British Country Life in Autumn and Winter

The Book of the Open Air

Edward Thomas

• Publisher: A Thousand Fields
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781473336544
• eBook ISBN: 9781473343702
• 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 Autumn and Winter. 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 October", "Open-air Diary for November", "Open-air Diary for December", "Open-air Diary for January", "Open-air Diary for February", "Open-air Diary for March", "Flowers of the Shore", "A Surrey Plateau", "Day-flying Moths", "The Sphinx Moth", "Humours of Insect Life in October", "The Makers of Gossamer", 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

FLOWERS OF THE SHORE

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;

There is a rapture on the lonely shore;

There is society where none intrudes

By the deep sea, and music in its roar.”

—BYRON.

OUR maritime flora continues much later in the season than that of the woods and hedgerows and other inland localities. In the month of September, when but few flowers will be found on the open downs, and when most of the bog plants are gone to seed, many interesting species are still in blossom by the seashore. The salt marshes which stretch for miles along the east coast are now aglow with the purple of the sea-lavender: on the rocky cliffs of Cornwall and South Wales the sea mallow is not yet past flowering; while on the short sandy turf—from early spring a favourite haunt of sea-loving species—numbers of wild flowers continue in bloom.

Among the most stately plants that grace our sea cliffs on certain parts of the coast must undoubtedly be reckoned the tree mallow (Lavatera arborea, L.). It is a tall and picturesque species, often six feet in height, with soft downy angular leaves, and abundance of glossy purple flowers. Parkinson, in the year 1640, notes it as growing “about the cottages neere Hurst Castle, over against the Ile of Wight.” A few years later Merrett states that “Mr. Morgan received it from the Isle of Wight”; and John Ray says, “I have observed it in many places by the seaside, as at Hurst Castle over against the Isle of Wight; in Portland Island; and on the rocks of Caldey Island.” It has now disappeared on the Hampshire coast and in the Isle of Wight, except here and there as an escape from cottage gardens; but on the rocks of Caldey Island, over against Tenby in South Pembrokeshire, it is as abundant as when, in 1662, Ray and Willughby visited the enchanting spot. Indeed “our tree mallow,” as the early writers called it, is a conspicuous feature in the flora of the district. Magnificent plants, many of them still in flower, were to be seen last September, not only on Caldey Island, but also on the rocks at Tenby, in company with the wild sea-cabbage (Brassica oleracea, L.), the origin of our cultivated varieties, and fennel, samphire, wild sea-radish, and a rare kind of sea-lavender (Statice occidentalis, Lloyd) which prefers the hard precipitous rocks to the muddy stretches of marshland which is the home of the commoner species.

At Giltar Head, some two miles from Tenby, over against St. Margaret’s Island, the golden samphire (Inula crithmoides, L.) was also in full flower last September. This conspicuous member of the Compositæ with narrow succulent leaves and large bright yellow flowers, must not be confused with the samphire immortalized by Shakespeare (Crithmum maritimum), the gathering of which, for purposes of pickling, was in his day regularly carried on by the hardy fishermen of the coast. The passage in King Lear is well known where above the white chalk cliffs of Dover, Edgar says to the Earl of Gloucester:

“Come on, sir, here’s the place; stand still.

How fearful

And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!

The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles; half-way down

Hangs one that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!

Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.”

Gerarde, a contemporary of Shakespeare, who calls this plant “Rocke Samfier,” states that it grows upon “the rocky clifts at Dover, about Southampton, the Isle of Wight, and most rocks about the west and north parts of England.” He speaks of “its spicie taste, with a certain saltnesse,” and as “beeing of smell delightfull and pleasant,” and adds that it makes “the pleasantest sauce, most familiar, and best agreeing with man’s body.” The custom of gathering samphire for pickling has now almost entirely ceased, but a hundred years ago it was a lucrative business in the Isle of Wight. “Great quantities of it,” wrote in 1799 the Rev. Thomas Garnier, a distinguished botanist, who afterwards became Dean of Winchester, “are annually gathered for a pickle of the most exquisite flavour; it may be had by being ordered at the public-house, Freshwater Gate, from whence I have been constantly supplied; and where I have often seen, as Shakespeare literally describes it, a man gathering it midway on the perpendicular cliffs, suspended by a rope fastened on the top, and sitting on a short piece of wood with a basket slung to his shoulders, somewhat as colliers descend a coalpit, and as in that case, accidents have been known to happen in this.” In consequence of the risk involved it appears that “some little fraud was often practised” in palming off other plants as the true samphire. Among these the golden samphire was a common substitute, and indeed it resembles the genuine kind in “being compassed about with a multitude of long fat leaves,” and to a certain extent in its aromatic qualities. Moreover, it could be gathered with little trouble and no danger in the marshes of this district, especially at Newtown, where now as then it is abundant. Its favourite haunt is mostly on the muddy banks of estuaries, although sometimes it is found on rocks. Ray noticed it not only in the Essex marshes, but also “on the rocks at Llandywn in Anglesea”; and at Giltar Head it flourishes in inaccessible places on the magnificent cliffs.

The “dunes” or sandhills and the short springy turf which on many parts of the coast borders the sea are sometimes famous places for rare and interesting plants. In addition to such generally distributed species as the beautiful sea-convolvulus with its large rose-coloured flowers striped with red, the yellow horned poppy with its cylindrical curved pod sometimes a foot long, the prickly saltwort, the scurvy-grass, once a famous remedy for scorbutic diseases and not without its virtue, the sea purslane, and sundry kinds of trefoils, choicer plants may sometimes be met with. On the coast of Suffolk between Lowestoft and Yarmouth the tall and stately lyme-grass (Elymus arenarius, L.) lends distinction to the sandy “dens”; and not far from the ruined church of Dunwich the sand cat’s-tail grass (Phleum arenarium, L.) is plentiful. Here and there on the Hampshire shore, but very sparingly, the delicate little pink, Dianthus prolifer, is found; and once the philosopher John Stuart Mill met with a single specimen of the purple spurge (Euphorbia peplis, L.) in San-down bay. This latter plant, at once distinguished by the purple hue of its stem and leaves, has now become very rare, and like the seaside cotton-weed (Diotis maritima) frequently recorded by early botanists, has doubtless become extinct in many of its former haunts. Another most interesting species, to be seen in a few localities on the shores of Cornwall and Wales, is the wild asparagus. It still exists near the Lizard Point, where Ray found it in the year 1667, and only last autumn I noticed it on the stretch of sandy burrow which curiously enough crowns the lofty headland of Giltar in South Pembrokeshire already alluded to. The lovely little burnet rose (R. spinosissima), then conspicuous with its black globular fruit, was trailing all over the ground, an uncommon form of felwort or autumn gentian (Gentiana Germanica) and the rare sea-spurge (Euphorbia Portlandica) were plentiful, and a few plants of Thalictrum minus were to be seen; but the choicest plant was the asparagus, known in old days as sparagus or sperage, corrupted, says Ray, into sparrow-grass. It was, beyond question, truly wild on this lofty, wind-swept elevation, which in spring-time is starred with the exquisite blue flowers of Scilla verna.

In the Isle of Wight, justly celebrated for the richness of its flora, there are several sandy spits or necks of land which will amply repay a botanical visit. The most famous of these is St. Helen’s Spit at the mouth of Brading harbour. It is a small piece of ground, not exceeding fifty acres, and yet it is said to support over two hundred and fifty species of flowering plants. In this respect it is perhaps unequalled by any area of like extent in the United Kingdom. Formerly the “Dover” at Ryde vied with it in the number and variety of its botanical treasures, but the “Dover” is no longer a haunt of wild flowers, and the only locality in the island now to be compared with it is Norton Spit near Freshwater. At Norton, it is true, the rare grass Phleum arenarium may also be found, and a few plants of asparagus which, although hardly indigenous, have been known to exist there for a long number of years. But the sandy tract near the early English tower of the now ruined church of St. Helen’s can show greater rarities than these. One plant calls for special mention. Unknown on the mainland of Hampshire, unknown in the neighbouring counties of Wilts, Dorset, Sussex, and Berkshire, unknown elsewhere in the Isle of Wight, at St. Helen’s Spit the autumnal squill (Scilla autumnalis) may be seen in extraordinary profusion. All over the sandy ground it puts forth its lovely little pale blue star-like flowers every August and September. Gerarde calls the plant “the small Autumne Jacinth,” and Ray “the lesser Autumnal Star-Hyacinth,” and the names are well chosen. How long the beautiful little jacinth has flourished at St. Helen’s there is no means of telling, for the island flora received but little attention from the early botanists. But there is no reason to doubt that it is truly indigenous. It seems to have been first recorded about the year 1823, and then it was as abundant as it is to-day, lending additional charm to this favoured spot.

Another striking species, not indeed rare and delicate like the vernal and autumnal squills, but characteristic of the loose sandhills of the coast, is the handsome sea-holly (Eryngium maritinum). This stout and prickly plant, not unlike a thistle in general appearance, but of a pale glaucous hue, and bearing dense heads or “knops” of “glistering blew” flowers “of the bignesse of a wallnut,” is often a conspicuous object on the seashore. In former days the long creeping roots, “of the bignesse of a man’s finger and so very long as that it cannot be plucked up but very seldome,” were highly esteemed when candied as a sweetmeat which was supposed to possess great virtues. It was known as “Eringoes,” and under this name Shakespeare refers to it in The Merry Wives of Windsor. In his list of rare Essex plants which Ray drew up for Gibson’s edition of Camden’s Britannia, published in 1695, the great botanist includes the sea-holly or eryngo, but adds: “This being a plant common enough on sandy shores I should not have mentioned, but that Colchester is noted for the first inventing or practising the candying or conditing of its roots, the manner whereof may be seen in Gerarde’s Herbal.” It is interesting to know that in the Chamberlain’s accounts for the borough in the reign of James I there are several entries with reference to the purchase of eryngo roots. The trade was then in the hands of one Robert Buxton, an apothecary and alderman of the town, who in the time of the Civil War, after the famous siege of Colchester, was expelled from the Corporation for his political opinions. It was afterwards carried on by his apprentice, Samuel Great, or de Groot, a member of one of the refugee houses, in whose family the secret of the “candying” remained till the close of the eighteenth century. For a long period “Great’s Candied Eryngo” was held in high repute, and a box of it was regarded as a present not unworthy for a queen. Indeed, when Princess Charlotte, on her arrival in England to be married to George III, passed through the town, she was duly presented with a box of the precious sweetmeat. The trade appears to have continued till about the middle of the last century when, owing, it is said, to the difficulty of obtaining roots, it gradually declined. This doubtless is the explanation of the comparative scarceness of Eryngium maritinum on the Essex coast. It is clear from Ray’s statement that it was formerly abundant: it cannot be called abundant now, but plants may be found at Clacton and Harwich, on the shores of Mersea Island, and where old Gerarde noticed it in the sixteenth century, “at Landamer lading.”

II

A SURREY PLATEAU

“The tribes who then lived on her breast,

Her vigorous primitive sons.”

—MATTHEW ARNOLD.

THE fastidious young man of Miss May Kendall’s poem who “owned the scenery was grand,” but objected to the cliffs because they were Laurentian and not Pleistocene might, it is possible to think, find scenery and deposits to his liking on a certain plateau near the escarpment of the North Downs. There he could inspect thick beds of gravel, the flints much rolled and often of considerable size, reputed to be of either pre-glacial or early Pleistocene age, while scattered over the surface in other parts may be traced the old Southern Drift containing, with the rolled and subangular flints, pieces of chert from the Lower Green-sand beds which are now separated from the Chalk by a valley 300 feet deep, the gravels having been deposited before the vast intervening hollow was formed. It would not be necessary to conduct this imaginary youth to the edge of the Chalk escarpment and point out the physical features of the country, due chiefly to the action of rain and rivers acting on the Greensands and the Gault, or to explain that his favourite Pleistocene rocks are comparatively recent accumulations, often of great thickness, and, where fossiliferous, contain shells belonging to existing species and remains of mammals, many of which are extinct or now resident in colder and warmer countries.—One small section here displayed contains the characteristic molluscan fauna of late Pleistocene age—land and freshwater shells, some of which are now rare or extinct in the neighbourhood. But these somewhat recent beds are limited in area, and the newest are on the edges of a depression which in prehistoric times was probably a diminutive lake which existed when the rounded pebbles were deposited by some temporary torrential stream in their present position. The present-day ponds, though small and shallow, never run dry even during the occurrence of a season like the rainless summer of 1906.

“We have no waters to delight

Our broad and brookless vales—

Only the dewpond on the height

Unfed, that never fails.”

In the spring they are white with the pretty little flowers of the Ranunculus or Water Crowfoot, and later their borders are bright with Forget-me-not and Persicaria and adorned with the bold lance-shaped leaves of the Water Plantain. Certain species of small molluscs, such as the Limnœa, with graceful sharp-pointed spire and wide mouth, and the flat and coiled Planorbis, flourish at the bottom; while the Water Boatman and “Skater” and other curious creatures disport themselves in coolness and security on the surface.

The chief deposits lying on the most interesting portion of this plateau—a pleasant undulating wind-swept heath of 3,000 acres in area—are a puzzling mixture of sands and clays from what are termed the Lower London Tertiaries, perhaps from the Thanet Sands and Blackheath Pebble beds, which, though originally in position seem to have been disturbed and rearranged unequally over the surface of the eroded chalk. In some small pits are beds of thick red clay capped with small pebbles, and in other sections the sands prevail. Near the chalk outcrop where the Tertiaries are thinner may be seen beds of clay-with-flints, the flints in their original fantastic shapes but with their beautiful combination of lustrous black and sober white altered and discoloured by the solution of the chalk and contact with clay into dirty brown and sooty shades. In a few places white sands are exposed, and from a distance with their background of brown heather almost seem to suggest the familiar image of “Snow upon the dusty desert’s face.” At one corner of the heath is a small coombe widened and deepened by excavations for flints, which when obtained are sorted and stacked in large rectangular heaps and finally sold as road material. It is pleasant to sit on the edge of this valley and watch the rabbits scamper and tumble to and from their sandy subterranean lairs, in numbers rivalling those at the antipodes, while occasionally the stoat, their chief enemy next to man, with uplifted head peeps round suspiciously and then with leisured pace continues his relentless pursuit of fur and feather. It seems an ideal spot for snakes and adders, but they appear to be rarely seen, though the slow worm, vulgarly classed with them, is common, and its skin and skeleton may often be seen bleaching in the sun. The little lizards with convenient tails may be detected by a quick and accustomed eye as frequently as Grant Allen could find them on his favourite Hindhead. Below on the piled stones wagtails flit, and at their appointed season build soft nests between the crevices and thus secure an original and safe retreat. The old poet in pre-migration days thus sang of the swallow:

“In thy undiscovered nest

Thou dost all the winter rest,”

and most of these nests are as undiscoverable as the swallow’s mythical winter residence or as those of the stonechats and wheatears on the common. In the gorse one can sometimes find the nest and blue eggs of the hedge sparrow, and, rarely, among dark nettles the whitethroat’s thin hairy nest is found, but only the keen eye and untiring enthusiasm of youth could hope to be successful here. The nests of most of the heather-loving birds are hidden too carefully by art and nature amid the thick vegetation, and the eggs of the goatsucker or nightjar are equally well concealed although laid on the bare ground among the small rounded Blackheath pebbles.

Down in the hollow small pinnacles of chalk are visible between masses of brick earth and gravel, and at the deep end on the northern slope is a good exposure of this pure limestone belonging to a zone of the Upper Chalk named after the familiar Echinoderm, Micraster cor-anguinum.

“What is it? A learned man

Could give it a clumsy name.”

The characteristic fossils of this zone have been found here, many of course in a fragmentary condition, but others beautifully preserved. The fossil which gives its name to the zone is not rare, the useful guide Echinoconus conicus is scarce, but the most important fossil at this horizon (for it should be stated that the Micraster cor-anguinum is also found in higher zones), namely, th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Contents
• Illustrations
• An Open-air Diary for October
• An Open-air Diary for November
• An Open-air Diary for December
• An Open-air Diary for January
• An Open-air Diary for February
• An Open-air Diary for March
• Chapter I Flowers of the Shore
• Chapter II A Surrey Plateau
• Chapter III Day-flying Moths
• Chapter IV The Sphinx Moth
• Chapter V Humours of Insect Life in October
• Chapter VI The Makers of Gossamer
• Chapter VII Flowers in late Autumn
• Chapter VIII The British Fungi
• Chapter IX An October East-Coast Ramble
• Chapter X The Chough
• Chapter XI A Plague of Field-Rats
• Chapter XII The Chalk Country
• Chapter XIII The Sand-Dunes
• Chapter XIV A Western Bay
• Chapter XV Our Fungus Harvest
• Chapter XVI Winter Visitors
• Chapter XVII Some Birds of the Marsh
• Chapter XVIII Gilbert White
• Chapter XIX In Hard Weather
• Chapter XX Game Shooting
• Chapter XXI Prehistoric Monuments
• Chapter XXII In East Norfolk Bird Haunts
• Chapter XXIII The Natural History of Place-Names
• Chapter XXIV Richard Jefferies
• Chapter XXV The Weasels: Weasel—Stoat—Polecat—Marten
• Chapter XXVI The Squirrel
• Chapter XXVII Our Vanishing Fauna
• Chapter XXVIII The Buzzard
• Chapter XXIX The Geography of Handicrafts
• Chapter XXX English Country Songs
• Chapter XXXI Trees
• Chapter XXXII Wild-Fowl Shooting
• Chapter XXXIII The Entomologist’s Methods
• Chapter XXXIV The Study of Botany out of Doors
• Chapter XXXV The Otter
• Chapter XXXVI Some Country Books
• Chapter XXXVII The Attraction of Birds
• Chapter XXXVIII Nature in English Poetry
• Chapter XXXIX Nature in Art
• Chapter XL Sea Birds, No. 2
• Chapter XLI The Homing Instinct in Birds
• Chapter XLII The Trout
• Chapter XLIII The Fox