They will carry off at once as many acorns as old-fashioned economical farmers used to walk about with in their pockets, "chucking" them one, two, or three at a time to the pigs in the stye as a bonne bouche and an encouragement to fatten well. Never was there such a bird to eat as the wood-pigeon. Pheasants roam out from the preserves after the same fruit, and no arts can retain them at acorn time. Swine are let run out about the hedgerows to help themselves. Mice pick up the acorns that fall, and hide them for winter use, and squirrels select the best.
If there is a decaying bough, or, more particularly, one that has been sawn off, it slowly decays into a hollow, and will remain in that state for years, the resort of endless woodlice, snapped up by insect-eating birds. Down from the branches in spring there descend long, slender threads, like gossamer, with a caterpillar at the end of each—the insect-eating birds decimate these. So that in various ways the oaks give more food to the birds than any other tree. Where there are oaks there are sure to be plenty of birds. Beeches come next. Is it possible that the severe frosts we sometimes have split oak trees? Some may be found split up the trunk, and yet not apparently otherwise injured, as they probably would be if it had been done by lightning. Trees are said to burst in America under frost, so that it is not impossible in this country.
There is a young oak beside the highway which in autumn was wreathed as artistically as could have been done by hand. A black bryony plant grew up round it, rising in a spiral. The heart-shaped leaves have dropped from the bine, leaving thick bunches of red and green berries clustering about the greyish stem of the oak.
Every one must have noticed that some trees have a much finer autumn tint than others. This, it will often be found, is an annual occurrence, and the same elm, or beech, or oak that has delighted the eye with its hues this autumn, will do the same next year, and excel its neighbours in colour. Oaks and beeches, perhaps, are the best examples of this, as they are also the trees that present the most beautiful appearance in autumn.
There are oaks on villa lawns near London whose glory of russet foliage in October or November is not to be surpassed in the parks of the country. There are two or three such oaks in Long Ditton. All oaks do not become russet, or buff; some never take those tints. An oak, for instance, not far from those just mentioned never quite loses its green; it cannot be said, indeed, to remain green, but there is a trace of it somewhere; the leaves must, I suppose, be partly buff and partly green; and the mixture of these colours in bright sunshine produces a tint for which I know no accurate term.
In the tops of the poplars, where most exposed, the leaves stay till the last, those growing on the trunk below disappearing long before those on the spire, which bends to every blast. The keys of the hornbeam come twirling down: the hornbeam and the birch are characteristic trees of the London landscape—the latter reaches a great height and never loses its beauty, for when devoid of leaves the feathery spray-like branches only come into view the more.
The abundant bird life is again demonstrated as the evening approaches. Along the hedgerows, at the corners of the copses, wherever there is the least cover, so soon as the sun sinks, the blackbirds announce their presence by their calls. Their "ching-chinging" sounds everywhere; they come out on the projecting branches and cry, then fly fifty yards farther down the hedge, and cry again. During the day they may not have been noticed, scattered as they were under the bushes, but the dusky shadows darkening the fields send them to roost, and before finally retiring, they "ching-ching" to each other.
Then, almost immediately after the sun has gone down, looking to the south-west the sky seen above the trees (which hide the yellow sunset) becomes a delicate violet. Soon a speck of light gleams faintly through it—the merest speck. The first appearance of a star is very beautiful; the actual moment of first contact as it were of the ray with the eye is always a surprise, however often you may have enjoyed it, and notwithstanding that you are aware it will happen. Where there was only the indefinite violet before, the most intense gaze into which could discover nothing, suddenly, as if at that moment born, the point of light arrives.
So glorious is the night that not all London, with its glare and smoke, can smother the sky; in the midst of the gas, and the roar and the driving crowd, look up from the pavement, and there, straight above, are the calm stars. I never forget them, not even in the restless Strand; they face one coming down the hill of the Haymarket; in Trafalgar Square, looking towards the high dark structure of the House at Westminster, the clear bright steel silver of the planet Jupiter shines unwearied, without sparkle or flicker.
Apart from the grand atmospheric changes caused by a storm wave from the Atlantic, or an anti-cyclone, London produces its own sky. Put a shepherd on St. Paul's, allow him three months to get accustomed to the local appearances and the deceptive smoke clouds, and he would then tell what the weather of the day was going to be far more efficiently than the very best instrument ever yet invented. He would not always be right; but he would predict the local London weather with far more accuracy than any one reading the returns from the barometers at Valentia, Stornoway, Brest, or Christiansand.