‘Why,’ said he, ‘that is a common plant here; it is rosemary—the well-known rosemary of Shakspeare; and if we look about we shall also find rue, another plant of poetic renown—there it is. You remember what Ophelia says about rue: “There’s rue for you; and here’s some for me.”’
‘Ophelia says something more than that: in tendering the rue to Laertes, she says, “we may call it herb-grace o’ Sundays,” and what is meant by that has been subject of subtle inquiry among critics; I suppose, however, that rue was called herb-grace simply as figuring by its sorrowful name the grace of repentance.’
The remark introduced a conversation on the practice of laying a bunch of rue before persons on trial at Newgate—an impertinent practical pun on their unfortunate position at the bar. While discussing the subject, Mr Moggridge made a sudden rush to a plant with small slender leaves, being the one he was in quest of, and seemed to feel more happy in securing a specimen of it than if he had fallen upon a mine of the precious metals. ‘I daresay it is a valuable plant that you have got hold of,’ said I; ‘unfortunately, I am not able to see anything remarkable about it; that, of course, is my ignorance. I go in for admiring the rosemary, which is flowering hereabouts in great profusion; so, “for remembrance,” I will take the liberty of carrying off a sprig in my button-hole.’
Glancing down the steep, I observed a donkey climbing a pathway under a load of sticks, with a lad behind driving it. ‘What a wonderfully useful animal the ass is in this mountainous region,’ I observed. ‘I don’t see how the people could get on without it. And so patient, so docile is the creature, I am sometimes sorry for it. Talking of that, I have heard the donkey-women address a few words to the animal, as if to cheer it on, which I did not understand. The words sounded like alla eesa. Can you tell me what they mean?’
‘Yes,’ was the reply. ‘The meaning is a pious exclamation of kindly import from the Arabic, and is traced to the Saracens, who at one time held possession of parts of the country along the coast. The hill-dwellers certainly take the work out of their donkeys, but on the whole treat them kindly; they are, in fact, their companions, their friends, their dependence.’
Conversation now turned on the remarkable absence of wild animals, particularly birds, along the whole Riviera. There was, doubtless, no deficiency of butterflies, but this only confirmed the notion, that insects injurious to plants had gained in numbers by the vicious practice of shooting almost every kind of small bird.
Mr Moggridge confirmed me in this opinion. ‘Some of the tracts on the higher hills,’ said he, ‘have been wholly stripped of their pine forests by a destructive caterpillar, the Bombyx processiania; so called because these caterpillars follow each other in long and very strange processions. One goes in front as a leader, two follow close behind, then three, and so on, all hard upon each other. As they are marked brown and black, a procession of them looks like a triangular piece of old carpet on the march with one of the corners foremost—a very queer sort of thing, I assure you. Two or three years ago, when on an expedition among the mountains, I came to the forest of Braus, which was already half destroyed by these voracious caterpillars. Many trees were merely withered stumps, others were dying, and to all appearance the remainder would ere long perish. A good way to get rid of these destructive caterpillars would be to gather and set fire to their nests, which resemble bunches of fine wool placed among the branches of the trees. I suggested to the government that women and children should be employed to pick off the nests, otherwise the country would be denuded; but I was referred to the communal authorities, and they would do nothing. I suppose the woods are all gone by this time. All this comes, of course, from shooting the small birds which are appointed by Nature to keep down the number of insects. There has been, I believe, some formal edict of the French government against killing these birds, but little or no attention is paid to it. The insects which prey on plants have full swing. The time may come when, alarmed for the consequences, the French, like the people of Philadelphia in the United States, may have to import batches of live sparrows from England.’
Taking the road back to Mentone, and leaving Mr Moggridge to pursue some inquiries in the neighbourhood of Roccabruna, I had not an opportunity of following up his remarks on the folly of killing small birds. It is more than a folly. It is a gross public outrage. At Mentone, persons are seen sallying out with guns slung by a belt over their shoulders, on the watch for every stray sparrow, lark, or robin. Shooting these small birds goes on with perfect impunity in the streets and by-ways. The practice is not carried on in a mere spirit of idleness or mischief. The little creatures are killed for the sake of picking up a few miserable sous. The birds are disposed of to shopkeepers, who hang them up in bunches for sale outside their doors; and in due time they make their appearance cooked at the tables-d’hôte: a menu with an Entrée des alouettes et des rouges-gorges—in plain English, a dish of roasted larks and robin-redbreasts! Greatly to the credit of the visitors residing last season at the Hôtel Splendide, they protested against the barbarity, and the remonstrance, as under, obtained publicity in the small local journal.[[B]]
[B]. (Translation.) The undersigned, members of the colony of strangers at Mentone, penetrated, as every one ought to be, with the great wrong done to agriculture by the destruction of insectivorous birds, and anxious to contribute on their part towards the disappearance of a practice as hurtful as it is barbarous, make it known as their wish that the keepers of hotels and pensions will never again serve up this species of game at their tables-d’hôte.—Journal de Menton, Nov. 27, 1869.