In the cellar there is sure to be a toad under the barrels on the cool stone-flags; in the garden there is another, purposely kept in the cucumber-frame to protect the plant from being eaten by creeping things. It is curious to notice that they both seem to flourish equally well—one in the coolest, the other in the hottest place. A third may generally be found in the strawberry-bed. Strawberries are much eaten by insects of many kinds; so that the toad really does good service in a garden.
In winter, when snow is on the ground, a few larks sometimes venture into the garden where anything green yet shows above the white covering on the patches. If the weather is severe, the moorhen will come up from the brook, though two fields distant, in the night, and the marks of her feet may be traced round the house. Then, as the evening approaches, the wild ducks pass over, and every now and then during the night the weird cries of waterfowl resound in the frosty air. The heron sails slowly over, every night and every morning, backwards and forwards from the mere to the water-meadows and the brook, uttering his unearthly call at intervals.
Chapter Ten.
The Wood-Pile—Lizards—Sheds and Rickyard—The Witches’ Briar—Insects—Plants, Flowers, and Fruit.
The farmhouse at Wick has the gardens and orchard already mentioned upon one side, and on the other are the carthouses, sheds, and rickyard. Between these latter and the dwelling runs a broad roadway for the waggons to enter and leave the fields, and on its border stands a great wood-pile. The faggots cut in the winter from the hedges are here stacked up as high as the roof of a cottage, and near by lies a heap of ponderous logs waiting to be split for firewood. From exposure to the weather the bark of the faggot-sticks has turned black and is rapidly decaying, and under it innumerable insects have made their homes.
For these, probably, the wrens visit the wood-pile continually; if in passing anyone strikes the faggots with a stick, a wren will generally fly out on the opposite side. They creep like mice in between the faggots—there are numerous interstices—and thus sometimes pass fight through a corner of the stack. Sometimes a pole which has been lying by for a length of time is found to be curiously chased, as it were, all over the surface under the loose bark by creeping things. They eat channels interweaving and winding in and out in an intricate pattern, occasionally a little resembling the Moorish style of ornamentation seen on the walls of the Alhambra. I have found poles so curiously carved like this that the idea naturally occurred of using them for cabinet work. They might at least have supplied a hint for a design. Besides the wrens, many other birds visit the wood-pile—sparrows are perpetually coming, and on the retired side towards the meadow the robins build their nests. On the ridge where some of the sticks project the swallows often perch and twitter—generally a pair seem to come together.
It takes skill as well as mere strength even to do so simple a thing as to split the rough logs lying here on the ground. They are not like those Abraham Lincoln began life working at—even-grained wood, quickly divided—but tough and full of knots strangely twisted; so that it needs judgment to put the wedges in the right place.
Near the wood-pile is a well and a stone trough for thirsty horses to drink from, and as the water, carelessly pumped in by the carters’ lads, frequently overflows, the ground just there is usually moist. If one of the loose oak logs that lie here with the grass growing up round it is rolled over, occasionally a lizard may be found under it. This lizard is slender, and not more than three or four inches in length, general colour a yellowish green. Where one is found a second is commonly close by. They are elegantly shaped, and quick in their motions, speedily making off. They may now and then be discovered under large stones, if there is a crevice, in the meadows. They do not in the least resemble the ordinary ‘land-lizard,’ which is a much coarser-looking and larger creature, and is not an inhabitant of this locality: at all events it is rare enough to have escaped me here, though I have often observed it in districts where the soil is light and sandy and where there is a good deal of heath-land. The land-lizards will stroll indoors if the door be left open. These lesser but more elegant lizards appear to prefer a damp spot—cool and moist, but not positively wet.