“Authentic tidings of invisible things;—
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,
And central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation.”—The Excursion.
CHAPTER II.
Ponds and rock-pools—Our necessary tackle—Wimbledon Common—Early memories—Gnat larvæ—Entomostraca and their paradoxes—Races of animals dispensing with the sterner sex—Insignificance of males—Volvox globator: is it an animal?—Plants swimming like animals—Animal retrogressions—The Dytiscus and its larva—The dragon-fly larva—Molluscs and their eggs—Polypes, and how to find them—A new polype, Hydra rubra—Nest-building fish—Contempt replaced by reverence.
The day is bright with a late autumn sun; the sky is clear with a keen autumn wind, which lashes our blood into a canter as we press against it, and the cantering blood sets the thoughts into hurrying excitement. Wimbledon Common is not far off; its five thousand acres of undulating heather, furze, and fern tempt us across it, health streaming in at every step as we snuff the keen breeze. We are tempted also to bring net and wide-mouthed jar, to ransack its many ponds for visible and invisible wonders.
Ponds, indeed, are not so rich and lovely as rock-pools; the heath is less alluring than the coast—our dear-loved coast, with its gleaming mystery, the sea, and its sweeps of sand, its reefs, its dripping boulders. I admit the comparative inferiority of ponds; but, you see, we are not near the coast, and the heath is close at hand. Nay, if the case were otherwise, I should object to dwarfing comparisons. It argues a pitiful thinness of nature (and the majority in this respect are lean) when present excellence is depreciated because some greater excellence is to be found elsewhere. We are not elsewhere; we must do the best we can with what is here. Because ours is not the Elizabethan age, shall we express no reverence for our great men, but reserve it for Shakspeare, Bacon, and Raleigh, whose traditional renown must overshadow our contemporaries? Not so. To each age its honour. Let us be thankful for all greatness, past or present, and never speak slightingly of noble work, or honest endeavour, because it is not, or we choose to say it is not, equal to something else. No comparisons then, I beg. If I said ponds were finer than rock-pools, you might demur; but I only say ponds are excellent things, let us dabble in them; ponds are rich in wonders, let us enjoy them.
And first we must look to our tackle. It is extremely simple. A landing-net, lined with muslin; a wide-mouthed glass jar, say a foot high and six inches in diameter, but the size optional, with a bit of string tied under the lip, and forming a loop over the top, to serve as a handle which will let the jar swing without spilling the water; a camel-hair brush; a quinine bottle, or any wide-mouthed phial, for worms and tiny animals which you desire to keep separated from the dangers and confusions of the larger jar; and when to these a pocket lens is added, our equipment is complete.
As we emerge upon the common, and tread its springy heather, what a wild wind dashes the hair into our eyes, and the blood into our cheeks! and what a fine sweep of horizon lies before us! The lingering splendours and the beautiful decays of autumn vary the scene, and touch it with a certain pensive charm. The ferns mingle harmoniously their rich browns with the dark green of the furze, now robbed of its golden summer-glory, but still pleasant to the eye, and exquisite to memory. The gaunt windmill on the rising ground is stretching its stiff, starred arms into the silent air: a landmark for the wanderer, a landmark, too, for the wandering mind, since it serves to recall the dim early feelings and sweet broken associations of a childhood when we gazed at it with awe, and listened to the rushing of its mighty arms. Ah! well may the mind with the sweet insistance of sadness linger on those scenes of the irrecoverable past, and try, by lingering there, to feel that it is not wholly lost, wholly irrecoverable, vanished for ever from the Life which, as these decays of autumn and these changing trees too feelingly remind us, is gliding away, leaving our cherished ambitions still unfulfilled, and our deeper affections still but half expressed. The vanishing visions of elapsing life bring with them thoughts which lie too deep for tears; and this windmill recalls such visions by the subtle laws of association. Let us go towards it, and stand once more under its shadow. See the intelligent and tailless sheep-dog which bounds out at our approach, eager and minatory; now his quick eye at once recognizes that we are neither tramps, nor thieves, and he ceases barking to commence a lively interchange of sniffs and amenities with our Pug, who seems also glad of a passing interchange of commonplace remarks. While these dogs travel over each other’s minds, let us sun ourselves upon this bench, and look down on the embrowned valley, with its gipsy encampment,—or abroad on the purple Surrey hills, or the varied-tinted trees of Combe Wood and Richmond Park. There are not many such prospects so near London. But, in spite of the sun, we must not linger here: the wind is much too analytical in its remarks; and, moreover, we came out to hunt.