Locality And Nature

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Title:     Locality And Nature
Author: Richard Jefferies [More Titles by Jefferies]

By the side of the rivers of Exmoor there grows a great leaf, so large it almost calls to mind those tropical leaves of which umbrellas and even tents are made. This is of a rounder shape than those of the palm, it is an elephant's ear among the foliage. The sweet river slips on with a murmuring song, for these are the rivers of the poets, and talk in verse for ever. Purple-tinted stones are strewn about the shallows flat like tiles, and out among the grass and the white orchis of the meadow. The floods carried them there and left them dry in the sun. Among these grows a thick bunch of mimulus or monkey-plant, well known in gardens, here flourishing alone beside the stream. These two plants greatly interested me: the last because it had long been a favourite in an old garden and I had not before seen it growing wild; the other because though I knew its large leaf by repute, this was the first time I had come upon it. Now that little spot in the bend of the river by means of these two plants is firmly impressed in my memory, and is a joy to me whenever I think of it. The sunshine, the song of the water, the pleasant green grass, the white orchis, and the purplish stones were thereby rendered permanent to me. Such is the wonderful power of plants. To any one who takes a delight in wild flowers some spot or other of the earth is always becoming consecrated.

There is, however, something curious about this butterbur. It is related to the coltsfoot of the arable fields, and the coltsfoot sends up a stalk without a leaf, and flowers before any green appears. So, too, the butterbur of the river flowers before its great leaf comes. Nothing is really common either, for everything is so local that you may spend years, and in fact a lifetime, in a district and never see a flower plentiful enough in another. Just where I am staying now the pennywort grows on every wall attached to the mortar between the cobbles. In some places you may search the roads in vain for this little plant, which has this merit, that its rounded leaf presents a fresh green in February. It does not die away, it appears as green as spring, and pieces of the wall are ornamented with it as thickly as the iron-headed nails in old doors. One plant grows out of the hard stem of a hawthorn tree, as if it were a parasite like the mistletoe; probably there is some crack which the plant itself has hidden. If every plant and every flower were found in all places the charm of locality would not exist. Everything varies, and that gives the interest. These purplish stones, where they lie in the water, seem to have a kind of growth upon them--small knobs on the surface. On examination each small roughness or knob will be found composed of a number of very minute fragments of stone. It is a sort of cell, probably built by a species of caddis. There was hardly a stone in the rivers that was not dotted with these little habitations, so that it seemed difficult to overlook them; but upon showing one to a mighty hunter to know the local name, he declared he had never noticed it before, and added that he did not care for such little things. It is of such little things that great nature is made.

On the highest part of the Forest Ridge in Sussex, where the soil is sandy and covered with heath, fern, and fir trees, there never seemed to be any rooks. These birds, so very characteristic of the country, appeared to be almost absent over several miles. They went by sometimes, sailing down into the vale, but never stopped on the hill, not even to walk the furrows behind the plough. This would seem to indicate a remarkable absence of the food they like, for it is very rare indeed for a piece of ground to be fresh ploughed without rooks coming to it. There were rookeries beneath in the plains where the elms and beeches grew tall, but the birds never came up to forage. Crows could be found, and stopped on the hill all the year. Wood-pigeons, like the rooks, went over, but did not stay. Starlings were not at all plentiful; blackbirds and thrushes were there, but not nearly so numerous as is usually the case; fieldfares and redwings drifted by in the winter, but never stopped. Slow-worms lived in the sand under the heath, and lizards, but no snakes and only a few adders. Inquiring of an old man if there were many snakes about, he said no; the soil was too poor for them; but in some places down in the vale he had dug up a gallon of snakes' eggs in the 'maxen.' The word was noticeable as a survival of the old English 'mixen' for manure heap. Swallows, martins, and swifts abounded; and as for insects, they were countless--honey-bees, wild bees, humble-bees, varieties of wasps, butterflies--an endless list. So common a plant as the arum did not seem to exist; on the other hand, ferns literally made up the hedges, growing in such quantities as to take the place of the grasses. There was, too, a great variety of moss and fungi. The soil looked black and fertile, and new-comers thought they were going to have good crops, but when these failed they found, upon examining the earth, that it was little more than black sand, and the particles of silica glittered if a handful were held in the sun. Such a sand would give the impression of dryness, instead of which it was extremely damp--damp all the year round.

For contrast, a place on the coast just opposite, as it were, and almost within view, at the same time of year seemed to have no bees. A great field of clover in flower was silent; there was no hum, nor glistening of wings. Butterflies rarely came along. Swallows were not common. In the rich loam it was curious to note mussel-shells, quite recent, in good preservation, and a geologist might wonder at the layers of them in such an earth; the farmer would smile, and say the mussels were carted there for manure. Another place, again, in the same county is full of rooks, and the arum is green on the banks. These items in a small area show how different places are, and if you move from locality to locality everything you have read about is by degrees seen in reality. In an old book, the History of Northampton, which I chanced to look at, among other curiosities, the author a hundred years ago mentioned a substance called star shot, which appeared in the meadows overnight, and seemed to have dropped from the sky. This I had not then seen, but many years afterwards came suddenly, by a copse, on a quantity of jelly-like substance with a most unpleasant aspect, but which did not in any other way offend the senses. It had shot up in the night, and was gone next day. It is a fungus unnoticed till it suddenly swells; I suppose this was the old chronicler's star shot. Nor do I think it too small a thing that the common snail makes a straight track over everything; if he comes to the wall of a house he goes straight up without the smallest hesitation, and explores a good height before he comes down again; if he finds a loaf of bread in the cellar he never thinks of going round it, but travels in a Roman road up and over. So do the armies of ants in warmer climates, and this proceeding in an invariable line irrespective of obstacles seems to be peculiar to many creatures, and is the reason why such 'plagues' were and are so dreaded. Nothing could divert the straight march of the locusts; nothing could divert the course of the millions of butterflies that sometimes cross the Channel and arrive here from the Continent.

The tenacity of insects in anything they have once begun is shown in many ways; you cannot drive away a fly or a gnat, and if a colony of ants take up their home in the garden they will hardly move till all are destroyed. Aristotle mentions the diseases of swine, so it will not be amiss to record that in the country swine are supposed to suffer from water-brash, and to relieve themselves by eating dry earth, for which purpose those that run loose are continually tearing up the ground. Human beings so affected show a similar tendency for dry food, as oatmeal. Sometimes the liver of calves and bullocks is small and dry, of very little use for food; this is found to be due to the neglect of providing them with dry standing-ground when fattening. To ensure their fattening properly they should stand on dry and high ground, and they should be plentifully supplied with dry litter. This fact may be of value to some suffering person; it points to the necessity of dry warm feet, dry subsoil, and drainage if the liver is to be in good order. Popular suspicion, if not science, attaches many other diseases besides those that actually consume that organ to the abnormal action of the liver, possibly lung disease. Such trifling circumstances are not so trifling as they appear. A case came under my notice quite recently when a person had been helpless from paralysis for several years. Chance compelled removal to another house, and very soon the paralysis began to disappear. The first house may have been damp, or there may have been some minute conditions besides. It certainly is a marked fact that in the country, at all events, one house is noted for its healthiness and another close by for its unhealthiness, and the cause is not traceable to the usual and obvious reason of drainage or water. Any one who has noticed the remarkable influence of locality in the more evident vegetation--such, for instance, as lichens--will be able to suppose the possibility of minute organisms--microbe, bacteria, whatever you like to call them--being more persistent in one spot than in another. I have often thought of the half-magical art of the Chinese, Feng-shui, by which they discover if a place be fortunate and fit for a house. It seems to suggest something of this kind, and I think there is a great deal yet to be discovered by the diligent observation of localities. The experience of the rudest country rustic is not to be despised; an observation is an observation, whoever makes it; there has been an air of too much science in the affected derision of our forefathers' wisdom.

[The end]
Richard Jefferies's essay: Locality And Nature

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