Part 26

Early in August rains fell, and continued seasonably until September; and their effect upon our scorched vegetation, from the general heat of the earth and the air, was extremely rapid. The larch, and other trees which had shed their leaves, now put forth their tender green foliage as in spring; and by the end of September the universal verdure of the country, and profusion of feed in the pastures, was so perfectly unlike what we had been accustomed to in common years, as to be astonishing. Even as low in the year as the 11th of October, there was no appearance of any change in the foliage, except a slight tinge upon the leaves of the maple; and this day was so brilliant, that the cattle were reposing in the shade, the thermometer varying from 66° to 68° F., and the general warmth to our feelings was greater than that indicated by the instrument. October the 20th, the weather changed, some sleety rain fell, and the hills were sprinkled with snow, the thermometer falling to 40°, and all our hirundines, which had been sporting about us up to this period, departed: yet still vegetation continued in all its vigor, and on the 1st of November dog-roses hung like little garlands in the hedges; the cornel bushes (cornus sanguinea) were in full bloom; and corn-roses (rosa arvensis) were decorating our hedges in a profusion equal to that of a common August. November 4th there were slight ice and partial snow, with various alternations undeserving of notice, but the weather was generally fair and mild until Christmas.

All these preceding heats and rapid changes had, I think, a manifest influence upon our constitutions. Violent catarrhs, and lingering, unremitting coughs, prevailed among all classes, both before and after Christmas, to a degree that I never remember; and children were afflicted with measles almost universally. Early in January a violent wind was succeeded by a severe frost, and in some places by a deep snow; but, after about ten days’ duration, a very gentle thaw removed all this, and the remainder of our winter was mild and agreeable, introducing what might be called an early spring, dry and propitious for every agricultural purpose. The trees that refoliaged so vigorously in autumn seemed in no way weakened by this unusual exertion, but produced their accustomed proportion of leaves, and the sprays of every bush and tree, ripened and matured by the last summer’s sun, displayed a profusion, an accumulation of blossom, that gave the fairest promise of abundance of fruit, and every product of the earth.

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That the death of any creature should be required by the naturalist, to perfect his examination, or arrange it in his collection, (and without a collection the investigation of any branch of natural history can be but partially undertaken), may be regretted; but still the epithet of “cruel employ” must not be attached to this pursuit. We do not destroy in wantonness, or unnecessarily; and that life, of which it is expedient to deprive a creature, is taken by the most speedy, and in the least painful manner known. Some of our methods, if speedy, are at the same time injurious, such as hot water, the stifling-box, &c.; and some, that are not painful, such as stupefaction by spirits, ether, &c., and suffocation by carbonate of ammonia, are occasionally not effectual. But there is one process, which I believe to be neither painful nor injurious, yet decisive, and communicative with pleasure; I mean the prussic acid. This fluid may be imbibed by the insect without producing any particular effect; but, if brought to act upon the spinal cord, or what at least is analogous to that part of a vertebrate animal, whatever it may be called, and which seems to be the most vital part of the creation, instant death ensues. A crow-quill must be shaped into a point, like a rather long pen, this point dipped into the prussic acid, and an incision made with it immediately beneath the head into the middle of the shoulders of the creature, so as to permit the fluid it contains to enter into the body of the insect. Immediately after this, in every instance in which I have tried it, a privation of sensation appears to take place, the corporeal action of the creature ceasing, a feeble tremulous motion of the antennæ being alone perceptible; and these parts seem to be the last fortress that is abandoned by sensation, as they are the primary principle of sensibility when life is perfect: extinction of animation ensues, not a mere suspension, but an annihilation of every power, muscular and vital. As one example of the decisive effects of this fluid, I shall instance the common wasp, a creature so remarkably tenacious of sensation, or so long retaining a muscular power, that it may remain, as every one knows, for days crushed in the window, an apparently dead insect, yet upon pressing the head, the sting will be so protruded as to give a very sensible pain to the finger it should meet with; but upon the prussic acid being injected into this creature as above, when in full vigor, in the course of less than half a minute a loss of vitality ensues, the action of the muscular fibre ceases altogether, and no pressure can incite it again into action. The sudden effect of this liquor is not so generally known as from humanity and expediency might be wished. Who first devised the experiment I am ignorant; but any repetition of means whereby a necessary end can be obtained by the least painful and brief infliction, will hardly be considered as superfluous.

This subject naturally introduces the preservation of the creatures after their death, and the young entomologist is not perhaps sensible from experience of the injury some species of insects will effect in the selected specimens of others of this race, and may lament, when too late, the separation of the wings, limbs, and bodies of his collection by these tiny depredators (ptinus fur, acararus destructor). Mr. Waterton’s recipe for preventing this evil, I have used rather extensively and believe it to be a very effectual, and generally an innocuous preservative; but as this gentleman has not given us the exact proportions of his mixture, it may not be useless to observe, that if one part of corrosive sublimate be dissolved in eight parts of good spirit of wine, and the under side of the insect touched with a camel’s- hair pencil, dipped in the liquor, so as to let it lightly pervade every part of the creature, which it readily does, it will, I apprehend, prevent any future injury from insects. A larger portion of the sublimate will leave an unsightly whiteness upon the creature when the specimen becomes dry. The under side of the board, on which the insects are fixed, should be warmed a little by the fire after the application, that the superfluous moisture may fly off, before finally closing the case. If this be omitted, the inner surface of the glass will sometimes become partially obscured by the fume arising from the mixture. The experienced entomologist needs not a notice like this; but the young collector probably will not regard it as unnecessary information, and may be spared by it from both mortification and regret. I have known insects commence their serious operations before the collections of the summer could be arranged in their permanent cases.

In noticing above, that this solution is generally harmless, it is requisite that mention should be made of the few instances in which it has been observed to be injurious. I have applied it to many specimens of foreign and British insects, and commonly observed no indication of its having been used, when the creatures had become dry. But to confine our attentions to English specimens, when the solution is made stronger than recommended, it will, after a time, injure the fine yellow of the sulphur butterfly (papilio rhamni), by turning parts of it brown and dirty; but even in its reduced state it has a manifest effect upon the colors of two of our moths, the Dartford emerald (phalæna lucidata), and what is commonly called the green housewife moth (phalæna vernaria) changing their plumage, in several places, to a red buffy hue, when at the same time the beautiful green wings of the small oak-moth (phalæna viridana) are in no way altered by it. But notwithstanding these circumstances, it will, I apprehend, be considered as a very useful preservative, and save many specimens from destruction which other means usually fail of effecting.

There are not many of our rural practices, that deserve more the disapprobation of the landed proprietor than that of pollarding trees.[74] “It is an evil under the sun, and common among men.” Here it is universal. This system of cutting off the heads of the young trees in the hedge-rows is resorted to by the farmer for the purpose of forcing them, thus deprived of their leaders, to throw out collateral shoots, serving for stakes for the fences, and for firewood. The purposes are effected; but of all hopes of timber, or profit to the proprietor, there is an end. No trees suffer more in this respect than the ash. Prohibitions against mangling trees, in agreements, are usual; but, with some exceptions in regard to oak, little attention seems paid to the covenant, as is obvious on the most cursory view of the country in any direction; whereas the ash is not a less valuable tree, from its thriving more universally in all situations, and becoming saleable in a shorter period. One or two generations must pass before an oak should be felled; but the ash becomes useful wood while its more respected companion is but a sapling. These prohibitions should not simply be engrossed on the parchment, but the agent ought strictly to notice any infringement; and young ash trees should be more especially guarded because they are the most likely to suffer, from their producing the greatest quantity of lop in the shortest time. The injury done by this practice to the present landlord and his successors is beyond estimation, as the numbers destroyed, and the vigor of their growth, must be first known; but there is not a farm of any extent from which hundreds of ash trees might not have been felled, had their growth been permitted, making an annual return; whereas nothing can be obtained now or hereafter for the proprietor, and only a few stakes and bavins for the farmer.[75] It is by no means an uncommon thing, to observe every ash tree in a hedge reduced to stumps by successive pollardings. Many a landlord would shudder at the thought of breaking up an old productive sward, and not regard the topping of an ash; whereas this latter act is infinitely more injurious, ultimately, than the former. The land may, and will probably, recover, but the tree is lost for ever, as to any profitable purposes for the owner. The farmer might perhaps tell the agent when he remonstrated, that he must have firewood, and hedging stuff; but the wants of the former have decreased by the facility of obtaining other fuel, and neither is to be supplied by the landlord at such a ruinous subversion of present and future benefit. I am not so silly as to enlarge upon the beauty of what has been called “picturesque farming;” but when we cast our eyes over the country, and see such rows of dark, club-headed posts, we cannot but remark upon the unsightly character they present, and consider it neither laudable to deform our beautiful country by the connivance, nor proper attention to individual profit to allow the continuation of it. The ash, after this mutilation, in a few years become flattened at the summit, moisture lodges in it, and decay commences, the central parts gradually mouldering away, though for many years the sap wood will throw out vigorous shoots for the hatchet. The goat moth now too commences its mordications, and the end is not distant. But the wood of the ash appears in every stage subject to injury; when in a dry state the weevils mine holes through it; when covered by its bark, it gives harbor to an infinite variety of insects, which are the appointed agents for the removal of the timber: the ashen bar of a stile, or a post, we may generally observe to be regularly scored by rude lines diverging from a central stem, like a trained fruit-tree, by the meanderings of a little insect (ips niger, &c.), being the passages of the creatures feeding on the wood.

There is one race of trees, the willow, very common about us, that is so universally subject to this pollarding, for the purpose of providing stakes and hurdles for the farm, that probably few persons have ever seen a willow tree. At any rate a sight of one grown unmutilated from the root is a rare occurrence. The few that I have seen constituted trees of great beauty; but as the willow, from the nature of its wood, can never be valuable as a timber tree, perhaps by topping it we obtain its best services. In the county of Gloucester there are several remarkable trees of different species now growing, but I am not acquainted with any greater natural curiosity of this sort than an uncommonly fine willow tree in the meadows on the right of the Spa-house at Gloucester. There are two of them; the species I forget, but one tree is so healthy and finely grown, that it deserves every attention, and should be preserved as a unique specimen, an example of what magnitude this despised race may attain when suffered to proceed in its own unrestrained vigor.

Dec. 30.—A cold foggy morning, the ground covered with a white frost; about twelve o’clock the sun burst out with great brilliancy, and life and light succeeded to torpor and gloom; a steam immediately arose from our garden beds and plowed lands, giving us a very strong example of the rapid manner in which the matter of heat (caloric) will at times unite with water. Half an hour before, this water was frozen and inert; but the instant that the sun’s rays fell upon it, their heat was imbibed, and the icy matter converted into a body lighter than the atmosphere by which it was surrounded, and passed into it in the vapor we have just noticed. I was the more particular in observing this common event, as it afforded a forcible illustration of the invisible evaporation which is constantly going forward, the unremitting changes in operation, the action and reaction of the earth and its products with the atmosphere. During the night, and the earlier parts of the morning, water was falling on the earth in minute particles, constituting what we call fog; then out burst the sun, and reclaimed this moisture which had fallen, and we could see it obeying the mandate, and pass away in steam. In the evening it will probably return again in fog, or in rain, when the atmosphere cools; and thus a constant visible intelligence is going on. How much insensible intercourse takes place we know not, but we can comprehend its agency by the effects and events that manifest themselves. Our country people think these “rokings” (reekings) of the earth greatly favorable to the growth of vegetation, supposing it occasioned by the internal heat of the earth producing a vapor like that from fermenting soil, thus warming the roots; but if the theory be defective, the fact may be true, by the caloric in the sun’s rays promoting the decomposition of the water, or separating the component parts (oxygen and hydrogen), which uniting with other matters contained in the earth and atmosphere (carbon and carbonic acid) become by this means the basis of all our fruits, our sweets, our sours, resins, &c., in the vegetable world; and hence there is a constant decomposition of water going forward by these alternations, and a constant formation of matters beneficial and necessary for the various inhabitants of the earth. When we perceive that a shower of rain has revived or promoted the increase of vegetation, we must understand, that the mere wetting it has not accomplished this; but that the vegetable has by means of its foliage, aided by light and heat, decomposed or separated the combined matters of the water, and taken from it certain portions as essential to its vigor, or been revictualled, in a manner, by the nutriment contained in the water.

Jan. 10.—The ground covered with snow, the pools with ice, trees and hedges leafless, and patched here and there with a mantle of white, present a cheerless, dreary void; no insects are animating the air, and all our songsters are silent and away; a few miserable thrushes are hopping on the ditch-bank, swept bare by the wind; and the robin puffing out his feathers, and contracting his neck into his body, is peeping with his fine bright eyes into the windows from the cypress bough. A few evergreens are waving their sprays, and glittering in the light, yet making but poor compensation for the variety, the flutter, the verdure, of our summer. Though we have little natural beauty to note or to record, we are not left without a testimony of an overruling Power; and, however sad and melancholy things may appear at the first view, yet a more steady observation will manifest to us a presiding Providence and Mercy. Frost and snow are but cheerless subjects for contemplation, yet I would add a reflection in my Journal of our passing events, or rather recall from memory the truth, that science has made known to us, revived by the sight of that frozen pool. There is one universal body, inherent in every known substance in nature, latent heat, which chemists have agreed to call “caloric.” By artificial means bodies may be deprived of certain portions of it; and then the substance most usually contracts, and increases in weight. Water is an exception to this; for in losing a part of its heat, the cause of its fluidity, and becoming ice, it expands, and is rendered lighter, by inclosing, during the operation, more or less of atmospheric air: consequently it swims, covering the surface. To this very simple circumstance, ice floating and not sinking,[76] are the banks and vicinities of all the rivers, lakes, pools, or great bodies of water in northern Europe, Asia, and America, rendered habitable, and what are now the most fertile and peopled would be the most sterile and abandoned, were it not for this law of nature. Had ice been so heavy as to sink in water, the surface on freezing would have fallen to the bottom, and a fresh surface would be presented for congelation; this would then descend in its turn, and unite with the other; and thus during a hard frost successive surfaces would be presented, and fall to the bottom, as long as the frost or any fluid remained. By this means the whole body of the water would become a dense concretion of ice: its inhabitants would not only perish, but the indurated mass would resist the influence of the sun of any summer to thaw it, and continue congealed throughout the year, chilling the earth in its neighborhood, and the winds that passed over it, preventing the growth of vegetation in the former, or blighting and destroying it by the influence of the latter.

Winter is called a dull season; and to the sensations of some, the enjoyments of others, and, perhaps, to the vision of all, it is a most cheerless period. This is so universally felt, that we always associate the idea of pleasure with the return of spring: whatsoever our occupations or employments may be, though its sleety storms and piercing winds may at times chill the very current in our veins, yet we consider it as a harbinger of pleasurable hours and grateful pursuits. We commence our undertakings, or defer them till spring. The hopes or prospects of the coming year are principally established in spring; and we trust that the delicate health of the blossoms round our hearths, which has faded in the chilling airs of winter, may be restored by the mild influence of that season. Yet winter must be considered as the time in which Nature is most busily employed; silent in her secret mansions, she is now preparing and compounding the verdure, the flowers, the nutriment of spring; and all the fruits and glorious profusion of our summer year are only the advance of what has been ordained and fabricated in these dull months. All these advances require Omnipotent wisdom and power to perfect; but perhaps a more exalted degree of wisdom and power has been requisite to call them into a state of being from nothing. The branch of that old pear-tree now extended before me, is denuded and bare, presenting no object of curiosity or of pleasure; but, had we the faculty to detect, and power to observe, what was going forward in its secret vessels, beneath its rugged, unsightly covering, what wonder and admiration would it create!—the materials manufacturing there for its leaf, and its bark; for the petals and parts of its flowers; the tubes and machinery that concoct the juices, modify the fluids, and furnish the substance of the fruit, with multitudes of other unknown operations and contrivances, too delicate and mysterious to be seen, or even comprehended, by the blindness, the defectibility of our nature—things of which we have no information, being beyond the range of any of the works or the employments of mankind! We may gather our pear, be pleased with its form or its flavor; we may magnify its vessels, analyze its fluids, yet be no more sensible of its elaborate formation, and the multiplicity of influences and operations requisite to conduct it to our use, than a wandering native of a polar clime could be of the infinite number of processes that are necessary to furnish a loaf of bread, from plowing the soil to drawing from the oven. This is but an isolated instance, amidst thousands of others more complicated still. How utterly inconceivable then are the labors, the contrivances, the combinations, that are going forward, and accomplishing, in this our dull season of the year, in that host of nature’s productions with which, shortly, we shall everywhere be surrounded!