Wild Life in a Southern County

by Richard Jefferies

Be careful how you pick up a ripe apple, all glowing orange, from the grass in the orchard; roll it over with your foot first, or you may chance to find that you have got a handful of wasps. They eat away the interior of the fruit, leaving little but the rind; and this very hollowness causes the rind to assume richer tints and a more tempting appearance. Specked apples on the tree, whether pecked by a blackbird, eaten by wasps or ants, always ripen fastest, and if you do not mind cutting out that portion, are the best. Such a fallen apple, when hollowed out within, is a veritable torpedo if incautiously handled.

Wasps are incurable drunkards. If they find something sweet and tempting they stick to it, and swill till they fall senseless to the ground. They are then most dangerous, because unseen and unheard, and one may put one’s hand on them in ignorance of their whereabouts. Noticing once that a particular pear tree appeared to attract wasps, though there was little or no fruit on it, I watched their motions, and found they settled at the mouth of certain circular apertures that had been made in the trunk. There the sap was slowly exuding, and to this sap the wasps came and sipped it till they could sip no more. The tree being old and of small value, it was determined to see what caused these circular holes. They were cut out with a gouge, when the whole interior of the trunk was found bored with winding tunnels, through which a pistol bullet might have been passed. This had been done by an enormous grub, as long and large as one’s finger.

Old-world plants and flowers linger still like heirlooms in the farmhouse garden, though their pleasant odour is ofttimes choked by the gaseous fumes from the furnaces of the steam-ploughing engines as they pass along the road to their labour. Then a dark vapour rises above the tops of the green elms, and the old walls tremble and the earth itself quakes beneath the pressure of the iron giant, while the atmosphere is tainted with the smell of cotton-waste and oil. How little these accord with the quiet, sunny slumber of the homestead. But the breeze comes, and ere the rattle of the wheels and cogs has died away, the fragrance of the flowers and green things has reasserted itself. Such a sunny slumber, and such a fragrance of flowers, both wild and cultivated, have dwelt round and over the place these 200 years, and mayhap before that. It is perhaps a fancy only, yet I think that where men and nature have dwelt side by side time out of mind there is a sense of a presence, a genius of the spot, a haunting sweetness and loveliness not elsewhere to be found. The most lavish expenditure, even when guided by true taste, cannot produce this feeling about a modern dwelling.

At Wick, by the side of the garden path, grows a perfect little hedge of lavender; every drawer in the house, when opened, emits an odour of its dried flowers. Here, too, are sweet marjoram, rosemary, and rue; so also bay and thyme, and some pot-herbs whose use is forgotten, besides southernwood and wormwood. They do not make medical potions at home here now, but the lily-leaves are used to allay inflammation of the skin. The house-leek had a reputation with the cottage herbalists; it is still talked of, but I think very rarely used.

Among the flowers here are beautiful dark-petalled wallflowers, sweet-williams, sweet-briar, and pansies. In spring the yellow crocus lifts its head from among the grass of the green in front of the house (as the snowdrops did also), and here and there a daffodil. These, I think, never look so lovely as when rising from the green sward; the daffodils grow, too, in the orchard. Woodbine is everywhere—climbing over the garden seat under the sycamore tree, whose leaves are spotted sometimes with tiny reddish dots, the honey-dew.

Just outside the rickyard, where the grass of the meadow has not been mown but fed by cattle, grow the tall buttercups, rising to the knee. The children use the long hollow stems as tubes wherewith to suck up the warm new milk through its crown of thick froth, from the oaken milking-pail. There is a fable that the buttercups make the butter yellow when they come—but the cows never eat them, being so bitter; they eat all round close up to the very stems, but leave them standing scrupulously. The children, top, make similar pipes of straw to suck up the new cider fresh from the cider-mill, as it stands in the tubs directly after the grinding. Under the shady trees of the orchard the hare’s parsley flourishes, and immediately without the orchard edge, on the ‘shore’ of the ditch, grow thick bunches of the beautiful blue crane’s-bill, or wild geranium, which ought to be a garden flower and not left to the chance mercy of the scythe. There, too, the herb Robert hides, and its foliage, turning colour, lies like crimson lace on the bank.

Even the tall thistles of the ditch have their beauty—the flower has a delicate tint, varying with the species from mauve to purple; the humble-bee visits every thistle-bloom in his path, and there must therefore be sweetness in it. Then in the autumn issues forth the floating thistledown, streaming through the air and rolling like an aerial ball over the tips of the bennets. Thistledown is sometimes gathered to fill pillow-cases, and a pillow so filled is exquisitely soft. There is not a nook or corner of the old place where something interesting may not be found. Even the slates on a modern addition to the homestead are each bordered with yellow lichen—perhaps because they adjoin thatch, for slates do not seem generally to encourage the growth of lichen. It appears to prefer tiles, which therefore sooner assume an antique tint.

To the geraniums in the bow-window the humming-bird moth comes now and then, hovering over the scarlet petals. Out of the high elms drops a huge grey moth, so exactly the colour of grey lichen that it might be passed for it—pursued, of course, as it clumsily falls, by two or more birds eager for the spoil. It is feast-time with them when the cockchafers come: they leave nothing but wing-cases scattered on the garden paths, like the shields of slain men-at-arms.

In the bright sunshine, when there is not a cloud in the sky, slender beetles come forth from the cracks of the earth and run swiftly across the paths, glittering green and gold, iridescent colours glistening on their backs. These are locally called sunbeetles, because they appear when the sun is brightest. Be careful not to step on or kill one; for if you do it will certainly rain, according to the old superstition. The blackbird, when he picks up one of the larger beetles, holds it with its back towards him in his bill, so that the legs claw helplessly at the air, and thus carries it to a spot where he can pick it to pieces at his leisure.

The ha-ha wall of the orchard is the favourite haunt of butterflies; they seem to love its sunny aspect, and often cling to the loose stones like ornaments attached by some cunning artist. Sulphur butterflies hover here early in the spring, and later on white and brown and tiny blue butterflies pass this way, calling en route. Sometimes a great noble of the butterfly world comes in all the glory of his wide velvety wings, and deigns to pause awhile that his beauty may be seen.