hampshire, north and south—a spot abounding in life—lyndhurst—a white spider—wooing spider's antics—a new forest little boy—blonde gipsies—the boy and the spider—a distant world of spiders—selborne and its visitors—selborne revisited—an owl at alton—a wagtail at the wakes—the cockerel and the martin—heat at selborne—house crickets—gilbert white on crickets—a colony of field-crickets—water plants—musk mallow—cirl buntings at selborne—evening gatherings of swifts at selborne—locustid?—thamnotrizon cinereus—english names wanted—black grasshopper's habits and disposition—its abundance at selborne.
in the last chapter i got away—succeeded in breaking away, would perhaps be a better expression—from that favourite hunting-ground of mine farther south; and the reader would perhaps care to know why a book descriptive of days in hampshire should be so much taken up with days in one small corner of the county. hampshire is not a very large county compared with some others: i have traversed it in this and in that direction often enough to be pretty familiar with a great deal of it, from the walled-round cornfield which was once roman calleva to the solent; and from the beautiful wild rother on the sussex border to the avon in the west. there is much to see and know within these limits: for all those whose proper study is man, his history and his works; and for the arch?ologist and for the artist and seekers after the picturesque, {154} there is much—nay, there is more to attract in the northern than in the southern half of the county. i, not of them, go south, and by preference to one spot, because my chief interest and delight is in life—life in all its forms, from man who "walks erect and smiling looks on heaven" to the minutest organic atoms—the invisible life. it here comes into my mind that the very smell of the earth, in which we all delight, the smell which fills the air after rain in summer, and is strong when we turn up a spadeful of fresh mould, which the rustic calls "good," believing, perhaps rightly, that we must smell it every day to be well and live long, is after all an odour given off by a living thing—cladothrix odorifera. too small for human eyes, which see only objects proportioned to their bigness, so minute, indeed, that millions may inhabit a clod no larger than one's watch, yet they are able to find a passage to us through the other subtler sense; and from the beginning of our earthly journey even to its end we walk with this odour in our nostrils, and love it, and will perhaps take with us a sweet memory of it into the after-life.
life being more than all else to me, i am drawn to the spot where it exists in greatest abundance and variety.
i remember feeling this passion very strongly one day during this summer of 1902 after looking at a spider. it was an interesting spider, and i found it within a couple of miles of lyndhurst, of all places; a spot so disagreeable to me that i avoid it, and {155} look for nothing and wish for nothing to detain me in its vicinity.
lyndhurst
lyndhurst is objectionable to me not only because it is a vulgar suburb, a transcript of chiswick or plumstead in the new forest where it is in a wrong atmosphere, but also because it is the spot on which london vomits out its annual crowd of collectors, who fill its numerous and ever-increasing brand-new red-brick lodging-houses, and who swarm through all the adjacent woods and heaths, men, women, and children (hateful little prigs!) with their vasculums, beer and treacle pots, green and blue butterfly nets, killing bottles, and all the detestable paraphernalia of what they would probably call "nature study."
it happened that one day, a mile or two from lyndhurst, going along the road i caught sight of a pretty bit of heath through an opening in the wood, and turning into it i looked out a spot to rest in, and was just about to cast myself down when i noticed a small white spider, disturbed by my step, drop from a cluster of bell-heath flowers to the ground. i stood still, and presently the spider, recovered from its alarm, drew itself up again by an invisible thread and settled down on the bright-coloured blossoms. seating myself close by, i began to watch the strangely shaped and coloured little creature. it was a thomisus—a genus of spiders distinguished by the extraordinary length of the two pairs of forelegs. the one before me, thomisus citreus, is also singular on account of its colour—pale citron or white—and its habit of sitting on flowers. {156} this habit and the colour, we may see, are related. the citreus is not a weaver of snares, but hunts for its prey, or rather lies in wait to capture any insect that comes to the flower on which it sits. on white, yellow, and indeed on most pale-coloured flowers, it almost becomes invisible. on the brilliant red bell-heath blossom it showed plainly enough, but even here it did not look nearly so conspicuous as when on a green leaf.
wooing spider's antics
i had observed this white spider before, but had always seen it sitting motionless in its flower; this one was curiously restless, and very soon after i had settled myself down by its side it began to throw itself into a variety of strange attitudes. the four long forelegs would go up all at once and stand out like rays from the round, white body, and by-and-by they would drop and hang down like two long strings from the flower. pretty soon i discovered the cause of these actions in the presence of a second spider, less than half the size of the first, moving about close by. his smallness and hideling habits had prevented me from seeing him sooner. this small, active, white creature was the male, and though moving constantly about in the heath at a distance of half a foot from her, it was plain that they could see each other and also understand each other very well. as he moved round her, passing by means of the threads he kept throwing out from spray to spray, she moved round on her flower to keep him in sight; but though fascinated and drawn to her, he still dreaded, and was pulled by his fear and his desire in opposite ways. {157} the excitement of both would increase whenever he came a little nearer, and their attitudes were then sometimes very curious, the most singular being one of the male when he would raise his body vertically in the air and stand on his two pairs of forelegs. when very near, they would extend the long forelegs and touch one another; but always at this point when they were closest and the excitement greatest a panic would seize him, and he would make haste to get to a safer distance. on two such occasions she, as if afraid to lose him altogether, quitted her beloved flower and moved after him, and after wandering about for some time to no purpose, found another flower-cluster to settle on. and so the queer wooing went on, and seemed no nearer to a conclusion, when, to my surprise, i found that i had been sitting and lying there, with eyes close to the female spider, for an hour and a half. once only, feeling a little bored, i gently stroked her on the back, which appeared to please her as much as if she had been a pig and i had scratched her back with my walking-stick. but no sooner had the soothing effect passed off than she began again watching the movements of that fantastic little lover of hers, who loved her for her beautiful white body, but feared her on account of those poison fangs which he could probably see every time she smiled to encourage him. at the end of my long watch the conclusion of the whole complex business seemed farther off than ever: fear had got the mastery, and the male had put so great a distance between them, and moved now {158} so languidly, that it seemed useless to remain any longer.
a little forest boy
i had not been watching alone all this time: when i had been about half an hour on the spot i had a visitor, a small miserable-looking new forest boy; he came walking towards me with a little crooked stick in his hand, and asked me in a low, husky voice if i had seen a pony in that part of the forest. i told him sharply not to come too near as his steps would disturb a spider i was watching. it did not seem to surprise him that i was there by myself watching a spider, but creeping up he subsided gently on the heath by my side and began watching with me. at intervals when there was a lull in the excitement of the spiders i could spare time for a glance at my poor little companion. he was probably eleven or twelve years old, but his stature was that of a boy of eight—a small, stunted creature, meanly dressed, with light-coloured lustreless hair, pale-blue eyes, and a weary sad expression on his pale face. yet he called himself a gipsy! but the south of england gipsies are a mixed and degenerate lot. they are now so incessantly harried by the authorities that the best of them settle down in the villages, while those who keep to the old ways and vagrant open-air life are joined by tramps and wastrels of every shade of colour. this little fellow had little or no romany blood in his watery veins.
he told me that his people were camping not far off, and that the party consisted of his parents with six (the half-dozen youngest) of their thirteen children. {159} they had a pony and trap; but the pony had got away during the night, and the father and two or three of the children were out looking for it in different directions. we talked a little at intervals, and i found him curiously ignorant concerning the wild life of the forest. he assured me that he had never seen the cuckoo, but he had heard of its singular habits, and was anxious to know how big a bird it was, also its colour. in some trees near us a wood-wren was uttering its sorrowful little wailing note of anxiety, and when i asked him what bird it was, he answered "a sparrer." nevertheless he seemed to feel a dim sort of interest in the spiders we were watching, and at length our intermittent conversation ceased altogether. when at last, after a long silence, i spoke, he did not answer, and glancing round i found that he had gone to sleep. lying there with eyes closed, his pale face on the bright green turf, he looked almost corpse-like. even his lips were colourless. getting up, i placed a penny piece on the turf beside his little crooked stick, so that on awaking he should have a gleam of happiness in his poor little soul, and went softly away. but he was sleeping very soundly, for when after going a couple of hundred yards i looked back he was still lying motionless on the same spot.
but when i looked back, and when, regaining the road, i went on my way, and indeed for long hours after, i saw the boy vaguely, almost like a boy of mist, and was hardly able to recall his features, so faintly had he impressed me; while the spider on {160} her flower, and the small male that wooed and won her many times yet never ventured to take her, were stamped so vividly on my brain, that even if i had wished it i could not have got rid of that persistent image. it made me miserable to think that i had left, thousands of miles away, a world of spiders exceeding in size, variety of shape and beauty and richness of colouring those i found here—surpassing them, too, in the marvellousness of their habits and that ferocity of disposition which is without a parallel in nature. i wished i could drop this burden of years so as to go back to them, to spend half a lifetime in finding out some of their fascinating secrets. finally, i envied those who in future years will grow up in that green continent, with this passion in their hearts, and have the happiness which i had missed.
i, of course, knew that it was but the too vivid and persistent image of that particular creature on which my attention had been fixed which made me regard spiders generally as the most interesting beings in nature—the proper study of mankind, in fact. but it is always so; any new aspect, form, or manifestation of the principle of life, at the moment it comes before the vision and the mind, is, to one who is not a specialist, attractive beyond all others.
but, after all is said and done, i have as a fact spent many of my hampshire days at a distance from the spots i love best, and my subject in this chapter will be of my sojourn in that eastern corner of the county, in the village and parish which all {161} naturalists love, and which many of them know so well.
visitors to selborne
it is told in the books that some seventy or eighty years ago an adventurous naturalist journeyed down from london by rough ways to the remote village of selborne, to see it with his own eyes and describe its condition to the world. the way is not long nor rough in these times, and on every summer day, almost at every hour of the day, strangers from all parts of the country, with not a few from foreign lands, may be seen in the old village street. of these visitors that come like shadows, so depart, nine in every ten, or possibly nineteen in every twenty, have no real interest in gilbert white and his work and the village he lived in, but are members of that innumerable tribe of gadders about the land who religiously visit every spot which they are told should be seen.
one morning, while staying at the village, in july 1901, i went at six o'clock for a stroll on the common, and, on going up to the hanger, noticed a couple of bicycles lying at the foot of the hill; then, half-way up i found the cyclists—two young ladies—resting on the turf by the side of the zigzag. they were conversing together as i went by, and one having asked some question which i did not hear, the other replied, "oh no! he lived a very long time ago, and wrote a history of selborne. about birds and that." to which the other returned, "oh!" and then they talked of something else.
{162}
these ladies had probably got up at four o'clock that morning, and ridden several miles to visit the village and go up the hanger before breakfast. later in the day they would be at other places where other hampshire celebrities, big and little, had been born, or had lived or died—wootton st. lawrence, chawton, steventon, alresford, basing, otterbourne, buriton, boldre, and a dozen more; and one, the informed, would say to her uninformed companion, "oh dear, no; he, or she, lived a long, long time ago, somewhere about the eighteenth century—or perhaps it was the sixteenth—and did something, or wrote fiction, or history, or philosophy, and that." to which the other would intelligently answer, "oh!" and then they would remount their bicycles, and go on to some other place.
selborne revisited
although a large majority of the visitors are of this description, there are others of a different kind—the true pilgrims; and these are mostly naturalists who have been familiar from boyhood with the famous letters, who love the memory of gilbert white, and regard the spot where he was born, to which he was so deeply attached, where his ashes lie, as almost a sacred place. it is but natural that some of these, who are the true and only selbornians, albeit they may not call themselves by a name which has been filched from them, should have given an account of a first visit, their impression of a spot familiar in description but never realised until seen, and of its effect on the mind. but no one, so far as i know, has told of a second or of any subsequent {163} visit. there is a good reason for this, for though the place is in itself beautiful and never loses its charm, it is impossible for anyone to recover the feeling experienced on a first sight. if i, unlike others, write of selborne revisited, it is not because there is anything fresh to say of an old, vanished emotion, a feeling which forms a singular and delightful experience in the life of many a naturalist, and is thereafter a pleasing memory but nothing more.
selborne is now to me like any other pleasant rural place: in the village street, in the churchyard, by the lyth and the bourne, on the hanger and the common, i feel that i am
in a green and undiscovered ground;
the feeling that the naturalist must or should always experience in all places where nature is, even as coventry patmore experienced it in the presence of women. he had paid more than ordinary attention to their ways, and knew that there was yet much to learn.
an owl at alton
how irrecoverable the first feeling is—a feeling which may be almost like the sense of an unseen presence, as i have described it in an account of my first visit to selborne in the concluding chapter in a book on birds and man—was impressed upon me on the occasion of a second visit two or three years later. there was then no return of the feeling—no faintest trace of it. the village was like any other, only more interesting because of several amusing incidents in bird-life which i by chance {164} witnessed when there. animals in a state of nature do not often move us to mirth, but on this occasion i was made to laugh several times. at first it was at an owl at alton. i arrived there in the evening of a wet, rough day in may 1898, too late to walk the five miles that remained to my destination. after securing a room at the hotel, i hurried out to look at the fine old church, which gilbert white admired in his day; but it was growing dark, so that there was nothing for me but to stand in the wind and rain in the wet churchyard, and get a general idea of the outline of the building, with its handsome, shingled spire standing tall against the wild, gloomy sky. by-and-by a vague figure appeared out of the clouds, travelling against the wind towards the spire, and looking more like a ragged piece of newspaper whirled about the heavens than any living thing. it was a white owl, and after watching him for some time i came to the conclusion that he was trying to get to the vane on the spire. a very idle ambition it seemed, for although he succeeded again and again in getting to within a few yards of the point aimed at, he was on each occasion struck by a fresh violent gust and driven back to a great distance, often quite out of sight in the gloom. but presently he would reappear, still striving to reach the vane. a crazy bird! but i could not help admiring his pluck, and greatly wondered what his secret motive in aiming at that windy perch could be. and at last, after so many defeats, he succeeded in grasping the metal cross-bar with his {165} crooked talons. the wind, with all its fury, could not tear him from it, and after a little flapping he was able to pull himself up; then, bending down, he deliberately wiped his beak on the bar and flew away! this, then, had been his powerful, mysterious motive—just to wipe his beak, which he could very well have wiped on any branch or barn-roof or fence, and saved himself that tremendous labour!
it was an extreme instance of the tyrannous effect of habit on a wild animal. doubtless this bird had been accustomed, after devouring his first mouse, to fly to the vane, where he could rest for a few minutes, taking a general view of the place, and wipe his beak at the same time; and the habit had become so strong that he could not forgo his visit even on so tempestuous an evening. his beak, if he had wiped it anywhere but on that lofty cross-bar, would not have seemed quite clean.
at selborne, in the garden at the wakes, i noticed a pair of pied wagtails busy nest-building in the ivy on the wall. one of the birds flew up to the roof of the house, where, i suppose, he caught sight of a fly in an upper window which looked on to the roof, for all at once he rose up and dashed against the pane with great force; and as the glass pane hit back with equal force, he was thrown on to the tiles under the window. nothing daunted, he got up and dashed against the glass a second time, with the same result. the action was repeated five times, then the poor baffled bird withdrew from the contest, and, drawing in his head, sat hunched up for two or three minutes {166} perfectly motionless. the volatile creature would not have sat there so quietly if he had not hurt himself rather badly.
cockerel and martin
one more of the amusing incidents witnessed during my visit must be told. several pairs of martins were making their nests under the eaves of a cottage opposite to the queen's arms, where i stayed; and on going out about seven o'clock in the morning, i stood to watch some of the birds getting mud at a pool which had been made by the night's rain in the middle of the street. it happened that some fowls had come out of the inn yard, and were walking or standing near the puddle picking up gravel or any small morsel they could find. among them was a cockerel, a big, ungainly, yellowish cochin, in the hobbledehoy stage of that ugliest and most ungraceful variety. for some time this bird stood idly by the pool, but by-and-by the movements of the martins coming and going between the cottage and the puddle attracted his attention, and he began to watch them with a strange interest; and then all at once he made a vicious peck at one occupied in deftly gathering a pellet of clay close to his great, feathered feet. the martin flitted lightly away, and after a turn or two, dropped down again at almost the same spot. the fowl had watched it, and as soon as it came down moved a step or two nearer to it with deliberation, then made a violent dash and peck at it, and was no nearer to hitting it than before. the same thing occurred again and again, the martin growing shyer after each attack; then other martins {167} came, and he, finding them less cautious than the first, stalked them in turn and made futile attacks on them. convinced at last that it was not possible for him to injure or touch these elusive little creatures, he determined that they should gather no mud at that place, and with head up he watched them circling like great flies around him, dashing savagely at them whenever they came lower, or paused in their flight, or dropped lightly down on the margin. it was a curious and amusing spectacle—the big, shapeless, lumbering bird chasing them round and round the pool in his stupid spite; they by contrast so beautiful in their shining purple mantle, snow-white breast, and stockinged feet, their fairy-like aerial bodies that responded so quickly to every motion of their bright, lively, little minds. it was like a very heavy policeman "moving on" a flock of fairies.
one remembers ?sop's dog in the manger, and thinks that this and many of the apologues are really nothing but everyday incidents in animal life, told just as they happened, with the addition of speech (in some cases quite unnecessary) put in the mouth of the various actors. ?sop's dog did not want to be disturbed in his bed of hay, and was not such an unredeemed curmudgeon as the selborne fowl; but this unlovely temper or feeling—spite and petty tyranny and persecution—is exceedingly common in the lower animals, from the higher vertebrates down even to the insects.
my third visit to selborne was in july 1901. i {168} went there on the 12th and stayed till the 23rd. now july, when the business of breeding is over or far advanced and all the best songsters are dropping into silence, and when the foliage is deepening to a uniform monotonous dark green, is, next to august, the least interesting month of the year. but at selborne i was singularly fortunate, although the season was excessively dry and hot. the heat was indeed great all over the country, but i doubt if there exists a warmer village than selborne, unless it be one in some, to me unknown, coombe in cornwall or devon. thus on 19th july, when the temperature rose to ninety degrees in the shade in the city of london, we had it as high as ninety-four degrees in selborne. the village lies in a kind of trough at the foot of a wall-like hill. if it were not for the moisture and the greenery that surrounds and almost covers it, hanging, as it were, like a cloud above it, the heat would doubtless have been even greater.
crickets
these conditions, in whatever way they may affect the human inhabitants, appear to be exceedingly favourable to the house-crickets. it was impossible for anyone to walk in the village of an evening without noticing the noise they made. the cottages on both sides of the street seemed to be alive with them, so that, walking, one was assailed by their shrilling in both ears. hearing them so much sent me in search of their wild cousin of the fields and of the mole-cricket, but no sound of them could i hear. it was too late for them to sing. no doubt—as white conjectured—the artificial conditions which {169} civilised man has made for the house-cricket have considerably altered its habits. like the canary and other finches that thrive in captivity, a uniform indoor climate, with food easily found, have made it a singer all the year round. i trust we shall never take to the japanese custom of caging insects for the sake of their music; but it is probable that a result of keeping tamed or domesticated field-crickets would be to set them singing at all seasons against the cricket on the hearth. a listener would then be able to judge which of the two "sweet and tiny cousins" is the better performer. the house-cricket has to my ears a louder, coarser, a more creaky sound; but we hear him, as a rule, in a room, singing, as it were, confined in a big box; and i remember the case of the skylark, and the disagreeable effect of its shrill and harsh spluttering song when heard from a cage hanging against a wall. the field-cricket, like the soaring skylark, has the wide expanse of open air to soften and etherealise the sound.
gilbert white lived in an age which had its own little, firmly-established, conventional ideas about nature, which he, open-air man though he was, did not escape, or else felt bound to respect. thus, the prolonged, wild, beautiful call of the peacock, the finest sound made by any domesticated creature, was to the convention of the day "disgustful," and as a disgustful sound he sets it down accordingly; and when he speaks of the keen pleasure it gave him to listen to the field-cricket, he writes in a somewhat apologetic strain:
{170}
sounds do not always give us pleasure according to their sweetness and melody, nor do harsh sounds always displease. we are more apt to be captivated or disgusted with the associations which they promote than with the notes themselves. thus the shrilling of the field-cricket, though sharp and stridulous, yet marvellously delights some hearers, filling their minds with a train of summer ideas of everything that is rural, verdurous, and joyous.
the delight i know, but i cannot wholly agree with the explanation. a couple of months before this visit to selborne, on 25th may, on passing some small grass-fields, enclosed in high, untrimmed hedges, on the border of a pine wood near hythe, by southampton water, i all at once became conscious of a sound, which indeed had been for some considerable time in my ears, increasing in volume as i went on until it forced my attention to it. when i listened, i found myself in a place where field-crickets were in extraordinary abundance; there must have been many hundreds within hearing distance, and their delicate shrilling came from the grass and hedges all round me. it was as if all the field-crickets in the county had congregated and were holding a grand musical festival at that spot. a dozen or twenty house-crickets in a kitchen would have made more noise; this was not loud, nor could it properly be described as a noise; it was more like a subtle music without rise or fall or change; or like a continuous, diffused, silvery-bright, musical hum, which surrounded one like an atmosphere, and at the same time pervaded and trembled through one like a vibration. it was certainly very delightful, and the feeling in this instance was not due to {171} association, but, i think, to the intrinsic beauty of the sound itself.
wild flowers
the selborne stream, or bourne, with its meadows and tangled copses on either side, was my favourite noonday haunt. the volume of water does not greatly diminish during the summer months, but in many places the bed of the stream was quite grown over with aquatic plants, topped with figwort, huge water-agrimony, with its masses of powdery, flesh-coloured blooms, creamy meadow-sweet, and rose-purple loosestrife, and willow-herb with its appetising odour of codlins and cream. the wild musk, or monkey-flower, a hampshire plant about which there will be much to say in another chapter, was also common. at one spot a mass of it grew at the foot of a high bank on the water's edge; from the top of the bank long branches of briar-rose trailed down, and the rich, pure yellow mimulus blossoms and ivory-white roses of the briar were seen together. an even lovelier effect was produced at another spot by the mingling of the yellow flowers with the large turquoise-blue water forget-me-nots.
the most charming of the selborne wild plants that flower in july is the musk mallow. it was quite common round the village, and perhaps the finest plant i saw was in the churchyard, growing luxuriantly by a humble grave near the little gate that opens to the lyth and bourne. as it is known to few persons, there must almost every day have been strangers and pilgrims in the churchyard who looked with admiration on that conspicuous plant, {172} with its deep-cut, scented geranium-like, beautiful leaves, tender grey-green in colour, and its profusion of delicate, silky, rose-coloured flowers. many would look on it as some rare exotic, and wonder at its being there by that lowly green mound. but to the residents it was a musk mallow and nothing more—a weed in the churchyard.
when one morning i found two men mowing the grass, i called their attention to this plant and asked them to spare it, telling them that it was one which the daily visitors to the village would admire above all the red geraniums and other gardeners' flowers which they would have to leave untouched. this simple request appeared to put them out a good deal; they took their hats off and wiped the sweat from their foreheads, and after gravely pondering the matter for some time, said they would "see about it" or "bear it in mind" when they came round to that side. in the afternoon, when the mowing was done, i returned and found that the musk mallow had not been spared.
during my stay i was specially interested in two of the common selborne birds—the cirl bunting and the swift. at about four o'clock each morning the lively, vigorous song of the cirl bunting would be heard from the gardens or ground of the wakes, at the foot of the hill. from four to six, at intervals, was his best singing-time; later in the day he sang at much longer intervals. there appeared to be three pairs of breeding birds: one at the wakes, another on the top of the hill to the left of the zigzag path, {173} and a third below the churchyard. the cock bird of the last pair sang at intervals every day during my visit from a tree in the churchyard, and from a big sycamore growing at the side of it. on 14th july i had a good opportunity of judging the penetrative power of this bunting's voice, for by chance, just as the bells commenced ringing for the six o'clock sunday evening service, the bird, perched on a small cypress in the churchyard, began to sing. though only about forty yards from the tower, he was not in the least discomposed by the clanging of the bells, but sang at proper intervals the usual number of times—six or eight—his high, incisive voice sounding distinct through that tempest of jangled metallic music.
cirl bunting
i was often at farringdon, a village close by, and there, too, the churchyard had its cirl bunting, singing merrily at intervals from a perch not above thirty yards from the building. and as at selborne and farringdon, so i have found it in most places in hampshire, especially in the southern half of the county; the cirl is the village bunting whose favourite singing place is in the quiet churchyard or the shade-trees at the farm: compared with other members of the genus he might almost be called our domestic bunting. the yellowhammer is never heard in a village: at selborne to find him one had to climb the hill and go out on the common, and there he could be heard drawling out his lazy song all day long. how curious to think that gilbert white never distinguished between these two species, although it {174} is probable that he heard the cirl on every summer day during the greater part of his life.
visiting swifts
the swifts at selborne interested me even more, and i spent a good many hours observing them; but the swifts i watched were not, strange to say, the native selborne birds. when i arrived i took particular notice of the swallows and swifts—a natural thing to do in gilbert white's village. the swallows, i was sorry to find, had decreased so greatly in numbers since my former visits that there were but few left. the house-martins, though still not scarce, had also fallen off a good deal. of swifts there were about eight or nine pairs, all with young in their nests, in holes under the eaves of different cottages. the old birds appeared to be very much taken up with feeding their young: they ranged about almost in solitude, never more than four or five birds being seen together, and that only in the evening, and even when in company they were silent and their flight comparatively languid. this continued from the 12th to the 16th, but on that day, at a little past seven o'clock in the evening, i was astonished to see a party of over fifty swifts rushing through the air over the village in the usual violent way, uttering excited screams as they streamed by. rising to some height in the air, they would scatter and float above the church for a few moments, then close and rush down and stream across the plestor, coming as low as the roofs of the cottages, then along the village street for a distance of forty or fifty yards, after which they would mount up and return to the {175} church, to repeat the same race over the same course again and again. they continued their pastime for an hour or longer, after which the flock began to diminish, and in a short time had quite melted away.
on the following evening i was absent, but some friends staying at the village watched for me, and they reported that the birds appeared after seven o'clock and played about the place for an hour or two, then vanished as before.
on the afternoon of the 18th i went with my friends to the ground behind the churchyard, from which a view of the sky all round can be obtained. four or five swifts were visible quietly flying about the sky, all wide apart. at six o'clock a little bunch of half a dozen swifts formed, and began to chase each other in the usual way, and more birds, singly, and in twos and threes, began to arrive. some of these were seen coming to the spot from the direction of alton. gradually the bunch grew until it was a big crowd numbering seventy to eighty birds, and as it grew the excitement of the birds increased: until eight o'clock they kept up their aerial mad gambols, and then, as on the previous evenings, the flock gradually dispersed.
on the evening of the 19th the performance was repeated, the birds congregated numbering about sixty. on the 20th the number had diminished to about forty, and an equal number returned on the following evening; and this was the last time. we watched in vain for them on the 22nd: no swifts {176} but the half-a-dozen selborne birds usually to be seen towards evening were visible; nor did they return on any other day up to the 24th, when my visit came to an end.
it is possible, and even probable, that these swifts which came from a distance to hold their evening games at selborne were birds that had already finished breeding, and were now free to go from home and spend a good deal of time in purely recreative exercises. the curious point is that they should have made choice of this sultry spot for such a purpose. it was, moreover, new to me to find that swifts do sometimes go a distance from home to indulge in such pastimes. i had always thought that the birds seen pursuing each other with screams through the sky at any place were the dwellers and breeders in the locality; and this is probably the idea that most persons have.
i wish i could have visited selborne again last july, in order to find out whether or not the evening gatherings and pastimes of the swifts occur annually. but i was engaged elsewhere, and at the village i failed to discover any person with interest enough in such subjects to watch for me. it would have been very strange if i had found such a one.
it was not until october 1902 that i went back, two months after the swifts had gone; but i was well occupied for two or three weeks during this latest visit in observing the ways of a grasshopper.
there has already been much about insects in {177} this book, and it may seem that i am giving a disproportionate amount of space to these negligible atomies; nevertheless i should not like to conclude this chapter without adding an account of yet another species, one indeed worthy to rank among the insect notables of southern england described in a former chapter. the account comes best in this place, since the species had seemed rare, or nowhere abundant, until, in october, i found it most common in selborne parish; and here i came to know it well, as i had come to know its great green relation, locusta viridissima, at longparish. both are of one family, and are night singers, but the selborne insect belongs to a different genus—thamnotrizon—of which it is the only british representative; and in colour and habits it differs widely from the green grasshoppers. the members of this charming family are found in all warm and temperate countries throughout the world: in this island we may say that they are at the extreme northern limit of their range. of our nine british species only three are found north of the thames. thamnotrizon cinereus is one of these, but is mainly a southern species, and the latest of our grasshoppers to come to maturity. in september it is full grown, and may be heard until november. it is much smaller than viridissima, and is very dark in colour, the female, which has no vestige of wings, being of a uniform deep olive-brown, except the under surface, which is bright buttercup-yellow. the male, though smaller than the female, and like her in colour, has a more {178} distinguished appearance on account of his small aborted wings, which serve as an instrument of music, and form a disc of ashy grey colour on his black and brown body.
the black grasshopper
unless looked at closely this insect appears black, and might very well be called the black grasshopper. and here it is necessary once more to protest against what must be regarded as a gross neglect of a plain duty on the part of writers on our native insects who will not give english names even to the most common and interesting species. unless it has a vernacular name they will go on speaking of it as thamnotrizon cinereus, cordulegaster annulatus, or whatever it may be, to the end of time. this grasshopper has no common name that i can discover: i have caught and shown it to the country people, asking them to name it, and they informed me that it was a "grasshopper," or else a "cricket." black, or black and yellow, or autumn grasshopper would do very well: but any english name would be better than the entomologist's ponderous double name compounded out of two dead languages.
our black grasshopper lives in grass and herbage, in the shade of bushes and trees, and so long as the weather is hot it is hard to find him, as he keeps in the shade. he is furthermore the shyest and wariest of his family, and ready to vanish on the least alarm. he does not leap, but slips away into hiding; and if one goes too near, or attempts to take him, he suddenly vanishes. he simply drops down through the leaves to the earth, and sits close and motionless {179} at the roots on the dark mould, and unless touched will not move. when traced down to his hiding-place he leaps away, and again sits motionless, where, owing to his dark colour on the dark soil, he is invisible. later, when the weather grows cool, he comes out and sits on a leaf, basking by the hour in the sun, his eyes turned from it; and it is then easy to find him, the dark colour making him appear very conspicuous on a green leaf. occasionally he sings in the afternoon, but, as a rule, he begins at dusk, and continues for some hours. to sing, the males often go high up in the bushes, and when emitting their sound are almost constantly on the move.
the sound is a cricket-like chirp; it is never sustained, but in quality it resembles the subtle musical shrilling of the viridissima, although it does not carry half so far.
in disposition the two species, the black and great green grasshoppers, are very unlike. the female viridissima, we have seen, is the most indolent and placid creature imaginable, while the males are perpetually challenging and fighting one another. the males of the black grasshopper i could never detect fighting. it is not easy to observe them, as they sing mostly at night; and as a rule when singing they are well hidden by the leaves. but i have occasionally found two males singing together, apparently against each other, when i would watch them, and although as they moved about they constantly passed and repassed so close that they all but touched, they never struck at each other, nor put themselves into fighting {180} attitudes. one day i found two males sitting on a leaf together, side by side, like the best of friends, basking in the sun.
the female, on the other hand, is a most unpleasant creature, so restless that in confinement she spends the whole time in running about in her cage or box, incessantly trying to get out, examining everything, eating of everything given her, and persecuting any other insect placed with her. when i put males and females together the poor males were kicked and bitten until they died.
before visiting selborne in october, it had seemed to me that hunting for this grasshopper was a most fascinating pursuit. it was very hard to find him by day, and when by chance you caught sight of him, sitting on a green leaf in the sun and looking like a small, very dark-coloured frog with abnormally long hind legs, it was generally in a bramble bush, into which he would vanish when approached too near.
when at selborne, one evening i heard one singing among the herbage at the foot of the hanger, and next morning i found one at the same spot—a female, sitting on a gold-red fallen beech leaf, her blackness on the brilliant leaf making her very conspicuous. a little later, when the wet weather improved, i found the grasshopper all about the village, and even in it; but it was most abundant near the well head and in the hedges between selborne and nore hill. here on a sunny morning i could find a score or more of them, and at dark they could be heard in numbers chirping in all the hedges.
