NATURE AROUND LONDON.
Most people have the impression that to enjoy country sights and sounds, and all the peaceful rural beauties and bright hues of an English landscape, one must go a long way out of London. Mr Richard Jefferies, in his recent volume, Nature near London (Chatto and Windus), has, with his admirable power of nature-painting, shown this to be a mistake. About twelve miles from the great metropolis there are to be found small picturesque villages lying in the heart of leafy copses, and rural lanes imbedded in greenery, and filled with bird and insect life. Here the wayfarer, weary with the dust and smoke of London, may inhale an atmosphere laden with resinous and balmy scents, and stretch himself in the cool grass beside streams beloved by the angler, where patches of forget-me-nots gem the greensward with their soft turquoise-blue, and the yellow flag hangs out in the bright summer sunshine its gay streamers of gold.
Mr Jefferies tells us regarding one of these tiny brooks, that he watched season after season a large trout that lay in a deep pool under the shadow of a great beech-tree. For nearly four years, in shadow and sunshine, he observed this veteran of the finny tribe as he lay meditatively watching the world outside from the quiet depths of his snug pool. The noisy little sedge-birds chattered overhead, and the patient anglers cast their lines with crafty care by the side of the brook; but no bait they could use had any charm for him. At length, by slow degrees, there came to be a comparative friendliness and confidence between the trout and the patient watcher who stood so still and silent by the edge of the pool. Sometimes the trout would venture out of the shadow, and raising himself over a dead branch that lay in the water, display all his speckled beauties in the ripple and sunshine. At last, one bright summer morning, an end came to this quaint friendship. An awful revolution occurred in the quiet life of the brook—the water was dammed up and let off by a side-hatch, in order that some large pipe might be laid down; and the big trout, with his lesser brethren, fell a victim to the predatory instincts of a party of navvies. Our author looked in vain next day into the still depths of the beech-tree pool; his finny friend was gone, and the place looked empty and dull without him.
It is impossible to describe to any one who has not experienced it for himself, how much the near neighbourhood of London enhances all the beauties of the country, and brings out the sweet scents of the fields and hedges. In the cool dewy mornings, the honeysuckle trailing along the hedgerows perfumes the air all around, and mingles with the delicious scent of the bean and hay fields. In these woodland copses, nature has opened her flowery cornucopia and poured out her treasures with a liberal hand. Here one stumbles upon a clump of wild-roses, with their delicate pink glow and faint sweet perfume; there, a few steps farther bring you to a lime-tree laden with blossoms, and you feel the whole perfumed air heavy with the slumberous hum of the bees busy overhead. Rabbits dart out and in from under the green palm-like fronds of a great clump of brake-fern; the woodpeckers call to each other; the jays screech from the leafy lanes; wood-pigeons coo from the depths of the copse-wood. There is no blank of silence, no absence of the companionship of living things, no lack of vivid interest for any one who can scan with an intelligent eye the pages of nature’s great book.
Away over the rippling hayfields, the lark, mounting upwards, a tiny speck in the cloudless blue of the summer sky, makes the air quiver with the glad thrilling notes of his morning song; and down in the leafy hollow of the copse, where the brook murmurs gently beneath the overhanging boughs, the blackbird trills his mellifluous flute-like notes. Birds, our author says, abound. ‘In some places, almost every clod has its lark, every bush its songster.’
One particular lane, with a high hedge bordered with elm-trees, had four or five nightingales; and a copse near it resounded in the season with the cheerful call of the cuckoo. Magpies, which have become scarce in many places throughout the country, are plentiful near London, where some birds are also found which, in many country districts, are but rare and occasional visitors, such as the blackcap, shrike, and gorgeous kingfisher. To a student of bird-life, such spots as a little wood, which our author christened Nightingale Copse, cannot fail to prove a perfect paradise. It was a favourite resort not only of nightingales, but of other migratory birds—chiff-chaffs, willow wrens, golden-crested wrens, fieldfares, &c. In the fields bordering the highway, partridges abounded; and Mr Jefferies counted on one occasion as many as seventeen young pheasants all feeding together on the wheat-stubbles. Nor is the ear the only sense which is charmed in these woodland copses—in the hedgerows, and under the straggling trees and bushes which border the woods, flowers abound, gleaming out in the sunshine from between the tall grasses with a sudden surprise of vivid colour; or spreading like enamel over the short turf; or intertwining their gay garlands with the clustering masses of creeping bramble. Each flower has its own peculiar habitat, where it flourishes luxuriantly. There are patches of the yellow rock rose, of the cranesbill, of the sweet purple wild thyme, of the starry white stitchwort, of the campion and yellow snapdragon; while stately and tall under the shadow of the birch-trees, the foxglove hangs out to the rustling breeze its lovely bells of clouded purple. Nor is heath awanting; ‘the open slopes beyond Sandown are covered with heath, growing so thickly, that even the narrow footpaths are hidden by the overhanging bushes of it. Beneath and amid the heath, what seems a species of lichen grows so profusely as to give a gray undertone to the whole.’
In autumn, this stretch of heath blazes out into a deep glory of purple, so rich and full, that it seems to give the very atmosphere a glow of purple light. Beyond the heath, there are fir-woods, stretching to the east and west; while southwards, the heath melts into the soft green of corn and meadow lands, with scattered clumps of trees. The open slopes among the straggling firs, which dot like sentinels the borders of these pine-woods, are covered with forests of tail ferns, amid which the browsing cows are lost to sight, and only reveal their whereabouts by the tinkling music of the small bells suspended to their necks.
Adders are common in these woods, and are sometimes killed for the sake of their oil, which some folks consider a specific for deafness. It is procured by skinning the adder and taking the fat and boiling it; the result being a clear oil, which never thickens even in the coldest weather. It is applied by pouring a small quantity into the ear, exactly in the same manner as the poison was poured into the ear of the sleeping king in Hamlet. Squirrels abound in these copses, and so do weasels and stoats.
In some fields christened by our author Magpie Fields, because he one day saw ten magpies all together in one of them, herbs abound which are in request among herbalists for medicinal purposes. One of these is yarrow. One day, looking at some mowers at work in a hayfield, he saw a man in advance of the others pulling up the yarrow plants as fast as he could and carefully laying them aside. Asking him why he did so, he answered, that although it seemed such a common weed, it was not without its value, for that a person sometimes came and took away a whole trap-load of it. The flowers were boiled, and mixed with cayenne pepper, and were then used as a remedy for colds in the chest. Dandelions are also in request; the tender leaves are pulled in the spring, and taken away in sackfuls to be eaten as salad. There are also hellebore and blue scabious; and the rough-leaved comfrey; and borage with its reminiscences of claret-cup; and groundsel, dear to the owners of pet birds; and knotted figwort, and Aaron’s rod; and a whole tribe of strongly scented mints and peppermints. The belief in these simples, which made the reputation in the middle ages of many a wonder-working doctor and village witch, is fast dying out in the country districts, where the agricultural labourers scarcely know one herb from another; but it flourishes still around the mighty and enlightened metropolis. The herb self-heal is to be found in many hedgerows of many harvest-fields, as well as on the stubbles near London; but very few reapers now would know it if they saw it, or ever think of applying it to any accidental cut or gash.
In the harvest and turnip-hoeing seasons, picturesque bivouac fires dot the fields and lanes. These do not owe their existence to parties of pleasure-seekers, who go a-gipsying under the greenwood tree, but are rather the outcome of a hard struggle for the means of subsistence. They belong to wandering Irish labourers, who move about from farm to farm wherever they can get work, sleeping in barns or outhouses, and in fine weather doing their cooking in the open air. Nothing can be more unlike the populace of the vast adjacent metropolis than these agricultural labourers, native or imported. Look at the ploughman in the furrows yonder, with his stolid characterless face, vacantly regarding the team of three stately horses before him. Intent day by day on the earth beneath his feet, he sees, or at least notices little else. ‘His mind imbibes the spirit of the soil,’ and cannot rise beyond. When the plough stops, he takes out his bread and cheese; and as he munches away, his eyes fall on the sunbeams glittering on the roof of the Crystal Palace; but the sparkling reflection awakens no train of thought in his uncontemplative soul; he takes no interest except in the furrows at his feet; although near London, he is not of it.