Part 24

The prevalence of this insect gives some of our orchards here the appearance of numerous white posts in an extensive drying ground, being washed with lime from root to branch—a practice I apprehend attended with little benefit; a few creatures may be destroyed by accident, but as the animal does not retire to the earth, but winters in the clefts of the boughs far beyond the influence of this wash, it remains uninjured, to commence its ravages again when spring returns.

Seasons arrive and pass away, the general features alone remaining impressed upon our minds; but they often produce consequences not commonly expected, and a departed summer or winter has frequently been the cause of some event, which we consider as exclusively occasioned by atmospheric changes, or present temperature. A warm dry summer generally occasions a healthy spring blossom the ensuing year, the bearing wood being ripened and matured to produce in its most perfect state. A wet, damp one usually effects the reverse, by occasioning an abundant flow of sap, producing wood and foliage rather than blossom; and the following spring, in such cases, from the floral vigor being diverted, has generally its blossom weak, and, though perhaps not defective, incompetent to mature the germen. This is mere reasoning upon general consequences; but so imperfect are our theories, and so many circumstances counteract the calculations, the predictions of human wisdom, which can rarely even “discern the face of the sky,” that results must more often be looked for than known. The recording of events is the province of the naturalist; and perhaps occasionally by comparing existing circumstances with past events, something approximating to probability may be obtained. The two burning summers of 1825 and 1826 are remembered by all; but it was in the succeeding year only, that the result of this heat and drought was manifested to us, by effects upon our pasture lands, which we did not expect. Not only in those on the limestone substratum, but in many that were sandy, and in the clayey which were chapped by the heat, the roots of the grasses, which we have generally considered as not being subject to such injuries, were destroyed in some cases, and greatly injured in others; and in their places frequently sprang up crowfeet (ranunculus acris, and bulbosus), and dandelions, a mere useless vegetation, which, as long as the grasses flourished, were kept in subordination and obscurity by their superior growth; while bare patches in other places told us of aridity and failure: the meadow grass (poa) and ray grass (lolium perenne) were great sufferers; the dog’s tail (cynosurus) supported itself better; the cockfoot (dactylis), though not killed, was so much hurt, that its ensuing vegetation, instead of the coarse luxuriance it generally manifests, was dry, hard, and deficient in succulency, or, as our laborers emphatically say, was “stunned;” and bent-grass (agrostis vulgaris), that certain indicator of a dry soil, appeared more than it commonly does. But this destruction of the roots in very many places was not obvious, the turf, as it was, remaining; yet some injury was apparent in the succeeding summer and autumn. The crop cut for hay was unusually abundant, and seemed to have exhausted the roots by its growth, as no aftergrass sprang up; nor did the pastures which were fed afford more than a dry, hard, yellow provender, looking tanned, as if seared by severe frost; and in September, when in general we expect our fields to yield an abundance of grass, as food for months, they presented commonly the aspect of hard-fed lands in March, though so much rain had fallen, both in July and August, as to lead us to expect profusion. It did not appear that the roots had actually perished; which could not have been the case, by producing the mowing crops that they did; but this was a single effort: the injury was manifested by the deficiency of the autumnal vigor; this was the actual result, difficult as it is to assign a satisfactory reason. Perhaps these effects upon our pasture lands were unprecedented: but these things pass away, unless recorded; and though we may resort to the oldest memory for evidence, yet memory is oblivious, often exaggerative, and cannot safely be trusted.

June and July, 1825.—The quantity of that sweet clammy fluid, which we find upon certain leaves, and commonly call “honey-dew,” was more than usually abundant during these months. In the day-time, bees, wasps, and tribes of flies collected to feed upon it, and in the evenings, moths and insects of the night frequented the fruit trees on our walls, particularly the cherry and the plum, for the same purpose, and their presence brought the bat, so that some places were animated by the flitting about of these creatures. Aphides abounded upon all the young sprays.

June 17, 1828.—Abundance of rain has fallen during the preceding night, and in the morning of this day, about two o’clock, the sun broke out, the air becoming hot and heavy. I was soon surprised by observing multitudes of hive-bees buzzing and crawling about the foliage and young shoots of my laurel bushes (prunus laurocerasus), and feeding upon some sweet matter lodged on them; the blossoms had long before fallen off: no aphides frequent this plant, nor were there any trees near them from whence any sweet matter might have fallen; we have no honey-dew upon our fruit trees, and an aphis is scarcely to be found. Has any saccharine matter fallen, or been emitted by the plant to entice these insects to harbor about them? It clearly appears that honey-dews arise from two causes; that a large portion of it is the discharges from insects of the genus aphis, has long since been manifested by the Abbé Sauvages, Mr. Curtis, and others: insects discharge in all days and hours during the warm months of the year. But there is another kind which we find only at particular times, and in certain states of the atmosphere, lodged on certain plants during the night in such quantities as to hang occasionally in drops from the points of the leaves. The foliage of the oak is at times lucid with this sweet liquor, and this the bees are soon acquainted with, and eagerly collect it, which they only partially do when spread upon the leaves on the wall, the evident discharge of aphides. Some of my neighbors who have hives will occasionally observe, “A heavy honey-dew last night, and the bees are hard at work;” this cannot proceed from insect discharges. That some foliage may condense any matter that may fall upon it, is not improbable; or even excrete it from their pores by the impellent power of the air in certain states, is to be conceived; but all this is conjectural, and our knowledge of the causes which produce these partial honey-dews is yet to be acquired.

In the years 1825 and 1826, the foliage of our hedges in the spring months was unusually mangled by the caterpillars of different moths; but in 1827 these creatures had increased so much, that the entire leaves of the sloe, and the white thorn, were consumed by them; the hedges, when consisting of these shrubs alone, presented for miles the appearance of winter sprays, covered with a cottony web. The other hedge plants were little injured. The larvæ of several species of small creatures were concerned in this annihilation of verdure; but the little ermine moths (phalæna evonymella, and ph. padella) were the chief performers in this denuding process. In July the perfected moths swarmed about the scene of their birth in vast numbers; yet such was the retrieving power of nature, that by the middle of August only a small portion of the injury occasioned by these creatures was to be observed, the summer shoot bursting out, and covering the sprays with the verdure of spring. The chief singularity in all this was the appearance of the sloe bush, all the foliage being consumed by insects, or crisped away by severe winds, leaving the sprays profusely covered with the small young fruit, perfectly uninjured, and proceeding in its growth; so that, by the time the foliage was renewed in August, it had obtained its usual size. This was the case too with the crab, and some of the orchard fruits, presenting the unusual sight of fruit growing alone on the boughs without leaves; so that in fact the offices of inspiration, transpiration, and all their consequences, usually accomplished by the leaves of plants, must have been suspended, or performed by other organs, as no deficiency of vegetative powers was apparent.

But insects alone were not the cause of all the denudation and unsightly appearance which our orchards and other trees so remarkably presented this year; for the destruction of the foliage was accomplished in part by some malignant influences, not well understood. Like the Egyptian king, we are accustomed to attribute all our evils of this nature to the “blasting of the _east_ wind;” yet we find all aspects and places obnoxious to it; one situation may be exempted for a period of many years from such visitations, when others suffer; on a sudden, a partial or a local stream of hot, cold, salt, or what we denominate a pestilential wind, sweeps along, and it is destroyed.

Surrounded by and situate in the midst of an agricultural district, we are eager and persevering “leasers” here; and it becomes in a certain degree profitable to our poor, though they cannot hope, like the dutiful Ruth, to gather their three pecks and over in a day. It may be difficult to comprehend how the picking up a head of corn here, and another there, should be a remunerative employ; but in this case, like all other slow operations, a distant result, rather than an instant effect, must be looked for. I have found some little difficulty in obtaining intelligence sufficient to acquire a knowledge of the gain by this employ. The poor are often jealous and suspicious of the motives, when any attempts are made to procure information regarding their profits or improvements; and indeed the advantages of one year are uncertain in another. Catching, doubtful seasons, when the farmer collects in haste, and is unmindful of trifles, afford the best harvest to the gleaner. In fine, settled weather, the operation of reaping is conducted with more deliberation, and less corn is scattered about. When a woman with two or three active children lease in concert, it becomes a beneficial employ. I have heard of a family in the parish thus engaged, who have in one season obtained eight bushels of clear wheat; but this was excess. I know a single woman also, who has gleaned in the same period four bushels and a half; but this again was under very favorable and partial circumstances. In general, a good leaser is satisfied, if she can obtain, single-handed, a clear three bushels in the season, which gives her about a bushel in the week; and, if taken at seven shillings, is very reasonable, and far from being any great accession or profit—less perhaps than is generally supposed to be the emolument of the gleaner; and this may have been acquired by the active labor of eight or nine hours. Yet such is the ardor for this occupation, the enjoyment of this full association, with their neighbors, the prattle, the gossip, the glee, the excitement it occasions, that I am sure the allowance of fourteen pence a day, certain and constant, would hardly be accepted by my leasing neighbors in place of it. Indeed I would not offer it, believing that this gleaning season is looked forward to with anxiety and satisfaction; and is a season, too, in which the children of the family can contribute to its support without pain or undue exertion; and viewing with much approbation and pleasure this long-established custom as a relaxation from domestic refinement, when every cottage is locked up and abandoned by its inmates, to pursue this innocent, healthful, laudable employ, where every grain that is collected is saved from waste, and converted to the benefit of a needy and laborious community. From the result of the pauper leasing, no bad criterion may be obtained of the general product of the season; for, as the collection is made from many stations, and variety of culture, these samples of all afford a reasonable average of the quality. It has been thought, but I trust and believe only in the apprehension of evil, that leasing is injurious to the morals of the poor, affording them an opportunity and initiating them in petty pilfering; but if the disposition existed, it could be practicable but in very few instances; mutual jealousy would prevent individual success, and immediate detection would follow the filching of numbers. The commencement of many ceremonies and solemnities is lost by perversion, or in the obscurity of years; the stream of habit may trickle on from age to age, till it flows in time a steady current, yet the original source remain unknown: but this custom of gleaning the remnant of the field we know existed from the earliest periods, three thousand years and upwards for certain; for, if it were not then first instituted, it was secured and regulated by an especial ordinance of the Almighty to the Israelites in the wilderness, as a privilege to be fully enjoyed by the poor of the land, whenever their triumphant armies should enter into possession of Canaan. By this law, the leasing of three products was granted to the destitute inhabitants of the soil,—the olive, the grape-vine, and corn; the olive-tree was to be beaten but once; the scattered grape in the vintage was not to be gathered; and in the field where the corn grew, “clean riddance” was not to be made, the corners were to be left unreaped, and even the forgotten sheaf was not to be fetched away by the owner, but to be left for the “poor and the stranger the fatherless and the widow.” This was not simply declared once, as an act of mercy, but enjoined and confirmed by ordinances thrice repeated, and impressed with particular solemnity; “I am the Lord thy God,” I have given thee all, and I command unreserved obedience to this my appointment.

Revolving in our minds, as we old-mannered people often do, the forms, rites, and usages of earlier days, we occasionally regret that fashions by gradual neglect have passed away, and can never be revived, to give that feeling of pleasure which a natural growth seemed to have inspired. Some, though probably of pagan origin, were innocent and harmless practices; the maypole, with all its flowery wreaths, so often surrounded by the dance and the song, is now but seldom seen, where we have known it, especially in the lace-making counties, the evening and almost sole recreation, after long hours of unhealthy occupation, for happy groups of

“Those pale maids who weave their threads with bone;”

and it gave these poor villagers a transient glow of health, seen then alone; but it is gone with the rest, and we grieve to think how little remains that poverty and innocence can partake of. Others were of monkish introduction, yet seemed to keep in remembrance the revolutions of seasons and events, which, though recorded elsewhere, had become the types of written things. Yet one of them in the irritation of the moment I have at times wished, selfishly enough perhaps, consigned to oblivion with monks and monkish deeds. “Christmassing,” as we call it, the decorating our churches, houses, and market meats with evergreens, is yet retained among us; and we growers of such things annually contribute more than we wish for the demand of the towns. Sprays and sprigs may be connived at, but this year I lost most of my beautiful young holly- trees, the cherished nurslings of my hedge-rows. The holly[69] though indigenous with us, is a very slow growing tree, and certainly the most ornamental of our native foresters. Its fine foliage shining in vigor and health, mingling with its brilliant coral beads, gives us the cheering aspect of a summer’s verdure when all besides is desolation and decay. It is not only grateful to the eye, but gives us pleasure, when we contemplate the food it will afford our poor hedgefaring birds, when all but its berries and those of the ivy are consumed; and we are careful to preserve these gay youths of promise, when we trim our fences: but no sooner do they become young trees, in splendid beauty, than the merciless hatchet, in some December’s night, lops off their heads, leaving a naked unsightly stake to point out our loss; and we grieve and are vexed, for they never acquire again comparative beauty. These young heads, that we have been robbed of, are in especial request to form a bush, dependent from the centre of the kitchen or the servants’ hall, which in this season of license and festivity becomes a station for extra liberty, as every female passing under it, becomes subject to the salutation of her male companion. This centre bush is often the object of particular decoration, being surrounded by the translucent berries of the mistletoe, and those of the ivy, dipped in blue and white starch. But at this season I have noticed one remarkable decoration among the natives of the principality. A large white turnip is stuck as full as possible of black oats, so as to hide almost the substance in which they are set, and sometimes having compartments of white oats; and being placed upon a candlestick, or some other elevation, on the mantle-tree, presents an extraordinary hedgehog-like appearance. The first adoption of this purely rural fancy, and its designation, I am perfectly unacquainted with; but, when it is well executed, it requires attentive examination to detect the device.

We are no votarists of fortune here, nor do we trouble ourselves concerning predestinate ordinations, or like subtilties; but when we notice passing events, we lament the ills and are pleased with the good luck of a neighbor: and a little turn happened lately to a parishioner, which in former times, when events were viewed under aspects different from those by which we now regard them, might have occasioned more wonderment and comment than it did. An industrious laboring man had been some time unemployed, and having sought an engagement at all those places most likely to have afforded it, but without success, sat himself down upon a bank in one of our potato-fields, carelessly twisting a straw, and ruminating what his next resource might be; when casting his eyes to the ground, he discovered, immediately between his feet, a guinea! a guinea perfect in all its requisites! The finding of such a coin, at such a time, was no common occurrence; but by what casualty did the money come there? The frequenters of our fields, breakers of stone, and delvers of the soil, inhabiters of the tenement and the cot, have no superfluous gold to drop unheeded in their progress, and one should have supposed that the various operations which the field had undergone in the potato culture, would have brought to view any coin of that size and lustre. Upon looking at the land, however, much of our perplexity was removed by observing that the ground had been in part manured by scrapings from our turnpike road, rendering it highly probable that this golden stranger had been dropped by some traveller, not missed by him, or lost in the mire, this mortar from the road possibly so coating it about, as to secrete it for a time some heavy rain dissolving the clod, and bringing it to view. This, I am sensible, is an incident little deserving of narration, but has been done from two motives: we village historians meet with but few important events to detail from the annals of our district; we have no gazettes, few public records or official documents to embellish our pages, and if we will write, must be content with such small matters as present themselves; and to point out how frequently very mysterious circumstances may be elucidated, and appear as consistent events by an unbiassed examination. We may not be able always satisfactorily to see why a tide of good fortune should flow at the desire of one, and ebb from the wishes of another; yet many of the occurrences of human life are perhaps not so extraordinary as they are made to appear by the suppression of facts, or our ignorance of circumstances.

The effects of atmospheric changes upon vegetation have been noticed in the rudest ages: even the simplest people have remarked their influence on the appetites of their cattle, so that to “eat like a rabbit before rain” has become proverbial, from the common observance of the fact: but the influence of the electric fluid upon the common herbage has not been, perhaps, so generally perceived. My men complain to-day that they cannot mow, that they “cannot any how make a hand of it,” as the grass hangs about the blade of the scythe, and is become tough and woolly; heavy rains are falling to the southward, and thunder rolls around us; this indicates the electric state of the air, and points out the influence that atmospheric temperature and condition have upon organized and unorganized bodies, though from their nature not always manifested, all terrestrial substances being replete with electric matter. In the case here mentioned, it appears probable that the state of the air induced a temporary degree of moisture to arise from the earth, or to be given out by the air, and that this moisture conducted the electric fluid to the vegetation of the field. Experiments prove that electric matter discharged into a vegetable withers and destroys it; and it appeared to me at the time, but I am no electrician, that an inferior or natural portion of this fluid, such as was then circulating around, had influenced my grass in a lower degree, so as not to wither, but to cause it to flag, and become tough, or, as they call it in some counties, to “wilt;”[70] the farina of the grass appeared damper than is usual, by its hanging about the blades of the scythes more than it commonly does; the stone removed it, as the men whetted them, just at the edge, but they were soon clogged again. As the thunder cleared away, the impediments became less obvious, and by degrees the difficulties ceased. The observance of local facts, though unimportant in themselves, may at times elucidate perplexities, or strengthen conclusions.

That purely rural, little noticed, and indeed local occurrence, called by the country people “hummings in the air,” is annually to be heard in one or two fields near my dwelling. About the middle of the day, perhaps from twelve o’clock till two, on a few calm, sultry days, in July, we occasionally hear, when in particular places, the humming of apparently a large swarm of bees. It is generally in some spacious, open spot, that this murmuring first arrests our attention. As we move onward the sound becomes fainter, and by degrees is no longer audible. That this sound proceeds from a collection of bees, or some such insects, high in the air, there can be no doubt; yet the musicians are invisible. At these times a solitary insect or so may be observed here and there, occupied in its usual employ, but this creature takes no part in our aërial orchestra. We investigators, who endeavor to find a reason and a cause for all things, are a little puzzled sometimes in our pursuits, like other people; and, perhaps, would have but little success in attempting an elucidation of this occurrence, which, with those circles in our pastures and on our lawns, that produce such crops of fungi (agaricus oreades), and are called by the common name, for want of a better or more significant one, of “fairy rings,”[71] we will leave as we find them, an _odium physiologicum_.