Part 10

Yet another little group of bog-plants, namely, the Utricularias, or bladderworts, are meat eaters. In their case the fly-catching apparatus is situated, not in the leaves, but in certain small attached air-bladders, which are constructed almost exactly upon the principle of an eel-trap, and which, if opened, may generally be found to contain flies. Thus we see how discovery may be anticipated, and how one of man’s most boasted attributes--that of the Destroyer--may be wrested from him by a miserable little green bog-weed! Before the first Celtic hunter flung spear at wolf or stag; before the Firbolgs, or the Tuatha-da-Daanans--cunning workers and craftsmen--had set up any gins or traps in the wilderness; before the first monk or abbot had arranged ingeniously devised weirs, wherein the salmon--seemingly by miracle--rang a bell to announce its own arrival; before any of these things had been done, or thought of, little Utricularia minor and little Utricularia intermedia had set up their own primitive green eel-traps in the yet unvisited wastes of Iar-Connaught.

MAY 5, 1900

Few events are more gratifying than to find oneself taken more seriously by other people than by oneself, and I am pleased therefore to discover that our palpably artificial little pond has been taken possession of by a colony of frogs, which must have travelled some distance to make its acquaintance, frog-haunted ponds or even ditches being by no means abundant on these dry hillsides of ours.

I have never myself met more than one species of frog in these islands. Professor Bell, however, speaks of another, Rana Scotica, which he held to be distinct, but the difference seems to be mainly one of size. It is extremely difficult to persuade anyone who has noticed the multitudes of frogs which swarm in Ireland that they were only introduced there artificially, and as lately as the beginning of last century. Such, nevertheless, is the fact, and the date of the event is, moreover, a tolerably fixed one. It was a Dr. Gunthers, or Guithers, who, in the year 1705, turned out a handful of spawn into a ditch near Trinity College. For some years the frogs appear to have contented themselves with the neighbourhood of that University, but sixteen years later, in 1721, they were found forty miles away, from which point they seem to have rapidly extended themselves over the whole island. Incidentally the fact is confirmed by a great, if hardly a zoological authority, namely, Dean Swift. In his _Considerations about Maintaining the Poor_, which appeared in the year 1726, in the course of thundering against certain fire offices, which had the impertinence to be English, he declares that “their marks upon our houses spread faster and further than a colony of frogs.” The portent, therefore, it is plain, had reached his ears.

Coincidences are attractive things, and it is satisfactory to discover that as regards earlier times we are again able to fortify our mere lay zoology upon the authority of an eminent ecclesiastic. This time it was St. Donatus, bishop of Etruria, who, writing in the ninth century, assured the world, upon his episcopal authority, that no frogs or toads existed, or, moreover, could exist in Ireland. Three centuries later Giraldus Cambrensis tells us, however, that in his time a frog was taken alive near Waterford, and brought into court, Robert de la Poer being then warden. “Whereat,” he says, “Duvenold, King of Ossory, a man of sense amongst his people, beat upon his head, and spake thus: ‘That reptile is the bearer of doleful news to Ireland.’” Giraldus is careful, however, to assure us that “no man will venture to suppose that this reptile was ever born in Ireland, for the mud there does not, as in other countries, contain the germs from which frogs are bred”; indeed, in another part of the _Topographia Hibernica_ we learn that frogs, toads, and snakes, if accidentally brought to Ireland, on being cast ashore, immediately “turning on their backs, do burst and die.” This statement is corroborated by a still more illustrious authority, that of the Venerable Bede, whom Giraldus quotes as follows: “No reptile is found there” (in Ireland), “neither can any serpent live in it, for, though oft carried there out of Britain, so soon as the ship draws near the land, and _the scent of the air from off the shore reaches them_, immediately they die.” So efficacious was the very dust of Ireland that on “gardens or other places in foreign lands being sprinkled with it, immediately all venomous reptiles are driven away.” So, too, with fragments of the skins and bones of animals born and bred in Ireland; indeed, parings from Irish manuscripts, and scraps of the leather with which Irish books were bound, were amongst the accredited cures for snakebite until well on in the Middle Ages. Of his own personal experience Giraldus relates to us how, upon a certain occasion, a thong of Irish leather was, in his presence, drawn round a toad, and that, “coming to the thong, the animal fell backward as if stunned. It then tried the opposite side of the circle, but, meeting the thong all round, it shrank from it as if it were pestiferous. At last, digging a hole with its feet in the centre of the circle, it disappeared in the presence of much people.”

Our frogs and toads are not likely at present to become an affliction to us. Should they ever do so I must certainly send for some Irish leather, or, failing that, for a pinch of Irish dust, and try its effect upon them. An influence that has been vouched for by such a variety of authorities ought to retain something of its ancient potency. Scientific experiments in any case are always interesting!

MAY 8, 1900

Returning to our pond this morning to see whether the water-lilies propose flowering this season, I find that the frogs have been depositing spawn along its edges, so that the thongs of Irish leather may become necessary sooner than I expected!

All the same I am delighted to see the frog-spawn, for I have an affection for tadpoles. Youthful associations cluster pretty thickly around them, but apart from such a merely sentimental attachment, there is a satisfaction, I may say a zoologic thrill, about this transition of a water-living and water-breathing animal into an air-breathing one; a transition going on, moreover, not at some remote, and more or less dubious geologic age, but under one’s very eyes, even, as in this case, in the middle of one’s own decorous, shaven lawn.

It is difficult to remember that frogs breathe air as much as we do ourselves. Unlike ourselves, and their other zoologic betters, they do so, however, not by alternate contractions and dilations of the chest, Nature not having provided them with ribs, but by the doubtless more archaic process of swallowing air. Not only would a frog die if kept too long under water, but--seeing that it can only swallow air by shutting its mouth--were that mouth kept forcibly open it would equally die, and from the same cause, namely, want of breath. Tadpoles, on the other hand, are strictly water-breathers, and until they have shed their gills, have no more need to go to the surface to breathe than a fish has. That, by the way is not an absolutely accurate illustration, seeing that certain fishes _do_ need to go to the surface for air. The famous Anabas, or “climbing perch” of India, is such an air-breathing fish, the air reaching it by means of cavities on either side of its gills, and if prevented from reaching the surface, and renewing the supply, it would “drown like a dog,” or so the scientists assert. Such cases, however, can hardly be called normal. Fishes that can live comfortably for days out of the water, that can nest in a bush, and travel across a particularly dry country, are not likely to be met with in zoologic rambles about this parish.

Returning to our Irish frogs, it is an odd fact, especially considering their recent introduction, that in addition to swarming over the lowlands, and in every place dear to frogs, they have learnt to climb long distances up hill, and to establish themselves in ponds separated widely from any others, often not even fed by streams, and moreover destitute of nearly all other animal inhabitants, with the exception of certain minute molluscs, which are believed by zoologists to have reached them upon the feet of wading birds, and that at such a remote period of time that they have become what are practically new species.

Many years ago, on reaching the top of Mweelrea, the leading mountain of Connemara, I remember my surprise at finding swarms of young tadpoles wriggling along the margin of a small pond, nearly upon the actual summit. They were still in the engaging comma-like stage, before legs had begun to dawn upon their consciousness, and seemed to have remarkably little to eat, for the water was crystal clear. The pond was one of that attractive kind known as _corries_, held by the geologists, doubtless truly, to be of glacial origin; a delicious clean-cut oval; pure rock, from marge to marge; gouged, as if by the chisel of Michael Angelo, from the matrix in which it lay. But for the unmistakable evidence of the tadpoles it would, to any reasonable imagination, have suggested the bath of some mountain nymph very much sooner than frog-spawn.

We are all of us to-day evolutionists, if some of us still with a certain amount of reservation, and to the evolutionist tadpoles must always prove interesting acquaintances. They provide us with at least an inkling as to the fashion in which your unadulterated water-breather may have been converted into an air-breather, and by means of no process more recondite than that of losing its gills. That such conversions do take place, and under certain circumstances remain permanent, has been proved in the well-known case of the axolotl, or Mexican gilled salamander. As long ago as the year 1867, while conducting some experiments at the Jardin des Plantes, M. Duméril startled the zoologic world of Paris by communicating the fact that, out of a number of axolotls kept in the collection there, about thirty had left the water, and had assumed the form of what had hitherto been regarded as an absolutely distinct genus of land salamander, known as amplystoma. This discovery made at the time a prodigious stir, not so much on account of a water-breathing creature losing its gills, and becoming an air-breather, for that was a phenomenon which might be seen every spring, and in most of the ditches round Paris, but because the axolotl was known to breed, and that it therefore appeared to indicate the exceedingly anomalous case of a larval form proving to be fertile.

How the feat of transformation was to be actually witnessed was the next problem, and it is pleasant to remember that it was through the energy and perseverance of a woman naturalist, Fraulein Marie von Chauvin, that the matter was finally cleared up. By continually damping the specimens of axolotl kept by her on land, and assiduously feeding them, she was able to preserve two out of five through the gradual process of decreasing their gill-tufts, and tail-fins, changing their skins, and so forth. Finally to her own and everyone’s triumph, the complete amplystoma form was assumed, and the transformation was thereby accomplished. The world has seen a fair number of miracles since it began to run its course, and perhaps not the least difficult of those miracles to receive with absolute credulity have been some of its natural ones!

MAFEKING-DAY, 1900

It is the nineteenth of May. S. S. has returned, and the east wind which has long been vexing our souls has departed for the moment, and a soft caressing zephyr blows seductively. The garden, comforted by recent showers, is smiling one broad smile from the red steps at the top of it to the new pergola at the bottom. And now this morning comes the news of the Relief of Mafeking. Joy for the victors; joy for the nation; joy for everything and everybody. Flags flutter from all the posts; the dogs strut about in new tricolor rosettes; “the air breaks into a mist with bells.” All this is well, very well. Only; only. A few lines coming by the same post, a single short note, and for one person that May sunshine is blotted out as effectually as though the very orb itself had perished. The garden with all its flowers; the copse surrounding it, new clad in gala attire; the whole cheerful little picture has become darkened; its atmosphere changed; its pleasant anticipations turned into a simple mockery. Even to-day’s news sounds thin and unreal, and the tale of Mafeking is as it were the tale of some defence read of long since in an ancient, a seldom-opened history, the actors and heroes of which have long vanished and been forgotten. We are but poor, bedimmed mirrors all of us, and what we reflect is rarely the real thing, more often only some blurred and distorted image projected by our own sad selves.

MAY 26, 1900

That Nature is cruel is not to be denied; the evidences of that cruelty are written out large and red in every woodland, under every hedgerow. That she can be also unaccountably pitiful, or at all events take pains to appear so, is fortunately equally true, and it is a truth that at times comes very near to the heart. This morning at a very early hour there was a tenderness, a kind of hovering serenity over everything, that appealed to one like a benediction. The air itself seemed changed; sanctified. The familiar little paths one walked along were like the approaches to some as yet invisible Temple.

There are certain pictures of Jean Francois Millet’s in which this quality of sanctity is the first thing that strikes one, the more so that the obviously religious element is conspicuously absent from them. His “Angelus” has always seemed to me a poorer composition in this respect than some others. When one sees a man standing with his hat off in the middle of a field, in the company of a woman, who clasps her hands, and looks down, one knows what one is expected to feel. When on the other hand one sees only a childish-looking farm-drudge knitting, a number of greedy sheep feeding, and a rough dog watching them, where, one asks oneself in perplexity, does the religious element come in? That it is to be found in the “Bergère” is however, unmistakable, and equally unmistakably was it to be found in the copse this morning, though how it got there, or who implanted it, I were rash were I to attempt to explain.

Assuredly man is by nature a devotional creature, however little of the dogmatic may mingle with his devotions. He may avert his ear from the church-going bell, he may refuse to label himself with the label of any particular denomination, but it is only to be overtaken with awe in the heart of a forest, and to fall on his knees, as it were, in some green secluded spot of the wilderness. The sense of something benignant close at hand, of some pitying eye surveying one, is so vivid at certain moments of one’s life that it actually needs a rough conscious effort if one would shake it off. Even the sense of the vastness of that arena upon which our poor little drama is being played out, even this habitual impression becomes less grimly crushing at such moments than usual. What if it is colossal, one says to oneself, and what if, as compared to it, ourselves and our troubles are infinitesimal? what if they count no more in the scheme of things than do the afflictions of a broken-legged mouse, or of a crushed beetle? Very well; be it so. The mouse and the beetle have, after all, each their allotted place in that scheme. Nay for aught we know to the contrary, each may have its own incalculable hour; each may be susceptible of the same profound, if intangible, consolation.

JUNE 2, 1900

The revolving year has brought us back at last to June. Here is June, and here are all the June flowers. If June were only always really June, and if our hearts could always keep time to its weather, then were earth paradise, and any remoter one might be relegated to the remotest of Greek kalends. June however is by no means invariably June, while as for our hearts they are like our eyes, which have a fashion of blinking sometimes at the light, as those of owls are reported to do, preferring their own shadowy places, and the night, which at least brings kindly dreams. Yet are kindly dreams, it may be asked, really the kindliest, seeing that we wake from them, and know that they are false? Are not ugly dreams, are not even terrible ones, better, seeing that we wake from them, and say to ourselves that matters, after all, are not quite so bad as _that_? It is a question, and, like many questions, a good deal easier asked than answered.

“If there were dreams to sell, Pleasant, and sad as well, And the crier rang his bell, Which would you buy?”

It is not the time, however, now for dreams, or for dream thoughts. It is nine o’clock in the morning, and everybody ought therefore to be wide awake and smiling. The garden at all events is performing its duty in both these respects, and seems, moreover, to be making encouraging little signals, like some humble but rather impatient suitor, who wishes to observe that he has really been waiting a long time, and deserves a little attention. Perhaps it does. Perhaps, seeing that it is there, and that we are here, it ought not to fare worse at our hands than our own dull bodies, which have to be clothed and fed, put to bed, and taken up again, whatever the less material portion may be feeling at the time. Here on my table I see is a list of some of our latest seedlings. They are not alpines this time, only common border plants, with a sprinkling of candidates for naturalisation, of which this copse can absorb almost any amount, so long as they are of the right sort. It is not a long list, and will not therefore take very long to transcribe.

Here it is:-

Adonis vernalis. ” pyrenaica. Alströmeria aurantiaca. Anchusa italica. Anthemis tinctoria. Aponogeton (self-sown). Armeria cephalotes. ” ”” alba. Aster amellus. ” ericoides. Campanula pyramidalis. Catananche cærulea. Commelina cælestis. Chionodoxa sardensis. Cimicifuga fœtida. Chelone (Penstemon) barbata. Clematis graveolens. Cobæa scandens. Convolvulus sylvatica. Coreopsis lanceolata. ” tenuifolia. Cistus laurifolius. ” formosus. Cyclamen Coum. ” europæum. ” hederæfolium. Cytisus scoparius. ” ” albus. ” Andreanus. Cytisus præcox. Delphinium (various). Dictamnus fraxinella. Dipsacus laciniatus. Doronicum austriacum. ” plantaginum ” excelsum. Eccremocarpus scaber. Echinops Ritro. ” ruthenicus. Erigeron speciosus. Eryngium amethystinum. ” Olivierianum. Onopordon arabicum. ” illyricum. Ferula tingitana. Francoa appendiculata. Gaillardia grandiflora. Gypsophila paniculata. Heuchera sanguinea. Hypericum calycinum. ” olympicum. Iberis corifolia. ” sempervirens. Lathyrus latifolius grandiflorus. Lilium tigrinum (from bulblets in axils). Lupinus arboreus. ” polyphyllus. Lupinus polyphyllus alba. Lythrum salicaria superbum. Libertia formosa. Lobelia cardinalis. Muscari armeniacum, } slow. ” conicum, } Meconopsis cambrica ” nepalensis Meconopsis Wallichi. Mimulus cardinalis. Myosotis dissitiflora. ” sylvatica. ” palustris semperflorens.

My list appears to be a longer one than I thought. I have as yet only reached the N’s, yet my energies have quite come to an end for the present. I will put off the remainder of it therefore for a day or two.

JUNE 8, 1900

I had intended going doggedly on this morning with the list of our seed-sowings, but another impulse has come, and the sowings must stand over for the moment. Something in the look of to-day’s sky and earth--a brand new earth after last night’s rain--has brought a new, and a most unlooked-for wave of exhilaration to my mental shores, and the visitation is just now too rare and comforting not to be met half way with the keenest of hospitality.

“Life is a flux of moods,” and to the fluctuations of those moods there is assuredly no limit. If we are eternally surprised by our own limitations, our own torpidity and dullness, there are also--and for this heaven be thanked--some possibilities of surprise upon the other side, and that for the oldest, the saddest, the least alert amongst us. A hundred hours of intolerable dullness and stagnation pass over our heads. Then comes the hundred and first, and lo! the dull brain wakes, and the deaf ear hears. A new perception of the unperceived relationship of things; a new perception of the invisible splendours lying unnoticed around us, becomes for the moment almost startlingly visible. Such hours are the only really countable ones, the chief solace of existence, the one clear reason, one is tempted to say, of our poor encumbered, stunted little lives. For their sakes, if for no other reason, it were well worth the trouble of being born, and of all the aches and ills that belong to that very singular estate; worth our meeting gallantly, if possible merrily, the thousand petty pinpricks, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the occasional alienation of those one loves best, nay--if it must be so--even the fell assaults of Giant Despair and all his abominable brood.

For the suggestiveness of what lies about us is no mere fancy, but is absolutely real; real as the light upon yonder tree-tops; real as the sorrow in our hearts; real as the love that makes all things endurable; real as the death which puts an end to pain. At this very moment, now passing over my head, there is lying about me--close to my eyes, could I but discern it--the materials alike of the loftiest poetry, and of the most riddle-solving science. Disregarded and unheeded there they lie, ready alike for the greatest singer in his happiest mood, for the most era-making of discoverers, nay, for aught I can tell to the contrary, for the seer, the saint, and the prophet in their hours of highest, and most God-inspired contemplation.

For the raw materials of inspiration are eternally at hand, only invisibly. They are as present here this morning as they ever were; present in the earth and its green things; in the common face of day; in the comings and goings of the clouds, and of men; in the changes of the sky, and of our own poor lives. The light that is gilding yonder cumulus is as capable of inspiring great thoughts here to-day in a Surrey copse, as ever it was in Delphi, or in Argos, or in Jerusalem. It may awaken just as resounding emotions, it may inspire just as great deeds to the hearts of yonder passers-by in a dogcart, as it did to the Assailants of Troy, or to the Seekers of the Golden Fleece. The constituents of all greatness, of all poetry, heroism, and sanctity are for ever amongst us. It is only the right recipients of them that are alas! so scanty.