CHAPTER XXXVII.

ON THE VERMIN OF FENCES.

One of the great objections urged to more hedge-row fences than are necessary, is that of harbouring Vermin; it therefore becomes necessary to inquire into the history of those creatures designated by a name everywhere held in reproach.

The meaning of the term vermin has not been very accurately defined. Johnson considers “any noxious animal” to belong to vermin; whilst Bailey, anxious to be more specific, defines vermin to be “any kind of hurtful creature or insect, as rats, mice, lice, fleas, bugs, &c.;” but whatever lexicographers may say upon the subject, there can be no doubt that, in country language, what are known as noxious animals are distinguished from noxious insects, the first being in most counties known as “Varment,” to which belong rats, mice, stoats, &c., to which the keeper would add kites, hawks, owls, magpies, and other birds; the second term being limited to those parasitic creatures by which both man and some inferior animals may be attacked.

The farmer’s notion of vermin, as applied to the hedge-row, differs from these, as it includes all beasts, birds, reptiles, insects, &c., which directly injure the hedge, together with such as choose the hedge-row or the bank on which it might be grown as a breeding-place, from which they migrate to farm crops, and so become injurious, not to the hedge alone, but to the farm in general.

Some notion of these may be inferred from the following list:—

1. Rabbits—By burrowing in the hedge-bank.
2. Hedge-hog—Ignorantly included with hedge-row vermin by the farmer.
3.- Stoats -These burrow or make the hedge-row or bank a place of refuge and concealment.
Rats
Mice
4. Snakes—Erroneously supposed to be injurious.
5.- Slugs -Both breed extensively in hedge-rows, which often form these hybernacula.
Snails
6.- Insects injurious to the growing hedge-plants.
Do. protected by the hedge, and migrating to the farm crops.
Do. harboured by hedge-row weeds, and thence migrating to the crops.
7. Birds in general, according to the dictum of the Sparrow Clubbists.

1. The rabbit is one of the greatest pests to the bank on which hedges are too often grown, and therefore is injurious to the growing hedge, to say nothing of the mischief which these creatures do to the crops. The other day we visited a field in which a hedge-bank had been undermined with no less than fifty holes in the distance of five-and-twenty yards; these ramified in every direction, not only through the raised mound, but into the fields on either side of the hedge, and out of which rabbits were dug from a depth of as much as four feet. Here the ridiculous nature of the mound was the primary cause of the mischief, and hence we here offer an illustration of the general facts which met our view:—

Diagram of a Mound and Ditch in Oolite Sands.

ft.in.
a. A rabbit hole.
1. and 5. Grass and weeds which cannot be ploughed50
2. Mound for fence80
3. Bottom of ditch30
4. Field side of ditch60
6. Arable field—
Total220

Here it will be seen that not only has nearly twenty feet of land been taken up with the fence, but the plan upon which it is made of itself suggests a rabbit-warren, and especially when we say that the soil is of a loose sandy nature, and the ditch has never yet been a conduit for running water, and is therefore perfectly unnecessary.

2. The hedge-hog is here only mentioned in the hope of dispelling a popular prejudice with regard to him. He is ruthlessly destroyed as vermin, on the supposition that the hedge screens a traitor who is ever ready to suck eggs or to take a meal from the cow’s udder. Now, as regards the first charge, one would have thought that, from the pertinacity displayed by those who bring it in destroying birds’ eggs and birds of every kind, they would have little care upon this head. His sucking of cows has never been witnessed by any competent observer, and with such the idea was never entertained, nor can it be supposed that a cow would suffer the approach of a creature so thoroughly armed with spines as the hedge-hog. In the words of Yarrell we may conclude that “this is about as well-founded an accusation as that of Pliny, exaggerated as it is by Sperling, who assures us that it ascends trees, knocks off the apples and pears, and, throwing itself down upon them that they may stick to its spines, trots off with the prize! Ælian gives us the same story, substituting figs for apples, and omitting the climbing power of the animal.”

3. This section contains creatures for which few of us entertain any affection; at the same time, it may perhaps be true that some of the greatest of farm pests, in the shapes of rats and mice, have greatly increased since the destruction of the polecat, stoat, and other of our smaller carnivorous quadrupeds.

As regards mice in general, one source of alarm connected with their former occupancy of the hedge-row has nearly vanished from among us. We allude to the supposed injury they were thought to inflict on any creature over which they might creep.

At one time, if a cow or sheep offered any symptom of paralysis or injury, more particularly of the hind-quarters, the creature was said to be “mouse-crope,” for which were several popular remedies, which were used by way of direct applications, such as a liberal application of rods of wytch-hazel, drawing twigs of mountain-ash or rowan-tree over the affected parts; but the more general plan of action was to operate upon the offending creature upon the same principle as pertains to the present day in the case of a bite by a dog—namely, that the bitten subject is not safe from the direst calamities so long as the author of the mischief is alive; and acting upon this, there are few persons in rural districts who would not demand the death of a dog by whom they may have been bitten, and this not as a measure of precaution, to prevent the like occurrence happening again, but as the first thing to be done to ensure a safe cure. So with a “mouse-crope” subject: action was at once taken against the mouse, but this through the agency of the “shrew-ash,” which potent remedy is thus described by Gilbert White, in his charming “Natural History of Selborne:”—

Now, a shrew-ash is an ash whose twigs or branches, when gently applied to the limbs of cattle, will immediately relieve the pains which a beast suffers from the running of a shrew-mouse over the part affected; for it is supposed that a shrew-mouse is of so baneful and deleterious a nature, that wherever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened with the loss of the use of the limb. Against this accident, to which they were continually liable, our provident forefathers always kept a shrew-ash at hand, which, when properly medicated, would maintain its virtue for ever. A shrew-ash was made thus:—Into the body of the tree a deep hole was bored with an augur, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, and plugged in, no doubt, with several quaint incantations, long since forgotten.

That the shrew-mouse was generally held in the greatest dread, there is no doubt; but, we find in Dorsetshire, where this notion still prevails, that the idea of mischief is not confined to the shrew, but is believed of any mouse. We had a steer in one of our feeding-pits, which, as he did not gain flesh, was said to be “moss-crop,” the western vernacular for mouse-crope. Still, field mice, without regard to species, are supposed to be the most baneful in this way; at the same time, we may trace an evidence of the former generally prevailing belief in the injurious tendencies of even our common mouse, in the fact that when you have so far convinced a lady friend, who may have a “horror of a mouse,” of their harmless nature, you are sure to be met with the unanswerable remark, which gains point from the manner of its utterance, “But suppose a mouse should creep over me?” We may now entirely discard every notion of the evils of mouse-crope cattle as an argument against the hedge-row as a harbour for rats and mice; still, these are vermin in the true sense of the word, and which hedge-rows, unless kept trim and clean at bottom, are sure to encourage.

4. Snakes in hedge-rows are very common, and especially on banks facing the south; of these, the common ringed snake and the slow-worm are often met with. They excite great terror in most people; but still they may be said not merely to be quite harmless, but absolutely useful, as they live upon insects and small fry in general, and so, in reality, they ought not to be classed as vermin, but take their place amongst their most decided enemies.

5. The land mollusks, to which belong the snail and the slug, are sheltered in hedges by thousands; and highly destructive they are, and more especially in small overshadowed enclosures. The quantity of vegetation which these consume is enormous, and we are sorry to think that they are on the increase—a fact which we deem to be due to the indiscriminate slaughter of small birds, more especially the blackbird, thrush, and lark, which are their most determined enemies. As farmers, we might well afford them a dessert of small fruit for the good they do in destroying slugs and snails.

6. Hedge-row shrubs are liable to be injured by many insects, more especially the caterpillars of different kinds of moths and butterflies, which sometimes eat away all their leaves, and so greatly retard the growth of the hedge. Upon this subject we quote from “Our Woodlands, Heaths, and Hedges,” for the purpose of introducing to our readers a small book by W. S. Coleman, which should be in the hands of all country readers:—

The foliage of the hawthorn, remarkable for its elegance, is the chosen food of a great number of interesting insects, principally the caterpillars of various lepidoptera.

Several species of these are of a gregarious nature, living together in extensive colonies under a thick net-work of silk, which serves them for a common protection while feeding on the foliage enclosed with themselves in a silken tent.

Among these social net-weavers are the caterpillars of a fine insect, the black-veined white butterfly (Pieris cratægi), a rarity in some districts, but in certain localities, and at certain periods, abounding to such an extent as entirely to strip the hawthorn hedges of their foliage. Similar depredations are committed by the gaily-coloured progeny of the common lackey moth, and of the gold-tailed and brown-tailed moths; but the most formidable devastators, though the tiniest individually, are the little ermine moths (Yponomenta), small silvery-grey creatures, minutely spotted with black. The curious twig-like caterpillars of the brimstone moth (a pretty canary-coloured creature, with brown markings), and of several other geometers, are common upon hawthorn.

Last summer (1864), the hawthorn trees and hedges about the parks and squares of London were entirely defoliated by caterpillars, which progressed from tree to tree in squads of numberless individuals, only seeking a new site of action when the former one had been despoiled of every vestige of leaf and bud.

But it is not only the hawthorn which becomes attacked by insects: all other hedge-row trees and shrubs have their peculiar enemies, to describe which would take more space than we have to spare, and we therefore conclude the chapter with a few remarks upon the weeds of dirty hedge-rows. These harbour various insects, which migrate to our crops, and do an immense amount of injury. For instance, such plants as Jack by the Hedge (Erysimum alliaria), treacle mustard (Sisymbrium officinale), wild mustards, and other forms of Cruciferæ, in hedge-rows, afford a winter nidus for the turnip flea beetles (Haltica concinna and H. nemorum),[25] from which they take their flight to the more delicate turnip and swede crops as soon as these come up.

[25] See How to Grow Good Roots, [pp. 43] and [44] of the present work.

Birds need only here be mentioned incidentally, as there is still a conflict of opinions as to the use of the bird family to the farmer; and those species which mostly build in and frequent our hedges are perhaps those upon which evil suspicions are most universally held. Amongst these are the hedge-sparrow, finch, linnet, and others—and that these are mischievous at times, we are not prepared to deny; but we should be sorry if the curtailment of hedges, for which we are advocates, should result in the destruction of our small birds, as we conclude most of the species to be at times eminently useful.