Part 5

I believe that the teasel affords a solitary instance of a natural production being applied to mechanical purposes in the state in which it is produced.[12] It appears, from many attempts, that the object designed to be effected by the teasel cannot be supplied by any contrivance—successive inventions having been abandoned as defective or injurious. The use of the teasel is to draw out the ends of the wool from the manufactured cloth, so as to bring a regular pile or nap upon the surface, free from twistings and knottings, and to comb off the coarse and loose parts of the wool. The head of the true teasel is composed of incorporated flowers, each separated by a long, rigid, chaffy substance, the terminating point of which is furnished with a fine hook. Many of these heads are fixed in a frame; and with this the surface of the cloth is teased, or brushed, until all the ends are drawn out, the loose parts combed off, and the cloth ceases to yield impediments to the free passage of the wheel, or frame, of teasels. Should the hook of the chaff, when in use, become fixed in a knot, or find sufficient resistance, it breaks without injuring or contending with the cloth, and care is taken by successive applications to draw the impediment out: but all mechanical inventions hitherto made use of offer resistance to the knot; and, instead of yielding and breaking as the teasel does, resist and tear it out, making a hole, or injuring the surface. The dressing of a piece of cloth consumes a great multitude of teasels—it requiring from 1500 to 2000 heads to accomplish the work properly. They are used repeatedly in the different stages of the process; but a piece of fine cloth generally breaks this number before it is finished, or we may say that there is a consumption answering to the proposed fineness—pieces of the best kinds requiring one hundred and fifty or two hundred runnings up, according to circumstances.

Our small farmers here have a vile practice of picking from their turf, in the spring of the year, all the droppings of their autumn and winter fed cattle to carry on their arable land for the potato, or some grain crop: this affords no great supply to plowed land, and is very injurious to their grazing grounds; but the answer generally is, “that the corn must have manure, and the beast can take care of itself;” and in many cases, I fear, from the starved appearance of the young cattle, that their best endeavors have afforded a very inadequate supply.

This picking of the field was formerly very generally resorted to in the midland counties; but the farmers at that time had a sufficient excuse in the scarcity of common fuel. The droppings of the cows were collected in heaps, and beaten into a mass with water; then pressed by the feet into moulds like bricks, by regular professional persons, called clatters (clodders); then dried in the sun, and stacked like peat, and a dry March for the clat-harvest was considered as very desirable. These answered very well for heating water for the dairy and uses of the farm back-kitchen, giving a steady, dull heat, without flame; but navigable canals, and other conveniences of a similar nature, have rendered the practice now unnecessary. With us this bad custom is declining, and probably in time will cease altogether.

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It is rather a subject of surprise, that in our general associations and commixtures in life, in times so highly enlightened as the present, when many ancient prejudices are gradually flitting away, as reason and science dawn on mankind, we should meet with so few, comparatively speaking, who have any knowledge of, or take the least interest in natural history; or if the subject obtain a moment’s consideration, it has no abiding place in the mind, being dismissed as the fitting employ of children and inferior capacities. But the natural historian is required to attend to something more than the vagaries of butterflies, and the spinnings of caterpillars; his study, considered abstractedly from the various branches of science which it embraces, is one of the most delightful occupations that can employ the attention of reasoning beings: a beautiful landscape, grateful objects, pleasures received by the eye or the senses, become the common property of all who can enjoy them, being in some measure obvious to every one; but the naturalist must reflect upon hidden things, investigate by comparison, and testify by experience, and living amidst the wonders of creation, it becomes his occupation to note and proclaim such manifestations of wisdom or goodness as may be perceived by him. And perhaps none of the amusements of human life are more satisfactory and dignified, than the investigation and survey of the workings and ways of Providence in this created world of wonders, filled with his never-absent power: it occupies and elevates the mind, is inexhaustible in supply, and, while it furnishes meditation for the closet of the studious, gives to the reflections of the moralizing rambler admiration and delight, and is an engaging companion, that will communicate an interest to every rural walk. We need not live with the humble denizens of the air, the tenants of the woods and hedges, or the grasses of the field; but to pass them by in utter disregard, is to neglect a large portion of rational pleasure open to our view, which may edify and employ many a passing hour, and by easy gradations will often become the source whence flow contemplations of the highest orders. Young minds cannot, I should conceive, be too strongly impressed with the simple wonders of creation by which they are surrounded: in the race of life they may be passed by, the occupation of existence may not admit attention to them, or the unceasing cares of the world may smother early attainments—but they can never be injurious—will give a bias to a reasoning mind, and tend, in some after-thoughtful, sobered hour, to comfort and to soothe. The little insights that we have obtained into nature’s works are many of them the offspring of scientific research; and partial and uncertain as our labors are, yet a brief gleam will occasionally lighten the darksome path of the humble inquirer, and give him a momentary glimpse of hidden truths: let not then the idle and the ignorant scoff at him who devotes an unemployed hour,—

“No calling left, no duty broke,”

to investigate a moss, a fungus, a beetle, or a shell, in “ways of pleasantness, and in paths of peace.” They are all the formation of Supreme Intelligence, for a wise and a worthy end, and may lead us by gentle gradations to a faint conception of the powers of infinite wisdom. They have calmed and amused some of us worms and reptiles, and possibly bettered us for our change to a new and more perfect order of being.

We yet possess two forest trees, beautiful and unmutilated! An oak in Shellard’s lane has escaped the woodman’s ax, the hedger’s bill: it stands on the side of the waste, and has long afforded shade and shelter to an adjoining farm-house. These circumstances, and not being valuable as a timber tree, may have contributed to its preservation: its hamadryad is left alone in the land to mourn her lost companions. This tree is not mentioned as being at all comparable with the gigantic productions of the kind that we have accounts of, and perhaps by many would be passed by unnoticed; yet it is deserving of some regard, from the vegetable powers that have existed, and still continue in its trunk. The bole, at some very distant period, by accident or design, appears to have lost its leading shoot, and in consequence has thrown out several collateral branches: three remain, which have now grown into trees themselves existing in full vigor, and constituting a whole of much beauty. It is a characteristic specimen of an oak, with all the corrugations, twistings, furrows, and irregularities, which this tree with a free growth generally exhibits; expanding its three vigorous arms to the Sun of Heaven with a pendent, easy dignity, that seems like an enjoyment of unrestrained liberty. We have no good criterion to regulate our judgment with regard to the age of trees of considerable antiquity. In young ones the rings of the wood will often afford a reasonable ground for opinion; but in old trees these marks are absorbed, obscured, or uncertainly formed, so as to be no sufficient guide. In particular cases, such as inclosure of waste or other lands, formation of parks and plantations, the times of planting are sufficiently recorded; but generally speaking, neither oral tradition, nor written testimony, remains to indicate the period when a tree sprang up. This oak, however, from all the signs of age that it retains, must have existed as a sapling at some very distant day, and is the most undoubted relic of antiquity in the vegetable world that we possess.

The elm, and the beech, in age, frequently present very decided vestiges of a former day; but the oak of centuries has impressed upon it indelible characters of antiquity, and is a visible _vetustum monumentum_. The wreathings and contortions of its bark, even its once vigorous, but now sapless limbs, with their bare and bleached summits, stag-headed and erect, maintain a regality of character which perfectly indicates the monarch of the forest, and which no other tree assumes. We have many accounts in different authors of the prodigious size which the oak has attained in England; but most of the trees, that have arrived at any vast circumference, seem, like this our village oak, to have lost their leaders when young, and hence are short in the but: yet we have records of aspiring timber trees of this species of astonishing magnitude, though perhaps none of them exceed those mentioned by Evelyn, cut down near Newberry in Berkshire, one of which ran fifty feet clear without a knot, and cut clean timber five feet square at the base; its consort gave forty feet of clear, straight timber, squaring four feet at its base, and nearly a yard at the top. The “lady oak,” mentioned by Sir E. Harley, produced a but of forty feet, and squared five feet throughout its whole length, thus producing twenty tons of timber, a mass of surprising grandeur! But the most magnificent oak ever known to have grown in England was probably that dug out of Hatfield bog: it was a hundred and twenty five feet in length, twelve in diameter at the base, ten in the middle, and six at the smaller end, where broken off; so that the but for sixty feet squared seven feet of timber, and four its entire length. Twenty pounds were offered for this tree.[13] This extraordinary vegetable should have been preserved in some museum, as unequalled in ancient, unapproachable in modern days; exceeding in magnitude even that famous larch brought to Rome in the reign of Tiberius,[14] and reserved as a curiosity for many years, which was one hundred and twenty feet long, and two feet in diameter its whole length.

Indigenous, flourishing, and inured to all the caprices of our climate as the oak is, yet it produces its fruit very precariously, and at times sparingly, like a plant of exotic origin; which does not appear to have been the case formerly, when such herds of swine were maintained by the produce of our woods alone, and grants from manorial lords for permission thus to feed them were recorded with care as valuable obtainments.

The cause of infertility in indigenous trees can arise from no defect of construction in the organs of fructification, but from some obstruction, perversion, redundancy, or vitiation of the natural powers; which is particularly manifested by the faculty which they possess at one period of producing fruit, and their impotency at another. This imbecility from one cause or another probably influences at periods every tree or herb that springs from the earth; but in regard to the oak, the most general and probable cause of its sterility is suspended circulation. This is more immediately brought to notice from our custom of barking the timber of this tree in the spring. At times our barkers go on rapidly with their work; yet in a few hours a frost, or a sharp wind, will put an entire stop to their operations, in consequence of the cessation of the flow of sap, which is followed by the adhesion of the bark to the wood. Whenever this nutriment ceases to be supplied, the immature and tender germen must languish; and if the supply be long suspended, it must perish from deficiency of food. That such is the natural effect of spring frosts and sudden chills, more injurious probably to the fruit in this immature state, from its greater delicacy, than when it is more developed, is reasonable to suppose: how far a change of seasons may have taken place to accomplish the injury alluded to, more commonly now than in former periods, we have no criterion for proving; but if failures of the acorn crop took place as frequently in times when swine’s flesh was mostly the diet of the middle and lower classes of people as they do now, the privations of our forefathers were severe indeed.

An interesting volume might be formed, entitled the “History of the Oak.” The first mention that we know of this tree is that ancient of days, the “oak of Mamre,” under which Abraham sat in the heat of the day; and that it was an oak, one of the fathers, Eusebius, tells us, as it remained an object of veneration even in the time of Constantine. We would note all the celebrated querci of antiquity; the use, value, strength, duration, &c., of its timber; the infinite variety of purposes to which its various parts are applied by the mechanic, the dyer, the artisan; the insects, which amount to hundreds of species, that live and have their being on the oak; the vegetables it nourishes, ferns, lichens, mosses, agarics, boleti, &c.; the sawdust, apples, gallnuts, acorns, leaves, and innumerable et cetera of Britain’s guardian tree. However highly the Druids might venerate the oak, and make it the emblem and residence of their deity, yet the intrinsic value of this tree was unknown to our remote forefathers. All their knowledge of its virtues was probably included in its uses for building, its acorns for their swine, and, perhaps, its bark for preserving the skins which they used. Modern ingenuity and necessity have brought its various qualities into notice, or our oak would have received such honors, as in days of darkness were conferred upon inanimate things: Attica considered the olive as the gift of her tutelary goddess, and some benevolent saint would have been lauded and hymned, for having endowed the oak of Britain with such extensive virtues for the good of mankind.

The other tree, that I mentioned above as one of our boasts, is a wych or broad-leaved elm[15] (ulmus montana), standing near the turnpike road. This very fine and stately tree was saved, when the merciless ax levelled all its companions, at the solicitation of a lady now no more, and remains a testimony of her good taste, the civility of the agent, and the ornament of our village. When in youth, this species presents a character decidedly different from the common elm (ulmus campestris). Its branches at times are so strong as to be nearly equal in size with the main stem that supports them, and loaded with such a profusion of foliage, that the sprays become pendent, and give the idea of luxuriance with weakness, of a growth beyond strength; advancing in age, its arms and sprays become less pensile, as the leaves are smaller and less burdensome; yet they hang commonly in large heavy masses, like what we formerly were accustomed to see in the aquatintas of Jukes, and the prints of that period. It can however occasionally assume the appearance of elegance and lightness, and is usually less aspiring and more branching than the common elm; its dense foliage yields a fine shade for cattle, and it deserves even on this account, if it possessed no other merit, a more general cultivation. The wych elm, though a rare tree in some counties, seems more extensively spread over England than the other species, and adventures farther to the north. Ray tells us, on the authority of Aubrey, that the common elm, so called, is scarcely found indigenous northward of Lincolnshire, whereas this species is found even in Scotland. Our soil is very favorable to the growth of both species. The wych elm affords a tough and valuable wood for the wheeler and the mill-wright; the bark from the young limbs is stripped off in long ribands, and often used, especially in Wales, for securing thatch, and for various bindings and tyings, to which purpose its flexible and tough nature renders it well adapted. Gerard says, that arrows were made from the wood of this tree, and he lived at a period when he could well ascertain the fact, during the reign of Elizabeth and her predecessor, before fire-arms had superseded this truly British weapon: he was in the younger part of his life gardener to the great Lord Burleigh. That the wych elm, when permitted, will attain large dimensions, is manifest by the size of several we have observed in many places; but that gigantic one, which grew in Staffordshire, exceeds in magnitude any other of this species which we ever heard of. It required the labor of two men for five days to fell it; it was forty yards in length, with a diameter of seventeen feet at the but; yielding eight pair of naves, and eight thousand, six hundred, and sixty feet of boards, the sawing of which cost 10_l._ 17_s._ It contained ninety-seven tons of timber. As Evelyn says, “this was certainly a goodly tree!” The etymology of this tree seems to be unknown, and different authors, who mention it, spell it, accordingly, various ways: Evelyn calls it wich, and witch; Gilpin, wich; others, wych; Bacon, weech. The foliage of the young trees of this elm are the favorite food of the larvæ of the Buff-tip-moth, (Phal. Bucephala), for though they likewise feed upon the young leaves of the oak, and the lime, yet they give the preference to those of this tree; when so feeding, it will always be known by their rejectments on the earth beneath, which when the larvæ are in any number, may be noticed by very unattentive persons. This caterpillar, when nearly fed for its change, becomes heavy, and commonly falls to the earth from the spray, and we can see them crawling along the paths, or even upon the clothes of persons that have walked under the trees where they have fed: though this creature is very often found in considerable numbers throughout the summer and autumn, yet by reason of some fatality, the moth is by no means so common an insect as might be expected from the profusion of its larvæ.

We have no indigenous tree that suffers from the advance of the winter season so early as the wych elm. A few others may manifest its approach nearly as soon, but they become augmented in splendor by a touch of the frosty air, not ruined and denuded like our elm, which contributes no grandeur, no beauty, to our autumnal scenery, as its leaves curl up, become brown, and flutter from their sprays, when growing in exposed situations, as early often as the middle of September, by constitutional mechanism alone, even before the beech or the maple seems sensibly affected by the cold. This character of itself marks a difference from the common elm, which preserves its verdure, except from accidental causes, long after this period; and then, when its season arrives, the foliage becomes tinged with a fine, mellow, yellow hue, contributing a full share with other trees to the character and splendor of autumn. The wych elm may occasionally be desirable in the few days that our northern summer requires its deep shades, but will not otherwise afford pleasure or beauty in the shrubbery or the park as an ornamental tree, as its leafless sprays announce too early the unwelcome termination of our floral year, and its sober russet foliage is scattered at our feet without preparation or a parting smile.

Trees in full foliage have long been noted as great attractors of humidity, and a young wych elm in full leaf affords a good example of this supposed power; but in the winter of the year, when trees are perfectly denuded, this faculty of creating moisture about them is equally obvious, though not so profusely. A strongly marked instance of this was witnessed by me, when ascending a hill in the month of March. The weather had previously been very fine and dry, and the road in a dusty state; but a fog coming on, an ash tree hanging over the road was dripping with water so copiously, that the road beneath was in a puddle, when the other parts continued dry, and manifested no appearance of humidity. That leaves imbibe moisture by one set of vessels and discharge them by another, is well-known; but these imbibings are never discharged in falling drops: the real mystery was, the fog in its progress was impeded by the boughs of the tree, and gradually collected on the exposed side of them, until it became drops of water, whereas the surrounding country had only a mist flying over it. Thus in fact the tree was no attractor, but a condenser; the gate of a field will in the same manner run down with water on the one side, and be dry on the other; as will a stick, or a post, from the same cause. It is upon this principle that currents of air will be found under trees in summer, when little is perceived in open places; and the under leaves and sprays will be curled and scorched at times, when the parts above are uninjured. The air in its passage being stopped and condensed against the foliage of the tree, it accordingly descends along its surface or front, and escapes at the bottom, where there are no branches or leaves to interrupt its progress. In winter there is little to impede the breeze in its course, and it passes through; consequently at this season the air under a tree is scarcely more sensibly felt than in the adjoining field.

It may be observed, that in the spring of the year the herbage under trees is generally more vivid and luxuriant, than that which is beyond the spread of the branches: this may be occasioned, in some instances, by cattle having harbored there, and the ground becoming in consequence more manured; but it will be found likewise manifestly verdant and flourishing where no such accessory could have enriched it, and is, I apprehend, in general, chiefly owing to the effects of the driving fogs and mists, which cause a frequent drip beneath the tree, not experienced in other places, and thus in a manner keep up a perpetual irrigation and refreshment of the soil, and promote the decomposition of the foliage beneath, which being drawn into the earth by worms, contributes to the verdure by the nutriment they yield.