An almost typical example of slow-flowing brooks is to be found in the remarkable channels which intersect the country between Minster and Sandwich, and which, on the ordnance map, look almost like the threads of a spider's web. In that flat district, the fields are not divided by hedges, as in most parts of England, or by stone walls—"dykes," as they are termed in Ireland—such as are employed in Derbyshire and several other stony localities, but by channels, which have a strong individuality of their own.
Even the smallest of these brooks is influenced by the tide, so that at the two periods of slack water there is no perceptible stream.
Yesterday afternoon, having an hour or so to spare at Minster, I examined slightly several of these streams and their banks. The contrast between them and the corresponding brooklets of Oxford, also a low-lying district, was very strongly marked.
In the first place, the willow, which forms so characteristic an ornament of the brooks and rivers of Oxford, is wholly absent. Most of the streamlets are entirely destitute of even a bush by which their course can be marked; so that when, as is often the case, a heavy white fog overhangs the entire district, looking from a distance as if the land had been sunk in an ocean of milk, no one who is not familiarly acquainted with every yard of ground could make his way over the fields without falling into the watery boundaries which surround them.
Some of them, however, are distinguished by hawthorns, which take the place of the willows, and thrive so luxuriantly that they may lay claim to the title of forest trees. Blackberries, too, are exuberant in their growth, and in many spots the hawthorn and blackberry on opposite sides of the brook have intertwined their branches across it and have completely hidden the water from sight. On these blackberries, the fruit of which was in its green state, the drone-flies and hawk-flies simply swarmed, telling the naturalist of their multitudinous successors, who at present are in the preliminary stages of their existence.
Among the blackberries the scarlet fruit of the woody nightshade (a first cousin of the potato) hung in tempting clusters, and I could not help wondering whether they would endanger the health of the young Minsterians.
In some places the common frog-bit had grown with such luxuriance that it had completely hidden the water, the leaves overlapping each other as if the overcrowded plants were trying to shoulder each other out of the way.
In most of these streamlets the conspicuous bur-reed (Spargánium ramósum) grew thickly, its singular fruit being here and there visible among the sword-like leaves. I cannot but think that the mediæval weapon called the "morning star" (or "morgen-stern") was derived from the globular, spiked fruit-cluster of the bur-reed.
A few of the streams were full of the fine plant which is popularly known by the name of bull-rush, or bulrush (Typha latifólia), but which ought by rights to be called the "cat's-tail" or "reed-mace." Of this plant it is said that a little girl, on seeing it growing, exclaimed that she never knew before that sausages grew on sticks. The teasel (Dipsacus) was abundant, as were also several of the true thistles.
In some places one of these streams becomes too deep for the bur-reed, and its surface is only diversified by the half-floating leaves of one or two aquatic plants.