on the hedge, which Shakespeare evidently regarded as a "common object of the country," was constantly seen. It was always laid on well-trimmed hedges, or otherwise it would have been torn. Now it is always hung on lines, possibly because the hedges are not so well trimmed and kept. Bad times in farming have greatly helped the beauty of hedges. They are mostly overgrown, hung with masses of dog-rose, trailed over by clematis, grown up at bottom with flowers, ferns, and fox-gloves, festooned with belladonna, padded with bracken. The Surrey hedges are mostly on banks, a sign that the soil is light, and that a bank is needed because the hedge will not thicken into a barrier. But these, like most others, are set with the charming hedgerow timber that makes half England look like a forest at a distance of a mile or so. It is difficult to reconstruct our landscape as it was before the hedges were made. But any one curious as to the comparative antiquity of the fields can perhaps detect the nucleus or centre where enclosure started. Those having the ditch on the outer side are always the earlier, the ditch being the defence against the cattle that strayed on the unenclosed common or grazings outside.

The finest garden hedges in England are at Hall Barn, in Buckinghamshire. They must be thirty feet high, are immensely thick, and are clipped so as to present the smooth, velvety appearance peculiar to the finest yew and box hedges. The colour and texture of these walls of ancient vegetation, contrasting with the vivid green lawns at their feet, are astonishingly beautiful. One of the peculiar charms of such hedges is that where yew of a different kind or age, or a bush of box, forms part of the mass, it shows like an inlay of a different material, and the same effect is given merely by the trick that some yews have of growing their leaves or shoots at a different angle from that favoured by others. These surfaces give the variety of tint which is shown in such fabrics as "shot" or "watered" silk. Here there is a splash of blue from the box, or of invisible dull green, or of golden sheen, from different classes of yew. Box hedges of great size are less common than those of yew, and less durable, for the box is easily rent from the stem when old. But these two, the yew and the box, are the "precious" hedges, the silver and gold, of the garden-maker. Next, representing the copper and brass, are the hedges of beech and holly. Both are commonly planted and carefully tended as borders and shelters to the less important parts of gardens; as screens also to block out the humdrum but necessary portions of the curtilage, such as the forcing-pits for early plants, minor offices, timber yards, and the like; and to shelter vegetable gardens (for which the Dutch use screens of dried reeds). Holly makes the best and most impenetrable of all hedges when clipped, but it is not beautiful for that reason. Clipped holly grows no berries; it accumulates dust and dirt, and has a dull, lifeless look. Beech, on the other hand, should be in greater esteem than it is. If clipped when the sap is rising it puts on leaves which last all the winter. From top to bottom the wall of russet shines warm and bright. Its leaves are harmless in decay, for they contain an antiseptic oil, and no leaves of spring are more tenderly green or in more ceaseless motion at the lightest breeze. Privet makes the last and least esteemed of these "one-tree" hedges. Yet it is the most tractable of all hedge material, and was almost invariably used to form the intricate "mazes," once a favourite toy of the layers-out of stately gardens.

Keeping these hedges in good repair and properly clipped and trimmed is one of the minor difficulties of the country. In large gardens there are always one or two professional gardeners who understand the topiary art. But it often happens that a quite modest garden possesses a splendid hedge of yew or box, the pride of the place, which needs attention once or twice every year. These hedges have frequently been clipped by the same man, some old resident in the village, for thirty or forty years. Clipping that hedge is part of his regular extra earnings to which he looks forward, and a source of credit and renown to him in his circle. He knows every weak place, what parts need humouring, what stems are crowding others between the furry screen of leaves, and where the wind got in and did mischief in the last January gale. When in the course of Nature the old hedge-trimmer dies, there is no one to take his place. The men do not learn these outside accomplishments as they once did, and the art is likely to be lost, just as ornamental thatching and the making of the more decorative kinds of oak paling are in danger of disappearing.

Mending, or still worse remaking, field-hedges is a difficult, expensive, and withal a very highly skilled form of labour. The workers have for generations been very humble men, who have scarcely been honoured for their excellent handiwork as they deserved. They appear in art only in John Leech's pictures of hunting in Leicestershire, in his endless jokes on "mending the gaps" towards the close of the hunting season. In February and March the scenes shown in Leech's pictures are reproduced on most of the Thames valley farms in Berkshire and Oxfordshire. The men wear in front an apron of sacking, torn and plucked by thorns. The hands are gloved in leather mits with no fingers; in them the hedger holds his light, sharp billhook, shaped much like the knife of the forest tribes of Southern India. When a whole fence has to be relaid the art of "hedge carpentry" is exhibited in its perfection. Few people not brought up to the business, which is only one minor branch of the many-sided handiness of a good field labourer, the kind of man whom every one now wants and whom few can find, would have the courage to attempt it. A ditch full of brambles, often with water at the bottom, has to be cleared. Then the man descends into the ditch, and strips the bank of brambles and briars. That is only the preliminary. When he has piled all the brambles in heaps at regular intervals along the brow of the ditch, he walks thoughtfully from end to end of the fence, and considers the main problem, or lets the idea sink into his mind, for he never talks, and probably never frames for himself any form of words or conscious plan. In front, with the bases of the stems bare where the bank is trimmed and slashed, stands the overgrown hedge which he is to cut, bend over, relay, and transform, to make another ten or twelve years of growth till it reaches the unmanageable size of that which stands before him. Most of it is great bushes of blackthorn, hard as oak, with thorns like two-inch nails, and sharper. These bushes, grow up in thick rods and stocks, spiny and intractable, from the bank to a height of perhaps twelve feet. The rest of the fence-stuff is whitethorn, nearly as ill to deal with as the blackthorn, and perhaps a few clumps of ash and wild rose. Slashing, hewing, tearing down, and bending in, he works steadily down the hedge day by day. All the time he is using his judgment at every stroke. Some he hews out at the base and flings behind him on the field. Much he cuts off at what will be the level of the hedge. But all the most vigorous stems of blackthorn and whitethorn he half cuts through and then bends over, twisting the heads to the next stocks or uprights, or, where there are no stocks, driving in stout stakes cut from the discarded blackthorns. When finished the newly mended hedge consists of uprights, mostly rooted in their native bank, and fascine-like bundles—the heads of these uprights, which are bent and bound horizontally to the other uprights or stakes. This is the universal "stake and bond" hedge of the shires, impenetrable to cattle, unbreakable, and imperishable, because the half-cut bonds, the stakes, and the small stuff all shoot again, and in a few years make the famous "bullfinch" with stake and bond below, and a tall mass of interlacing thorns and small stuff above.

During the last era of prosperous farming there was a mania for destroying hedges and cutting down the timber. If ever prosperity returns it will smile on a better-informed class of occupier and owner. It is now seen that the hedges were of the greatest value to shelter cattle, sheep, and horses, and benefited to some extent even the sown crops, especially at the blossoming time. As cattle are now the farmer's main reliance, it will be long before he grubs up or destroys the welcome shelter given by the hedges from sun, rain, and storm.



THE ENGLISH MOCKING BIRD

One winter an unusual number of peewits visited the flats near Wittenham and Burcote, and remained there for several months. One or two starlings which haunted the house in which we stayed, and slept in their old holes in the thatch, picked up all the various peewits' calls and notes, and used to amuse themselves by repeating these in the apple-trees on sunny mornings. The note was so exact a reproduction that I often looked up to see where the plover was before I made out that it was only the starling's mimicry.

A correspondent of the Newcastle Journal, writing from Yeare, near Wooler, in Northumberland, recently described the performances of a wild starling which has settled near his house. It is such an excellent mimic of other birds' notes that no one can help noticing its performances. A record has been kept of the variety entertainments provided by the bird. Besides its own calls, whistles, and song, it reproduces the song of the blackbird and thrush absolutely correctly, and mimics with equal nicety the calls of the curlew, the corncrake, and the jackdaw.

It is appropriate that this eulogy of the starling should appear in a Newcastle paper, for Bewick when residing there always regretted the absence of these birds from the town, and hoped that they might in time become numerous, as in the South and West. Starlings are such intelligent, interesting, and really remarkable birds that if they were rare they would be among the most prized of pets. Their open-air vocal performances are quite as remarkable as their latest admirer says. They are the British mocking-birds, able, when and if they choose, to reproduce almost any form of song. They do this partly, no doubt, because their throats are adaptable, but more from temperament and a kind of objective mind not very common in birds. Like parrots, starlings are given to spending a good deal of every fine morning in contemplating other people, including other birds, and then in thinking them over, or talking them over to themselves. Any one who is sitting or working quietly near a room where a parrot is in its cage alone can fairly follow the train of thought in the parrot's mind. It is evidently recalling episodes or things which form part of its daily mental experiences. It begins by barking like the dog, then remembers the dog's mistress, and tells it to be quiet, as she does. Then it hears the housemaid, and imitates a window-sash being let down, or some phrase it has picked up in the servants' quarters. If it has been lately struck with some new animal noise or unusual sound, it will be heard practising that. Starlings do exactly the same thing. When the sun begins to be hot on any fine day, summer or winter, the cock bird goes up usually alone, to a sunny branch, gable, or chimney, and there indulges in a pleasant reverie, talking aloud all the time. Its own modes of utterance are three. One is a melodious whistle, rather low and soft; another is a curious chattering, into which it introduces as many "clicks" as a Zulu talking his native language; and the third is a short snatch of song, either its own, or one which has become a national anthem or morning hymn common to all starlings, though it may originally have been a "selection" from other birds' notes. Then, or amongst the rest of the ordinary notes, the starling inserts or practises its accomplishments. Not all starlings do this, and only a few attain great eminence in that line. Obviously it is only personal feeling that induces them to do it, and they get no encouragement from other starlings, though when kept in cages, as they very seldom are now, and rewarded and taught, they might develop the most striking talents. It should be added that, like all good bird-mimics, they are ventriloquists. They can reproduce perfectly the sound of another bird's note, not as that bird utters it, but as it is heard, faint and low, softened by distance. They can also sing over bars of bird-songs in a low tone perfectly correctly, and repeat them in a high one.

To give a rather striking example. Last spring the writer was in the Valley of the Eden, opposite Eden-hall. The vale is a wide one, and on the north-east side are high fells, Cross Fell among others. On these the curlews breed, and occasionally fly right over the valley at a great height to the hills above Edenhall, uttering their long, musical call. When heard, this call is generally uttered several hundred feet above the valley. A curlew was heard flying above, and repeating its cry, but was not discernible. Again the call was heard, but no curlew seen, though such a large bird must have been visible. In the line of sound was a starling sitting on a chimney-pot. Again the curlew called, the long-drawn notes sounding from exactly the same place in the sky. It was the starling, reproducing with perfect accuracy the call, as it was used to hear it from the high-flying curlews crossing the valley. Apparently the tradition that they were good talkers has died out in rural England. It was always one of the firm beliefs of East Anglia that if a starling's tongue were slit with a thin sixpence it would learn to talk at once, but that otherwise it would only mimic other birds. The operation, like most other traditional brutalities, was absolutely unnecessary. Talking starlings were common enough, and must have been for many years previous to the time when they were no longer valued as cage-birds. Has not Sterne in his "Sentimental Journey" immortalised the poor bird whose one and leading sentiment, had he been able to find words for it, was "I can't get out! I can't get out!"?

* * * * *

From early spring until after midsummer the starlings have young broods in more varied places and positions than probably any other birds in England. They like the homes of men, and build with equal pleasure in thatched roofs, under tiles, in the eaves and under the leads of churches (though a recent edict by the Bench of Bishops has forbidden them the towers by causing wire netting to be placed over the louvre boards), and also in places the most remote from mankind. In the most solitary groves on Beaulieu Heath, under the ledges of stark Cornish precipices, and in ruins on islets in mountain lochs in Scotland, they tend their hungry nestlings with the same assiduous care. The good done by the starlings throughout the spring, summer, and autumn is incalculable. The young are fed entirely on insect food, and as the birds always seek this as close to home as possible, they act as police to our gardens and meadows. They do a little mischief when nesting and in the fruit season, partly because they have ideas. It was alleged recently that they picked off the cherry blossoms and carried them off to decorate their nests with. Later they are among the most inveterate robbers of cherry orchards and peckers of figs, which they always attack on the ripest side. But they have never developed a taste for devouring corn, like the rice-birds and starlings of the United States. They have a good deal in common with those bright, clever, and famous mimics, the Indian mynahs, which they much resemble physically. This was the bird which Bontius considered "went one better" than Ovid's famous parrot:—

"Psittacus, Eois quamvis tibi missus ab oris Jussa loquar; vincit me sturnus garrulus Indis."

The mynahs have also the starling's habit of building in houses, and especially in temples. There is a finish about the mynah's and the starling's mimicry which certainly beats that of the parrots.

In their attendance on sheep and cattle the starlings have another creditable affinity. They are very like the famous rhinoceros-birds of Africa, to which also they are related. The rhinoceros-birds always keep in small flocks, every member of which sits on the back of the animal, whether antelope, buffalo, or rhinoceros, on which it is catching insects. The starlings do not keep so closely to the animal's body, though they frequently alight on the back of a sheep or cow and run all over it. But when seeking insect food among cattle the little groups of starlings generally keep in a pack and attend to a single animal. Mr. J.G. Millais, watching deer in a park with his glasses, saw a starling remove a fly from the corner of a deer's eye. When they have run round it, and over it, and caught all the flies they can there, they rise with a little unanimous exclamation, and fly on to the next beast. Their winter movements are also interesting. By day they associate with other birds, mainly with rooks. Gilbert White thought they did this because the rooks had extra nerves in their beaks, and were able to act as guides to the smaller birds searching for invisible food. Probably it is only due to the sociable instinct. Towards night they nearly always repair in innumerable flocks to some favourite roosting-place, either a reed-bed or a wood of evergreens, where they assemble in thousands. One of these communal sleeping-places is the duck island in St. James's Park. In hard weather they feed on the saltings and round the shore, especially where rotten seaweed abounds, with great quantities of insect life in it. At such times they roost in the crevices of the great sea cliffs. Under Culver Cliff, for instance, they may be seen flying along the shore and coming in to bed in the frost fog with the cormorants and other fishers of the deep.



FLOWERS OF THE GRASS FIELDS

Just before hay-time, the crowning glory of the Thames-side flats is given by the flowers growing in the grass. Their setting, among the uncounted millions of green grass stems, appeals not only by the contrast of colour, but by the sense of coolness and content which these sheltered and softly bedded blossoms suggest. The meadows which they adorn are best-loved of all the fields of England; but they would never be as dear to Englishmen as they are were it not for the flowers which deck them. The blossoms and plants found in the tall grasses differ from those on lawns and grazing pastures. They are taller, more delicate, and of a more graceful growth. The daisy, so dear to pastoral poets, is not a flower of the hayfield. The myriads of springing stems choke the daisy flowers, which love to lie low, on their flat and shallow-rooted stars of leaves. The daisy is a lawn plant that loves low turf, and only in early spring on the pasture-fields does it whiten the unmown grasses. The turf glades of the New Forest, grazed short by cattle for eight hundred years, are very properly called "lawns"; and on these the daisies grow in thousands, showing that they are true lawns, and not grassfields mown yearly by the scythe. What makes a flower of the grasses it is difficult to say. Bulbs flourish among them, and clovers, trefoils, and vetch. White ox-eye daisies love the grass, and many orchids, and in shady places white cow-parsley, and blue wild geraniums, and all the buttercups. Others, like the yellow snapdragon and the scarlet poppy, will have none of it, but love a dry and dusty fallow or a cornfield that has run to waste, shimmering with heat and drought. Up the valley of the Pang, you may see acres of poppies on a fallow as scarlet as a field-marshal's coat, and not one in the meadows by the stream. Even before the sheltering grass stems shoot upward and around them, drawing all the flower-life skywards as trees draw other trees upright towards the light, there are plants which are found only growing in the meadows, springing from the turf carpet, and happy in no other setting. Chief of these are the wild daffodils or Lent-lilies, the ornaments of old orchards and of the green meadows of Devon and the Isle of Wight. Why they, like the snowdrops, and in other parts of Europe the narcissi, should choose the turf in which to flower, instead of the woods, where grass does not grow, is one of the secrets of the flower-world. So, too, the wild hyacinths grow not in the meadows, though the fritillaries, the chequered red or pale "snake flowers," are grass-lovers, and grow only in the alluvial meadows by the streams and brooks of the valleys. Early though the fritillaries are, they are a real "grass flower," flourishing best where there is some early succulent growth around them, for they like the shelter so given. This they enjoy even early in the year, because their favourite home is in meadows over which flood-waters run in winter, and there the grass grows fast. With the cowslip comes the early common orchis, with its red-purple flower, and later the masses of buttercups, and the ox-eye daisies. Both these flowers are increasing in our meadows, the former to the detriment of the grass itself, and to the loss of the butter-makers, for the cows will not eat the buttercups' bitter stems. Like the ox-eye daisy, the buttercup is a typical meadow flower, tall, so that it tops the grasses and catches the sun in its petals, thin-foliaged, for no real grass-growing flower has broad or remarkable leaves, and with a habit of deep, underground growth far below the upper surface of the matted grass roots. You cannot easily pull up a buttercup root, or that of any flower of the meadows. The stems break first, for they draw their sustenance from a deep stratum of earth. Most of the meadow flowers and blossoms in the mowing grass belong to the beautiful, rather than to the useful, order of plants. They are fitted to weave a garland from rather than to distil into simples and potions. As Gerard says of the butterfly orchis, "there is no great use of these in physicke, but they are chiefly regarded for the pleasant and beautiful flowers wherewith Nature hath seemed to play and disport herselfe." Herein they differ from the roadside plants and the blossoms of waste-lands and woods, for these, especially the former, swell the list of the medicinal plants, the garden not of Flora, but of Aesculapius. It is these which have been gathered for centuries by the wise men and wise women of the villages from the Apennines to Exmoor, while, if we may infer from the story of agriculture, the flowers of the grassfields are in a sense modern and artificial. They owe their numbers to the discovery of the art of haymaking. Before men learnt to cut, dry, and stack hay, which, after fermenting partly in the stacks under pressure, becomes a manufactured food, it may be concluded that there were no such flower-spangled fields, in this country at least, as now form such a striking feature of rural England. Cattle and sheep wandered all over the common pastures, and ate the grass down, or trampled it under foot. Consequently, it never grew long, or formed the protecting bed in which the flowers now lie, and many of the meadow plants could seldom have flowered at all. The hungry cattle would graze down all the soft, juicy young buds and leaves, wandering at will over the valleys, under charge only of the herdsman. When haymaking became general the cattle were confined in spring and early summer, and the fields of "mowing grass" appeared, and nourished year by year the plants peculiar to this form of cultivation. The proof that this is so may be seen in the New Forest. There the private fields, carefully protected during the spring, from the tread or bite of cattle, and mown yearly in the summer, have all the wealth of flowers peculiar to our hay-meadows. Outside, in the forest itself, these flowers hardly exist, except by some pool-side, or on the meadow-like border of a bog. They are only natural in the second sense, because our mowing grass is a natural product of enclosed ground, when cattle are excluded. Some flowers just invade the meadows, venturing out a few yards from the hedges or woods, but never spreading broadcast over the sun-warmed central acres. Such are the blue bird's-eye, which just colours the mowing grass in shady spots and patches near the fence, and occasionally the bee-orchis and the butterfly-orchis. The latter does not grow tall in the meadows as it does in the woods, but affects a humbler growth. Blue wild geraniums also flourish in patches in the meadows, and sometimes cranesbill and campion. But campions do not seed well among the thick grasses and seldom hold their own, as they do where a copse has been cut down, or on a hedgeside. And, though it is not a flower, there is the "quaking grass" beloved of children, though useless as cattle food, and a sign of bad pasturage, but the only grass which cottage people gather to keep, as a memento of the hayfields.



Flowering plants form a large part of the actual herbage from which the hay is made. The bottom of a good crop of mowing grass springs from a tangle of clover and leguminous plants, all owning blossoms, and many of them of brilliant hues and exquisite perfume. Chief among these is the red meadow-clover, the pride of the hayfields. Few plants can match its perfume, or the cool freshness of its leaves. With this is mixed the little hop-clover, and the sucklings, and other tiny gold-dust blossoms. Meadow vetchling, and the tall meadow crowfoot, with rich yellow blooms and dainty leaves, are set off by the pinks of the clover and the crimson of stray sainfoin clusters. All these blossoms with the various flowers of the grasses, tend to ripen and come to perfection together, the heats of June bringing the whole multitude on together as in a natural forcing-pit. It is then that the mowing grass is said to be "ripe," when all the blossoms are shedding their pollen, and giving hay-fever to those who enter the fields. It must be cut then, wet or fine, or the quality and aroma of the hay passes away beyond recovery. Perhaps it is an accident that most of our meadow flowers are white or yellow. The two most striking exceptions are from foreign soil, the purple-blue lucerne and the crimson sainfoin. But yellow is not the universally predominant hue of the flowers of grasses, for in Switzerland and the Italian Alps the hayfields are as blue with campanulas as they are here yellow with buttercups. The turf on our chalk downs shows flowers more nearly approaching in tint the flora of the Alps. The hair-bells with their pale blue, and the dark-purple campanulas, give the complement of blue absent in the lower meadows, while the tiny milkwort is as deep an ultramarine as the Alpine gentians themselves. But the turf of the chalk downs, never rising to any height, and without the forcing power of the valley grasses, yields no such wealth of colour or perfume as the meadow flowers lavish on our senses in the early weeks of June.



RIVERSIDE GARDENING

"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden."

A Recent addition to the country house is the "water garden," in which a running brook is the centre and motif of the subsidiary ornaments of flowers, ferns, trees, shrubs, and mosses. Nature is in league with art in the brook garden, for nowhere is wild vegetation so luxuriant, and the two forces of warmth and moisture so generally combined, as by the banks of running streams. The brook is its own landscape gardener, and curves and slopes its own banks and terraces, sheltered from rough winds and prone to the sun.

Many houses near the Thames, especially those under the chalk hills which fringe much of the valley, have near them some rill or brook running to the main river. On the sides of the chalk hills, though not on their summits, these streams cut narrow gullies and glens. Wherever, in fact, there is hilly, broken ground, the little rills form these broken ravines and gullies, often only a few yards in width from side to side. Usually these brooklet valleys are choked with brambles or fern, and filled with rank undergrowth. Often the stream is overhung and invisible, or dammed and left in soak, breeding frogs, gnats, and flies. The trees are always tall and beautifully grown, whatever their age, for the moisture and warmth force vertical growth; the smaller bushes—hawthorn, briar, and wild guelder-rose—also assume graceful forms unhidden, for they always bow their heads towards the sun-reflecting stream. Part of the charm of the transformation of these brookside jungles into the brookside garden lies in the gradual and experimental method of their conversion. Every one knows that running water is the most delightful thing to play with provided in this world; and the management of the water is the first amusement in forming the brook garden. When the banks have been cleared of brambles to such a distance up the sides of the hollow as the ground suggests, and all poor or ill-grown trees have been cut away to let in the only two "fertilisers" needed—air and sun—the dimensions of the first pool or "reach" in the brook garden are decided upon. This must depend partly on the size and flow of the stream. If it is a chalk spring, from six feet to six yards wide, its flow will probably be constant throughout the year, for it is fed from the reservoirs in the heart of the hills. Then it needs little care except to clear its course, and the planting of its banks with flowers and stocking of its waters with lilies, arums, irises, and trout is begun at once. But most streams are full in winter and low in summer. On these the brook gardener must take a lesson from the beavers, and make a succession of delightful little dams, cascades, and pools, to keep his water at the right level throughout the year. Where there is a considerable brook these dams may be carried away in winter and ruin the garden. Stone or concrete outfalls are costly, and often give way, undermined by the floods. But there is a form of overflow which gives an added sparkle even to the waterfall, and costs little. Each little dam is roofed with thin split oak, overlapping like the laths of a Venetian blind when closed. This forms the bottom of the "shoot," and carries the water clear of the dam into the stream below. As the water runs over the overlapping laths it forms a ripple above each ridge, and from the everlasting throb of these pleats of running water the sunlight flashes as if from a moving river of diamonds. Beside these cascades, and only two inches higher than their level, are cut "flood-overflows" paved with turf, to let off the swollen waters in autumn rains. With the cutting out of undergrowth and the admission of light the rank vegetation of the banks changes to sweet grass, clovers, woodruffe, and daisies, and the flowers natural to the soil can be planted or will often spring up by themselves. In spring the banks should be set thick with violets, primroses, and the lovely bronze, crimson, and purple polyanthuses. Periwinkle, daffodils, crocuses, and scarlet or yellow tulips will all flourish and blossom before the grass grows too high or hides their flowers. For later in the year taller plants, which can rise, as all summer wood-plants do, above the level of the grasses, must be set on the banks. Clumps of everlasting peas, masses of phloxes, hollyhocks, and, far later in the year, scarlet tritomas (red-hot pokers) look splendid among the deep greens of the summer grass and beneath the canopy of trees. For it must be remembered that the brookside garden is in nearly every case a shaded garden, beneath the tall trees natural to such places. All beautiful flowering shrubs and trees, such as the guelder-rose, the pink may, the hardy azaleas, and certain of the more beautiful rhododendrons will aid the background of the brook garden, and flourish naturally in its sheltered hollow. There is one "new" rhododendron, which the writer saw recently in such a situation, but of which he does not recollect the name, which has masses of wax-like, pale sulphur flowers, which are mirrored in a miniature pool set almost at its foot. This half-wild flower garden pertains mainly to the banks of the brook gully, and not to the banks of the brook itself. It is in the latter, by the waterside, that the special charm of these gardens should be found. It is the nature of such places to have a strip of level ground opposite to each of the curves of the stream. All the narcissi, or chalice-flowers, naturally love the banks of brooks—

"Those springs On chaliced flowers that lies."

These will grow in great tufts and ever-increasing masses, multiplying their bulbs till they touch the water's edge. Not only the old pheasant's-eye narcissus, but all the modern and splendid varieties in gold, cream, white, and orange, grow best by the brookside. By these, but on the lower ground almost level with the water, big forget-me-nots, butterburs, and wild snake's-head lilies should be set, and all the crimson and white varieties of garden daisy. Lily-of-the-valley, despite its name, likes more sun than our brook garden admits except in certain places; but certain of the lilies which flourish in the garden beds grow with an added and more languid grace on the green bank of our flower-bordered brook, and the American swamp-lily finds its natural place. Then special pools will be formed for the growth of those plants, foreign and English, which love to have their roots in water-soaked mud or the beds of running streams, while leaves and flowers rise far above into the light. Other pools should become "beds" for the water-flowers that float upon the surface. In the slang of the rock garden the plants living and flourishing on upright rocks are called "verticals." If we must have a slang for the flora of the brook garden we will term them "horizontals"— the plants that lie flat on the water surface, and only use their stems as cables to anchor them to the bottom of the stream. Of these we may plant, in addition to the white water-lily and the yellow, the crimson scented water-lily and the wild water-villarsia. White water-crowfoot, water-soldier, and arrowheads will form the fringe of the pool. But the crowning floral honour of the brook garden is in the irises set in and beside its waters, chief among which are the glorious irises of Japan— purple, blue, rose-colour, and crimson—the pink English flowering rush, big white mocassin flowers, New Zealand flax, and pink buckbean, and bog arum. The great white arum of the greenhouse is quite hardy out of doors if it is planted eighteen inches below water, and blossoms in the brook.



The brook garden is like a colony. It is always extending its range, following the course of the stream. Each year adds a little more to the completeness of the lower pools, and each year some yards of the upper waters and their banks are brought into partial harmony with the lower reaches. In one perfect example of this kind of garden, under the Berkshire downs, the succession of trout-pools, water gardening, half-wild banks, and turf-walk stretches for nearly a mile among the fields in a narrow glen, unseen from either side, except for its narrow riband of tree-tops among the fields; but within its narrow limits it is glorious with flowers, cascades, pools full of trout, set with water-plants in blossom, and the haunt of innumerable birds. Even the wild ducks ascend to the topmost pools, and are constantly in flight down the narrow winding vistas of grass, water, and trees, which they, like the kingfishers and water-hens, seem to think are set out for their especial pleasure.



COTTAGES AND CAMPING OUT

This is supposed to be a "business" country, but one wonders why new wants which accompany any change of daily habit are so slowly realised. Take, for instance, the annual migration to the Thames Valley, which has assumed proportions never reached before. Beyond the enlargement of the riverside inns, little has been done to meet this new taste of English families for rustic life in place of the seaside; and though the thousands of visitors to the "happy valley" of our largest river do contrive to enjoy a maximum of fresh air and outdoor life, this is often accompanied by a needless sacrifice of comfort. If any improvements in the conditions of life by the river can be suggested and put into practice, these will certainly benefit other districts. The profits accruing to intelligent provision for such a demand should also be considerable. But the first condition is that the wants and wishes of those who take their pleasure in this way should be properly understood.

The boating part of the river life is quite well organised; indeed, it would be difficult to improve upon it. Its convenience and elasticity is remarkable. The way in which the leading boatbuilders provide craft of all descriptions, which may be left by their hirers at any point on the river, to be brought back to Oxford or Reading by train, is beyond all praise. It is a triumph of good sense and management. But boating is only part of the amusement of the holiday, just as bathing is at the seaside. The real object with which an ever-growing number of visitors have adopted the river life is in order to spend the utmost length of time out of doors and in beautiful scenery. To this end they need accommodation of a special kind. The large hotel, with its inducements to spend much time over meals and indoors, is wholly out of place for such a purpose. What is needed is a cottage which can be rented either wholly or in part, or actual camp life under tents. The latter is now not confined to boating-men travelling up or down the river. It is enjoyed partly as an annexe to up-river houseboats; more often as "camping out" for its own sake, the tents being pitched near the river, but in complete detachment from any other habitation, fixed or floating. In these tents whole families of the well-to-do classes now elect to live, sometimes for weeks; rising early, bathing in the river, sometimes cooking their own food, or more often employing a servant or local man-of-all-work to do this, taking their meals in the open, and using the tents only to sleep in, or as a shelter from rain. Even little children now share the delights of this al fresco life, which realises their wildest dreams of adventure, and is by general consent as wholesome as it is entrancing. Whether their elders derive as much pleasure as they might from the same environment is doubtful. The business is not properly organised, and only half understood by the greater number of those who are nevertheless so well pleased by the experiment that they are anxious to repeat it. Sporadic camping out involves too much fetching and carrying. Tradesmen do not "call" at isolated tents in a riverside meadow, and all commodities have to be fetched by the campers. On the other hand, sociable camping out, when several groups set up their tents in proximity, needs proper arrangement. Philosophers may see in it the evolution of the social life from its primitive elements, with the growth of division of labour and reciprocal good offices. English families would usually prefer the sporadic tent, if it were not for the hard work involved. But if camping out is to be a real success, such understandings and arrangements must be made. Where this is not done the result is a failure, obvious to the passer-by. Separate and unsightly fires for cooking, and untidiness, because there are no "hours" for performing the light but necessary domestic work, are common objects of individualism on the camping ground. Yachts, which are self-maintaining, never have clothes hanging in the rigging after 8 a.m. when in harbour, and the self-respecting camp must not fall behind this example.

The camp in the country should have its communal kitchen in a wooden movable house, in which meals can be cooked, and from which it should be possible to purchase food as required. Here is an opening for commercial enterprise. The tourist agencies might rent camping grounds and supply tents on hire, with kitchens and all proper necessaries for living under canvas. They do this with great success for travellers in the East, and at a moderate cost. In England tents, if not so luxurious as those provided from Egypt for life in Palestine, are very cheap, and need no transport animals. But such a firm could easily make them removable by arranging for them to be called for and taken up river a few stages, as the boats are. The hire could be fixed at so much per tent, and a camp servant could also be provided. Commissionaires and ex-soldiers with good characters could be found employment in the early autumn, when they now find it difficult to earn a wage. They thoroughly understand not only the management of tents, but the duties of a camp. Rain-proof tents with movable board floors would be provided from London in uncertain weather on the receipt of a wire, for life under canvas is quite pleasant even if the hours are not all serene, if the interior is kept dry.

Though a new departure in this country camping out is part of the ordinary and well-understood amusements of the eastern cities of the United States. The whole State of Maine is practically a State reserve for this, the most popular form of holiday-making in America. Its forests, rivers, and lakes are one vast playground and public sporting domain, which is enjoyed almost entirely by means of camping out and boating. The rivers teem with State-reared trout, of which as many are allowed to be caught as can possibly be consumed by the party. The woods are free to shoot in, with a limit for deer and caribou; State-provided guides are employed at a fixed wage. At regular intervals along the rivers are the camping grounds, each under the control of a camp agent, who arranges for the comfort and convenience of the travelling host of tent-dwellers. Each "base" is properly organised and supplied, and visitors can purchase necessaries, in addition to the fish and birds which fall to rod and gun. Ladies and children are among those who enjoy the pastime most keenly, amusing themselves by the river and among the woods while the husbands hunt or fish.

The "residential cottage" is perhaps the safer basis for the complete outdoor life, though it tends to reduce the number of hours spent in the open. Habit is too strong when once we are under a roof. It is evidence of the habitable nature of many of our much-abused cottages that in the Thames-side villages a great proportion are now occupied for several months in the year by people who, though willing to pay for simple accommodation, will not tolerate dirt, squalor, or want of sanitation. To their surprise they have found hundreds of cottages, homely, but not uncomfortable, kept with scrupulous neatness, and furnished by no means badly. Nearly all have ample kitchen accommodation, fair beds, and an equipment of glass, china, and crockery, which shows how cheap and good are the necessaries of life in England. The well-to-do agricultural labourer and his wife, whose children are out in the world, the village artisans, small tradesfolk, and "retired" couples are the owners or occupiers, and now let their rooms at from L1 to L1 10s. per week, from June till the middle of September. The results are good in every way. Visitors are pleased at what seems a cheap holiday, and the letters of the rooms save money for the winter, and realise in a pleasant way that their later years have fallen on good times. It is also an encouragement to landowners to build good and picturesque cottages. For the first time they see their way to charging a fair rent on their outlay. The town comes to help the country, and the country sees in the movement a hopeful future.



NETTING STAGS IN RICHMOND PARK

About the opening of the year I went to see the big stags netted in Richmond Park for transfer to Windsor. Last season this unique and ancient hunting had to be put off till February. There was too much "bone" in the ground to make riding safe. When the frost gave, the stags were more than usually cunning, and were helped by more than their usual share of luck. One fine stag charged the toils at best pace, and, happening to hit a rotten net, burst through, and went off shaking his antlers as proudly as if he had upset a rival in a charge. Another took to the lake, and after playing Robinson Crusoe on the island for some time, swam across to the wood, took a standing leap out of the shallow water on the brink over the paling, and laid up in Penn Wood.

It was on a lovely mellow January morning, after just a touch of frost, with haze and mist veiling the distant woods, a winter sun struggling to make itself seen, and all the birds, from the mallards on the lakes to the jackdaws in the old oaks, beginning to talk, but with their minds not quite made up as to whether they should take a morning flight or stop where they were, when the business of setting up the toils began.

This, which is probably managed in exactly the same way as when Queen Dido arranged to give a day's sport to good Aeneas, is carried out according to the ancient and unvarying tradition of this royal and ancient park. Nor were we allowed to forget that in this case, too, the stags were being taken by the servants of a queen. Everything was ready for the transport of the stags to Windsor, and in the foreground was a good strong wooden cart, painted red and blue, and inscribed in the largest capitals with the words, "Her Majesty's cart."

The art and practice of taking the stags in the toils is carried out in this wise. A body of mounted men, under the orders of the superintendent of the park, ride out to find the herds of red deer. They then ride in and "cut" out the finest stags, and, spreading out in a broad line, chase them at the utmost speed of horse towards that quarter of the park where the nets are spread. Some two hundred yards in front of the nets two deerhounds are held, and slipped as the stag gallops past—not to injure or distress him, but to hurry him up and distract his attention from the long lines of nets in front.

The stags were known to be full of running, and resourceful; consequently the number of riders who had been asked to help was rather larger than usual. Even so they had to make a wide sweep of the Southern Park before they found their deer, and had a racing burst of more than a mile and a half before they brought them round. Meantime, while they are away on their quest, let us inspect the ancient contrivance of the toils. They are heavy nets of rope, thick as a finger, and with meshes not more than ten inches square—very strong, and to our eyes almost too solid and visible. Partly to render them less conspicuous, the line—at least one hundred yards long—is set in a long, narrow depression or shallow drain, running from a wood on the Richmond side of Penn Pond down to a small pool. Just in the centre of this line is a most ancient pollard oak, the crown of which will hold eight men easily, ready to spring down to earth and seize the deer as the nets fall on him. In this most appropriate watch-tower the keeper in command at the toils, and several of his helpers, ensconced themselves. The Richmond stags, though so constantly in the sight of the crowds of visitors to the park, are among the boldest and gamest of all park stags. One, who was more especially the object of the day's chase, jumped a paling 6 ft. 3 in. high the day before, merely for amusement. Those sometimes transferred to the paddocks at Ascot for hunting with the Royal Buckhounds were noted for their courage and straight running. Perhaps the most famous was old Volunteer, whose latest exploit was to give a run of nearly thirty miles, at the end of which he was not taken. Having had his day out, and not being taken up in the cart as usual, he made his way home by night, jumped into his paddock, and was found there next morning!

Holloaing, long and loud, was now heard from the east. Keen was the keeper's glance as he looked, not to the sound, but along his line of nets, the top at least eight feet from the ground, lightly hitched on thick saplings, while an ample fold of some four feet more lay upon the ground. Before and behind, the dead and tangled bracken broke the line; the props were of natural wood, and the tawny nets themselves made no break in the general colour of the hillside. Then the shouting came louder down the wind. Where were they? Not coming "up the straight" certainly, for no stags were visible and the hounds were not slipped. Suddenly from above us three big red stags came galloping obliquely down the hill, not as they are represented in pictures with muzzles up and horns back, but at high speed for all that; and though they carried their horns erect, their sides were heaving and the smoke coming out of their nostrils. They saw the nets, but determined to push through them. One charged them gallantly head first, and as the thick meshes fell tumultuously over his head and back, the second jumped the falling toils twenty yards to his left, taking them most gracefully, as if he were doing a circus trick. Down from the tree sprang the keeper and his men, and seized the helpless stag, while the second, which had jumped and won, stood panting and looking over his shoulder to see what curious game this was. The third broke back and disappeared.

Perhaps the most strange thing was the calm self-possession of the netted stag. The astonishing catching power of a net held him enmeshed at all points. His muzzle was held by one mesh, his horns by three or four; all four feet were caught also. In addition, about eight men kindly caught hold of his horns, legs, and back, to prevent him hurting himself. This he was far too clever to do. He just lay quiet, calmly regarding the fun with his upper eye, and wondering when the deuce they were going to take him "out of that." In a very few minutes his feet were buckled together by soft straps, and a saw trimmed off his antler tops, for which we felt sorry, but there was not room for them in the "compartment" he was to travel in. It is only when a stag lies close before you on the ground that you realise that he is not a "slab-sided," flat-ribbed animal, but a bulky, well-rounded beast. It took six men to lift him on to the bed of fern in "Her Majesty's cart," and when there he quickly twisted round, and lay couched, bound but not subdued, calmly regarding the scene over the side of his cart. A nice lot of chopped mangold root had been put in his box, and we hope he enjoyed his lunch in the train on his way to Windsor.



The next drive was far more rapid, and its results more exciting. The stags were again brought round from above Penn Pond, then through the oak grove below White Lodge, and came galloping up the long side of the slope, straight for the nets. Then the brace of deerhounds, which, like the keeper, seemed to know the game thoroughly, were slipped, and most beautiful they looked, one laying out, lithe and low, just parallel with the haunch of one stag, the other driving the brace below. The single stag charged the nets and was enveloped as before, but the other brace broke back and escaped.

Four in all were taken during the day, without accident or mishap. One of the keepers did have an accident of a rather curious kind, when assisting to catch stags at Buckhurst Park in Kent. He was galloping as hard as he could, driving a stag, when his horse cannoned up against another deer which was lying crouched in the fern, as deer sometimes do. The horse went a complete somersault, and its rider was badly bruised and hurt, though no bones were broken.



RICHMOND OLD DEER PARK

If Henry VII.'s palace at Richmond still stood by the riverside, we should have a second Hampton Court at half the distance from London. It was almost the first of the fine Tudor palaces in this country, built very stately, with a prodigious number of towers, turrets, cupolas, and gilded vanes, on a site as fine as that of Wolsey's competing pile higher up the river. But though the palace has gone, the park is left. It is the precinct now called the Old Deer Park, in which not one in ten thousand of those who visit and enjoy the park on the hill which we call Richmond Park has ever set foot, except in the corner furthest from the river to see a horse-show or a cricket-match. Old it certainly is. The park on the hill, venerable as it looks now, is only a thing of yesterday in comparison with it. Charles I. made the latter, and the Penn Ponds were dug by the Princess Amelia. The Old Deer Park was a Royal demesne when the Saxon Kings had their palace at Sheen, before it was given its new name of Richmond by the first Tudor, after the Castle in Yorkshire from which he took his title when a subject. In the middle of this ancient and forgotten park, forgotten because it is neither reserved for the pleasure of the Sovereign nor thrown open for the enjoyment of his subjects, it was lately proposed to build a scientific laboratory, to supplement the work of the observatory, which is mainly employed in magnetic observations and in testing thermometers and chronometers. The proposal is an instance of the mischief which may be done by precedent, and of the way in which Royal favour may be misused quite unconsciously by persons who forget that the circumstances which lent grace and propriety to a concession at one time may be so altered later that to presume on it is an error of judgment. George III. instructed Chambers, the architect, who had been doing work for him at Kew, to erect an observatory in the Old Park. It was a thoughtful act, at a time when there were no public funds for the encouragement of science, and when the study of astronomy was still regarded partly as something peculiarly under Royal patronage because its practical use was to keep and make records to ensure the safe navigation of his Majesty's ships.

The application to erect new buildings was refused, for a place like the Old Deer Park, if kept open and wild, and not built upon, has a present and future value to the health and happiness of millions of people beyond any calculation or power of words.

It does not need much imagination to make this forecast. But as few people have ever made what, in the old words of forest law, was called a "perambulation" of the park, some description of its present condition and appearance may help to form an opinion. It is the largest and finest riverside park in England. It covers nearly four hundred acres, but this great area, as large as Hyde Park, is shaped and placed so as to gain the maximum of beauty and convenience from its surroundings. On the London side it has for neighbour the whole depth of Kew Gardens, from the road at the back to the river at the front—two hundred and eighty acres of garden and wood. But whoever first acquired the land for the park, whether Norman or Saxon, very rightly thought that the feature to be desired was to make the most of the river-front, where the Thames, pushing into Middlesex, cuts "a huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle, out." Whether by accident or design, the park is like a half-open fan, narrowest at the back, which is the ugly or plain side, near the road, and with its widest part unbosoming on the Thames. From back to front it is some half-mile deep; but the Thames front extends for a mile along one of the most beautiful river scenes in England.

On the Kew Gardens border it lies against what was, until a few years ago, the wild and private part of Kew. To this it served as an open park, where all the birds drew out to sun themselves and feed. So they do still. Along the margin are scattered old beech trees, and a wilderness of long grass and flowers, where wood-pigeons, thrushes, pheasants, crows, jays, and all the smaller birds of the gardens may be seen sunning themselves. The narrow end or "stick" of the "fan," near the road, is leased to a cricket club, and cut off from the greater area by a belt of young plantation. In this a brood of partridges hatches nearly every year, though what becomes of the birds later is only conjectured. Beyond this cross-belt the whole area of the park stretches out, ever widening, and with an imperceptible fall, to the Thames. It is studded here and there with very large and very ancient trees, and is one of the largest and least broken areas of ancient pasture, whether for deer or cattle, in England. Until lately the old observatory was the only building upon it, and the turf was unbroken. But recent years have added two disfigurements. One is a large red building with skylights, connected with the games and athletic sports, which have found a more or less permanent home in the upper part of the park, where the annual horse-shows are held, uses for which that part of the ground is well suited. The other is a permanent and very deplorable blemish, made purposely, in the interests of the popular game of the hour. The greater part of this fine park has been leased to a private golf club. Golf, as every one knows, originally flourished on sand dunes, which are about as completely the natural opposite of an old flat park of ancient pasture as can be found in this country. The golf club have been allowed to do what they can to remedy this defect of Nature by converting the Old Park into a sand dune, and this they have done by digging holes and throwing up dozens, or scores, of bunkers. But the margins of the park are quite unspoilt, and the river-front is the wildest and the freest piece of Nature left near London. It is completely bounded by an ancient moat, beyond which lies the towing-path, and beyond that the river and the ancient and picturesque front of Isleworth. The path between the moat and the river is set with ancient trees, mostly horse-chestnuts and beech, in continuous line. Under their branches and between their stems the visitor in the park sees a series of pictures, framed by trees and branches, of the Queen Anne houses and rose-gardens of Isleworth, the old church with its tower and huge sun-dial, the ferry and the old inn of the "London Apprentice," the poplars and willows of the Isleworth eyots, the granaries and mills where the little Hounslow stream falls in, and further Twickenham way the gardens of the fine villas there, while towards London the pavilions and park of Syon House begin. At the present moment the margin of the Old Deer Park and its moat give a mile of beauty and refreshment. No one has troubled to mow the grass or cut the weeds, or clear the moat, or meddle with the hedge beyond it. So the moat, which is filled from the river when necessary, and is not stagnant, is full of water-flowers, and quite clear, and fringed with a deep bed of reeds and sedges. In it are shoals of dace, and minnow, and gudgeon, and sticklebacks, and plenty of small pike basking in the sun. The largest and bluest forget-me-nots, and water-mints, and big water-docks and burdocks flourish in the water, and the hedge beyond is full of sweet elder in flower, and covered with wild hops. Huge elms, partly decaying, and a dark grove of tall beeches line the park near the moat, and besides water and flowers there is shade and the motion of leaves. If the proposal to build on such a site leads to a better knowledge of what this ancient park really is, and its value to the amenities of the capital, it will have done good, not harm. The late Queen recently presented the cottage in the reserved part of Kew Gardens and its precincts for the use of the public. It would seem that a similar sacrifice has been made by Royalty in the case of the Old Deer Park, but that the public are excluded by the Office of Woods and Forests, which has charge of it, and the park neglected and disfigured. If it were put on the same footing as Richmond Park upon the hill, and communication were open between the park and Kew Gardens at proper hours, an unequalled domain, still the property of the Crown, but enjoyed within reasonable limitations by every subject, would be open from Kew Green practically to Kingston. The line from the boundary of the Old Deer Park is taken on by Richmond Green, and the towing-path to the Terrace Gardens, formerly the property of the Duke of Buccleuch, and now of the Richmond Corporation, thence by the terrace and the open slope under it to Richmond Park, through Sudbrook Park to Ham Common, a series of varied scenery unrivalled even in the valley of the Thames.