Good-for-nothing grass
The happy spot was in Harewood Forest, a dense oak-wood covering an area of about two thousand acres, a few miles from Andover. I had haunted it for some days, finding little wild life to interest me except the jays, which seemed to be the principal inhabitants. In the middle of this forest or wood, among the oak trees there stands a tall handsome granite cross about thirty feet high, placed to mark the exact spot, known as "Deadman's Plack," where over nine centuries ago King Edgar, with his own hand, slew his friend and favourite, Earl Athelwold. The account which history gives of this pious monarch, called the Peaceable, despite his volcanic disposition where women were concerned, especially his affair with Elfrida, who was also pious and volcanic as well as beautiful, reads in these dull, proper times like a tale from another hotter, fiercer world. It is not strange that many persons find their way through the thick forest by the narrow track to this place or "Plack"; and there too I went on several days, and sat by the hour and meditated. It had struck me as a suitable spot to watch for the purple emperor; but I saw him not, and once only I caught sight of his bride to be—a big black-looking butterfly which rose from the top of an oak, took a short flight, and returned to settle once more on the highest leaves in the same place. This vain hunt for the purple king of the butterflies—to see him, not to "take"—led to the discovery of the green minstrels. Near the cross, or "monument," as it is called, there is an open place occupying a part of the top and a slope of a down, as pretty a bit of wild heath as may be found in the county. Stony and barren in places, it is in other parts clothed in ling, purple with bloom at this season, with a few pretty little birches and clumps of tangled thorn and bramble scattered about. But the feature which gives a peculiar charm to the spot is the false brome grass which flourishes on the slope, growing in large patches, and on the borders of these mixing its vivid light-green tussocks with the purple-flowered heath. It is the species called (in books) heath false brome grass, but as lips of man refuse to pronounce these four ponderous monosyllables, the invention of some dreary botanist, that follow and jolt against each other, I will venture to rename it good-for-nothing grass. For it is useless to the farmer, since no domestic herbivore will touch it; its sole justification is its exceeding beauty. It grows as high as a man's knees, or higher, and even in the driest, hottest season keeps its wonderfully vivid fresh green, as near a brilliant colour as any green leaf can be; and the stalks and graceful spikes after the flowering time are pale yellow-brown, and have a golden lustre in the bright August and September sunlight. Could our poetical viridissima have a more suitable home! And here, coming out from the thick oaks and sauntering about the heath I caught the sound of his delicate shrilling, and to my delight found myself in the midst of a colony. They were not abundant, and one could not experience the sensation produced by many stridulating at a time: they were thinly scattered over two or three acres of ground, but at some points I could hear several of them shrilling together at different distances, and it was not difficult to keep two or three in sight at one time.
Hitherto I had known this insect as an evening musician, beginning as a rule after sunset and continuing till about eleven o'clock. Here he made his music only during the daylight hours, from about ten or eleven in the morning until five or six o'clock in the afternoon, becoming silent at noon when it was hot. But it was late in the season when I found him, on 26th August, and after much rain the weather had become exceptionally cool for the time of year.
RIVAL GREAT GREEN GRASSHOPPERS
When stridulating it appeared to be the ambition of every male grasshopper to get up as high as he could climb on the stiff blades and thin stalks of the grass; and there, very conspicuous in his uniform green colour which in a strong sunlight looked like the green of verdigris, his translucent overwings glistening like a dragon-fly's wings, he would shrill and make the grass to which he was clinging tremble to his rapidly vibrating body. Then he would listen to the shrill response of some other singer not far off, and then sing and listen again, and yet again; then all at once in a determined manner he would set out to find his rival, travelling high up through the grass, climbing stems and blades until they bent enough for him to grasp others and push on, reminding one of a squirrel progressing through the thin highest branches of a hazel copse. After covering the distance in this manner, with a few short pauses by the way to shrill back an answering challenge, he would find a suitable place near to the other, still in his place high up in the grass; and then the two, a foot or so, sometimes three or four inches, apart, would begin a regular duel in sound at short range. Each takes his turn, and when one sings the other raises one of his forelegs to listen; one may say that in lifting a leg he "cocks an ear." The attitude of the insects is admirably given in the accompanying drawing from life. This contest usually ends in a real fight: one advances, and when at a distance of five or six inches makes a leap at his adversary, and the other, prepared for what is coming and in position, leaps too at the same time, so that they meet midway, and strike each other with their long spiny hind legs. It is done so quickly that the movements cannot be followed by the eye, but that they do hit hard is plain, as in many cases one is knocked down or flung to some distance away. Thus ends the round; the beaten one rushes off as quickly as he can, as if hurt, but soon pulls up, and lowering his head, begins defiantly stridulating as before. The other follows him up, shrills at and attacks him again; and you may see a dozen or twenty such encounters between the same two in the course of half an hour. Occasionally when the blow is struck they grasp each other and fall together; and it is hardly to be doubted that they not only kick, like French wrestlers and bald-headed coots, but also make wicked use of their powerful black teeth. Some of the fighters I examined had lost a portion of one of the forelegs—one had lost portions of two—and these had evidently been bitten off. Perhaps they inflict even worse injuries. Hearing two shrilling against each other at a spot where there was a large clump of heath between them, I dropped down close by to listen and watch, when I discovered a third grasshopper sitting mid-way between the others in the centre of the heath-bush. This one appeared more excited than the others, keeping his wings violently agitated almost without a pause, and yet not the faintest sound proceeded from him. It proved on examination that one of his stiff overwings had been bitten or torn off at the base, so that he had but half of his sounding apparatus left, and no music could his most passionate efforts ever draw from it, and, silent, he was no more in the world of green grasshoppers than a bird with a broken wing in the world of birds.
Singing-contests
For it cannot be doubted that his own music is the greatest, the one all-absorbing motive and passion of his little soul. This may seem to be saying too much—to attribute something of human feelings to a creature so immeasurably far removed from us. Fantastic in shape, even among beings invertebrate and unhuman, one that indeed sees with opal eyes set in his green goat-like mask, but who hears with his forelegs, breathes through spiracles set in his sides, whipping the air for other sense-impressions and unimaginable sorts of knowledge with his excessively long limber horns, or antennæ, just as a dry-fly fisher whips the crystal stream for speckled trout; and, finally, who wears his musical apparatus (his vocal organs) like an electric shield or plaster on the small of his back. Nevertheless it is impossible to watch their actions without regarding them as creatures of like passions with ourselves. The resemblance is most striking when we think not of what we, hard Saxons, are in this cold north, but of the more fiery, music-loving races in warmer countries. I remember in my early years, before the advent of "Progress" in those outlying realms, that the ancient singing contests still flourished among the gauchos of La Plata. They were all lovers of their own peculiar kind of music, singing endless decimas and coplas in high-pitched nasal tones to the strum-strumming of a guitar; and when any singer of a livelier mind than his fellows had the faculty of improvising, his fame went forth, and the others of his quality were filled with emulation, and journeyed long distances over the lonely plains to meet and sing against him. How curiously is this like our island grasshoppers, who have come to us unchanged from the past, and are neither Saxons nor Celts, but true, original, ancient Britons—the little grass-green people with passionate souls! You can almost hear him say—this little green minstrel you have been watching when his shrill note has brought back as shrill an answer—as he resolutely sets out over the tall, bending grasses in the direction of the sound, "I'll teach him to sing!"