Field and Hedgerow

R >> Richard Jefferies >> Field and Hedgerow

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I own to a boyish pleasure in seeing the clouds of brown chafers in early
summer clustering on the maple hedges and keeping up a continual burring.
They stick to the fingers like the bud of a horse-chestnut. Now the fern
owl pitches himself over the oaks in the evening as a boy might throw a
ball careless whither it goes; the next moment he comes up out of the
earth under your feet. The night cuckoo might make another of his many
names; his colour, ways, and food are all cuckoo-like; so, too, his
immense gape--a cave in which endless moths end their lives; the eggs are
laid on the ground, for there is no night-feeding bird into whose nest
they could be put, else, perhaps, they would be. There is no
night-feeding bird to feed the fern owl's young. Does any one think the
cuckoo could herself feed two young cuckoos? How many birds would it take
to feed three young cuckoos? Supposing there were _five_ young cuckoos in
the nest, would it not take almost all the birds in a hedge to feed them?
For the incredible voracity of the young cuckoo--swallow, swallow,
swallow, and gape, gape, gape--cannot be computed. The two robins or the
pair of hedge-sparrows in whose nest the young cuckoo is bred, work the
day through, and cannot satisfy him; and the mother cuckoo is said to
come and assist in feeding him at times. How, then, could the cuckoo feed
two or three of its offspring and itself at the same time? Several other
birds do not build nests--the plover, the fern owl. That is no evidence
of lack of intelligence. The cuckoo's difficulty, or one of its
difficulties, seems to be in the providing sufficient food for its
ravenous young. A half-fledged cuckoo is already a large bird, and needs
a bulk of soft food for its support. Three of them would wear out their
mother completely, especially if--as may possibly be the case--the male
cuckoo will not help in feeding. This is the simplest explanation, I
think; yet, as I have often said before, we must not always judge the
ways of birds or animals or insects either by strict utility, or by
crediting them with semi-supernatural intelligence. They have their
fancies, likes and dislikes, and caprices. There are circumstances--perhaps
far back in the life-history of their race--of which we know nothing, but
which may influence their conduct unconsciously still, just as the
crusades have transmitted a mark to our minds to-day. Even though an
explanation may satisfy us, it is by no means certain that it is the true
one, for they may look at matters in an entirely different manner from
what we do. The effect of the cuckoo's course is to cause an immense
destruction of insects, and it is really one of the most valuable as well
as the most welcome of all our birds.

The thin pipe of the gnat heard at night is often alluded to, half in
jest, by our older novelists. It is now, I think, dying out a good deal,
and local where it stays. It occurred to me, on seeing some such allusion
the other day, that it was six years since I had heard a gnat in a
bedroom--never since we left a neighbourhood where there had once been
marshy ground. Gnats are, however, less common generally--exclusive, of
course, of those places where there is much water. All things are local,
insects particularly so. On clay soils the flies in summer are most
trying; black flies swarm on the eyes and lips, and in the deep lanes
cannot be kept off without a green bough. It requires the utmost patience
to stay there to observe anything. In a place where the soil was sand,
with much heath, on elevated ground, there was no annoyance from flies.
There were crowds of them, but they did not attack human beings. You
might sit on a bank in the fields with endless insects passing without
being irritated; but everywhere out of doors you must listen for the
peculiar low whir of the stoat-fly, who will fill his long grey body with
your blood in a very few minutes. This is the tsetse of our woods.

STEAM ON COUNTRY ROADS.

Losses year after year and increasing competition indicate that the crops
now grown are not sufficient to support the farmer. When he endeavours,
however, to vary his method of culture, and to introduce something new,
he is met at the outset by two great difficulties which crush out the
possibility of enterprise. The first of these--the extraordinary
tithe--has already come into prominent notice; the second is really even
more important--it is the deficiency of transit. An extensive use of
steam on common roads appears essential to a revival of agricultural
prosperity, because without it it is almost impossible for delicate and
perishable produce to be quickly and cheaply brought to market. Railways,
indeed, now connect nearly every town of any size whatever throughout the
country with the large cities or London; but railways are necessarily
built as lines of communication between towns, and not in reference to
scattered farms. Upon the map the spaces between the various rails do not
look very broad, but those white bands when actually examined would be
found to be six, eight, ten, or even twenty miles wide. Nor are there
stations everywhere, so that a farm which may be only six miles from the
metals may be ten from the nearest platform. Goods trains do not, as in
the United States, stop to pick up wherever there is material or produce
waiting to be loaded; the produce has to be taken where the railway
chooses, and not where it would suit the farmer's convenience. When at
last the farmer's waggon reaches the station he finds no particular
trouble taken to meet his needs; his horse and carters are kept hours and
hours, perhaps far into the night, for a mere matter of a ton or two, nor
is there any special anxiety shown to deliver his consignment early,
though if it should not be moved from the companies' premises demurrage
is charged. In short, the railway companies, knowing that the
agriculturists until the formation of the 'Farmers' Alliance' were
incapable of united action, have used them much as they liked. As for the
rates charged, the evidence recently taken, and which is to be continued,
shows that they are arbitrary and often excessive. The accommodation is
poor in the extreme, the charges high, the speed low, and every condition
against the farmer. This, in its turn, drives the farmer more into the
hands of the middleman. The latter makes a study of the rail and its
awkward ways, and manages to get the goods through, of course adding to
their cost when they reach the public. Without the dealer, under present
circumstances, the farmer would often find it practically impossible to
get to markets not in his immediate neighbourhood. The rail and its
awkward, inconvenient ways actually shut him off. In manufacturing
districts the transit of iron and minerals and worked-up metal is managed
with considerable ability. There are appointed to manage the goods
traffic men who are alert to the conditions of modern requirements and
quick to meet them. In agricultural districts the question often arises
if there be really any responsible local goods managers at all. It seems
to be left to men who are little more than labourers, and who cannot
understand the patent fact that times are different now from what they
were thirty years since, when they first donned their uniforms. The
railways may bring their books and any number of their officers to prove
that everything is perfectly satisfactory, but the feeling remains,
nevertheless, that it is exactly the contrary.

Look at the map, and place the finger on any of the spaces between the
lines of rail. Take, then, the case of a farmer in the midst of that
space, not more than five or six miles from the metals, and able at times
to hear the distant whistle of the engines, but not less than eight from
a station. This present season he finds his wheat damaged by the rain
after it was cut, and he comes to the conclusion that he must supplement
his ordinary crops by some special culture in order to make his way. On
the last occasion he was in a large city he was much struck by the
quantity of fruit which he found was imported from abroad. The idea
naturally occurs to him of setting aside some ten or twenty acres of his
holding of four hundred or five hundred for the culture of fruit. He goes
to his landlord, who is only too willing to give him every facility,
provided that no injury be done to the soil. He faces the monstrous
injustice of the extraordinary tithes, and expends fresh capital in the
planting of various kinds of fruit.

In places at that distance from a station labour is dear relative to the
low profit on the ordinary style of farming, but very cheap relative to
the possible profits on an improved and specialised system. The amount of
extra labour he thus employs in the preparation of the ground, the
planting, cleaning, picking, and packing, is an inestimable boon to the
humbler population. Not only men, but women and children can assist at
times, and earn enough to add an appreciable degree of comfort to their
homes. In itself this is a valuable result. But now suppose our
enterprising farmer has the fortune to have a good season, and to see his
twenty acres teeming with produce. He sets as many hands on as possible
to get it in; but now what is he to do with it? Send it to London. That
is easily said; but trace the process through. The goods, perishable and
delicate, must first be carted to the railway station and delivered
there, eight miles from the farm, at most inconvenient hours. They must
be loaded into slow goods trains, which may not reach town for
four-and-twenty hours. There is not the slightest effort to accelerate
the transit, and the rates are high. By the time the produce reaches the
market its gloss and value are diminished, and the cost of transit has
eaten away the profit. The thing has been tried over and over again and
demonstrated. One need only go to the nearest greengrocer's to obtain
practical proof of it. The apples he sells are American. The farmers in
New York State or Massachusetts can grow apples, pack them in barrels,
despatch them two thousand eight hundred miles to Liverpool, and they can
then be scattered all over the country and still sold cheaper than the
fruit from English orchards. This is an extraordinary fact, showing the
absolute need of speedy and cheap transit to the English farmer if he is
to rise again. Of what value is his proximity to the largest city in the
world--of what value is it that he is only ninety miles from London, if
it costs him more to send his apples about ninety miles than it does his
American kinsman very nearly three thousand?

As we have in this country no great natural waterways like the rivers and
lakes of the United States, our best resource is evidently to be found in
the development of the excellent common roads which traverse the country,
and may be said practically to pass every man's door. Upon these a goods
train may be run to every farm, and loaded at the gate of the field. This
assertion is not too bold. The thing, indeed, is already done in a manner
much more difficult to accomplish than that proposed. Traction engines,
weighing many tons--so heavy as to sometimes endanger bridges, and
drawing two trucks loaded with tons of coal, chalk, bricks, or other
materials--have already been seen on the roads, travelling considerable
distances, and in no wise impeded by steep gradients; so little, indeed,
that they ascend the downs and supply farms situated in the most elevated
positions with fuel. What is this but a goods train, and a goods train of
the clumsiest, most awkward, and, consequently, unprofitable description?
Yet it is run, and it would not be run were it not to some extent useful.
Anything more hideous it would be hard to conceive, yet if the world
patiently submits to it for the welfare of the agricultural community,
what possible objection can there be to engines so formed as to avoid
every one of the annoyances caused by it? It may be asserted without the
slightest fear of contradiction that there are at least fifty engineering
firms in this country who could send forth a road locomotive very nearly
noiseless, very nearly smokeless, certainly sparkless, capable of running
up and down hill on our smooth and capital roads, perfectly under
control, not in the least alarming to horses, and able to draw two or
more trucks or passenger cars round all their devious windings at a speed
at least equal to that of a moderate trot--say eight miles an hour. Why,
then, do we not see such useful road trains running to and fro? Why,
indeed? In the first place, progress in this direction is absolutely
stopped by the Acts of Parliament regulating agricultural engines. The
Act in question was passed at a time when steam was still imperfectly
understood. It was in itself a perfectly judicious Act, which ought to be
even more strictly enforced than it is. But it was intended solely and
wholly for the regulation of those vast and monstrous-looking engines
which it was at once foreseen, if left to run wild, would frighten all
horse traffic off the roads. The possibility of road locomotives in the
reasonable sense of the term was not even in the minds of the framers.
Yet, by a singular perversity, this very Act has shut off steam from one
of its most legitimate functions.

It is quite possible that the depression of agriculture may have the
effect of drawing attention to this subject, and if so it will be but
tardy justice to the rest of society that the very calling whose engines
now block the roads should thus in the end open them. We should then see
goods trains passing every farm and loading at the gate of the field.
Such a road goods train would not, of course, run regularly to and fro in
the same stereotyped direction, but would call as previously ordered, and
make three or four journeys a day, sometimes loading entirely from one
farm, sometimes making up a load from several farms in succession.
Besides the quick communication thus opened up with the railway station
and the larger towns, the farmer would be enabled to work his tenancy
with fewer horses. He would get manures, coal, and all other goods
delivered for him instead of fetching them. He would get his produce
landed for him instead of sending his own teams, men, and boys. In a
short time, as the railways began to awaken to the new state of things,
they would see the advantage of accommodating their arrangements, and
open their yards and sidings to their competitor. In the case of long
journeys, and with some kinds of goods, in order to save the cost of
transhipment, it would be possible to transfer the bed of the road truck
from its frame on to the frame of the railroad truck, so that the goods,
with one loading, might pass direct to London. Our American cousins are
quite capable of inventing a transferable truck of this kind. In return,
goods loaded in London would never leave the same bottom till unloaded at
the farmyard or in the midst of the village. For all long journeys the
rails would probably always remain the great carriers, and the road
trains serve as their most valuable feeders. When farmers found it
possible to communicate with the cities at reasonable rates, and at
reasonable speed, they would be encouraged to put forth fresh efforts, to
plant vegetables, to grow fruit, to supplement their larger crops with
every species of lesser produce. This, in its turn, would bring new
traffic to the lines; for instead of one or two crops in the year only,
there would be three or four requiring carriage. There would be then
speedy results of such improved communication. One would be an increased
value of land; the second, an increase in the number of small areas
occupied and cultivated; the third, an increase in the rural population.
A fourth would be that the incredible amount of money which is now
annually transferred to the Continent and America for the purchase of
every kind of lesser produce would remain in this country to the
multiplication of the accounts at Post Office savings banks. Every one
who possibly could would grow or fatten something when he could just put
it on a road train, and send it off to market.

Two through passenger road trains a day, one in each direction, carrying
light parcels as well, and traversing say forty or fifty miles or less,
would probably soon obtain sufficient support, as they ran from village
to village and market town to market town. At present, those who live in
villages are practically denied locomotion unless they are well enough
off to keep a horse and trap and a man to look after them. A person
residing in a village must either remain in the village, or walk, or go
by carrier. The carrier stops at every inn, and takes a day to get over
ten miles. The exposure in the carrier's cart has been the cause of
serious illness to many and many a poor woman obliged to travel by it,
and sit in the wind and rain for hours and hours together. Unless they
ride in this vehicle, or tramp on foot, the villagers are simply shut off
from the world. They have neither omnibus, tramway, nor train. Those who
have not lived in a village have no idea of the isolation possible even
in this nineteenth century, and with the telegraph brought to the local
post office. The swift message of the electric wire, and the slow transit
of the material person--the speed of the written thought, and the
slowness of the bodily presence--are in strange contrast.

When people do not move about freely commerce is practically at a
standstill. But if two passenger road trains, travelling at an average
speed of not more than eight miles an hour, one going up and the other
down, and connecting two or more market towns and lines of railway,
passed through the village, how different would be the state of things!
Ease of transit multiplies business, and, besides passengers, a large
amount of light material could thus be conveyed. There would be depots at
the central places, but such trains could stop to pick up travellers at
any gate, door, or stile. If the route did not go through every hamlet,
it would pass near enough to enable persons to walk to it and join the
carriages. No one objects to walk one mile if he can afterwards ride the
other ten. Besides these through trains, special trains could run on
occasions when numbers of people wanted to go to one spot, such as sheep
or cattle fairs and great markets. Large tracts of country look to one
town as their central place, not by any means always the nearest market
town; to such places, for instance, as Gloucester and Reading, thousands
resort in the course of the year from hamlets at a considerable distance.
Such road trains as have been described would naturally converge on
provincial towns of this kind, and bring them thrice their present trade.
Country people only want facilities to travel exactly like city people.
It is, indeed, quite possible that when villages thus become accessible
many moderately well-to-do people will choose them for their residence,
in preference to large towns, for health and cheapness. If any number of
such persons took up their residence in villages, the advantage to
farmers would of course be that they would have good customers for all
minor produce at their doors. It is not too much to say that three parts
of England are quite as much in need of opening up as the backwoods of
America. When a new railroad track is pushed over prairie and through
primeval woods, settlements spring up beside it. When road trains run
through remote hamlets those remote hamlets will awake to a new life.

Many country towns of recent years have made superhuman efforts to get
the railway to their doors. Some have succeeded, some are still trying;
in no case has it been accomplished without an immense expenditure, and
for the most part these railroad branches are completely in the control
of the main line with which they are connected. In one or two cases
progress has been effected by means of tramways, notably one at
Wantage--an excellent idea and highly to be commended. All these are
signs that by slow degrees matters are tending towards some such scheme
as has been here sketched out. While local railroads are extremely
expensive, slow in construction, and always dominated by main lines, and
while tramways need rails, with the paraphernalia rails require, they
have this drawback--they are not flexible. The engines and cars that run
upon them must for ever adhere to the track: there may be goods, produce,
ricks, cows, fruit, hops, and what not, wanting to be landed only a
quarter of a mile distant, but the cars cannot go to the crops. The
railroad is rigid, everything must be brought to it. From town to town it
answers well, but it cannot suit itself and wind about from village to
hamlet, from farm to farm, up hill and down dale. The projected road
train is flexible and capable of coming to the crops. It can call at the
farmer's door, and wait by the gate of the field for the load. We have
lately seen France devote an enormous sum to the laying down of rails in
agricultural districts, to the making of canals, and generally to the
improvement of internal communication in provinces but thinly populated.
The industrious French have recognised that old countries, whose area is
limited, can only compete with America, whose area is almost unlimited,
by rendering transit easy and cheap. We in England shall ultimately have
to apply the same fact.

FIELD SPORTS IN ART.

THE MAMMOTH HUNTER.

The most ancient attempt to delineate the objects of sport in existence
is, I think, the celebrated engraving of a mammoth on a portion of a
mammoth's tusk. I call it an engraving because the figure is marked out
with incised lines such as the engraver makes with his tool, and it is
perfect enough to print from. If it were inked and properly manipulated
it would leave an impression--an artist's proof the most curious and
extraordinary in the world, for the block was cut with flint instruments
by the Cave-men an incredible number of years ago, perhaps before England
was separated from the Continent by the sea, while the two were still
connected, and it was dry land where now the _Calais-Douvres_ steams so
steadily over the waves. But it would be an artist's proof with the
lights and shades reversed, the lines that sketch the form of the mammoth
would be white and the body dark, yet for all that lifelike, since the
undulating indentations that represent the woolly hide of the immense
creature would relieve the ground. This picture of a prehistoric animal,
drawn by a prehistoric artist, shows that Art arose from the chase.
Traced to the den of primeval man, who had no Academy to instruct him, no
Ruskin to guide, and no gallery to exhibit in, it appears that Art sprang
from nature, and not from science. His life was occupied with the hunt,
and he represented that which filled his thoughts. Those who understand
wild sports will not for a moment doubt that the mammoth was taken in
pits or otherwise destroyed despite its huge strength; no matter if it
had been twice as large, the cunning of man would have been equal to the
difficulty. The mind is the arrow that slays the monster. The greater the
danger the greater the interest, and consequently the more the
imagination would dwell upon the circumstances of the chase. Afterwards
resting in the cave round about the fire and thinking of the mighty work
of sport which had been accomplished, the finger of the savage would
involuntarily describe the outline of the creature so laboriously
captured. His finger might describe it upon the scattered ashes whitening
the ground beside him. Or it might describe the outline simply in the
air. Speech in its inception was as much expressed by the finger as the
tongue; perhaps the fingers talked before the mouth, and in a sense
writing preceded language. Uttering the unpolished sound which in their
primitive society indicated the mammoth, the savage drew rapidly a figure
with his finger, and his companions read his meaning written in the air.
To this day it is common for the Italian peasantry to talk with their
fingers; a few syllables suffice, illustrated and emphasised by those
dexterous hands. A more subtle meaning is thus conveyed than could be put
in words. Some of the most ancient languages seem bald and incomplete,
too rigid; they need intonation, as it were, to express passion or
changes of emotion, and when written the letters are too far apart to
indicate what is meant. Not too far apart upon the page, but far apart in
their sense, which has to be supplied as you supply the vowels. In actual
use such languages must have required much gesture and finger-sketching
in the air. The letters of the Egyptians largely consist of animals and
birds, which represent both sounds and ideas. Dreaming over the embers of
his fire, the Cave-man saw pass before his mental vision all the
circumstances of the chase, ending with the crash when the mammoth
crushed into the pit, at which he would start and partially awake.
Intentness of mind upon a pursuit causes an equivalent intentness of
dream, and thus wild races believe their dreams to be real and
substantial things, and not mere shadows of the night. To those who do
not read or write much, even in our days, dreams are much more real than
to those who are continuously exercising the imagination. If you use your
imagination all day you will not fear it at night. Since I have been
occupied with literature my dreams have lost all vividness and are less
real than the shadows of trees, they do not deceive me even in my sleep.
At every hour of the day I am accustomed to call up figures at will
before my eyes, which stand out well defined and coloured to the very hue
of their faces. If I see these or have disturbed visions during the night
they do not affect me in the least. The less literary a people the more
they believe in dreams; the disappearance of superstition is not due to
the cultivation of reason or the spread of knowledge, but purely to the
mechanical effect of reading, which so perpetually puts figures and
aerial shapes before the mental gaze that in time those that occur
naturally are thought no more of than those conjured into existence by a
book. It is in far-away country places, where people read very little,
that they see phantoms and consult the oracles of fate. Their dreams are
real.

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