Yellow flowers—Family likeness in flavours and scents—Mimulus luteus—Flowers in church decoration—Effect of association—Mimulus luteus as a British plant—A rule as to naturalised plants wanted—A visit to Swarraton—Changes since Gilbert White's day—"Wild musk"—Bird life on the downs—Turtle-dove nestlings—Blue skin in doves—A boy naturalist—Birds at the cottage—The wren's sun-bath—Wild fruits ripen—An old chalk pit—Birds and elderberries—Past and present times compared—Calm days—Migration of swallows—Conclusion.
The oak in the field and a flowering plant by the water were the two best things plant life contained for me during those beautiful late summer days by the Itchen. About the waterside flower I must write at some length.
Of our wild flowers the yellow in colour, as a rule, attract me least; not because the colour is not beautiful to me, but probably on account of the numerous ungraceful, weedy-looking plants of unpleasant scent which in late summer produce yellow flowers—tansy, fleabane, ragwort, sow-thistle, and some of other orders, the worst of the lot being the pepper saxifrage, an ungainly parsley in appearance, with evil-smelling flowers. You know them by their odours. If I were to smell at a number of strong-scented flowers unknown to me in a dark room, or blindfolded, I should be able to pick out the yellow ones.
They would have the yellow smell. The yellow {283} smell has an analogue in the purple taste. It may be fancy, but it strikes me that there is a certain family resemblance in the flavours of most purple fruits, or their skins—the purple fruit-flavour which is so strong in damson, sloe, black currant, blackberry, mulberry, whortleberry, and elderberry.
All the species I have named were common in the valley, and there were others—St. John's wort, yellow loosestrife, etc.—which, although not ungraceful nor evil-smelling, yet failed to attract. Nevertheless, as the days and weeks went on and brought yet another conspicuous yellow waterside flower into bloom, which became more and more abundant as the season advanced, while the others, one by one, faded and failed from the earth, until, during the last half of September, it was in its fullest splendour, I was completely won by it, and said in my haste that it was the brightest blossom in all the Hampshire garland, if not the loveliest wild flower in England. Nor was it strange, all things considered, that I was so taken with its beauty, since, besides being beautiful, it was new to me, and therefore had the additional charm of novelty; and, finally, it was at its best when all the conspicuous flowers that give touches of brilliant colour here and there to the green of this greenest valley, including most of the yellow flowers I have mentioned, were faded and gone.
Mimulus luteus
No description of this flower, Mimulus luteus, known to the country people as "wild musk," is needed here—it is well known as a garden plant. The large foxglove-shaped flowers grow singly on {284} their stems among the topmost leaves, and the form of stem, leaf, and flower is a very perfect example of that kind of formal beauty in plants which is called "decorative." This character is well shown in the accompanying figure, reduced to little more than half the natural size, from a spray plucked at Bransbury, on the Test. But the shape is nothing, and is scarcely seen or noticed twenty-five to fifty yards away, the proper distance at which to view the blossoming plants; not indeed as a plant-student or an admirer of flowers in a garden would view it, as the one thing to see, but merely as part of the scene. The colour is then everything. There is no purer, no more {285} beautiful yellow in any of our wild flowers, from the primrose and the almost equally pale, exquisite blossom which we improperly name "dark mullein" in our books on account of its lovely purple eye, to the intensest pure yellow of the marsh marigold.
MIMULUS LUTEUS
MIMULUS LUTEUS
But although purity of colour is the chief thing, it would not of itself serve to give so great a distinction to this plant; the charm is in the colour and the way in which Nature has disposed it, abundantly, in single, separate blossoms, among leaves of a green that is rich and beautiful, and looks almost dark by contrast with that shining, luminous hue it sets off so well.
On 17th September it was Harvest Festival Sunday at the little church at Itchen Abbas, where I worshipped that day, and I noticed that the decorators had dressed up the font with water-plants and flowers from the river; reeds and reed-mace, or cat's-tail, and the yellow mimulus. It was a mistake. Deep green, glossy foliage, and white and brilliantly coloured flowers look well in churches; white chrysanthemums, arums, azaleas, and other conspicuous white flowers; and scarlet geraniums, and many other garden blooms which seen in masses in the sunshine hurt the sense—cinerarias, calceolarias, larkspurs, etc. The subdued light of the interior softens the intensity, and sometimes crudity, of the strongest colours, and makes them suitable for decoration. The effect is like that of stained-glass windows, or of a bright embroidery on a sober ground. The graceful, grey, flowery reeds, and the light-green {286} reed-mace, with its brown velvet head, and the moist yellow of the mimulus, which quickly loses its freshness, look not well in the dim, religious light of the old village church. These should be seen where the sunlight and wind and water are, or not seen at all.
Mimulus and Camaloté
Beautiful as the mimulus is when viewed in its natural surroundings, by running waters amidst the greys and light and dark greens of reed and willow, and of sedge and aquatic grasses, and water-cress, and darkest bulrush, its attractiveness was to me greatly increased by association. Now to say that a flower which is new to one can have any associations may sound very strange, but it is a fact in this case. Viewing it at a distance of, say, forty or fifty yards, as a flower of a certain size, which might be any shape, in colour a very pure, luminous yellow, blooming in profusion all over the rich green, rounded masses of the plants, as one may see it in September at Ovington, and at many other points on the Itchen, from its source to Southampton Water, and on the Test, I am so strongly reminded of the yellow camaloté of the South American watercourses that the memory is almost like an illusion. It has the pure, beautiful yellow of the river camaloté; in its size it is like that flower; it grows, too, in the same way, singly, among rounded masses of leaves of the same lovely rich green; and the camaloté, too, has for neighbours the green blades of the sedges, and grey, graceful reeds, and multitudinous bulrushes, their dark polished stems tufted with brown.
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Looking at these masses of blossoming mimulus at Ovington, I am instantly transported in thought to some waterside thousands of miles away. The dank, fresh smell is in my nostrils; I listen delightedly to the low, silvery, water-like gurgling note of the little kinglet in his brilliant feathers among the rushes, and to the tremulous song of the green marsh-grasshoppers or leaf-crickets; and with a still greater delight do I gaze at the lovely yellow flower, the unforgotten camaloté, which is as much to me as the wee, modest, crimson-tipped daisy was to Robert Burns or to Chaucer; and as the primrose, the violet, the dog-rose, the shining, yellow gorse, and the flower o' the broom, and bramble, and hawthorn, and purple heather are to so many inhabitants of these islands who were born and bred amid rural scenes.
On referring to the books for information as to the history of the mimulus as a British wild flower, I found that in some it was not mentioned, and in others mentioned only to be dismissed with the remark that it is an "introduced plant." But when was it introduced, and what is its range? And whom are we to ask?
After an infinite amount of pains, seeing and writing to all those among my acquaintances who have any knowledge of our wild plant life, I discovered that the mimulus grows more or less abundantly in or by streams here and there in most English counties, but is more commonly met with south of Derbyshire; also that it extends to Scotland, {288} and is known even in the Orkneys. Finally, a botanical friend discovered for me that as long ago as 1846 there had been a great discussion, in which a number of persons took part, on this very subject of the date of the naturalisation in Britain of the mimulus, in Edward Newman's botanical magazine, the Phytologist. It was shown conclusively by a correspondent that the plant had established itself at one point as far back as the year 1815.
A British species?
There may exist more literature on the subject if one knew where to look for it; but we are certainly justified in feeling annoyed at the silence of the makers of books on British wild flowers, and the compilers of local lists and floras. And what, we should like to ask of our masters, is a British wild flower? Does not the same rule apply to plants as to animals—namely, that when a species, whether "introduced" or imported by chance or by human agency, has thoroughly established itself on our soil, and proved itself able to maintain its existence in a state of nature, it becomes, and is, a British species? If this rule had not been followed by zoologists, even our beloved little rabbit would not be a native, to say nothing of our familiar brown rat and our black-beetle: and the pheasant, and red-legged partridge, and capercailzie, and the fallow-deer, and a frog, and a snail, and goodness knows how many other British species, introduced into this country by civilised man, some in recent times. And, going farther back in time, it may be said that every species has at some time been brought, or has brought itself, from {289} otherwhere—every animal from the red deer and the white cattle, to the smallest, most elusive microbe not yet discovered; and every plant from the microscopical fungus to the British oak and the yew. The main thing is to have a rule in such a matter, a simple, sensible rule, like that of the zoologist, or some other; and what we should like to know from the botanists is—Have they got a rule, and, if so, what is it? There are many who would be glad of an answer to this question: judging from the sale of books on British wild flowers during the last few years, there must be several millions of persons in this country who take an interest in the subject.
A visit to Swarraton
One bright September day, when the mimulus was in its greatest perfection, and my new pleasure in the flower at its highest, I by chance remembered that Gilbert White, of Selborne, in the early part of his career, had been curate for a time at Swarraton, a small village on the Itchen, near its source, about four miles above Alresford. That was in 1747. To Swarraton I accordingly went, only to find what any guide-book or any person would have told me, that the church no longer exists. Only the old churchyard remained, overgrown with nettles, the few tombstones that had not been carried away so covered with ivy as to appear like green mounds. A group of a dozen yews marked the spot where the church had formerly stood; and there were besides some very old trees, an ancient yew and a giant beech, and others, and just outside the ground as noble an ash tree as I have ever seen. These three, {290} at any rate, must have been big trees a century and a half ago, and well known to Gilbert White. On inquiry I was told that the church had been pulled down a very long time back—about forty years, perhaps; that it was a very old and very pretty church, covered with ivy, and that no one knew why it was pulled down. The probable reason was that a vast church was being or about to be built at the neighbouring village of Northington, big enough to hold all the inhabitants of the two parishes together, and about a thousand persons besides. This immense church would look well enough among the gigantic structures of all shapes and materials in the architectural wonderland of South Kensington. But I came not to see this building: the little ancient village church, in which the villagers had worshipped for several centuries, where Gilbert White did duty for a year or so, was what I wanted, and I was bitterly disappointed. Looking away from the weed-grown churchyard, I began to wonder what his feelings would be could he revisit this old familiar spot. The group of yew trees where the church had stood, and the desolate aspect of the ground about it would disturb and puzzle his mind; but, on looking farther, all the scene would appear as he had known it so long ago—the round, wooded hills, the green valley, the stream, and possibly some of the old trees, and even the old cottages. Then his eyes would begin to detect things new and strange. First, my bicycle, leaning against the trunk of the great ash tree, would arrest his attention; but in {291} a few moments, before he could examine it closely and consider for what purpose it was intended, something far more interesting and more wonderful to him would appear in sight. Five large birds standing quietly on the green turf beside the stream—birds never hitherto seen. Regarding them attentively, he would see that they were geese, and it would appear to him that they were of two species, one white and grey in colour, with black legs, the other a rich maroon red, with yellow legs; also that they were both beautiful and more graceful in their carriage than any bird of their family known to him. Before he would cease wondering at the presence at Swarraton of these Magellanic geese, no longer strange to any living person's eye in England, lo! a fresh wonder—beautiful yellow flowers by the stream, unlike any flower that grew there in his day, or by any stream in Hampshire.
But how long after White's time did that flower run wild in Hampshire? I asked, and then thought that I might get the answer from some old person who had spent a long life at that spot.
I went no farther than the nearest cottage to find the very one I wanted, an ancient dame of seventy-four, who had never lived anywhere but in that small thatched cottage at the side of the old churchyard. She was an excessively thin old dame, and had the appearance of a walking skeleton in a worn old cotton gown; and her head was like a skull with a thin grey skin drawn tightly over the sharp bones of the face, with pale-coloured living eyes in {292} the sockets. Her scanty grey hair was gathered in a net worn tightly on her head like a skull-cap. The old women in the villages here still keep to this long-vanished fashion.
I asked this old woman to tell me about the yellow flowers by the water, and she said that they had always been there. I told her she must be mistaken; and after considering for awhile she assured me that they grew there in abundance when she was quite young. She distinctly remembered that before her marriage—and that was over fifty years ago—she often went down to the stream to gather flowers, and would come in with great handfuls of wild musk.
When she had told me this, even before she had finished speaking, I seemed to see two persons before me—the lean old woman with her thin colourless visage, and, coming in from the sunshine, a young woman with rosy face, glossy brown hair and laughing blue eyes, her hands full of brightest yellow wild musk from the stream. And the visionary woman seemed to be alive and real, and the other unsubstantial, a delusion of the mind, a ghost of a woman.
But was the old woman right—was the beautiful yellow mimulus, the wild musk or water-buttercup as she called it, which our botanists refuse to admit into their works intended for our instruction, or give it only half a dozen dry words—was it a common wild flower on the Hampshire rivers more than half a century ago?
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Bird life on the downs
From the valley and the river with its shining yellow mimulus and floating water-grass in the crystal current—that green hair-like grass that one is never tired of looking at—back to the ivy-green cottage, its ancient limes and noble solitary oaks, and, above all, its birds; then back again to the stream—that mainly was our life. But close by on either side of the valley were the downs, and these too drew us with that immemorial fascination which the higher ground has for all of us, because of the sense of freedom and power which comes with a wide horizon. That was a fine saying of Lord Herbert of Cherbury that a man mounted on a good horse is lifted above himself: one experiences the feeling in a greater degree on any chalk down. One extensive open down within easy distance was a favourite afternoon walk. Here on the short fragrant turf an army of pewits were to be found every day, and usually there were a few stone-curlews with them. It is not here as in the country about Salisbury, where the Hawking Club has its headquarters, and where they have been "having fun with the thick-knees," as they express it in their lingo, until there are no thick-knees left. But the chief attraction of this down was an extensive thicket of thorn and bramble, mixed with furze and juniper and some good-sized old trees, where birds were abundant, many of them still breeding. Here, down to the end of September, I found turtle-doves' nests with newly-hatched young and incubated eggs. I always felt more than compensated for scratches {294} and torn clothes when I found young turtle-doves in the down, as the little creatures are then delightful to look at. Sitting hunched up on its platform, the head with its massive bulbous beak drawn against its arched back, the little thing is less like a bird than a mammal in appearance—a singularly coloured shrew, let us say. The colour is indeed strange, the whole body, the thick, fleshy, snout-like beak included, being a deep, intense, almost indigo blue, and the loose hair-like down on the head and upper parts a light, bright primrose yellow.
There are surprising colours in some young birds: the cirl nestling, as we have seen, is black and crimson—clothed in black down with gaping crimson mouth; loveliest of all is the young snipe in down of brown-gold, frosted with silvery white; but for quaintness and fantastic colouring the turtle-dove nestling has no equal. In all of our native doves, and probably in all doves everywhere, the skin is blue and the down yellow, but the colours differ in intensity. I tried to find a newly-hatched stock-dove to compare it with the turtle nestling but failed, alth............