This Would Seem To Indicate A
Remarkable Absence Of The Food They Like, For It Is Very Rare Indeed For
A Piece Of Ground To Be Fresh Ploughed Without Rooks Coming To It.
There
were rookeries beneath in the plains where the elms and beeches grew
tall, but the birds never came up to forage.
Crows could be found, and
stopped on the hill all the year. Wood-pigeons, like the rooks, went
over, but did not stay. Starlings were not at all plentiful; blackbirds
and thrushes were there, but not nearly so numerous as is usually the
case; fieldfares and redwings drifted by in the winter, but never
stopped. Slow-worms lived in the sand under the heath, and lizards, but
no snakes and only a few adders. Inquiring of an old man if there were
many snakes about, he said no; the soil was too poor for them; but in
some places down in the vale he had dug up a gallon of snakes' eggs in
the 'maxen.' The word was noticeable as a survival of the old English
'mixen' for manure heap. Swallows, martins, and swifts abounded; and as
for insects, they were countless - honey-bees, wild bees, humble-bees,
varieties of wasps, butterflies - an endless list. So common a plant as
the arum did not seem to exist; on the other hand, ferns literally made
up the hedges, growing in such quantities as to take the place of the
grasses. There was, too, a great variety of moss and fungi. The soil
looked black and fertile, and new-comers thought they were going to have
good crops, but when these failed they found, upon examining the earth,
that it was little more than black sand, and the particles of silica
glittered if a handful were held in the sun. Such a sand would give the
impression of dryness, instead of which it was extremely damp - damp all
the year round.
For contrast, a place on the coast just opposite, as it were, and almost
within view, at the same time of year seemed to have no bees. A great
field of clover in flower was silent; there was no hum, nor glistening of
wings. Butterflies rarely came along. Swallows were not common. In the
rich loam it was curious to note mussel-shells, quite recent, in good
preservation, and a geologist might wonder at the layers of them in such
an earth; the farmer would smile, and say the mussels were carted there
for manure. Another place, again, in the same county is full of rooks,
and the arum is green on the banks. These items in a small area show how
different places are, and if you move from locality to locality
everything you have read about is by degrees seen in reality. In an old
book, the History of Northampton, which I chanced to look at, among other
curiosities, the author a hundred years ago mentioned a substance called
star shot, which appeared in the meadows overnight, and seemed to have
dropped from the sky. This I had not then seen, but many years afterwards
came suddenly, by a copse, on a quantity of jelly-like substance with a
most unpleasant aspect, but which did not in any other way offend the
senses. It had shot up in the night, and was gone next day. It is a
fungus unnoticed till it suddenly swells; I suppose this was the old
chronicler's star shot. Nor do I think it too small a thing that the
common snail makes a straight track over everything; if he comes to the
wall of a house he goes straight up without the smallest hesitation, and
explores a good height before he comes down again; if he finds a loaf of
bread in the cellar he never thinks of going round it, but travels in a
Roman road up and over. So do the armies of ants in warmer climates, and
this proceeding in an invariable line irrespective of obstacles seems to
be peculiar to many creatures, and is the reason why such 'plagues' were
and are so dreaded. Nothing could divert the straight march of the
locusts; nothing could divert the course of the millions of butterflies
that sometimes cross the Channel and arrive here from the Continent.
The tenacity of insects in anything they have once begun is shown in many
ways; you cannot drive away a fly or a gnat, and if a colony of ants take
up their home in the garden they will hardly move till all are destroyed.
Aristotle mentions the diseases of swine, so it will not be amiss to
record that in the country swine are supposed to suffer from water-brash,
and to relieve themselves by eating dry earth, for which purpose those
that run loose are continually tearing up the ground. Human beings so
affected show a similar tendency for dry food, as oatmeal. Sometimes the
liver of calves and bullocks is small and dry, of very little use for
food; this is found to be due to the neglect of providing them with dry
standing-ground when fattening. To ensure their fattening properly they
should stand on dry and high ground, and they should be plentifully
supplied with dry litter. This fact may be of value to some suffering
person; it points to the necessity of dry warm feet, dry subsoil, and
drainage if the liver is to be in good order. Popular suspicion, if not
science, attaches many other diseases besides those that actually consume
that organ to the abnormal action of the liver, possibly lung disease.
Such trifling circumstances are not so trifling as they appear. A case
came under my notice quite recently when a person had been helpless from
paralysis for several years. Chance compelled removal to another house,
and very soon the paralysis began to disappear. The first house may have
been damp, or there may have been some minute conditions besides. It
certainly is a marked fact that in the country, at all events, one house
is noted for its healthiness and another close by for its unhealthiness,
and the cause is not traceable to the usual and obvious reason of
drainage or water.
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