The Open Air Part 3

There was a humming in the tops of the young pines as if a swarm of bees were busy at the green cones. They were not visible through the thick needles, and on listening longer it seemed as if the sound was not exactly the note of the bee--a slightly different pitch, and the hum was different, while bees have a habit of working close together.

Where there is one bee there are usually five or six, and the hum is that of a group; here there only appeared one or two insects to a pine.

Nor was the buzz like that of the humble-bee, for every now and then one came along low down, flying between the stems, and his note was much deeper. By-and-by, crossing to the edge of the plantation, where the boughs could be examined, being within reach, I found it was wasps.

A yellow wasp wandered over the blue-green needles till he found a pair with a drop of liquid like dew between them. There he fastened himself and sucked at it; you could see the drop gradually drying up till it was gone. The largest of these drops were generally between two needles--those of the Scotch fir or pine grow in pairs--but there were smaller drops on the outside of other needles. In searching for this exuding turpentine the wasps filled the whole plantation with the sound of their wings. There must have been many thousands of them. They caused no inconvenience to any one walking in the copse, because they were high overhead.

Watching these wasps I found two coc.o.o.ns of pale yellow silk on a branch of larch, and by them a green spider. He was quite green--two shades, lightest on the back, but little lighter than the green larch bough. An ant had climbed up a pine and over to the extreme end of a bough; she seemed slow and stupefied in her motions, as if she had drunken of the turpentine and had lost her intelligence. The soft cones of the larch could be easily cut down the centre with a penknife, showing the structure of the cone and the seeds inside each scale. It is for these seeds that birds frequent the fir copses, shearing off the scales with their beaks. One larch cone had still the tuft at the top--a pineapple in miniature. The loudest sound in the wood was the humming in the trees; there was no wind, no sunshine; a summer day, still and shadowy, under large clouds high up. To this low humming the sense of hearing soon became accustomed, and it served but to render the silence deeper. In time, as I sat waiting and listening, there came the faintest far-off song of a bird away in the trees; the merest thin upstroke of sound, slight in structure, the echo of the strong spring singing. This was the summer repet.i.tion, dying away. A willow-wren still remembered his love, and whispered about it to the silent fir tops, as in after days we turn over the pages of letters, withered as leaves, and sigh. So gentle, so low, so tender a song the willow-wren sang that it could scarce be known as the voice of a bird, but was like that of some yet more delicate creature with the heart of a woman.

A b.u.t.terfly with folded wings clung to a stalk of gra.s.s; upon the under side of his wing thus exposed there were buff spots, and dark dots and streaks drawn on the finest ground of pearl-grey, through which there came a tint of blue; there was a blue, too, shut up between the wings, visible at the edges. The spots, and dots, and streaks were not exactly the same on each wing; at first sight they appeared similar, but, on comparing one with the other, differences could be traced. The pattern was not mechanical; it was hand-painted by Nature, and the painter's eye and fingers varied in their work.

How fond Nature is of spot-markings!--the wings of b.u.t.terflies, the feathers of birds, the surface of eggs, the leaves and petals of plants are constantly spotted; so, too, fish--as trout. From the wing of the b.u.t.terfly I looked involuntarily at the foxglove I had just gathered; inside, the bells were thickly spotted--dots and dustings that might have been transferred to a b.u.t.terfly's wing. The spotted meadow-orchis; the brown dots on the cowslips; brown, black, greenish, reddish dots and spots and dustings on the eggs of the finches, the whitethroats, and so many others--some of the spots seem as if they had been splashed on and had run into short streaks, some mottled, some gathered together at the end; all spots, dots, dustings of minute specks, mottlings, and irregular markings. The histories, the stories, the library of knowledge contained in those signs! It was thought a wonderful thing when at last the strange inscriptions of a.s.syria were read, made of nail-headed characters whose sound was lost; it was thought a triumph when the yet older hieroglyphics of Egypt were compelled to give up their messages, and the world hoped that we should know the secrets of life. That hope was disappointed; there was nothing in the records but superst.i.tion and useless ritual. But here we go back to the beginning; the antiquity of Egypt is nothing to the age of these signs--they date from unfathomable time. In them the sun has written his commands, and the wind inscribed deep thought. They were before superst.i.tion began; they were composed in the old, old world, when the Immortals walked on earth. They have been handed down thousands upon thousands of years to tell us that to-day we are still in the presence of the heavenly visitants, if only we will give up the soul to these pure influences.

The language in which they are written has no alphabet, and cannot be reduced to order. It can only be understood by the heart and spirit.

Look down into this foxglove bell and you will know that; look long and lovingly at this blue b.u.t.terfly's underwing, and a feeling will rise to your consciousness.

Some time pa.s.sed, but the b.u.t.terfly did not move; a touch presently disturbed him, and flutter, flutter went his blue wings, only for a few seconds, to another gra.s.s-stalk, and so on from gra.s.s-stalk to gra.s.s-stalk as compelled, a yard flight at most. He would not go farther; he settled as if it had been night. There was no sunshine, and under the clouds he had no animation. A swallow went by singing in the air, and as he flew his forked tail was shut, and but one streak of feathers drawn past. Though but young trees, there was a coating of fallen needles under the firs an inch thick, and beneath it the dry earth touched warm. A fern here and there came up through it, the palest of pale green, quite a different colour to the same species growing in the hedges away from the copse. A yellow fungus, streaked with scarlet as if blood had soaked into it, stood at the foot of a tree occasionally. Black fungi, dry, shrivelled, and dead, lay fallen about, detached from the places where they had grown, and crumbling if handled. Still more silent after sunset, the wood was utterly quiet; the swallows no longer pa.s.sed twittering, the willow-wren was gone, there was no hum or rustle; the wood was as silent as a shadow.

But before the darkness a song and an answer arose in a tree, one bird singing a few notes and another replying side by side. Two goldfinches sat on the cross of a larch-fir and sang, looking towards the west, where the light lingered. High up, the larch-fir boughs with the top shoot form a cross; on this one goldfinch sat, the other was immediately beneath. At even the birds often turn to the west as they sing.

Next morning the August sun shone, and the wood was all a-hum with insects. The wasps were working at the pine boughs high overhead; the bees by dozens were crowding to the bramble flowers; swarming on them, they seemed so delighted; humble-bees went wandering among the ferns in the copse and in the ditches--they sometimes alight on fern--and calling at every purple heath-blossom, at the purple knapweeds, purple thistles, and broad handfuls of yellow-weed flowers. Wasp-like flies barred with yellow suspended themselves in the air between the pine-trunks like hawks hovering, and suddenly shot themselves a yard forward or to one side, as if the rapid vibration of their wings while hovering had acc.u.mulated force which drove them as if discharged from a cross-bow. The sun had set all things in motion.

There was a hum under the oak by the hedge, a hum in the pine wood, a humming among the heath and the dry gra.s.s which heat had browned. The air was alive and merry with sound, so that the day seemed quite different and twice as pleasant. Three blue b.u.t.terflies fluttered in one flowery corner, the warmth gave them vigour; two had a silvery edging to their wings, one was brown and blue. The nuts reddening at the tips appeared ripening like apples in the sunshine. This corner is a favourite with wild bees and b.u.t.terflies; if the sun shines they are sure to be found there at the heath-bloom and tall yellow-weed, and among the dry seeding bennets or gra.s.s-stalks. All things, even b.u.t.terflies, are local in their habits. Far up on the hillside the blue green of the pines beneath shone in the sun--a burnished colour; the high hillside is covered with heath and heather. Where there are open places a small species of gorse, scarcely six inches high, is in bloom, the yellow blossom on the extremity of the stalk.

Some of these gorse plants seemed to have a different flower growing at the side of the stem, instead of at the extremity. These florets were cream-coloured, so that it looked like a new species of gorse. On gathering it to examine the thick-set florets, if was found that a slender runner or creeper had been torn up with it. Like a thread the creeper had wound itself round and round the furze, buried in and hidden by the p.r.i.c.kles, and it was this creeper that bore the white or cream-florets. It was tied round as tightly as thread could be, so that the florets seemed to start from the stem, deceiving the eye at first.

In some places this parasite plant had grown up the heath and strangled it, so that the tips turned brown and died. The runners extended in every direction across the ground, like those of strawberries. One creeper had climbed up a bennet, or seeding gra.s.s-stalk, binding the stalk and a blade of the gra.s.s together, and flowering there. On the ground there were patches of grey lichen; many of the pillar-like stems were crowned with a red top. Under a small boulder stone there was an ants' nest. These boulders, or, as they are called locally, "bowlers,"

were scattered about the heath. Many of the lesser stones were spotted with dark dots of lichen, not unlike a toad.

Thoughtlessly turning over a boulder about nine inches square, lo!

there was subject enough for thinking underneath it--a subject that has been thought about many thousand years; for this piece of rock had formed the roof of an ants' nest. The stone had sunk three inches deep into the dry soil of sand and peaty mould, and in the floor of the hole the ants had worked out their excavations, which resembled an outline map. The largest excavation was like England; at the top, or north, they had left a narrow bridge, an eighth of an inch wide, under which to pa.s.s into Scotland, and from Scotland again another narrow arch led to the Orkney Islands; these last, however, were dug in the perpendicular side of the hole. In the corners of these excavations tunnels ran deeper into the ground, and the ants immediately began hurrying their treasures, the eggs, down into these cellars. At one angle a tunnel went beneath the heath into further excavations beneath a second boulder stone. Without, a fern grew, and the dead dry stems of heather crossed each other.

This discovery led to the turning over of another boulder stone not far off, and under it there appeared a much more extensive and complete series of galleries, bridges, cellars and tunnels. In these the whole life-history of the ant was exposed at a single glance, as if one had taken off the roofs of a city. One cell contained a dust-like deposit, another a collection resembling the dust, but now elongated and a little greenish; a third treasury, much larger, was piled up with yellowish grains about the size of wheat, each with a black dot on the top, and looking like minute hop-pockets. Besides these, there was a pure white substance in a corridor, which the irritated ants seemed particularly anxious to remove out of sight, and quickly carried away.

Among the ants rushing about there were several with wings; one took flight; one was seized by a wingless ant and dragged down into a cellar, as if to prevent its taking wing. A helpless green fly was in the midst, and round the outside galleries there crept a creature like a spider, seeming to try to hide itself. If the nest had been formed under gla.s.s, it could not have been more open to view. The stone was carefully replaced.

Below the pine wood on the slope of the hill a plough was already at work, the crop of peas having been harvested. The four horses came up the slope, and at the ridge swept round in a fine curve to go back and open a fresh furrow. As soon as they faced down-hill they paused, well aware of what had to be done, and the ploughman in a manner knocked his plough to pieces, putting it together again the opposite way, that the earth he was about to cut with the share might fall on what he had just turned. With a piece of iron he hammered the edge of the share, to set it, for the hard ground had bent the edge, and it did not cut properly.

I said his team looked light; they were not so heavily built as the cart-horses used in many places. No, he said, they did not want heavy horses. "Dese yer thick-boned hosses be more clutter-headed over the clots," as he expressed it, _i.e._ more clumsy or thick-headed over the clods. He preferred comparatively light cart-horses to step well. In the heat of the sun the furze-pods kept popping and bursting open; they are often as full of insects as seeds, which come creeping out. A green and black lady-bird--exactly like a tortoise--flew on to my hand. Again on the heath, and the gra.s.shoppers rose at every step, sometimes three or four springing in as many directions. They were winged, and as soon as they were up spread their vanes and floated forwards. As the force of the original hop decreased, the wind took their wings and turned them aside from the straight course before they fell. Down the dusty road, inches deep in sand, comes a sulphur b.u.t.terfly, rushing as quick as if hastening to a b.u.t.terfly-fair. If only rare, how valued he would be! His colour is so evident and visible; he fills the road, being brighter than all, and for the moment is more than the trees and flowers.

Coming so suddenly over the hedge into the road close to me, he startled me as if I had been awakened from a dream--I had been thinking it was August, and woke to find it February--for the sulphur b.u.t.terfly is the February pleasure. Between the dark storms and wintry rains there is a warm sunny interval of a week in February. Away one goes for a walk, and presently there appears a bright yellow spot among the furze, dancing along like a flower let loose. It is a sulphur b.u.t.terfly, who thus comes before the earliest chiffchaff--before the watch begins for the first swallow. I call it the February pleasure, as each month has its delight. So a.s.sociated as this b.u.t.terfly is with early spring, to see it again after months of leaf and flower--after June and July--with the wheat in shock and the scent of harvest in the land, is startling. The summer, then, is a dream! It is still winter; but no, here are the trees in leaf, the nuts reddening, the hum of bees, and dry summer dust on the high wiry gra.s.s. The sulphur b.u.t.terfly comes twice; there is a second brood; but there are some facts that are always new and surprising, however well known. I may say again, if only rare, how this b.u.t.terfly would be prized! Along the hedgerow there are several spiders' webs. In the centre they are drawn inwards, forming a funnel, which goes back a few inches into the hedge, and at the bottom of this the spider waits. If you look down the funnel you see his claws at the bottom, ready to run up and seize a fly.

Sitting in the garden after a walk, it is pleasant to watch the eave-swallows feeding their young on the wing. The young bird follows the old one; then they face each other and stay a moment in the air, while the insect food is transferred from beak to beak; with a loud note they part. There was a constant warfare between the eave-swallows and the sparrows frequenting a house where I was staying during the early part of the summer. The sparrows strove their utmost to get possession of the nests the swallows built, and there was no peace between them It is common enough for one or two swallows' nests to be attacked in this way, but here every nest along the eaves was fought for, and the sparrows succeeded in conquering many of them. The driven-out swallows after a while began to build again, and I noticed that more than a pair seemed to work at the same nest. One nest was worked at by four swallows; often all four came together and twittered at it.

NATURE ON THE ROOF

Increased activity on the housetop marks the approach of spring and summer exactly as in the woods and hedges, for the roof has its migrants, its semi-migrants, and its residents. When the first dandelion is opening on a sheltered bank, and the pale-blue field veronica flowers in the waste corner, the whistle of the starling comes from his favourite ledge. Day by day it is heard more and more, till, when the first green spray appears on the hawthorn, he visits the roof continually. Besides the roof-tree and the chimney-pot, he has his own special place, sometimes under an eave, sometimes between two gables; and as I sit writing, I can see a pair who have a ledge which slightly projects from the wall between the eaves and the highest window. This was made by the builder for an ornament; but my two starlings consider it their own particular possession. They alight with a sort of half-scream half-whistle just over the window, flap their wings, and whistle again, run along the ledge to a spot where there is a gable, and with another note, rise up and enter an aperture between the slates and the wall. There their nest will be in a little time, and busy indeed they will be when the young require to be fed, to and fro the fields and the gable the whole day through; the busiest and the most useful of birds, for they destroy thousands upon thousands of insects, and if farmers were wise they would never have one shot, no matter how the thatch was pulled about.

My pair of starlings were frequently at this ledge last autumn, very late in autumn, and I suspect they had a winter brood there. The starling does rear a brood sometimes in the midst of the winter, contrary as that may seem to our general ideas of natural history. They may be called roof-residents, as they visit it all the year round; they nest in the roof, rearing two and sometimes three broods; and use it as their club and place of meeting. Towards July the young starlings and those that have for the time at least finished nesting, flock together, and pa.s.s the day in the fields, returning now and then to their old home. These flocks gradually increase; the starling is so prolific that the flocks become immense, till in the latter part of the autumn in southern fields it is common to see a great elm-tree black with them, from the highest bough downwards, and the noise of their chattering can be heard a long distance. They roost in firs or in osier-beds. But in the blackest days of winter, when frost binds the ground hard as iron, the starlings return to the roof almost every day; they do not whistle much, but have a peculiar chuckling whistle at the instant of alighting. In very hard weather, especially snow, the starlings find it difficult to obtain a living, and at such times will come to the premises at the rear, and at farmhouses where cattle are in the yards, search about among them for insects.

The whole history of the starling is interesting, but I must here only mention it as a roof-bird. They are very handsome in their full plumage, which gleams bronze and green among the darker shades; quick in their motions, and full of spirit; loaded to the muzzle with energy, and never still. I hope none of those who are so good as to read what I have written will ever keep a starling in a cage; the cruelty is extreme. As for shooting pigeons at a trap, it is mercy in comparison.

Even before the starling whistles much, the sparrows begin to chirp: in the dead of winter they are silent; but so soon as the warmer winds blow, if only for a day, they begin to chirp. In January this year I used to listen to the sparrows chirping, the starlings whistling, and the chaffinches' "c.h.i.n.k, c.h.i.n.k" about eight o'clock, or earlier, in the morning: the first two on the roof; the latter, which is not a roof-bird, in some garden shrubs. As the spring advances, the sparrows sing--it is a short song, it is true, but still it is singing--perched at the edge of a sunny wall. There is not a place about the house where they will not build--under the eaves, on the roof, anywhere where there is a projection or shelter, deep in the thatch, under the tiles, in old eave-swallows' nest. The last place I noticed as a favourite one in towns is on the half-bricks left projecting in perpendicular rows at the sides of unfinished houses, Half a dozen nests may be counted at the side of a house on these bricks; and like the starlings, they rear several broods, and some are nesting late in the autumn. By degrees as the summer advances they leave the houses for the corn, and gather in vast flocks, rivalling those of the starlings. At this time they desert the roofs, except those who still have nesting duties. In winter and in the beginning of the new year, they gradually return; migration thus goes on under the eyes of those who care to notice it. In London, some who fed sparrows on the roof found that rooks also came for the crumbs placed out. I sometimes see a sparrow chasing a rook, as if angry, and trying to drive it away over the roofs where I live, the thief does not retaliate, but, like a thief, flees from the scene of his guilt. This is not only in the breeding season, when the rook steals eggs, but in winter. Town residents are apt to despise the sparrow, seeing him always black; but in the country the sparrows are as clean as a pink; and in themselves they are the most animated, clever little creatures.

They are easily tamed. The Parisians are fond of taming them. At a certain hour in the Tuilleries Gardens, you may see a man perfectly surrounded with a crowd of sparrows--some perching on his shoulder; some fluttering in the air immediately before his face; some on the ground like a tribe of followers; and others on the marble seats. He jerks a crumb of bread into the air--a sparrow dexterously seizes it as he would a flying insect; he puts a crumb between his lips--a sparrow takes it out and feeds from his mouth. Meantime they keep up a constant chirping; those that are satisfied still stay by and adjust their feathers. He walks on, giving a little chirp with his mouth, and they follow him along the path--a cloud about his shoulders, and the rest flying from shrub to shrub, perching, and then following again. They are all perfectly clean--a contrast to the London Sparrow. I came across one of these sparrow-tamers by chance, and was much amused at the scene, which, to any one not acquainted with birds, appears marvellous; but it is really as simple as possible, and you can repeat it for yourself if you have patience, for they are so sharp they soon understand you. They seem to play at nest-making before they really begin; taking up straws in their beaks, and carrying them half-way to the roof, then letting the straws float away; and the same with stray feathers, Neither of these, starlings nor sparrows, seem to like the dark. Under the roof, between it and the first ceiling, there is a large open s.p.a.ce; if the slates or tiles are kept in good order, very little light enters, and this s.p.a.ce is nearly dark in daylight. Even if c.h.i.n.ks admit a beam of light, it is not enough; they seldom enter or fly about there, though quite accessible to them. But if the roof is in bad order, and this s.p.a.ce light, they enter freely. Though nesting in holes, yet they like light. The swallows could easily go in and make nests upon the beams, but they will not, unless the place is well lit.

They do not like darkness in the daytime.

The swallows bring us the sunbeams on their wings from Africa to fill the fields with flowers. From the time of the arrival of the first swallow the flowers take heart; the few and scanty plants that had braved the earlier cold are succeeded by a constantly enlarging list, till the banks and lanes are full of them. The chimney-swallow is usually the forerunner of the three house-swallows; and perhaps no fact in natural history has been so much studied as the migration of these tender birds. The commonest things are always the most interesting. In summer there is no bird so common everywhere as the swallow, and for that reason many overlook it, though they rush to see a "white elephant." But the deepest thinkers have spent hours and hours in considering the problem of the swallow--its migrations, its flight, its habits; great poets have loved it; great artists and art-writers have curiously studied it. The idea that it is necessary to seek the wilderness or the thickest woods for nature is a total mistake; nature it, at home, on the roof, close to every one. Eave-swallows, or house-martins (easily distinguished by the white bar across the tail), build sometimes in the shelter of the porches of old houses.

As you go in or out, the swallows visiting or leaving their nests fly so closely as almost to brush the face. Swallow means porch-bird, and for centuries and centuries their nests have been placed in the closest proximity to man. They might be called man's birds, so attached are they to the human race. I think the greatest ornament a house can have is the nest of an eave-swallow under the eaves--far superior to the most elaborate carving, colouring, or arrangement the architect can devise. There is no ornament like the swallow's nest; the home of a messenger between man and the blue heavens, between us and the sunlight, and all the promise of the sky. The joy of life, the highest and tenderest feelings, thoughts that soar on the swallow's wings, come to the round nest under the roof. Not only to-day, not only the hopes of future years, but all the past dwells there. Year after year the generations and descent of the swallow have been a.s.sociated with our homes, and all the events of successive lives have taken place under their guardianship. The swallow is the genius of good to a house. Let its nest, then, stay; to me it seems the extremity of barbarism, or rather stupidity, to knock it down. I wish I could induce them to build under the eaves of this house; I would if I could discover some means of communicating with them.

It is a peculiarity of the swallow that you cannot make it afraid of you; just the reverse of other birds. The swallow does not understand being repulsed, but comes back again. Even knocking the nest down will not drive it away, until the stupid process has been repeated several years. The robin must be coaxed; the sparrow is suspicious, and though easy to tame, quick to notice the least alarming movement. The swallow will not be driven away. He has not the slightest fear of man; he flies to his nest close to the window, under the low eave, or on the beams in the out-houses, no matter if you are looking on or not. Bold as the starlings are, they will seldom do this. But in the swallow the instinct of suspicion is reversed, an instinct of confidence occupies its place. In addition to the eave-swallow, to which I have chiefly alluded, and the chimney-swallow, there is the swift, also a roof-bird, and making its nest in the slates of houses in the midst of towns.

These three are migrants in the fullest sense, and come to our houses over thousands of miles of land and sea.

Robins frequently visit the roof for insects, especially when it is thatched; so do wrens; and the latter, after they have peered along, have a habit of perching at the extreme angle of a gable, or the extreme edge of a corner, and uttering their song. Finches occasionally fly up to the roofs of country-houses if shrubberies are near, also in pursuit of insects; but they are not truly roof-birds. Wagtails perch on roofs; they often have their nests in the ivy, or creepers trained against walls; they are quite at borne, and are frequently seen on the ridges of farmhouses. t.i.ts of several species, particularly the great t.i.tmouse and the blue t.i.t, come to thatch for insects, both in summer and winter. In some districts where they are common, it is not unusual to see a goatsucker or fern-owl hawk along close to the eaves in the dusk of the evening for moths. The white owl is a roof-bird (though not often of the house), building inside the roof, and sitting there all day in some shaded corner. They do sometimes take up their residence in the roofs of outhouses attached to dwellings, but not often nowadays, though still residing in the roofs of old castles. Jackdaws, again, are roof-birds, building in the roofs of towers. Bats live in roofs, and hang there wrapped up in their membranous wings till the evening calls them forth. They are residents in the full sense, remaining all the year round, though princ.i.p.ally seen in the warmer months; but they are there in the colder, hidden away, and if the temperature rises, will venture out and hawk to and fro in the midst of the winter. Tame pigeons and doves hardly come into this paper, but still it is their habit to use roofs as tree-tops. Rats and mice creep through the crevices of roofs, and in old country-houses hold a sort of nightly carnival, racing to and fro under the roof. Weasels sometimes follow them indoors and up to their roof strongholds.

When the first warm days of spring sunshine strike against the southern side of the chimney, sparrows perch there and enjoy it; and again in autumn, when the general warmth of the atmosphere is declining, they still find a little pleasant heat there. They make use of the radiation of heat, as the gardener does who trains his fruit-trees to a wall.

Before the autumn has thinned the leaves, the swallows gather on the highest ridge of the roof in a row and twitter to each other; they know the time is approaching when they must depart for another climate. In winter, many birds seek the thatched roofs to roost. Wrens, t.i.ts, and even blackbirds roost in the holes left by sparrows or starlings.

Every crevice is the home of insects, or used by them for the deposit of their eggs--under the tiles or slates, where mortar has dropped out between the bricks, in the holes of thatch, and on the straws. The number of insects that frequent a large roof must be very great--all the robins, wrens, bats, and so on, can scarcely affect them; nor the spiders, though these, too, are numerous. Then there are the moths, and those creeping creatures that work out of sight, boring their way through the rafters and beams. Sometimes a sparrow may be seen clinging to the bare wall of the house; t.i.ts do the same thing. It is surprising how they manage to hold on. They are taking insects from the apertures of the mortar. Where the slates slope to the south, the sunshine soon heats them, and pa.s.sing b.u.t.terflies alight on the warm surface, and spread out their wings, as if hovering over the heat. Flies are attracted in crowds sometimes to heated slates and tiles, and wasps will occasionally pause there. Wasps are addicted to haunting houses, and, in the autumn, feed on the flies. Floating germs carried by the air must necessarily lodge in numbers against roofs; so do dust and invisible particles; and together, these make the rain-water collected in water-b.u.t.ts after a storm turbid and dark; and it soon becomes full of living organisms.

Lichen and moss grow on the mortar wherever it has become slightly disintegrated; and if any mould, however minute, by any means acc.u.mulates between the slates, there, too, they spring up, and even on the slates themselves. Tiles are often coloured yellow by such growths.

On some old roofs, which have decayed, and upon which detritus has acc.u.mulated, wallflowers may be found; and the house-leek takes capricious root where it fancies. The stonecrop is the finest of roof-plants, sometimes forming a broad patch of brilliant yellow. Birds carry up seeds and grains, and these germinate in moist thatch.

Groundsel, for instance, and stray stalks of wheat, thin and drooping for lack of soil, are sometimes seen there, besides gra.s.ses. Ivy is familiar as a roof-creeper. Some ferns and the pennywort will grow on the wall close to the roof. A correspondent tells me that in Wales he found a cottage perfectly roofed with fern--it grew so thickly as to conceal the roof. Had a painter put this in a picture, many would have exclaimed: "How fanciful! He must have made it up; it could never have grown like that!" Not long after receiving my correspondent's kind letter, I chanced to find a roof near London upon which the same fern was growing in lines along the tiles. It grew plentifully, but was not in so flourishing a condition as that found in Wales. Painters are sometimes accused of calling upon their imagination when they are really depicting fact, for the ways of nature vary very much in different localities, and that which may seem impossible in one place is common enough in another.

Where will not ferns grow? We saw one attached to the under-side of a gla.s.s coal-hole cover; its green could be seen through the thick gla.s.s on which people stepped daily.

Recently, much attention has been paid to the dust which is found on roofs and ledges at great heights. This meteoric dust, as it is called, consists of minute particles of iron, which are thought to fall from the highest part of the atmosphere, or possibly to be attracted to the earth from s.p.a.ce. Lightning usually strikes the roof. The whole subject of lightning-conductors has been re-opened of late years, there being reason to think that mistakes have been made in the manner of their erection. The reason English roofs are high-pitched is not only because of the rain, that it may shoot off quickly, but on account of snow.

Once now and then there comes a snow-year, and those who live in houses with flat surfaces anywhere on the roof soon discover how inconvenient they are. The snow is sure to find its way through, damaging ceilings, and doing other mischief. Sometimes, in fine summer weather, people remark how pleasant it would be if the roof were flat, so that it could be used as a terrace, as it is in warmer climates. But the fact is, the English roof, although now merely copied and repeated without a thought of the reason of its shape, grew up from experience of severe winters.

Of old, great care and ingenuity--what we should now call artistic skill--were employed in contracting the roof. It was not only pleasant to the eye with its gables, but the woodwork was wonderfully well done.

Such roofs may still be seen on ancient mansions, having endured for centuries. They are splendid pieces of workmanship, and seen from afar among foliage, are admired by every one who has the least taste.

Draughtsmen and painters value them highly. No matter whether reproduced on a large canvas or in a little woodcut, their proportions please. The roof is much neglected in modern houses; it is either conventional, or it is full indeed of gables, but gables that do not agree, as it were, with each other--that are obviously put there on purpose to look artistic, and fail altogether. Now, the ancient roofs were true works of art, consistent, and yet each varied to its particular circ.u.mstances, and each impressed with the individuality of the place and of the designer. The finest old roofs were built of oak or chestnut; the beams are black with age, and, in that condition, oak is scarcely distinguishable from chestnut.

So the roof has its natural history, its science, and art; it has its seasons, its migrants and residents, of whom a housetop calendar might be made. The fine old roofs which have just been mentioned are often a.s.sociated with historic events and the rise of families; and the roof-tree, like the hearth, has a range of proverbs or sayings and ancient lore to itself. More than one great monarch has been slain by a tile thrown from the housetop, and numerous other incidents have occurred in connection with it. The most interesting is the story of the Grecian mother who, with her infant, was on the roof, when, in a moment of inattention, the child crept to the edge, and was balanced on the very verge. To call to it, to touch it, would have insured its destruction; but the mother, without a second's thought, bared her breast, and the child eagerly turning to it, was saved!

ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS

I

If any one were to get up about half-past five on an August morning and look out of an eastern window in the country, he would see the distant trees almost hidden by a white mist. The tops of the larger groups of elms would appear above it, and by these the line of the hedgerows could be traced. Tier after tier they stretch along, rising by degrees on a gentle slope, the s.p.a.ce between filled with haze. Whether there were corn-fields or meadows under this white cloud he could not tell--a cloud that might have come down from the sky, leaving it a clear azure.

This morning haze means intense heat in the day. It is hot already, very hot, for the sun is shining with all his strength, and if you wish the house to be cool it is time to set the sunblinds.

Roger, the reaper, had slept all night in the cowhouse, lying on the raised platform of narrow planks put up for cleanliness when the cattle were there. He had set the wooden window wide open and left the door ajar when he came stumbling in overnight, long after the late swallows had settled in their nests in the beams, and the bats had wearied of moth catching. One of the swallows twittered a little, as much as to say to his mate, "my love, it is only a reaper, we need not be afraid,"

and all was silence and darkness. Roger did not so much as take off his boots, but flung himself on the boards crash, curled himself up hedgehog fashion with some old sacks, and immediately began to breathe heavily. He had no difficulty in sleeping, first because his muscles had been tried to the utmost, and next because his skin was full to the brim, not of jolly "good ale and old" but of the very smallest and poorest of wish-washy beer. In his own words, it "blowed him up till he very nigh bust." Now the great authorities on dyspepsia, so eagerly studied by the wealthy folk whose stomachs are deranged, tell us that a very little flatulence will make the heart beat irregularly and cause the most distressing symptoms.

Roger had swallowed at least a gallon of a liquid chemically designed, one might say, on purpose to utterly upset the internal economy.

Harvest beer is probably the vilest drink in the world. The men say it is made by pouring muddy water into empty casks returned sour from use, and then brushing them round and round inside with a besom. This liquid leaves a stickiness on the tongue and a harsh feeling at the back of the mouth which soon turns to thirst, so that having once drunk a pint the drinker must go on drinking. The peculiar dryness caused by this beer is not like any other throat drought--worse than dust, or heat, or thirst from work; there is no satisfying it. With it there go down the germs of fermentation, a sour, yeasty, and, as it were, secondary fermentation; not that kind which is necessary to make beer, but the kind that unmakes and spoils beer. It is beer rotting and decomposing in the stomach. Violent diarrhoea often follows, and then the exhaustion thus caused induces the men to drink more in order to regain the strength necessary to do their work. The great heat of the sun and the heat of hard labour, the strain and perspiration, of course try the body and weaken the digestion. To distend the stomach with half a gallon of this liquor, expressly compounded to ferment, is about the most murderous thing a man could do--murderous because it exposes him to the risk of sunstroke. So vile a drink there is not elsewhere in the world; arrack, and potato-spirit, and all the other killing extracts of the distiller are not equal to it. Upon this abominable mess the golden harvest of English fields is gathered in.

Some people have in consequence endeavoured to induce the harvesters to accept a money payment in place of beer, and to a certain extent successfully. Even then, however, they must drink something. Many manage on weak tea after a fashion, but not so well as the abstainers would have us think. Others have brewed for their men a miserable stuff in buckets, an infusion of oatmeal, and got a few to drink it; but English labourers will never drink oatmeal-water unless they are paid to do it. If they are paid extra beer-money and oatmeal water is made for them gratis, some will, of course, imbibe it, especially if they see that thereby they may obtain little favours from their employer by yielding to his fad. By drinking the crotchet perhaps they may get a present now and then-food for themselves, cast-off clothes for their families, and so on. For it is a remarkable feature of human natural history, the desire to proselytise. The spectacle of John Bull--jovial John Bull--offering his men a bucket of oatmeal liquor is not a pleasant one. Such a John Bull ought to be ashamed of himself.