British Country Life in Spring and Summer

The Book of the Open Air

Edward Thomas

• Publisher: A Thousand Fields
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781473336063
• eBook ISBN: 9781473343238
• Subtopic: Literary Essays

Contained within this book is a collection of essays, field notes, and diary excerpts from numerous naturalists relating to British country life in Spring and Summer. These fascinating and highly-readable articles will appeal to those with an interest in the British countryside and naturalism in general. Contents include: "Open-air Diary for April", "Open-air Diary for May", "Open-air Diary for June", "Open-air Diary for July", "Open-air Diary for August", "Open-air Diary for September", "Introduction", "In Praise of Rain", "The Otter's Holt", "The Flowers of Early Spring", "Some English Butterflies", "Birds as Architects", etc. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in a modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of Edward Thomas.

I

IN PRAISE OF RAIN

“A land of hills and valleys, drinking water of the rain of heaven.”—Deut. xi. II.

IT is the privilege of the educated Englishman, unless he be a farmer or a market gardener, to think of rain as a nuisance. He does not understand his debt to it; he hardly knows what it is to long for it. It interferes with the out-of-door games that he loves, and it spoils his cycling or his motoring. But the fact is that the peculiar beauty of his country is more the result of rain than any other cause. It is rain, the gentle constant rain of the ocean, that has moulded his country into hill and dale, and made his roads twist and turn, mount and descend, ever giving him fresh scenes as he moves along them. It is this gentle rain, not coming in seasonal deluge, but spreading itself in fair proportion over the whole year, that has given such constant variety to his landscape, and has given himself the unconscious eye of an artist in contemplating it, and in suiting to it the works of his hands. The approach of rain, the passing of rain, the rain over and gone—all these phases of his enemy’s being have an educating power on his eye and mind, though he be unconscious of it. They are beautiful in themselves, and the changes they work in the atmosphere and on the earth keep his outdoor mind alive and stirring. They accustom his eye to see his landscape through a glorifying medium; they have given his painters a sense of atmospheric effects which perhaps belongs to no other nation, for in this moist land of ours the atmosphere is almost always visible between us and the object we look at in the distance.

And it is rain, spreading itself thus so constantly and so quietly over the moderate elevations of our land, that has made water an almost invariable accompaniment of our wayside scenes; our roads and lanes and footpaths are for ever crossing it, and bridges great and small are tempting the artist to set up his easel, or the wayfarer to lean on them and refresh his eyes with running water and its plants and animals. The motorist and cyclist shoot past these pleasant spots, but for the walker there is nothing more delightful than to look leisurely over a bridge. These streams never wholly dry up, like the torrents of Greece and the East; and in summer the wealth of their vegetation—a wealth that often almost hides them from view—is beyond my power to describe. Loosestrife, forget-me-nots, willow-herb, water-lilies, yellowflags, flowering rushes, are the embroidery that the kindly rain sets upon her daughters the streams.

We hardly know in this country what a drought is. The last I can remember was in 1893, lasting from the middle of March to the middle of May; I can well remember the intense relief when the moisture came at last. As a rule we have to learn the true value of rain from the Hebrew poetry, the only Eastern literature we read. The psalms are full of this lesson for a Western; and in the last poem written by the poet-king (2 Sam. xxiii. 5) it is expressed in a simile of exquisite beauty: the just king is “as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.”

There are of course different kinds of rain, of different degrees of pleasantness. There is the heavy downpour, sustained and perhaps depressing, in which it is not enjoyable to be out; yet this does excellent work in washing as well as in stimulating growth. After a spell of dry weather everything needs to be cleansed; and this rain carries away from the surface of the earth and the roads all that ought not to linger there, fills the streams and washes their beds and banks. Even if they flood there is seldom much harm done, and the refuse that is spread over the meadows when the flood retires sinks into the ground and helps to enrich it. Then there is the soft warm rain that makes all nature rejoice, plants and animals alike—neish rain, as we call it, or used to call it, in the west; even man can be out and enjoy himself in this rain, for it makes all other things happy and fragrant, and can do himself no harm. But the most beautiful of all rain is that which comes in showers—showers of which nature drinks quietly and earnestly for a while, and then seems to lift a smiling face in grateful content as the sun comes out on her. In the spring of 1906 we had but few of those exquisite days of warm sun and soft shower from the west, which are so peculiarly English that to be without them in April and May is like being deprived of our birthright. And lastly, in contrast with these delicious showers there is yet another rain, distilling itself from cloud and mist on our western hills for many days together, hindering rather than helping the works of man, if not of other living things, and reminding us that neither rain without sun nor sun without rain can do for us and nature exactly what we wish. In a Cumberland dale I have seen the whole population making hay, while the sun was shining on a Sunday morning, with the full sanction of their good parson, who postponed his service for their benefit, and finally preached a sermon of extraordinary eloquence and power to a congregation of two strangers and his sexton. Those strangers soon found that they must accept the drizzle and make the best of it, and that all attempts to counteract it by umbrellas and mackintoshes are vain and even harmful—for they do but keep reminding you that it is raining.

RAIN.

From a photograph by

Rev. F. C. Lambert, M.A.

It is true then that the sweet and even distribution of rain over the greater part of this island has its exceptions; there is no part of England that has as a rule too little rain, but there are districts which get too much, and where man loses the constant sense of wholesome change, and the frequent cheering influence of the sun.

But let us return to the lower lands, where rain rarely continues for many days together, and watch the subtle influence it has on the life of plants and animals. All plants, as we all know, must have water, and many of them will droop after a day or two of dry heat; then, when the rain comes, it is almost possible to see the grass growing. The processes that go on at the roots and in the stems and leaves are hidden from us; but it is interesting to note the different ways in which different kinds of plants deal with the rain as it falls on their leaves. Some adorn themselves with it, retaining it in the form of gems sparkling in the sunshine, and thus make themselves more beautiful than ever to the human eye; others distribute it over their leaves as moisture hardly discernible unless we look at them closely; and some few seem almost to reject it. As you walk along a road during or just after a shower, looking into the hedgerows (always a most soothing occupation for eye and mind), and chance to be thinking of this treatment of rain by the plants, you can hardly fail to be struck by the surly and inhospitable conduct of the whole nettle tribe—a tribe that flourishes in dry places, and seems to be none the worse for dust and drought. The nettle leaves seem really to reject the rain; you may look in vain for a leaf which clearly shows the moisture upon it, and if you closely watch the drops falling, they seem to vanish and come to nothing as they reach these dark forbidding structures. Yet underneath them the long swordgrass is sparkling with a thousand diamonds; so is the clover, and the beautiful silverleaf (Potentilla anserina), and above them the wild rose and the honeysuckle both keep these brilliant gems for a short while. It might almost seem as if the plants that we love best have this way of decking themselves out, while those that we value least have never acquired it; for I notice that neither the docks nor the tall acrid buttercup can use the rain to please the human eye. But this is fancy, and for the real facts and the reasons for them, which are doubtless to be found in the varying structure of the leaves and the nature of their surfaces, we must go to the professed botanist. I have lately noticed that of all the plants in my garden the lupins, even with their small pointed leaves, which look as though they never could retain a drop, had decorated themselves more beautifully than all their neighbours. I put a lupin leaf under a strong magnifying glass, and found the surface softly hairy; but this does not carry me very far. Experiments with a watering-pot as well as the magnifying glass might tell us something more.

No one needs to be told how wholesome for the life of birds is a shower of rain; they let us know it themselves by breaking out into song the moment the rain has passed. I seem to notice that this is more particularly the case with our resident species, less so perhaps with those that have come from hot climates to bring up their young in cooler regions. Or at least I shall not be wrong in saying that few of these summer migrants will sing actually during the rain, while the blackbird, song-thrush, missel-thrush, robin, may always be heard if the rain is not too hard and cold. Yesterday (May 16) we had the first soft rain—fragrant rain, as I like to call it—that we have enjoyed for weeks, and while it was falling the blackbirds were wonderfully voiceful, and, as I fancied, unusually mellow. The sweet monotonous song of the missel-thrush is often to be heard while a wet gale is blowing; but the whitethroats and whinchats and blackcaps, which have only lately joined us, seem to like to wait till the rain is over. I am not so often out in rain for long together that I can speak with entire confidence on this point; but if it be so, the reason probably is that the insect-eaters like the sun best, the grub-eaters the rain.

But it is not only the song and the food of our native birds that is affected by the rain supply; some of them need it for their masonry as well. In a very dry spring neither thrush nor blackbird can line his nest with mud, and I have heard of cases in which they had for once in a way to do without it. Swallows too, and housemartins, must have mud for the structure of their nests, and their nesting operations may be delayed for weeks by dry east wind and hot sun; in such a year we may look out for young martins still in the nests well into October. If the spell of drought is broken by a thunder shower, it is pleasant to see the swallow tribe instantly busy on the roads or by the pond side—but a single shower too often only raises false hopes of progress.

In the rain of yesterday the grass in the hedgerows was adorned not only by the watery gems, but also by the many varieties of the common little snail which we all know so well (Helix nemoralis) on the downs, and in all short sweet pastures they were climbing up all long stalks even to the very top, as if from a desire to get right into the full favour of the rain. Indeed all creeping things, except perhaps the viper, enjoy the moisture, which rids them of dust and all the grittiness that comes of drought. Lately in period of east winds and frost it was pitiable to see worms covered with grit and gravel wriggling on the path, plagued no doubt with parasites, loathsome even to the birds, which never seem to touch them in this state; now if I see a worm on the road,—and after rain they are out all night on the roads, and even longer—they are clean and wholesome, without a particle of gravel sticking to them. In the garden the frogs and toads, as well as snails, come out and revel in the dampness, and the tortoise, if you have one, knows that he will find his food succulent. The most wonderful exhibition of reptile life that I have ever seen was not in England, but on a Swiss Alp, which became alive after rain with fat, jolly little salamanders, all crowding and tumbling upon each other, and with their jet-black skins shining with moisture.

One kind of living creature does not relish rain—I mean the fully developed insects. But in the early stages of their career they have owed so much to rain and moisture, that in later life they have to take things as they come. The larvae of all insects are themselves moist, and need moisture to give them bodily comfort and the vegetable matter on which they feed. Caterpillars must have their food-plant, which cannot grow without moisture; so that when we see the Mayflies crushed by a thunder shower, or miss the butterflies on a wet day, we have to reflect that they would be neither Mayflies nor butterflies if it had not been for the kindly rain. As to spiders, I am half inclined to guess that they are abnormal and dislike rain from infancy upwards; but this I must leave to the specialist.

So it would seem that man, and almost all if not quite all the creatures that live around him, are the better for rain and ought to enjoy it. Long ago we used to be afraid of it, and even for an ordinary walk young ladies used to take some time to “get ready.” The little heroine of that delightful novel Northanger Abbey, could not walk by the Avon at Bath with Henry Tilney and his sister because it came on to rain; and it is pathetic to contemplate her grief as she watched the first drops on the window panes. “Oh dear, I do believe it will be wet,” broke from her in a most despairing tone. In these days healthy English men, women, boys and girls, do not mind rain. Last spring, landing on the coast of Asia Minor, a hundred and fifty of us, old and young, were wetted through by a thunderstorm in ten minutes; we pushed on, and no one seemed to mind. Here, in the sweet gentle rain of the Atlantic, we ought to be quite content. And we need be in no hurry to get home quickly, if we would see the earth and all its creatures rejoicing under the genial influence of the moisture.

II

THE OTTER’S HOLT

“To climb the trackless mountains all unseen . . .

This is not solitude; ’tis but to hold

Converse with Nature’s charms, and view her charms unrolled.”

—BYRON.

“’TISN’T a fox as lives in the White Stones, sir,” said my visitor, “so you were wrong in your guess when you sent me to watch there yesterday. As far as I can make out, the ‘run’ leading down from the carn to the pond where old Aben washes his sheep is ‘travelled’ by a different sort of animal. Nobody but ourselves need know that, whatever. A sheep-dog might turn clap-cat, but then, Aben’s shepherd don’t go up so high on the moor, for he can see what’s nigh the carn from the foot of the hill, without climbing among the rocks. As for old Aben hisself, his breath’s a bit too short for clambering about the White Stones. Nigh every week, for years, on market day in the village, Anne Marged Jones at the shop’s been giving ’n a packet of peppermint drops, extra-strong, to lengthen his breath, but they don’t work, and I s’pose hill-climbing ’ll never be much to his mind the more.

“It would be better for Aben to come down from the farm, and hang up his hat on the nail behind Anne Marged’s passage door and have done with ploughing and shearing; he’d be welcome. There’s a lovely life he’d be having with Anne Marged! She’d be fussing over ’n like a hen with one chick; for, as you’re knowing, sir, she’s an old maid, and for all that she’s a good-tempered body. And once an old maid gets the fellow she’s dulling on, she’s like a mother and a missus and a lass all in one to ’n. She don’t take count of things like shortness o’ breath, not she! ’cept to mix bottles and bottles of camphor oil to rub on his chest; and why! all ’twixt her and him’s like a second spring, as comes in the fall of the year.”

My companion was an interesting gossip, and I let him ramble on with his story of Aben’s infirmities, his camphor oil and herb tea, and how by smoking the sun-dried leaves of coltsfoot the sufferer had sometimes found relief when Anne Marged’s peppermint drops were ineffectual. Presently the tale was again of wild life on the moor.

“’Twas just about sundown when I got to the carn, sir. You’d told me not to let anybody see me once I’d passed Mountain Gate, so I went along the rough path by the bog, where the furze was tall, and up the bed of the stream in the dingle to the foot of the carn. Half-way from the furze I came across a sure fox-sign, as I thought—half-a-dozen white feathers from the breast of a duckling. ‘Aben’s ducks don’t come so far up the dingle of their own accord,’ says I to myself; ‘it seems to me a vixen’s busy with a family in the carn.’

“Well, I climbed the White Stones near to the top, and settled down comfortable in the fern, so’s I could view a likely opening or two below me. By-and-by, old Aben passed up the opposite hill, holding his sides, and coughing now and then, on his way for his drop of beer in the Farmer’s Arms at the cross-roads. ’Twas wonderful how well I could hear ’n—the air was so still. When he was far on the edge of the moor, up jumped a covey of grouse, not two hundred yards from the Stones, and came flying straight to the place where I was hiding, two old birds and a lot of little poults as seemed proud they could fly. They lit on the ground about twenty or thirty yards from the Stones, in a big clump of heather and fern. I kept my eye on the spot, and soon the cock grouse walked down the dry bed of the stream, with his family in the rear. He crooded (crouched) down close by a small heather bush. I couldn’t see what was happening to his mate and the poults, but I judged they were putting up for the night close by. Thinks I, ‘One or two of that family ’ll be missing afore dawn; if there’s a vixen with cubs hereabouts she’s certain to use the path down to the brook, and she’ll come plump on ’em in their sleep.’

“I watched and watched, but nothing like a fox came out of the carn, though about midnight I heard a pebble rolling down to the edge of the little stream—the water’s only a trickle now, the weather’s been so dry—and I fancied, a minute after, that a fern moved, as if some animal brushed under it. But I couldn’t well see the ground between this spot and the lowest of the big stones in the carn, so I crawled to the other side, and lay where I could get a better view. I tried my best to keep awake, but the mountain air was too strong for me, and made me go to sleep. I woke just afore dawning, after a couple of hours rest, and felt as fresh as a lark. I thought I’d surely see the vixen afore long, or not at all, so I settled to watch once more. The sky grew brighter and brighter above the furthest hills, and though the hills looked black against the sky, there was a cold, white light about the carn.

“Sudden-like, I heard a stone falling again by the stream, and made out some grey animal climbing through the shadows into the light. Then I saw, as it came nearer, ’twas a full-sized otter carrying something in her mouth. She came to a sort of gallery between the rock I was lying on and the next, so clo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Contents
• An Open-air Diary for April
• An Open-air Diary for May
• An Open-air Diary for June
• An Open-air Diary for July
• An Open-air Diary for August
• An Open-air Diary for September
• Introduction By Edward Thomas
• Chapter I In Praise of Rain
• Chapter II The Otter’s Holt
• Chapter III The Flowers of Early Spring
• Chapter IV Some English Butterflies
• Chapter V Birds as Architects
• Chapter VI The Venus Eve
• Chapter VII Ancient Ponds
• Chapter VIII The Making of Scenery
• Chapter IX The Life-Story of a Badger
• Chapter X Some May Flowers
• Chapter XI The Bee Mind
• Chapter XII Bird-Watching in a Breydon Punt
• Chapter XIII The Nightingale and its Haunts
• Chapter XIV Some Moorland Birds
• Chapter XV The Story of Some Pebble Hills
• Chapter XVI Advice to Adder Seekers
• Chapter XVII Ghost Moth Evenings
• Chapter XVIII Roe and Red-Deer
• Chapter XIX Our Wild Orchids
• Chapter XX The Railway Embankment
• Chapter XXI The Peregrine
• Chapter XXII Summer Visitors
• Chapter XXIII Blue Columbine and Chequered Daffodil
• Chapter XXIV Trees and Shrubs
• Chapter XXV Midsummer Plants
• Chapter XXVI The Animals of the Cliffs
• Chapter XXVII Butterflies in Bed
• Chapter XXVIII Sea Birds
• Chapter XXIX The British Ferns
• Chapter XXX Plant Aliens
• Chapter XXXI English Snakes
• Chapter XXXII The Kite
• Chapter XXXIII The Pleasures of Coarse-Fishing.
• Chapter XXXIV Pearl Skippers
• Chapter XXXV Summer in a Heath Country
• Chapter XXXVI August in a Breydon Punt
• Chapter XXXVII Varying Fecundity in Birds
• Chapter XXXVIII Sport, and Wild Life
• Chapter XXXIX Exmoor
• Chapter XL A Northern Valley
• Chapter XLI The Little Red Dog
• Chapter XLII The Life of the Rabbit
• Chapter XLIII The Water Vole
• Chapter XLIV Salmon
• Chapter XLV Anax Imperator
• Chapter XLVI Field Notes on Some English Butterflies