Part 23

I do not recollect any creature less obnoxious to harm than the common snail (helix aspersa) of our gardens. A sad persevering depredator and mangler it is; and when we catch it at its banquet on our walls, it can expect no reprieve from our hands. But our captures are partial and temporary; and, secured in its strong shell, it seems safe from external dangers; yet its time comes and one weak bird destroys it in great numbers. In the winter season, the common song-thrush feeds sparingly upon the berries of the white thorn, and the hedge fruits, but passes a great portion of its time at the bottoms of ditches, seeking for the smaller species of snails (helix hortensis and hel. nemoralis), which it draws out from the old stumps of the fence with unwearied perseverance, dashing their shells to pieces on a stone; and we frequently see it escaping from the hedge bank with its prize, which no little intimidation induces it to relinquish. The larger kind at this season are beyond its power readily to obtain; for as the cold weather advances, they congregate in clusters behind some old tree, or against a sheltered wall, fixing the openings of their shells against each other, or on the substance beneath, and adhering so firmly in a mass, that the thrush cannot by any means draw them wholly, or singly, from their asylum. In the warmer portion of the year, they rest separate, and adhere but slightly; and should the summer be a dry one, the bird makes ample amends for the disappointment in winter, intrudes its bill under the margin of the opening, detaches them from their hold, and destroys them in great numbers. In the summers of 1825 and 1826, both hot and dry ones, necessity rendered the thrush unusually assiduous in its pursuits; and every large stone in the lane, or under the old hedge, was strewed with the fragments of its banquet. This has more than once reminded me of the fable of the “Four Bulls;” united invincible, when separated an easy prey; but, with the exception of this season, and this bird, I know no casualty to which the garden snail is exposed.

Ignorant as we are of the scope, limitation, and even existence, of certain faculties in animals, we can frequently do little more than conjecture the means whereby they perform many of the functions of life. This ignorance leads us naturally at times to refer these powers to the agency of senses like our own; but, in most instances, probably without any foundation in truth. No creature seems less qualified to commit the depredations which it does, than the garden snail. We grieve to see our fruit mangled and disfigured by these creatures, but cannot readily comprehend by what means they obtain the knowledge that its maturity is approaching—though we find that they must be endued with some faculty capable of accomplishing the purpose; for no sooner does a plum, a fig, a nectarine, or other fruit, begin to ripen on the wall, and long before any sensible odor can be diffused from it, even before an experienced eye can detect the approach to maturity, than those creatures, the slug and the snail, will advance from their asylums, though remotely situate, and proceed by very direct paths to the object. This cannot probably be by the guidance of any known faculty. Eyesight was once considered to be situate on the summit of their horns; but this is now known to be erroneous, and we do not know that they have any vision. The acoustic organ of worms and insects is unknown; and it is not by any means ascertained that these creatures ever hear.[66] If they possess the faculty of smelling, in them it must be a very exquisite sense, beyond any delicacy we can comprehend. Thus, excluding human means of comprehension, which appear inadequate, we more reasonably conclude them to be endowed with intelligences for effecting intentions, of which we have no perception, and which we have no capacity for defining. The contemplative man finds pleasure in viewing the ways and artifices of creatures to accomplish a purpose, though he knows not the directing means; and it fortifies the convictions of the believer, by giving him fresh evidences of the universal superintendence of his Maker, that even the slug and the snail, which are arranged so low in the scale of creation, are yet, equally with all, the object of his benevolence and care.

Connected with this subject of snails, a circumstance that took place in this neighborhood is brought to my remembrance, which discovered yet latent in a few of us, notwithstanding our boasted enlightenment, some leaven of the superstition of darker ages; and that any occurrence, not the event of every coming day, may be made a subject of wonder by the ignorant, and a means for the artful to deceive the credulous. A little banded snail (helix virgata) is a very common species on most of our arid, maritime pastures, and the sheep-downs of many inland places. It happened, from some unknown cause, that those inhabiting a dry field in an adjoining parish were in one season, a few years ago, greatly increased, so as to become an object of notice to a few, then to more, till at length this accumulation was noised about as a supernatural event. The field was visited by hundreds daily from neighboring villages and distant towns. People who could not attend purchased the snails at a half-penny each; and there were persons who made five shillings a day by the sale of them. As this increase of the creature was not certainly to be accounted for, some had the impudence to assert that they had witnessed their fall from the clouds; and many declared their belief that some great public or private misfortune was indicated by it. The proprietor of the field being supposed not to maintain the same sentiments as the commonalty upon a political circumstance, which at that moment greatly agitated the country, it was considered as a manifestation of heavenly displeasure, precursive of malady, misfortune, death. However, autumn came, these snails retired to their holes in the banks, and the worthy man lived on,—and long may he live, esteemed and respected by all, unscathed by snails or misfortunes.

Little obnoxious to injury as this garden snail appears to be, there is another creature, and that a very important one in the operations of nature, that is surrounded by dangers, harassed, pursued unceasingly, and becomes the prey of all: the common earth-worm (lumbricus terrestris). This animal, destined to be the natural manurer of the soil, and the ready indicator of an improved staple, consumes on the surface of the ground, where they soon would be injurious, the softer parts of decayed vegetable matters, and conveys into the soil the more woody fibres, where they moulder, and become reduced to a simple nutriment, fitting for living vegetation. The parts consumed by them are soon returned to the surface, whence, dissolved by frosts, and scattered by rains they circulate again in the plants of the soil,

“Death still producing life.”

Thus eminently serviceable as the worm is, it yet becomes the prey of various orders of the animal creation, and perhaps is a solitary example of an individual race being subjected to universal destruction. The very emmet seizes it when disabled, and bears it away as its prize: it constitutes throughout the year the food of many birds; fishes devour it greedily; the hedgehog eats it; the mole pursues it unceasingly in the pastures, along the moist bottoms of ditches, and burrows after it through the banks of hedges, to which it retires in dry seasons: secured as the worm appears to be by its residence in the earth from the capture of creatures inhabiting a different element, yet many aquatic animals seem well acquainted with it, and prey on it as a natural food, whenever it falls in their way; frogs eat it; and even the great water-beetle (ditiscus marginalis) I have known to seize it when the bait of the angler, and it has been drawn up by the hook. Yet notwithstanding this prodigious destruction of the animal, its increase is fully commensurate to its consumption, as if ordained the appointed food of all; and Reaumur computes, though from what data it is difficult to conjecture, that the number of worms lodged in the bosom of the earth exceeds that of the grains of all kinds of corn collected by man.

Worms, generally speaking, are tender creatures, and water remaining over their haunts for a few days drowns them; they easily become frozen, when a mortification commences at some part, which gradually consumes the whole substance, and we find them on the surface a mucilaginous mass: and their retiring deeper in the soil is no bad indication of approaching cold weather; but no sooner is the frost out of the earth, than they approach the surface to feed on decayed vegetable matter. Greatly beneficial as these creatures are, by drawing leaves and decayed matters into the earth, where their dissolution is accomplished, yet they are sad tormentors to us gardeners, and occasion the loss of more young plants than even the slug, by drawing in the leaf, which throws out the root; so that in the morning we find our nursling inverted. It is the same propensity, or ordination, for removing decayed matters, that influences them in these actions; as they are the faded leaves that are seized by them, such as newly removed plants present before the root draws nutriment from the earth. Even stones of some magnitude are at times drawn over their holes. The horticulturist perhaps encounters more mortification and disappointment than any other laborer upon the earth from insects, elementary severity, the slug, and the worm; yet, if the depredations of this last creature do at times excite a little of our irascibility, we must still remember the nightly labors, and extensive services, that are performed for the agriculturist by this scavenger of the earth, and manurer of the soil.

Besides, worms are essentially useful in draining our lands from superfluous moisture, which in many cases, without their agency, would be detained upon or near the surface of the earth, chilling and deteriorating our pastures. A few inches of soil, resting upon a substratum of clay, would commonly, without some natural or artificial drainage, be soaked with water after heavy rains, and thus become a bog, or produce coarse water herbage rather than good grasses; but these worms greatly facilitate the passage of the water by draining horizontally along the bed of clay, and aid the emission of the water by this means, as I have often observed in the trenches, which we cut in our retentive soils, numerous worm-casts on their sides a few days after they had been made, being the exits of the horizontal runs, and through these the water drains into the trenches, and runs off. I do not assert the water would not in any case be discharged without the agency of worms; but that the passages which they make expedite it, which, in situations where the operation would be subjected to delay from the position of the ground, or the under stratum, is of infinite advantage. Thus the soil is not only rendered firm, allowing the admission of cattle, but the good herbage, which the long residence of water would vitiate or destroy, is saved from injury, and the aquatic and useless plants starved or checked in their growth; but after great gluts of rain, when the supply of water is greater than can be speedily carried off, it becomes stagnant, and those worms, which cannot burrow beyond its influence, soon perish, and we lose the benefit of these very beneficial creatures. Drainage is therefore one of the most important operations in our agricultural concerns. As by irrigation we turn a quantity of nutritive water over our lands, or by reason of its higher temperature foster the growth of grasses; so, by draining cold and superfluous moisture off, we promote the growth of valuable vegetation. I would advocate the cause of all creatures, had I the privilege of knowing the excellency of them; not willingly assigning vague and fanciful claims to excite wonder, or manifest a base pride by any vaunt of superior observation; but when we see, blind as we are, that all things are formed in justice, mercy, truth, I would tell my tale as a man, glorying as a Christian, and bless the gracious power that permitted me to obtain this knowledge.

Residing, as I constantly do, in the country, and having been long observant of rural things, and the operations of Infinite Wisdom, through the very feeble organs with which I have been endowed, I have often thought, that we, who are daily made sensible of so many manifestations of creative power and mercy, should be more seriously disposed, more grateful for the beneficences of Providence, than those who live in societies removed from these evidences; but yet I neither know nor believe that we in any respect give greater proof of this disposition, or are more sensible of the benevolence of an overruling power, than others. The manufacturer by the combination of artful contrivances effects his purposes, and by aid of man’s wisdom brings his work to perfection; the artisan may eat his bread with all thankfulness and humility of heart, solace his labors and mitigate his fatigue by the grateful flavor and juices of fruits purchased at the stall; but he sees nothing of the machinery, the gradual elaborations of nature, nor can he be conversant with the multiplicity of influences and events, which are requisite to bring them to his hand. He who lives in the country knows that an omnipotent impulse must be constantly in action; he may till his land, and scatter his corn, but the early and latter rain must soften his furrows; the snow, as wool, must cover the soil; the hoar-frost, like ashes, lighten his glebe; the sunshine animate the sprouting shoot; and winds evaporate noxious moisture, insects and blights, that hover around, or circulate through the air, must be guided away, or our labors become abortive, or are consumed: we see the bud, the blossom, leaf, and germ, all progressively advance, to afford plenty or yield us enjoyment; we see these things accomplished by the influencing interpositions of a beneficent Providence, and in no way effected by the machinery or artifices of our own hands; and it should operate more powerfully, in disposing those who witness them to particular resignation and gratitude, than others who cannot behold them, but view the ingenuity of man as the agent and means of his prosperity; yet how it happens that this principle is not in more active operation within us, I cannot perceive.

Every age has been the dupe of empiricism; and the greater its darkness, the more impudent appear to have been the pretensions of knavery. We may even now, perhaps, swallow a few matters, the arcana of the needy or the daring, in the various compositions of powders, draughts and pills, which are not quite agreeable to our palates or our stomachs; but our forefathers had more to encounter, as they had more faith to support them, when they were subjected, for the cure of their maladies, to such medicines as _album græcum_, or the white bony excrement of dogs, bleached on the bank, for their heart-burns and acidities; the powder produced from burnt mice, as a dentifrice; millepedes, or wood-lice, for nephritic and other complaints; and the ashes of earth-worms, administered in nervous and epileptic cases.

Our apple-trees here are greatly injured, and some annually destroyed by the agency of what seems to be a very feeble insect. We call it, from habit, or from some unassigned cause, the “American blight” (aphis lanata);[67] this noxious creature being known in some orchards by the more significant name of “white blight.” In the spring of the year a slight hoariness is observed upon the branches of certain species of our orchard fruit. As the season advances this hoariness increases, it becomes cottony, and toward the middle or the end of summer the under sides of some of the branches are invested with a thick, downy substance, so long as at times to be sensibly agitated by the air. Upon examining this substance we find, that it conceals a multitude of small wingless creatures, which are busily employed in preying upon the limb of the tree beneath. This they are well enabled to do, by means of a beak terminating in a fine bristle: this, being insinuated through the bark, and the sappy part of the wood, enables the creature to extract, as with a syringe, the sweet, vital liquor that circulates in the plant. This terminating bristle is not observed in every individual: in those that possess it, it is of different lengths, and is usually, when not in use, so closely concealed under the breast of the animal, as to be invisible. In the younger insects it is often manifested by protruding like a fine termination to the anus; but as their bodies become lengthened the bristle is not in this way observable. The alburnum, or sap wood, being thus wounded, rises up in excrescences and nodes all over the branch, and deforms it; the limb, deprived of its nutriment, grows sickly; the leaves turn yellow, and the part perishes. Branch after branch is thus assailed until they all become leafless, and the tree dies.

Aphides in general attack the young and softer parts of plants; but this insect seems easily to wound the harder bark of the apple, and by no means makes choice of the most tender part of the branch. They give a preference to certain sorts, but not always the most rich fruits; as cider apples, and wildings, are greatly infested by them, and from some unknown cause other varieties seem to be exempted from their depredations. The Wheeler’s russet, and Crofton pippin, I have never observed to be injured by them. This insect is viviparous, or produces its young alive, forming a cradle for them by discharging from the extremities of its body a quantity of long cottony matter, which, becoming interwoven and entangled, prevents the young from falling to the earth, and completely envelops the parent and offspring. In this cottony substance we observe, as soon as the creature becomes animated in the spring, and as long as it remains in vigor, many round pellucid bodies, which, at the first sight, look like eggs, only that they are larger than we might suppose to be ejected by the animal. They consist of a sweet glutinous fluid, and are probably the discharges of the aphis, and the first food of its young. That it is thus consumed, I conjecture from its diminution, and its by no means increasing so fast as fæcal matter would do from such perpetually feeding creatures. I have not, in any instance, observed the young to proceed from these globular bodies, though they are found at various ages at all times during the season. This lanuginous vestiture seems to serve likewise as a vehicle for dispersing the animal; for though most of our species of aphis are furnished with wings, I have never seen any individual of this American blight so provided, but the winds wafting about small tufts of this downy matter, convey the creature with it from tree to tree throughout the whole orchard. In the autumn, when this substance is generally long, the winds and rains of the season effectually disperse these insects, and we observe them endeavoring to secrete themselves in the crannies of any neighboring substance. Should the savoy cabbage be near the trees whence they have been dislodged, the cavities of the under sides of its leaves are commonly favorite asylums for them. Multitudes perish by these rough removals, but numbers yet remain; and we may find them in the nodes and crevices, on the under sides of the branches, at any period of the year, the long, cottony vesture being removed, but still they are enveloped in a fine, short, downy clothing, to be seen by a magnifier, proceeding apparently from every suture, or pore of their bodies, and protecting them in their dormant state from the moisture and frosts of our climate. This aphis, in a natural state, usually awakens and commences its labors very early in the month of March; and the hoariness on its body may be observed increasing daily: but if an infected branch be cut in the winter, and kept in water in a warm room, these aphides will awaken speedily, spin their cottony vests, and feed, and discharge, as accustomed to do in a genial season.

It is often very difficult to ascertain the first appearance of many creatures not natives of our climate, though, from the progress of science, and more general observation, many things will be recorded. The first visit of the death’s-head moth is very obscure; an extraordinary snail (testacellus halotideus)[68] is now spreading by transplantation in many places, and may hereafter occasion inquiry. The first visit of this aphis to us is by no means clear. The epithet of American blight may be correctly applied; but we have no sufficient authority to conclude, that we derived this pest from that country. Normandy and the Netherlands, too, have each been supposed to have conferred this evil upon us; but extensively as this insect is spread around, and favorable as our climate appears to be to its increase, it bids fair to destroy in progression most of our oldest and long-esteemed fruit from our orchards. The same unknown decree, which regulates the increase and decrease of all created beings, influences this insect; yet wet seasons, upon the whole, seem ungenial to its constitution. In the hot dry summer of 1825, it was abundant everywhere; in the spring of 1826, which was unusually fine and dry, it abounded in such incredible luxuriance, that many trees seemed at a short distance as if they had been whitewashed; in the ensuing summer, which was a very dry and hot one, this cottony matter so entirely disappeared, that to superficial observation the malady was not in existence; and it did not become manifest again until September, when, after the rains of that season, it reissued in fine, cottony patches from the old nodes on the trees. Many remedies have been proposed for removing this evil, efficacious perhaps in some cases upon a small scale; but when the injury has existed for some time, and extended its influence over the parts of a large tree, I apprehend it will take its course, and the tree die. Upon young plants, and in places where a brush can be applied, any substance that can be used in a liquid state, to harden into a coat, insoluble by rain, will assuredly confine the ravages of the creature, and smother it. Hard rubbing with a dry brush crushes many, but there are crevices into which the bristle cannot enter: thus some escape, and the propagation continues. I have very successfully removed this blight from young trees, and from recently attacked places in those more advanced, by an easy application. Melt about three ounces of resin in an earthen pipkin, take it from the fire, and pour into it three ounces of fish oil; the ingredients perfectly unite, and, when cold, acquire the consistence of honey. A slight degree of heat will liquefy it, and in this state paint over every node or infected part in your tree, using a common painter’s brush. This I prefer doing in spring, or as soon as the hoariness appears. The substance soon sufficiently hardens, and forms a varnish, which prevents any escape, and stifles the individuals. After this first dressing, should any cottony matter appear round the margin of the varnish, a second application to these parts will, I think, be found to effect a perfect cure.