Richard Jefferies (continued 7)

Yet they only occasionally scratch away the snow, and so get at the grass. Though the natural instinct of rabbits is to dig, and though here and there a place may be seen where they appear to have searched for a favourite morsel, yet they do not seem to acquire the sense of systematically clearing snow away. They then bark ash—and, indeed, nearly any young sapling or tree—and visit gardens in the night, as the hares do also. They creep about along the mounds, being driven by hunger to search for food all day instead of remaining part of the time in the buries.

As to the hares, little more than a week of deep snow cripples their strength: they will run but twenty or thirty yards, and may be killed occasionally with a stick or captured alive. They are even more helpless than rabbits, because the latter still have holes to take refuge in from danger; but the hare while the snow lasts is a wretched creature, and knows not where to turn. Birds resort to the cattle-sheds, to roost; among them the blackbirds, who usually roost in the hedges. Birds come to the houses and gardens in numbers because the snow is there cleared away along the paths.

During severe weather the water-meadows are the most frequented places. They are rarely altogether frozen. If in the early morning there are sheets of ice, by noonday a great part will be flooded an inch or two deep, the water rising over the ice, and forced by it to spread farther, softening the ground at the sides. The water-carriers are long before they freeze. Thrushes and blackbirds come to the hedges surrounding these meadows; the fieldfares and redwings are there by hundreds, and fly up to the trees if alarmed.

The old folks say that the irrigated meadows (and other open waters) do not freeze in the evening till the moon rises; a bright clear moon is credited with causing the water to ‘catch’—that is, the slender, thread-like spicules form on the surface, and, joining together, finally cover it. It is, of course, because the water-meadows are long before altogether frozen that the duck and teal come down to them. When the brooks are frozen is almost the only time when the dabchick can be got to rise: at other times this bird will dive and redive, and double about in the water, and rather be caught by the spaniels than take wing. But when the ice prevents this they will fly. Wood-pigeons go to the few places that remain moist, and also frequent the hawthorn bushes with the fieldfares. They seem fond of trees that are overgrown with ivy, probably for the berries.

The fish are supposed to go down upon the mud; but the jacks certainly do the reverse: they may be seen lying just beneath the ice, and apparently touching it with their backs. They seem partly torpid. In open winters, such as we have had of recent years, the hedge fruit remains comparatively untouched by birds: from which it would appear that it is not altogether a favourite food.

The country folk, who are much about at night and naturally pay great heed to the weather, are persuaded that on rainy nights more shooting stars are seen than when it is bright and clear. The kind of weather they mean is when scudding clouds with frequent breaks pass over, now obscuring and now leaving part of the sky visible, and with occasional showers. These shooting stars, they say, are but just above the clouds, and are mere streaks of light: by which they mean to convey that they have no apparent nucleus and are different from the great meteors which are sometimes seen.

I have myself been often much interested in the remarkable difference of the degree of darkness when there has been no moon. There are nights when, although the sky be clear of visible cloud and the stars are shining, it is, in familiar phrase, ‘as black as pitch.’ The sky itself is black between the stars, and they do not seem to give the slightest illumination. On the other hand, there are nights without a moon when it is (though winter time) quite light. Hedges and trees are plainly visible; the road is light, and anything approaching can be seen at some distance, and this occasionally happens though the sky be partly clouded. So that the character of the night does not seem to depend entirely upon the moon or stars. The shepherds on the hills say that now and then there comes an intense blackness at night which frightens the sheep and makes them leap the hurdles.

When logs of timber are split for firewood they are commonly stacked ‘four square,’ and occasionally such a stack, four or five feet high, may be seen all aglow with phosphorescence. Each individual split piece of wood is distinctly visible—a pale faintly yellow light seems to be emitted from its surface. At the same time the ends of the faggot-sticks projecting from the adjacent stack of faggots also glow as if touched with fire. So vivid is the light that at the first glance it is quite startling—as if the whole collection of wood were just on the point of bursting into flame. In passing old hollow trees sometimes they appear illuminated from within: the light proceeds from the decaying ‘touchwood.’ Old willow trees are sometimes streaked with such light from the top to the foot of the trunk. As this phosphorescence is only occasional, it would seem to depend on the condition of the atmosphere.

I once noticed what looked like a glowworm on a window-blind at night, but there was no glowworm there; the light was of a pale greenish hue. In the morning an examination showed that the linen was decayed and almost rotten just in that particular spot, and it had slightly turned colour. Glowworms are uncommon in the district which has been more particularly described.

The ignis fatuus is almost extinct; so much so that Jack-o’-the-Lantern has died out of the village folklore. On one occasion, however, I saw what at a distance seemed a bright light shining in a ditch where two hedges met. Thinking some mischief was going on, I went to the spot, when the light disappeared; but on retiring, after a search which proved that no one was about, it came into view again. A second time I approached, and a second time the light died out. A few nights afterwards it was there again, and must clearly have been some kind of ignis fatuus. There was a small quantity of stagnant water in the ditch, and a good deal of rotting wood—branches fallen from trees.

One of the most interesting phenomena in connection with the weather seems to me to be the radiation of clouds. It appears to be more commonly visible in the evening, and, when fully developed, there is a low bank on the horizon, roughly arched, from which streamers of cloud trail right across the sky, through the zenith and down to the horizon opposite. Near each horizon these streamers or lines almost touch; overhead they are wider apart—an effect of perspective, I suppose. Often the lines do not stretch so far, hardly to the zenith, where they spread out like a fan. If the sun has gone down, and the cloud chances to be white, these lines greatly resemble the aurora borealis, which takes the same form, and, when pale, can scarcely be distinguished from them, except for the streamers shooting—now extending, now withdrawing—while the cloud streamers only drift slowly. Sometimes there is but one line of cloud, a single streamer stretching right across the sky. So far as I have been able to observe, this radiation is usually followed by wind blowing in a direction parallel to the course of the streamers.

Once while walking in winter I was overtaken by a storm of rain, and took shelter behind a tree, which for some time kept me perfectly dry. But suddenly there came an increase of darkness, and, glancing round, I saw a black cloud advancing in the teeth of the wind, and close to the earth. The trees it passed were instantly blotted out, and as it approached I could see that in the centre it bulged and hung down—or rather slightly slanting forward—in the shape of an inverted cone with the apex cut off. This bulging part was of a slaty black, and the end travelled over the earth not higher than half the elevation of an ordinary elm. It came up with great speed, and in a moment I was completely drenched, and the field was flooded. It did not seem so much to rain as to descend in a solid sheet of water; this lasted a very short time, and immediately afterwards the storm began to clear. Though not a perfect waterspout, it was something very near it. The tree behind which I had taken shelter stood near a large pond, or mere; and I thought at the time that that might have attracted the cloud. The field quite ran with water, as if suddenly irrigated, but the space thus flooded was of small area—about an acre.

The haymakers sometimes talk of mysterious noises heard in the very finest weather, when it is still and calm, resembling extremely distant thunder. They were convinced it was something ‘in the air;’ but I feel certain it was the guns of the fleet exercising at sea. In that case the sound of the explosion must have travelled over fifty miles in a direct line—supposing it to come from the neighbourhood of the nearest naval station. I have found by observation that thunder cannot be heard nearly so far as the sound of cannon. I doubt whether it is often heard more than ten miles. Some of the old cottage folk are still positive that it is not the lightning but the thunder that splits the trees; they ask if a great noise does not make the windows rattle, and want to know whether a still greater one may not rive an oak. They allow, however, that the mischief is sometimes done by a thunder-bolt.

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Preface

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Chapter 1

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Chapter 2

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Chapter 3

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Chapter 4

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Chapter 5

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Chapter 6

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Chapter 7

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Chapter 8

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Chapter 9

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Chapter 10

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Chapter 11

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Chapter 12

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Chapter 13

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Chapter 14

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Chapter 15

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Chapter 16

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Chapter 17

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Chapter 18

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Chapter 19

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Chapter 20

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