Madam How and Lady Why; Or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children

by Charles Kingsley

Of milk of course, and cows, and sheep, and horses; and of your body and mine—for we shall drink the milk and eat the meat. And therefore it is a flesh and milk manufactory. We must put into it every year yard-stuff, tank-stuff, guano, bones, and anything and everything of that kin, that Madam How may cook it for us into grass, and cook the grass again into milk and meat. But if we don’t give Madam How material to work on, we cannot expect her to work for us. And what do you think will happen then? She will set to work for herself. The rich grasses will dwindle for want of ammonia (that is smelling salts), and the rich clovers for want of phosphates (that is bone-earth): and in their places will come over the bank the old weeds and grass off the moor, which have not room to get in now, because the ground is coveted already. They want no ammonia nor phosphates—at all events they have none, and that is why the cattle on the moor never get fat. So they can live where these rich grasses cannot. And then they will conquer and thrive; and the Field will turn into Wild once more.

Ah, my child, thank God for your forefathers, when you look over that boundary mark. For the difference between the Field and the Wild is the difference between the old England of Madam How’s making, and the new England which she has taught man to make, carrying on what she had only begun and had not time to finish.

That moor is a pattern bit left to show what the greater part of this land was like for long ages after it had risen out of the sea; when there was little or nothing on the flat upper moors save heaths, and ling, and club-mosses, and soft gorse, and needle-whin, and creeping willows; and furze and fern upon the brows; and in the bottoms oak and ash, beech and alder, hazel and mountain ash, holly and thorn, with here and there an aspen or a buckthorn (berry-bearing alder as you call it), and everywhere—where he could thrust down his long root, and thrust up his long shoots—that intruding conqueror and insolent tyrant, the bramble. There were sedges and rushes, too, in the bogs, and coarse grass on the forest pastures—or “leas” as we call them to this day round here—but no real green fields; and, I suspect, very few gay flowers, save in spring the sheets of golden gorse, and in summer the purple heather. Such was old England—or rather, such was this land before it was England; a far sadder, damper, poorer land than now. For one man or one cow or sheep which could have lived on it then, a hundred can live now. And yet, what it was once, that it might become again,—it surely would round here, if this brave English people died out of it, and the land was left to itself once more.

What would happen then, you may guess for yourself, from what you see happen whenever the land is left to itself, as it is in the wood above. In that wood you can still see the grass ridges and furrows which show that it was once ploughed and sown by man; perhaps as late as the time of Henry the Eighth, when a great deal of poor land, as you will read some day, was thrown out of tillage, to become forest and down once more. And what is the mount now? A jungle of oak and beech, cherry and holly, young and old all growing up together, with the mountain ash and bramble and furze coming up so fast beneath them, that we have to cut the paths clear again year by year. Why, even the little cow-wheat, a very old-world plant, which only grows in ancient woods, has found its way back again, I know not whence, and covers the open spaces with its pretty yellow and white flowers. Man had conquered this mount, you see, from Madam How, hundreds of years ago. And she always lets man conquer her, because Lady Why wishes man to conquer: only he must have a fair fight with Madam How first, and try his strength against hers to the utmost. So man conquered the wood for a while; and it became cornfield instead of forest: but he was not strong and wise enough three hundred years ago to keep what he had conquered; and back came Madam How, and took the place into her own hands, and bade the old forest trees and plants come back again—as they would come if they were not stopped year by year, down from the wood, over the pastures—killing the rich grasses as they went, till they met another forest coming up from below, and fought it for many a year, till both made peace, and lived quietly side by side for ages.

Another forest coming up from below? Where would it come from?

From where it is now. Come down and look along the brook, and every drain and grip which runs into the brook. What is here?

Seedling alders, and some withies among them.

Very well. You know how we pull these alders up, and cut them down, and yet they continually come again. Now, if we and all human beings were to leave this pasture for a few hundred years, would not those alders increase into a wood? Would they not kill the grass, and spread right and left, seeding themselves more and more as the grass died, and left the ground bare, till they met the oaks and beeches coming down the hill? And then would begin a great fight, for years and years, between oak and beech against alder and willow.

But how can trees fight? Could they move or beat each other with their boughs?

Not quite that; though they do beat each other with their boughs, fiercely enough, in a gale of wind; and then the trees who have strong and stiff boughs wound those who have brittle and limp boughs, and so hurt them, and if the storms come often enough, kill them. But among these trees in a sheltered valley the larger and stronger would kill the weaker and smaller by simply overshadowing their tops, and starving their roots; starving them, indeed, so much when they grow very thick, that the poor little acorns, and beech mast, and alder seeds would not be able to sprout at all. So they would fight, killing each other’s children, till the war ended—I think I can guess how.