The Naturalist on the Thames Part 2

About the middle of August, when walking by one of the locks on a disused ca.n.a.l in the Ock Valley, I saw a man engaged in a very artistic mode of catching crayfish. The lock was very old, and the brickwork above water covered with pennywort and crane's-bill growing where the mortar had rotted at the joints. In these same joints below water the crayfish had made holes or homes of some sort, and were sitting at the doors with their claws and feelers just outside, waiting, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up. To meet their views the crayfish catcher had cut a long willow withe. From the tapering tip of this he had cut the wood, leaving the bark, which had been carefully slit and the woody tip extracted from it.

This pendant of bark he had made into a running noose, and leaning over the bank he worked it over the crayfish's claws and then snared them. It was a neat adaptation of local means to an end; for if you think of it, string would not have answered, because it would not remain rigid, and wire would be too stiff for the job.

Crayfish catching, until lately one of the minor fisheries of the Thames, is now a vanished industry. Ten years ago the banks of the river from Staines to the upper waters at Cricklade were honeycombed with crayfish holes, like sandmartins' nests in a railway cutting. These holes were generally not more than eighteen inches below the normal water line of the river. In winter when the stream was full fresh holes were dug higher up the bank. In summer when the water fell these were deserted. The result was that there were many times more holes than crayfish, and that for hundreds of miles along the Thames and its tributaries these burrows made a perforated border of about three feet deep. The almost complete destruction of the crayfish was due to a disease, which first appeared near Staines, and worked its way up the Thames, with as much method as enteric fever worked its way down the Nile in the Egyptian Campaign after Omdurman. The epidemic is well known in France, where a larger kind of crayfish is reared artificially in ponds, and serves as the material for _bisque d'ecrevisses_, and as the most elegant scarlet garnish for cold and hot dishes of fish in Paris restaurants; but it was new to recent experience of the Thames. Perhaps that is why its effects were so disastrous. The neat little fresh-water lobsters turned almost as red as if they had been boiled, crawled out of their holes, and died. Under some of the most closely perforated banks they lay like a red fringe along the riverside under the water. Near Oxford, and up the Cherwell, Windrush, and other streams they were, before the pestilence, so numerous that making crayfish pots was as much a local industry as making eel-pots, the smaller withes, not much larger than a thick straw, being used for this purpose.

Most cottages near the river had one or two of these pots, which were baited on summer nights and laid in the bottom of the stream near the crayfish holes. It must be supposed that they only use them by day, and come out by night, just as lobsters do, to roam about and seek food on a larger scale than that which they seize as it floats past their holes by day. That time of more or less enforced idleness the crayfish used to spend in looking out of their holes with their claws hanging just over the edge ready to seize and haul in anything nice that floated by. Their appet.i.te by night was such that no form of animal food came amiss to them.

The "pots" were baited with most unpleasant dainties, but nasty as these were they were not so unsavoury as the food which the crayfish found for themselves and thoroughly enjoyed, such as dead water-rats and dead fish, worms, snails, and larvae. They were always hungry, and one of the simplest ways of catching them was to push into their holes a gloved finger, which the creature always seized with its claw and tried to drag further in. The crayfish, who, like the lobster, looked on it as a point of honour never to let go, was then jerked out into a basket. They rather liked the neighbourhood of towns and villages because plenty of dirty refuse was thrown into the water. In the ca.n.a.lised stream which runs into Oxford city itself there were numbers, which not only burrowed in the bank, but made homes in all the c.h.i.n.ks of stone and brick river walls, and sides of locks, and in the wood of the weiring, where they sat ensconced as snugly as crickets round a brick farmhouse kitchen fireplace. They were regularly caught by the families of the riverine population of boatmen, bargees, and waterside labourers, and sold in the Oxford market. A dish of crayfish, as scarlet as coral, was not unfrequently seen at a College luncheon. Possibly the recovery from the epidemic may be rapid, and the small boys of Medley and Mill Street may earn their sixpence a dozen as delightfully as they used to. Young crayfish, when hatched from the egg, are almost exactly like their parents. The female nurses and protects them, carrying them attached to its underside in clinging crowds. They grow very fast, and this makes it necessary for the youthful crayfish to "moult" or shed their sh.e.l.ls eight times in their first twelvemonth of life, as the sh.e.l.l is rigid and does not grow with the body. The constant secretion of the lime necessary to make these sh.e.l.ls is so exhausting to the youthful crayfish that only a small number ever grow up. In America, where a large freshwater crayfish nearly a foot long is found, its burrowing habits are a serious nuisance, especially in the d.y.k.es of the Mississippi. In those streams from which these interesting little creatures have entirely disappeared it might be worth while to introduce the large Continental crayfish. As it is bred artificially, there would be no difficulty in obtaining a supply, and it would be a useful subst.i.tute for the small native kind.

Sea crayfish, which grow to a very large size, are not much esteemed in this country. They are not so well flavoured as their cousin the lobster.

But as river crayfish of a superior kind can be cultivated, and are reared for the table abroad, it might be worth while to pay some attention to what has been done in the United States to replenish by artificial breeding the stock of lobsters now somewhat depleted by the great "canning" industry. The method of obtaining the young lobsters is different from that employed to rear trout from ova. The female lobsters carry all their eggs fastened to hair-fringed fans or "swimmerets" under their tails, the eggs being glued to these hairs by a kind of gum which instantly hardens when it touches the water. For some ten months the female lobster carries the eggs in this way, aerating them all the time with the movement of the swimmerets. When they are caught in the lobster-pots in the months of June and July, the eggs are taken to the hatchery, and the ova are detached. As they are already fertilised, they are put into hatching jars, where in due course they become young lobsters, or rather lobster larvae, for the lobster does not start in life quite so much developed as does the infant crayfish. It is about one-third of an inch long, has no large claws, and swims naturally on the surface of the water, instead of lurking at the bottom as it does when it has come to lobster's estate. It seems to be compelled to rise to the surface, for sunlight, or any bright illumination, always brings swarms of lobsterlings to the top of the jars in which they are hatched. In the sea this impulse towards the light stands them in good stead, for in the surface-waters they find themselves surrounded by the countless atoms of animal life, or potential life, the eggs and young of smaller sea beasts. The young lobster is furiously hungry and voracious, because, like the young crayfish, it has to change not only its sh.e.l.l but the lining of its stomach five times in eighteen days. Unfortunately, in the hatching jars there is no such store of natural food as in the sea. The result is that the young lobsters have to eat each other, which they do with a cheerful mind, if they are not at once liberated. When they have reached their fifth month they go to the bottom and "settle down" in the literal sense to the serious life of lobsters.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TROUT. _From a photograph by Charles Reid._]

I believe no one ever saw trout sp.a.w.ning in the Thames, though there are plenty of shallows where they might do so. Consequently the Thames trout must be regarded as a fish which was born in the tributaries and descended into the big river, and as the mouths of these trout-holding tributaries, such as the Kennet at Reading, the Pang, the lower Colne, and others, become surrounded with houses and the trout no longer haunt the _embouchure_, so the tendency is for fewer trout to get into the Thames. Still, places like the Windrush, the Evenlode, and the other upper tributaries hold rather more trout than they did, as they are better looked after; and the Fairford Colne is still a beautiful trout stream.

For some reason, however, the Thames trout do not seem fond of the upper waters, where if found they seem to keep entirely in the highly aerated parts by the weirs, but mainly haunt the lower ones from Windsor downwards, and one was recently caught in the tidal waters below the bridge. It is very difficult to see why there are so few above Oxford, or from Abingdon to Reading. It is not because they are caught, for very few are caught. A friend of mine who had lived on the river near Clifton Hampden for some eight years, could only remember eight trout being caught in that time. I thought I was going to have one once. I was fis.h.i.+ng for chub with a b.u.mble bee, and a great spotted trout rose to it in a way which made me hope I was going to have a trophy to boast of for life. But he "rose short," and I saw him no more. I believe _all_ the brooks which rise in the chalk hills of the Thames Valley have trout in them. One runs under the railway line at Steventon. A resident there had quite a number of tamed trout in the conduit which took the stream under the line, and used to feed them with worms as a show. At the head waters of the Lockinge brook, close to the springs, I saw the trout sp.a.w.ning on New Year's Day. The big fish had wriggled up into the very shallowest water, and were lying with their back fins and tails out, I suppose from some instinct either that this water is the most highly aerated, or because floods do less harm on a shallow, or for both reasons combined. At Long Wittenham, though I never saw a trout in the river (they are, however, taken there), Admiral Clutterbuck recently had a fine old stew pond in the picturesque old grounds of the Manor House cleaned out, and stocked it with rainbow trout. They did well and grew fast, and so far as I know, none died. The water was not suited for their breeding, but the fish were very ornamental, and rose freely to the fly.

FOUNTAINS AND SPRINGS

Is it true that our fountains and springs of sweet water are about to perish? A writer in _Country Life_ says "Yes," that in parts of the Southern counties the hidden cisterns of the springs are now sucked dry, and that the engineers employed to bring the waters from these natural sources to the village or the farm lament that where formerly streams gushed out unbidden, they are now at pains to raise the needed water by all the resources of modern machinery. When the old fountains fail new sources are eagerly sought, and where science fails the diviner's art is called in to aid. At the Agricultural Show the water-diviner sits installed, surrounded by votive tablets picturing the springs discovered by his magic art; and County Councils quarrel with the auditors of local expenditure over sums paid for the successful employment of his mysterious gift.

It is not strange that the springs of England should still suggest a faint echo of Nature-wors.h.i.+p. If rivers have their G.o.ds, fountains and springs have ever been held to be the home of divinities, beings who were by right of birth G.o.ds, even though, owing to circ.u.mstances, they did not move exactly in their circle. _Procul a Jove, procul a fulgure_ may have been the thought ascribed by Greek fancy to the gracious beings who made their home by the springs, for whether in ancient Greece or in our Western island, they breathe the sense of peace, security, and quiet, and to them all living things, animal and human, come by instinct to enjoy the sense of refreshment and repose. A spring is always old and always new. It is ever in movement, yet constant, seldom greater and seldom less, in the case of most natural upspringing waters, syphoned from the deep cisterns of earth. Absolutely material, with no mystery in its origin, it impresses the fancy as a thing unaccountable, like the source of life embodied, something self-engendered. It has pulses, throbbing like the ebb and flow of blood. Its dancing bubbles, rising and bursting, image emotion. It is the only water always clear and sparkling. Streams gather mud, springs dispel it. They come pure from the depths, and never suffer the earth to gather where they leap from ground. They are the brightest and the cleanest things in Nature. From all time the polluter of a spring has been held accursed.

One of the sources of the Thames was a real spring, rising from the earth in a meadow, until the level of the subterranean water was reduced.

These suddenly uprising springs are not common in our country, and need seeking. Our poets, who borrowed from the cla.s.sics all their epithets for natural _fountains_, wrongly applied them to our modest springs welling gently from the bosom of the earth. The springs of old Greece and Italy gushed spouting from the rocks or flowed like the fountains of Tivoli in falling sheets over dripping shoots of stone. Even a Greek of to-day never speaks of a "spring," because he seldom sees one. "Fountain"

is the word used for all waters flowing from the earth, and the difference of words corresponds to a difference of fact. The springs of his land _are_ fountains, waters gus.h.i.+ng from the rock or flowing from caverns and channels in the hills. The fountains of Greece flow down from above, and do not bubble up from below. These are the waters that tell their presence by sound, and have been the natural models of all the drinking fountains ever built,--jets that, spouting in a rainbow curve, hollow out basins below them, cut in the marble floor, cool cisterns ever running over, at which demi-G.o.ds watered their horses, and the white feet of the nymphs were seen dancing at sundown.

A tributary of the Severn, near Bisley, in the Cotswolds, bursts from a real fountain pouring from a hollow face of stone. But fountains in this sense are rare in England, though among the Welsh hills and the Yorks.h.i.+re dales they may be seen springing full grown from the sides of the glens or "scarrs," and cutting basins and steps in marble or slate. But in the South the gentle springs take their place, silent, retiring, seldom found, except by chance, or by the local tradition which always attaches to the more important of our English natural wells. These it is the ambition of misdirected zeal to enclose in walls of stone, and to furnish with steps and conduits. If the old G.o.ddess Tan was once wors.h.i.+pped as the deity of the spring, it has usually undergone conversion by the early monks and changed its t.i.tle to "St. Anne's Well," or been a.s.signed to St. Catherine or some other of the holy sisterhood of saints.[1] But there are hundreds of tiny springs in Britain still left as Nature made them, and not yet settled in trust on any of the modern successors to the water rights of cla.s.sic nymphs and Celtic G.o.ddesses. He who discovers for himself one of these springs will visit it each time he pa.s.ses near. Some are in the woods, known only to the birds and beasts which live in them, and come daily to drink the pure, untainted waters. Wood springs are among the most beautiful of all, for they have a setting of tall timber, and their margins are never trampled by cattle, or the natural play of their waters disturbed to draw for the beasts of the farm. In the wood below Sinodun Hill there rises an everlasting spring. There may be seen how great an area of land it takes to make and keep one tiny spring. All the waters which gather in the millions of tons of chalk on Sinodun rise and flow out in the wood in the one pool, not larger than the circle of a wheel. It is always full, with the water throbbing up clear from the invisible vents below, and tiny white water-sh.e.l.ls floating and falling in the basin, set round with liverwort and moss, and watering a bed of teazles in the wood below. Children drink from it, and pluck wild strawberries by its banks, and the pheasant and the fox come there to quench their thirst. An unexpected but not uncommon site of such springs is close to the margin of streams, which themselves are fed, not mainly by springs, but from the surface waters. [2] Wherever high ground slopes down to a stream, and ends in a rising bank at some distance from the river, there a true spring often rises, with an existence wholly apart from that of the river close by, into which its surplus of waters flows. Such springs have their special flora, their own "phenomena," and their own little set of effects on their liliput landscape. In the centre the waters well up, absolutely pure, and only discoloured when a more impatient earth-throb drives up a column of cloudy sand or earth. The spreading circles broaden outwards, and make their little marsh, planted with water-gra.s.s and forget-me-nots and blue bog-bean, and in the spring with b.u.t.terburs. Outside, on the firmer but still moist soil the creeping jenny mats the ground; and the succulent gra.s.ses which attract the cattle to tread the marsh into a muddy paste. At the foot of the larger chalk downs the springs sometimes break out in different fas.h.i.+on, a modest imitation of cla.s.sical fountains. The chalky soil breaks down, and from its sides the water often spouts in jets, as may be seen in Betterton glen, above Lockinge House, and in many other heads of the chalk brooks.

Springs of this kind are the natural outflowing of the water-bearing strata, where they lie upon others not pervious. But the upflowing springs are often fed by the acc.u.mulations of a great area of country, coming to the surface like water from the orifice of a syphon, and flowing permanently neither in greater nor less volume with constant force. If these cease to run the inference is that the old conditions are seriously disturbed. This has happened so frequently of late that local authorities would do well to schedule lists of the larger springs and request the owners or occupiers of the land to inform them from time to time whether there is a decrease in the flow. Stored water is almost as valuable as earth in a cycle of deficient rainfall, and the loss of any of our fountains and springs is a local misfortune not easily remedied.

[1] "Well deckings" are still common festivals in the North. Quite lately a Scotch loch was dragged with nets to catch a kelpie, and the bottom sowed with lime. The Church early forbade well wors.h.i.+p.

[2] There is one such just above Marston Ferry, near Oxford, on the Cherwell, and two in a field below Ardington, near Lockinge.

BIRD MIGRATION DOWN THE THAMES

On September 16, 1896, after a period of very stormy wet weather, I saw a great migration of swallows down the Thames. It was a dark, dripping evening, and the thick osier bed on Chiswick Eyot was covered with wet leaf. Between five and six o'clock immense flights of swallows and martins suddenly appeared above the eyot, arriving, not in hundreds, but in thousands and tens of thousands. The air was thick with them, and their numbers increased from minute to minute. Part drifted above, in clouds, twisting round like soot in a smoke-wreath. Thousands kept sweeping just over the tops of the willows, skimming so thickly that the sky-line was almost blotted out for the height of from three to four feet. The quarter from which these armies of swallows came was at first undiscoverable. They might have been hatched, like gnats, from the river.

In time I discovered whence they came. They were literally "dropping from the sky." The flocks were travelling at a height at which they were quite invisible in the cloudy air, and from minute to minute they kept dropping down into sight, and so perpendicularly to the very surface of the river or of the eyot. One of these flocks dropped from the invisible regions to the lawn on the river bank on which I stood. Without exaggeration I may say that I saw them fall from the sky, for I was looking upwards, and saw them when first visible as descending specks. The plunge was perpendicular till within ten yards of the ground. Soon the high-flying crowds of birds drew down, and swept for a few minutes low over the willows, from end to end of the eyot, with a sound like the rush of water in a hydraulic pipe.

Then by a common impulse the whole ma.s.s settled down from end to end of the island, upon the osiers. Those in the centre of the eyot were black with swallows--like the black blight on beans.

Next morning, at 6.30 a.m., every swallow was gone. In half an hour's watching not a bird was seen. Whether they went on during the night, or started at dawn, I know not. Probably the latter, for Gilbert White once found a heath covered with such a flock of migrating swallows, which did not leave till the sun dispelled the mists.

The migration routes of birds follow river valleys, when these are conveniently in line with the course they wish to take. There is far more food along a river than elsewhere, and this is a consideration, for most birds, in spite of the wonderful stories of thousand-mile flights, prefer to rest and feed when making long migrations, and also those short s.h.i.+fts of locality which temporary hard weather causes. A friend just back from Khartoum tells me that he saw the storks descending from vast heights to rest at night on the Nile sandbanks, and saw their departing flight early in the morning, these birds being in flocks of hundreds and thousands.

By watching the river carefully for many years I have noticed that it is a regular migration route for several species besides swallows. The first to begin the "trek" down the river are the early broods of water-wagtails, both yellow and pied. They turn up in small flocks so early in the summer that one might almost doubt if they could fly well enough to take care of themselves. On June 26th last summer nearly forty were flying about in the evening, and went across to roost on the eyot. Later numbers of blackbirds arrive, also moving down the river. Sand-martins, when beginning the migration, travel down the Thames in small flocks, and sleep each night in different osier beds. How many stages they make when "going easy" down the river no one knows. But I have seen the flocks come along just before dusk, straight down stream, and then dropping into an osier bed.

In the second week of September there is usually an immense migration of house-martins and swallows down the river. I have already described what I once saw on a migration night on Chiswick Eyot. Sometimes they go on past London, and find themselves near Thames mouth with no osier beds or shelter of any kind. Then they settle on s.h.i.+ps. I was told that one morning the craft lying in Hole Haven off Canvey Island were covered with swallows, all too numb to move, but that when the sun came out the greater number flew away towards the sea. The same thing happened on the windmill at Cley, in Norfolk, a famous starting and alighting place for birds.

Moorhens evidently migrate up or down the river in spring and autumn, and occasionally dabchicks; otherwise their sudden appearance and disappearance on the eyot could not be accounted for. Snipe follow the Thames up the valley. Formerly Chiswick Eyot was their first alighting place when east winds were blowing, after the fatigue of crossing London; and persons still living used to go out and shoot them. A friend of mine, whose family has resided in Chiswick for several generations, used to go down the outside of the eyot and kill snipe, and also kill teal and duck in the stream which runs from Chiswick House into the river. Another friend broke a young pointer to partridges on the market garden between Barnes Bridge and Chiswick.

Probably a number of the warblers also use the river as a migration road, though I only notice them in spring. But as I am never here in early September possibly many pa.s.s without being noticed. Also they are silent in autumn, whereas in spring they sing, a little, but enough to show that they are there.

Among the birds of this kind which pa.s.s up the river, but of which only a few pairs stay to breed on the eyot, are whitethroats, blackcaps, chiff-chaffs, and, I believe, nightingales. One beautiful early morning in spring I could not believe my ears, but I heard a nightingale in a bush by the side of the garden overhanging the river. It sang for about an hour, "practising" as nightingales do. Another person in a house near also heard it, and was equally astonished. It probably pa.s.sed on, for next day it was inaudible.

In hard weather a migration of a different kind takes place down the river towards the sea. These birds are recruited from the ranks of the birds that stay, with some foreign winter visitors also. They pa.s.s down the river feeding on the mud and among the stones at ebb tide. Among those I have seen are flocks of starlings and scattered birds, mainly redwings, thrushes, blackbirds, and occasionally robins. Sandpipers also migrate up the Thames in spring, and down it in autumn.

WITTENHAM WOOD

In Wittenham Wood, which in our time was not spoiled, from a naturalist's point of view, by too much trapping or shooting the enemies of game, though there was plenty of wild game in it, the balance of nature was quite undisturbed. Of course we never shot a hawk or an owl, and I think the most important item of vermin killed was two cats, which were hung up as an awful instance of what we could do if we liked.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OTTERS. _From a photograph by J. S. Bond_.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WATERHEN ON HER NEST. _From a photograph by R. B. Lodge_.]

In such large isolated woods, the wild life of the ordinary countryside exists under conditions somewhat differing from those found even in estates where the natural cover of woodland is broken up into copses and plantations. Birds and beasts, and even vegetation, are found in an intermediate stage between the wholly artificial life on cultivated land and the natural life in true forest districts like the New Forest or Exmoor. Most of these woods are cut bare, so far as the underwood extends, once in every seven years. But the cutting is always limited to a seventh of the wood. This leaves the ground covered with seven stages of growth, the large trees remaining unfelled. With the exception of this annual disturbance of a seventh of the area, and a few days' hunting and shooting, limited by the difficulty of beating such extensive tracts of cover, the wood remains undisturbed for the twelve months, and all wild animals are naturally tempted to make it a permanent home.

As I have said, the wood stands on the banks of the Thames, below the old fortress of Sinodun Hill, and opposite to the junction of the River Thame.

All the British land carnivora except the martin cat and the wild cat are found in it. The writer recently saw the skin of a cat which had reverted to the exact size, colouring, and length of fur of the wild species, killed in the well-known Bagley Wood, an area of similar character, but of much greater extent, at a few miles distance in the direction of Oxford. A polecat was domiciled in Wittenham Wood as lately as August, 1898. Though this animal is reported to be very scarce in many counties, there is little doubt that in such woods it is far commoner than is generally believed. Being mainly a night-hunting animal it escapes notice. But in the quiet of the wood it lays aside its caution, and hunts boldly in the daytime. The cries of a young pheasant in distress, running through some thick bramble patches and clumps of hazel, suggested that some carnivorous animal was near, and on stepping into the thicket a large polecat was seen galloping through the brushwood. Its great size showed that it was a male, and the colour of its fur was to all appearance not the rich brown common to the polecat and the polecat cross in the ferret, but a glossy black.

This, according to Mr. W.E. de Winton, perhaps the best authority on the British _mustelidae_, is the normal tint of the male polecat's fur in summer. "By the 1st of June," he writes, "the fur is entirely changed in both s.e.xes. The female, or 'Jill,' changes her entire coat directly she has young; at the end of April or the beginning of May. The male, or 'Hob,' changes his more leisurely throughout the month of May. He is then known locally as the black ferret, and has a beautiful purplish black coat. As in all _mustelidae_ the male is half as big again as the female." Stoats and weasels are of course attracted to the woods, where, abandoning their habit of methodical hedgerow hunting, they range at large, killing the rabbits in the open wood, and hunting them through the different squares into which the ground is divided with as much perseverance as a hound. They may be seen engaged in this occupation, during which they show little or no fear of man. They will stop when crossing a ride to pick up the scent of the hunted rabbit, and after following it into the next square, run back to have another look at the man they noticed as they went by, with an impudence peculiar to their race. The foxes have selected one of the prettiest tracts of the wood for their breeding-earth. It is dug in a gentle hollow, and at a height of some forty feet above the Thames. From it the cubs have beaten a regular path to the riverside, where they amuse themselves by catching frogs and young water-voles. The parent foxes do not, as a rule, kill much game in the wood itself, except when the cubs are young. They leave it early in the evening and prowl round the outsides, over the hill, and round the Celtic camp above, and beat the river-bank for a great distance up and down stream, catching water-hens and rats. At sunrise they return to the wood, and, as a rule, go to earth. The cubs, on the other hand, never leave it until disturbed by the hounds cub-hunting in September. Otters, which travel up and down the river, and occasionally lie in the osier-bed which joins the wood, complete the list of predatory quadrupeds which haunt it. With the exception of the first, the wild cat, and the last, the otter, they const.i.tute its normal population, and as long as the stock of rabbits and hares is maintained, they may remain there as long as the wood lasts.

Numerically, the rabbits are more than equal to the total of other species, whether bird or beast.[1] In dry seasons, they swarm in the lighter tracts of the wood, and burrow in every part of it. These wood-rabbits differ in their way of life from those in the open warren outside. Their burrows are less intricate, and not ma.s.sed together in numbers as in the open. On the other hand, the whole rabbit population of the one hundred acres seems to keep in touch, and occasionally moves in large bodies from one part of the area to another. During one spring and early summer the first broods of young rabbits burrowed tunnels under the wire-netting which encircled the boundary for many hundred yards, and went into a large field of barley adjoining. This they half destroyed. By the middle of August it was found that, instead of the barley being full of rabbits, it was deserted. They had all returned to the wood, and were in their turn bringing up young families. One colony deserted the wood altogether, and formed a separate warren some hundreds of yards away on a steep hillside. On the eastern boundary the river is a complete check to their migration. Except in the great frosts, when the Thames is frozen, no rabbit ever troubles to cross it. Hares do so frequently when coursed, and occasionally when under no pressure of danger. After harvest, when the last barley-fields are cut, the wood is full of hares. They resort to it from all quarters for shelter, and do not emerge in any number until after the fall of the leaf. During the months of August, September, and October these hares, which during the spring and winter lie out in the most open parts of the hills above, lead the life of woodland animals. In place of lying still in a form throughout the day, they move and feed. At all hours they may be heard fidgeting about in the underwood and "creeping" in the regularly used paths in the thick cover. When disturbed they never go at speed, but, confident in the shelter of the wood, hop and canter in circles, without leaving cover. In the evening they come out into the rides, and thence travel out into the clover layers, returning, like the foxes, early in the morning. A badger was found dead in the wood the first year I rented it. This I much regretted, for though it had probably been shot coming out of a cornfield next the wood, the badger is quite harmless, and most useful to the fox hunter, for he _cleans out the earths_. Mr. E. Dunn, late master of the Old Berks.h.i.+re, tells me that they are of great service in this way, as they _dig_ and enlarge the earths, and so prevent the taint of mange clinging to the sides if a mangy fox has lain in them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DABCHICK. _From a photograph by R.B. Lodge._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BADGER. _From a photograph by J.S. Bond._]

Lying between the river and the hills, this wood holds nearly every species of the larger woodland and riverine birds common to southern England. The hobby breeds there yearly. The wild pheasant, crow, sparrow-hawk, kestrel, magpie, jay, ringdove, brown owl, water-hen (on the river-bounded side), in summer the cuckoo and turtle-dove, are all found there, and, with the exception of the pigeons and kestrels, which seek their food at a distance during the day, they seldom leave the shelter of its trees. One other species frequents the more open parts of the cover in yearly greater numbers; this is the common grey partridge. The wood has an increasing attraction for them. They nest in it, fly to it at once for shelter when disturbed, lie in the thick copses during the heat of the day, and roost there at night. Several covies may be seen on the wing in a few minutes if the stubbles outside are disturbed in the evening, flying to the wood. There they alight, and run like pheasants, refusing to rise if followed. It is said that in the most thickly planted parts of Hamps.h.i.+re the partridge is becoming a woodland bird, like the ruffed grouse of North America. All that it needs to learn is how to perch in a tree, an art which the red-legged partridge possesses. The birds, unlike the foxes, hares, and rabbits, avoid the centre of the wood. Only the owls and wood-pigeons haunt the interior. All the other species live upon the edge. They dislike the darkness, and draw towards the sun. The jays keep mainly to one corner by the river. The sparrow-hawks have also their favourite corner. The wild pheasants lead a life in curious contrast to that of the tame birds in the preserves. Like their ancestors in China and the Caucasus, they prefer the osier-beds and reeds by the river to the higher and drier ground. But in common with all the other birds of the wood, with the exception of the brown owls, they move round the wood daily, _following the sun_. In the early morning they are on the eastern margin to meet the sunrise. At noon they move round to the south, and in the evening are on the stubbles to the west. Where the pheasants are there will the other birds be found, in an unconscious search for light. It is the shelter and safety of the big wood, and not the presence of crowded vegetation, that attracts them. They seek the wood, not from choice, but because it is a city of refuge.

[1] These observations were made some years ago. I believe it has been found necessary to kill down the rabbits since.

SPORT AT WITTENHAM

There is always some rivalry about shooting different woods on adjacent properties, and the villages near always take a certain interest in the results. Visiting our nearest riverside inn to order luncheon for our own shoot that week, I found about a dozen labourers in the front room, with a high settle before the fire to keep the draught out, sitting in a fine mixed odour of burning wood, beer, and pipes. Sport was the pervading topic, for a popular resident had been shooting his wood, and many of the men had been beating for him, and had their usual half-crown to spend.