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Title: The Romance of Plant Life
Interesting Descriptions of the Strange and Curious in the Plant World
Author: G. F. Scott Elliot
Release Date: June 10, 2014 [EBook #45930]
Language: English
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[Illustration: A LIVING BRIDGE
Such a bridge is described by Sir J. D. Hooker in his _Himalayan
Journals_.]
THE ROMANCE OF
PLANT LIFE
INTERESTING DESCRIPTIONS OF
THE STRANGE AND CURIOUS IN
THE PLANT WORLD
BY
G. F. SCOTT ELLIOT
M.A. CANTAB., B.SC. EDIN., F.R.G.S., F.L.S., ETC.
AUTHOR OF
"A NATURALIST IN MID AFRICA," "NATURE STUDIES--PLANT LIFE"
ETC.
WITH THIRTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
LONDON: SEELEY & CO. LIMITED
1907
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE ACTIVITY OF VEGETABLES
PAGE
Plants which move--Sensitive Plant--A tourist from Neptune--The
World's and the British harvest--Working of green leaves--Power
of sunshine--Work done by an acre of plants--Coltsfoot,
dandelion, pansies, in sunshine and in cold--Woodsorrel and
crocus--Foxglove--Leaves and light--Adventures of a carbon
atom--The sap--Cabbages and oaks requiring water--Traveller's
tree--The water in trees--An oasis in Greece--The associate life
of its trees and flowers 13
CHAPTER II
ON SAVAGES, DOCTORS, AND PLANTS
Savages knew Botany--First lady doctors and botanical
excursions--True drugs and horrible ornaments--Hydrophobia
cure--Cloves--Mustard--Ivy--Roses and Teeth--How to
keep hair on--How to know if a patient will recover--Curious
properties of a mushroom--The Scythian lamb--Quinine: history
and use--Safflower--Romance of ipecacuanha--Wars of the spice
trade--Cinnamon, logwood, and indigo--Romance of pepper--Babylonian
and Egyptian botanists--Chinese discoveries--Theophrastus--Medieval
times--The first illustrated book--Numbers of plants
known--Discoveries of painters and poets 27
CHAPTER III
A TREE'S PERILOUS LIFE
Hemlock spruce and pine forests--Story of a pine seedling--Its
struggles and dangers--The gardener's boot--Turpentine of
pines--The giant sawfly--Bark beetles--Their effect on music--Storm
and strength of trees--Tall trees and long seaweeds--Eucalyptus,
big trees--Age of trees--Venerable sequoias, oaks,
chestnuts, and olives--Baobab and Dragontree--Rabbits as
woodcutters--Fire as protection--Sacred fires--Dug-out and
birch-bark canoes--Lake dwellings--Grazing animals and forest
destruction--First kind of cultivation--Old forests in England
and Scotland--Game-preserving 40
CHAPTER IV
ON FORESTS
The forests of the Coal Age--Monkey-puzzle and ginkgo--Wood,
its uses, colour, and smell--Lasting properties of wood--Jarrah
and deodar--Teak--Uses of birch--Norwegian barques--Destruction
of wood in America--Paper from wood pulp--Forest
fires--Arid lands once fertile--Britain to be again covered by
forests--Vanished country homes--Ashes at farmhouses--Yews
in churchyards--History of Man _versus_ Woods in Britain 55
CHAPTER V
FLOWERS
Man's ideas of the use of flowers--Sprengel's great
discovery--Insects, not man, consulted--Pollen carried to set
seed--Flowers and insects of the Whinstone Age--Coal Age
flowers--Monkey-puzzle times--Chalk flowers--Wind-blown
pollen--Extravagant expenditure of pollen in them--Flower of the
pine--Exploding flowers--Brilliant alpines--Intense life in
flowers--Colour contrasts--Lost bees--Evening flowers--Humming
birds and sunbirds--Kangaroo--Floral clocks--Ages of flowers--How
to get flowers all the year round--Ingenious contrivances--Yucca
and fig--Horrible-smelling flowers--Artistic tastes of birds,
insects, and man 68
CHAPTER VI
ON UNDERGROUND LIFE
Mother-earth--Quarries and Chalk-pits--Wandering atoms--The
soil or dirt--Populations of Worms, Birds, Germs--Fairy
Rings--Roots miles long--How roots find their way--How they do the
right thing and seek only what is good for them--Root _versus_
stones--Roots which haul bulbs about--Bishopsweed--Wild
Garlic--Dandelion, Plantain--Solomon's Seal--Roots throwing
down walls--Strength of a seedling root 82
CHAPTER VII
HIGH MOUNTAINS, ARCTIC SNOWS
The life of a cherry tree--Cherries in March--Flowering of
gorse--Chickweed's descendants--Forest fires in Africa--Spring
passing from Italy to the frozen North--Life in the
Arctic--Dwarfs--Snow-melting soldanellas--Highland Arctic-Alpine
plants--Their history--Arctic Britain--Edelweiss--An
Alpine garden 97
CHAPTER VIII
SCRUB
Famous countries which were covered by it--Trees which are colonizing
the desert--Acacia scrub in East Africa, game and lions--Battle
between acacia and camels, etc.--Australian half-deserts--Explorers'
fate--Queen Hatasu and the first geographical
expedition recorded--Frankincense, myrrh, gums, and odorous
resins--Manna--Ladanum--Burning bush--Olives, oranges, and
perfume farms--Story of roses--Bulgarian attar of roses--How
pomade is made--Cutting down of forests and Mohammed 107
CHAPTER IX
ON TEA, COFFEE, CHOCOLATE, AND TOBACCO
English tea-drinking--Story of our tea--Assam coolies--Manufacture
in India and China--Celestial moisture--Danger of tea--The
hermit and his intelligent goat--Government coffee and
cafés--Chicory--Chocolate--Aztecs--Kola and its curious
effects--Tobacco--Sir Walter Raleigh--Great emperors and
tobacco--Could we grow tobacco?--Story of a Sumatra cigar--Danger
of young people smoking tobacco 120
CHAPTER X
ON DESERTS
What are deserts like?--Camel-riding--Afterglow--Darwin in
South America--Big Bad Lands--Plants which train themselves
to endure thirst--Cactus and euphorbia--Curious shapes--Grey
hairs--Iceplant--Esparto grass--Retama--Colocynth--Sudden
flowering of the Karoo--Short-lived flowers--Colorado Desert--Date
palms on the Nile--Irrigation in Egypt--The creaking
Sakkieh--Alexandria hills--The Nile and Euphrates 131
CHAPTER XI
THE STORY OF THE FIELDS
What was Ancient Britain?--Marshes and bittern--Oak forest--Pines--Savage
country--Cornfield--Fire--Ice--Forest--Worms--Paleolithic family--The
first farmers--Alfred the Great's first Government agricultural
leaflet--Dr. Johnson--Prince Charlie's time--Misery of our
forefathers--Oatmeal, milk, and cabbages--Patrick Miller--Tennyson's
_Northern Farmer_--Flourishing days of 1830 to 1870--Derelict
farmhouses and abandoned crofts--Where have the people gone?--Will
they come back? 143
CHAPTER XII
ON PLANTS WHICH ADD TO CONTINENTS
Lake Aral and Lake Tschad--Mangrove swamps of West Africa--New
mudbanks colonized--Fish, oysters, birds, and mosquitoes--Grasping
roots and seedlings--Extent of mangroves--Touradons
of the Rhone--Sea-meadows of Britain--Floating pollen--Reeds
and sedges of estuarine meadows--Storms--Plants on
ships' hulls--Kelps and tangles in storms--Are seaweeds
useless?--Fish 156
CHAPTER XIII
ROCKS, STONES, AND SCENERY
An old wall--Beautiful colours--Insects--Nature's chief aim--Hard
times of lichens--Age of lichens--Crusts--Mosses--Lava flows
of great eruptions--Colonizing plants--Krakatoa--Vesuvius--Greenland
volcanoes--Sumatra--Shale-heaps--Foreigners on railway
lines--Plants keep to their own grounds--Precipices and
rocks--Plants which change the scenery--Cañons in America 166
CHAPTER XIV
ON VEGETABLE DEMONS
Animals and grass--Travellers in the elephant grass--Enemies in
Britain--Cactus _versus_ rats and wild asses--Angora kids _v._
acacia--The Wait-a-bit thorn--Palm roots and snails--Wild yam
_v._ pig--Larch _v._ goat--Portuguese and English gorse--Hawthorn
_v._ rabbits--Briers, brambles, and barberry--The bramble
loop and sick children or ailing cows--Briers of the
wilderness--Theophrastus and Phrygian goats--Carline near the
Pyramids--Calthrops--Tragacanth--Hollies and their ingenious
contrivances--How thorns and spines are formed--Tastes
of animals 177
CHAPTER XV
ON NETTLES, SENSITIVE PLANTS, ETC.
Stinging nettles at home and abroad--The use of the nettle--Sham
nettles--Sensitive plants--Mechanism--Plants alive, under chloroform
and ether--Telegraph plant--Woodsorrel--Have plants
nerves?--Electricity in the Polar regions--Plants under electric
shocks--Currents of electricity in plants--The singing of trees
to the electro-magnetic ear--Experiments--Electrocution of
vegetables 191
CHAPTER XVI
ON FLOWERS OF THE WATER
The first plant--Seaweeds in hot baths--Breaking of the meres--Gory
Dew--Plants driven back to the water--Marsh plants--Fleur-de-Lis--Reeds
and rushes--Floating islands--Water-lilies--_Victoria
regia_--Plants 180 feet deep--Life in a pond, as seen
by an inhabitant--Fish-farming--The useful Diatom--Willows
and Alders--Polluted streams--The Hornwort--The Florida
Hyacinth--Reeds and grass-reeds--The richest lands in the
world--Papyrus of Egypt--Birds and hippopotami--Fever and
ague 200
CHAPTER XVII
ON GRASSLANDS
Where is peace?--Troubles of the grass--Roadsides--Glaciers in
Switzerland--Strength and gracefulness of grasses--Rainstorms--Dangers
of Drought and of swamping--Artificial fields--Farmer's
abstruse calculations--Grass mixtures--Tennis lawns--The
invasion of forest--Natural grass--Prairie of the United
States, Red Indian, Cowboy--Pampas and Gaucho--Thistles
and tall stories--South Africa and Boers--Hunting of the
Tartars--An unfortunate Chinese princess--Australian shepherds
herds 213
CHAPTER XVIII
POISONS
Poisoned arrows--Fish poisons--Manchineel--Curare--A wonderful
story--Antiaris--Ordeals--The Obi poison--Oracles produced
by poisons--Plants which make horses crazy and others that
remove their hair--Australian sheep and the Caustic Creeper--Swelled
head--Madness by the Darling Pea--Wild and tame
animals, how they know poisons--How do they tell one another?--The
Yew tree, when is it, and when is it not poisonous? 226
CHAPTER XIX
ON FRUITS
Bright colours of fruits--Unripe fruits and their effects--An
intemperate Fungus--Oranges--Prickly pear and the monkey--Strong
seeds--Bill-of-fare of certain birds--A wood-pigeon and beans--Ants
and seeds--Bats, rats, bears, and baboons--The rise in
weight of a Big Gooseberry--Mr. Gideon and the Wealthy
Apple--Crossing fruits--Breadfruit and banana--Dates--Figs--
Olives--Pineapples by the acre--Apples and pears--Home and Canadian
orchards 240
CHAPTER XX
WANDERING FRUITS AND SEEDS
Ships and stowaway seeds--Tidal drift--Sheep, broom, migrating
birds--Crows and acorns--Ice--Squirrels--Long flight of birds--Seeds
in mud--Martynia and lions--The wanderings of
Xanthium--Cocoanut and South Sea Islands--Sedges and floods--Lichens
of Arctic and Antarctic--Manna of Bible--The Tumble
weeds of America--Catapult and sling fruits--Cow parsnips--Parachutes,
shuttlecocks, and kites--Cotton--The use of hairs
and wings--Monkey's Dinner-bell--Sheep-killing grasses 254
CHAPTER XXI
STORY OF THE CROPS
Bloated and unhealthy plants--Oats of the Borderers, Norsemen,
and Danes--Wheat as a wild plant--Barley--Rye--Where was
the very first harvest?--Vine in the Caucasus--Indians sowing
corn--Early weeds--Where did weeds live before cultivation?--Armies
of weeds--Their cunning and ingenuity--Gardeners' feats--The
Ideal Bean--Diseased pineapples--Raising beetroot and
carrot--Story of the travels of Sugar-cane--Indian Cupid--Beetroot
and Napoleon 269
CHAPTER XXII
PLANTS AND ANTS
Meaning of Plant Life--Captive and domesticated germs--Solomon's
observations denied by Buffon but confirmed by recent writers--Ants
as keepers and germinators of corn--Ant fields--Ants
growing mushrooms--Leaf-cutting ants--Plants which are
guarded by insects--The African bush--Ants boarded by Acacias
and by Imbauba trees--Ants kept in China and Italy--Cockchafer
_v._ ant--Scale insects--A fungus which catches worms 281
CHAPTER XXIII
THE PERIL OF INSECTS
The Phylloxera--French sport--Life history of the
Phylloxera--Cockchafer grubs--Wireworm--The misunderstood
crows--Dangerous sucklings of greenflies--"Sweat of heaven" and
"Saliva of the stars"--A parasite of a parasite of a
parasite--Buds--The apple-blossom weevil--Apple-sucker--The
codlin moth and the ripening apple--The pear midge--A careless
naturalist and his present of rare eggs--Leaf-miners--Birds
without a stain upon their characters--Birds and man--Moats--Dust
and mites--The homes of the mites--Buds, insect eggs, and parent
birds flourishing together 290
CHAPTER XXIV
RUBBER, HEMP AND OPIUM
Effects of opium--The poppy-plant and its latex--Work of the
opium-gatherer--Where the opium poppy is grown--Haschisch of the
Count of Monte Cristo--Heckling, scotching, and retting--Hempseed
and bhang--Users of haschisch--Use of india-rubber--Why
plants produce rubber--With the Indians in Nicaragua--The
Congo Free State--Scarcity of rubber--Columbus and
Torquemada--Macintosh--Gutta-percha 301
CHAPTER XXV
ON CLIMBING PLANTS
Robin-run-the-Hedge--Bramble bushes--Climbing roses--Spiny,
wiry stems of smilax--The weak young stem of a liane--The
way in which stems revolve--The hop and its little harpoons--A
climbing palm--Rapidity of turners--The effect of American life
on them--Living bridges--Rope bridges in India--The common
stitchwort--Tendrils--Their behaviour when stroked or tickled--Their
sensibility--Their grasping power--The quickness with
which they curve and their sense of weight--Charles
Darwin--Reasonableness of plants--Corkscrew spirals--The pads
of the Virginian Creeper--The ivy--Does it do harm?--Embracing
roots--Tree ivy 313
CHAPTER XXVI
PLANTS WHICH PREY ON PLANTS
The kinds of cannibals--Bacteria--Spring flowers--Pale, ghostly
Wood-flowers--Their alliance with fungi--Gooseberries growing on
trees--Orchid-hunting--The life of an orchid--The mistletoe--Balder
the Beautiful--Druids-Mistletoe as a remedy--Its parasitic
roots--The trees it prefers--The _Cactus Loranthus_--Yellow Rattle
and Eyebright, or Milk-thief, and their root-suckers--Broomrape
and toothwort--Their colour and tastes--The scales of the
toothwort which catch animalcula--Sir Stamford Raffles--A flower a
yard across--The Dodder--Its twining stem and sucker-roots--Parasites
rare, degenerate and dangerously situated 327
CHAPTER XXVII
PLANTS ATTACKING ANIMALS
Brittle Star _v._ algæ--Fungus _v._ meal-worm--Stag-headed
caterpillars--Liverwort _v._ small insects--Natural
flower-pots--Watercups of Bromeliads--Sarracenia and inquiring
insects--An unfortunate centipede--Pitcher plants: their crafty
contrivances--Blowflies defy them and spiders rob
them--Bladderwort's traps which catch small fry--Hairs and their
uses--Plants used as fly-papers--Butterwort _v._ midges--Its use
as rennet--Sundew and its sensitive tentacles--Pinning down an
insect--Suffocating and chloroforming the sundew--Venus' fly-trap
which acts like a rat-trap--Have plants a nervous system? 340
CHAPTER XXVIII
MOSSES AND MOORS
Peat-mosses and their birds--Moorlands--Cotton-grass--Scotch
whisky--Growth of peat-moss--A vegetable pump--Low-lying
and moorland mosses--Eruptions and floods of peat--Colonizing
by heather and Scotch fir--Peat-mosses as museums--Remains
of children and troopers--Irish elk--Story of the plants in
Denmark--Rhododendrons and peat--Uses of peat--Reclaiming the
mosses near Glasgow 353
CHAPTER XXIX
NAMES AND SUPERSTITIONS
Giving names the first amusement--Curious and odd names--A spiteful
naturalist--The melancholy Bartzia--Common names--British
orchids--Dancing girls and columbines--Susans--Biblical names--Almond,
apple, locust--Spikenard--Tares--Effects of darnel--Daffodil--Acanthus
leaf--Ghost-disturbing branches--Elder or bour tree--Its powers and
medicinal advantage--Danewort--Mandrake--How to pull it up--The
insane root--Its properties--Plants which make bones pink--The
betel nut--Henna--Egyptian and Persian uses--Castor oil--Leeks,
onions, and garlic--Ancient use of them 363
INDEX 375
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACE PAGE
I. A SENTINEL PALM IN THE ANDREAS CAÑON, CALIFORNIA 24
II. THE GARDEN OF EDEN 32
III. A GIANT DOUGLAS FIR 40
IV. A DRAGON TREE IN THE CANARY ISLANDS 48
V. SHOOTING THE HOZU RAPIDS IN JAPAN 52
VI. A FOREST FIRE 66
VII. THRASHING CORN IN CHILE 83
VIII. WISTARIA IN KAMAIDO PARK, JAPAN 98
IX. GATHERING OLIVES IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE 108
X. THE EGYPTIAN QUEEN HATARU'S EXPEDITION 113
XI. WEIGHING THE DAY'S WORK 120
XII. A TOBACCO PLANTATION IN CUBA 127
XIII. GIANT CACTUS NEAR ACONCAGUA VALLEY, CHILE 134
XIV. THEN 146
XV. AND NOW 147
XVI. A RICEFIELD IN CHINA 160
XVII. CULTIVATED BAMBOO IN A CHINESE PLANTATION 178
XVIII. CALTHROPS 185
XIX. A LEAF RAFT 205
XX. FELLING OF GIANT TREES IN CALIFORNIA 215
XXI. A BUSHMAN DIGGING UP ELEPHANT'S FOOT 220
XXII. PINEAPPLES AS A FIELD CROP 240
XXIII. BANANA CARRIERS IN JAMAICA 248
XXIV. A COCOANUT GROVE IN CEYLON 259
XXV. COTTON-FIELDS IN GEORGIA, U.S.A. 265
XXVI. RICEFIELDS IN THE CEYLON HILLS 272
XXVII. SUGAR CANE IN QUEENSLAND 279
XXVIII. GATHERING RUBBER IN TEHUANTEPEC 304
XXIX. A LIVING BRIDGE 313
XXX. IN A KENTISH HOP GARDEN 316
XXXI. CINNAMON PEELING IN CEYLON 331
XXXII. FUNGUS IN CATERPILLAR 340
XXXIII. AN ARCTIC ALPINE PLANT 354
XXXIV. LAKE DWELLINGS IN EARLY BRITAIN 359
THE ROMANCE OF PLANT LIFE
CHAPTER I
THE ACTIVITY OF VEGETABLES
Plants which move--Sensitive Plant--A tourist from Neptune--The
World's and the British harvest--Working of green leaves--Power
of sunshine--Work done by an acre of plants--Coltsfoot,
dandelion, pansies, in sunshine and in cold--Woodsorrel and
crocus--Foxglove--Leaves and light--Adventures of a carbon
atom--The sap--Cabbages and oaks requiring water--Traveller's
tree--The water in trees--An oasis in Greece--The associate life
of its trees and flowers.
When we remember either the general appearance or the way in which
a cabbage or a turnip appears to exist, it does not seem possible
to call them active. It is difficult to imagine anything less
lively than an ordinary vegetable. They seem to us the very model
of dullness, stupidity, and slowness; they cannot move even from
one field to the next; they are "fast rooted in the soil"; "they
languidly adjust their vapid vegetable loves" like Tennyson's Oak.
In fact one usually speaks of vegetating when anybody is living a
particularly dull, unexciting kind of life in one particular place.
And it even seems as if the books, which are supposed to give us the
best information about the study of plants, and which are not very
attractive little books, quite agree with the ordinary views of the
subject.
For one finds in them that plants differ from animals in being
"incapable of motion." This, of course, just means that an animal, or
rather most animals, can walk, swim, or fly about, whilst plants have
roots and do not move from one spot to another. But it is not true to
say that plants cannot move, for most plants grow, which means that
they move, and in some few cases, we find that plants behave very
much in the same way as animals do when they are touched or excited
in any way.
We shall have to speak about tendrils, roots, and insect-catching
plants later on. But it is perhaps the Sensitive Plant which shows
most distinctly that it can shrink back or shrink together when it is
bruised or roughly handled.
It will be described in its place, but just to show that this plant
can move of its own accord, it is only necessary to hold a lighted
or burning match about an inch or so below the end of a long leaf.
If one does this then all the little leaflets begin to fold up, and
finally the main stalk droops; soon afterwards other leaves higher
up the stalk begin to be affected in the same way, and fall limply
down one after the other. It is supposed that this movement frightens
a grazing animal, who will imagine there is something uncanny about
the plant and leave it alone. There are many respects in which this
reaction of the Sensitive Plant resembles that found in animals. It
does not take place if the plant is chloroformed or treated with
ether; the leaves also get "fatigued" if too often handled, and
refuse to rise up again.
There are, however, only a very few plants in which an immediate,
visible answer to a stimulus can be detected. But all plants are
at work; they have periods of rest which correspond to our sleep,
but during their ordinary working hours they never slacken off, but
continue vigorously active.
The life of man is so short that it is difficult to realize all
that is being done by the world of plants. It is necessary to get
beyond our human ideas of time. That is most conveniently done by
considering how our plant world would strike an inhabitant of the
planet Neptune. Our theoretical Neptunian would be accustomed to a
year of 60,127 days (164 of our years); we will suppose that three of
our years are a Neptunian week, and that ten of our days are about
three-quarters of a Neptunian hour, whilst two earth-hours would be a
minute to him.
If such a being were to observe our earth, he would be astonished
at the rapidity of our vegetable world. The buds would seem to him
to swell visibly; in the course of an hour or two, the bare boughs
of the trees would clothe themselves with the luxuriant greenery of
midsummer. Hops would fly round and round their poles, climbing at
the rate of a foot a minute. Bare places, such as the gravel heaps
near a sandpit, or the bare railroad tracks at a siding, would be
perhaps in one week entirely covered by rich grass and wild flowers.
In six Neptunian months a forest of graceful larches would spring up
to a height of seventy or eighty feet.
So that, if one thinks Neptunially, the activity of plants can be
easily realized.
The truth is that we are so familiar with common annual events, such
as the regular harvest every year, that we never seem to realize what
it means. There are some 1,400,000,000 human beings on the earth
to-day, and they entirely depend on the work done every year by
cultivated and wild plants.
Even in one of the least agricultural of all civilized countries,
such as Great Britain, the cultivation of plants is still the largest
national industry. In 1897 we grew enough corn to give a ration of
1lb. per diem to every inhabitant for 68 days, and we manage to get
a large amount from every acre (28 to 33 bushels per acre). In most
other countries the relative importance of land and of agriculture
generally is very much greater than it is in Britain.
Moreover, it seems at first sight as if all this harvest had been
made out of nothing at all. Plants do take in a small amount of
mineral matter from the earth, but these minerals form but a very
little part of the bulk of a tree or any vegetable substance.
A piece of wood can be burnt up in a fire and very little indeed of
it is left. A few ashes will indeed remain, which are the minerals
taken in from the earth, but all the rest has vanished into the
atmosphere. The water which was contained in the wood has become
steam and is evaporated; the woody matter consisted chiefly of
compounds of a chemical substance, carbon, which also becomes an
invisible gas (carbonic acid gas) in a fire and goes back into the
atmosphere.
When the piece of wood was formed in a growing tree, it is easy to
see where the water came from: it was taken in by the roots. Just
as flowers drink up the water in a vase, and wither if they do not
receive enough, so all plants suck up water by their roots. The
carbonic acid gas is taken into plants through their leaves and is
worked up into sugar, starch, wood, and other matters inside the
plant.
But there is another very interesting point about the way in which
wood is burnt in a fire; heat and light are obtained from a wood
fire. Where did that heat and light come from?
If you walk in summer, under a tree in full leaf, it is much cooler
than it is in the sunshine outside. This shows what happens: the
sunshine has been taken up or absorbed by the leaves of the tree. It
does not pass through the foliage, but the heat and light are stopped
by the leaves.
The light and heat which were used up by the leaves in making wood,
sugar, and starch come back again when that wood or starch is burnt.
So that the burning up of a bit of wood is just the opposite to the
formation of that wood in sunshine in a living tree. The important
point is that it is the sunshine which is used by plants to make
all these refractory bodies, such as water, carbonic acid gas, and
others, unite together to form sugar, starch, and wood.
As the earth revolves upon its axis, sunlight falls successively on
every acre of land. Almost everywhere it is intercepted by green
foliage. Each leaf of every plant receives and absorbs as much as it
can, and, for so long as the light lasts, its living particles are
hard at work: water or sap is hurrying up the stem and streaming out
of the leaves as water vapour. Carbonic acid gas also is hurrying
into the leaves; inside these latter first sugar and then starch is
being manufactured, so that the green cells become filled with starch
or sugar.
So soon as the light fails, the work begins to slacken. When darkness
sets in, the starch changes to sugar and passes down the leaf-stalk
into the stem, where it is used up in growth, in the formation of new
wood or in supplying the developing flowers or young buds.
Next morning when the sunlight touches the plant all its little
living cells set to work again, and another day's task is begun. It
is very difficult to understand what is going on inside the leaf. If
you were to imagine a square yard of leaves all taking in sunshine
and making starch as they do in fine weather; then if you weighed
all these leaves, and then weighed them again one hour after they
had been in the sunshine, of course that square yard of leaf surface
should be heavier, because a certain amount of starch has been formed
in it. The amount actually made in one hour has been estimated by
Dr. Horace Brown as 1/500 lb. So that 100 square yards of leaves
working in sunshine for five hours might make one pound of starch.
But one can estimate the activity of plants in another way. Look at
the amount of work done by the Grass, etc., on an acre of pasture
land in one year. This might entirely support a cow and calf during
the summer; all the work done by these animals, as well as all the
work which can be done on the beef which they put on, is due to the
activity of the grasses on that acre. Moreover it is not only these
large animals that are supported, but every mouse, every bird, every
insect, and every worm which lives on that piece of ground, derives
all its energy from the activity of the plants thereon.
All work which we do with our brains or muscles involves the
consumption of food which has been formed by plants under the warm
rays of the sun.
So that man's thoughts and labour, as well as that of every living
creature, is in the first instance rendered possible by sunshine.
But the sunlight, besides this all-important function, affects plants
in other ways.
One of the most interesting of the early spring flowers is the
Coltsfoot. On bare blackish and unsightly heaps of shale one may see
quantities of its golden blossoms. Now if one looks at them on a
fine sunny day, every single blossom will be widely opened and each
will turn towards the sun.
In wet cold weather every blossom will hang its head and be tightly
closed up. Exactly the same may be observed with the Dandelion, which
is, indeed, still more sensitive than the Coltsfoot. In cold wet
weather it is so tightly closed that it is barely possible to make
out the yellow colour of the flower, but on warm sunny days it opens
wide: every one of its florets drinks in as much as possible of the
genial sunshine. Both opening and closing are produced by the warmth
and light of the sun's rays.
It is also the same with Pansies. On a fine day they spread out
widely, but in cold wet weather the heads hang over and the whole
flower shrinks together.
Perhaps the most interesting of them all are the little Woodsorrel
and the Crocus.
Both are exceedingly sensitive to sunlight, or rather to the cold. A
mere cloud passing over the sun on a fine spring morning will close
up the flowers of the Crocus. In cold weather, if you bring one of
its flowers indoors and put it near a bright light it will open
widely, sometimes in a few minutes.
What produces these changes? It is very difficult to say, but every
change helps towards the general good of the plant. In warm sunny
weather insects are flying about, and they can enter the flower if it
is open. These insects help in setting the seed (as we shall see in
another chapter). In cold wet weather the flowers are best closed,
as the rain might injure the florets and because also no insects are
abroad.
Both the Foxglove and the Blue Vetch (_Vicia Cracca_) are specially
ingenious in their way of obtaining light. For the stalk of every
separate blossom bends so that its head turns to the best lighted or
sunniest side. Thus, if you have Foxgloves planted against a wall,
every flower will turn away from it; if you plant them in a circular
bed, every one turns to the outside, so that every flower can get the
sunlight.
Every one who has kept plants in a window knows that the stems turn
towards the light. This has the effect of placing the leaves where
they can get as much sunshine as possible. The leaves themselves are
also affected by sunlight. They seem to stretch out in such a way
that they absorb as much of it as they can.
That, of course, is what they ought to do, for they want to obtain
as much as possible of the sunlight to carry on the work of forming
sugar and starch inside the leaf.
Not only each leaf by itself endeavours to place itself in the
best light-position, but all the leaves on the same spray of, for
instance, Elm, Lime, or Horsechestnut, arrange themselves so that
they interfere with one another as little as possible.[1] Very little
light is lost by escaping between the leaves, and very few of the
leaves are overshaded by their neighbours on the same branch.
[1] Kerner, _Natural History of Plants_; also Scott Elliot,
_Nature Studies--Plant Life_.
Thus all co-operate in sunlight-catching. But, when a number of
different plants are competing together to catch the light on one
square yard of ground, their leaves try to overreach and get beyond
their neighbours.
On such a square yard of ground, it is just the competition amongst
the plants, that makes it certain that every gleam of light is used
by one or other of them.
Every one of all those plants of itself alters the slope of its
leaves and turns its stems so as to get as much light as possible.
This light, as we have seen, is taken in by the plant. It is used to
make the gas, carbonic acid,[2] unite with water: when these are made
to join together, they form sugar; if the sugar is burnt the heat and
light appear again.
[2] The gas Carbonic acid consists of one part of Carbon and
two of Oxygen. It is invisible, just as are the gaseous states
of many liquids and solids. Water-vapour is not visible, though
water (liquid) and ice can of course be seen. Starch, sugar, cell
wall substance, etc., all contain Carbon, Oxygen, and Hydrogen.
Vegetable fat is not well understood, but starch helps to form it.
By changing the amount and arrangement of the molecules in sugar,
starch or vegetable fats, and many other substances can be formed.
But it is the sunlight that makes all this possible.
Thus the sun not merely supplies the motive power for all animal
and vegetable activity but, by its influence, flowers, leaves, and
stems move and turn in such ways that they are in the most convenient
position to intercept its light.
The sunlight, though all-important in the life of most plants, kills
many kinds of bacteria and bacilli which love the darkness. The
well-known radium rays are also destructive to bacteria, and hinder
the growth of certain fungi (Becquerel's rays have a similar effect).
The X-rays are not so well understood, but one can close the leaflets
of the Sensitive Plant by means of them.
Carbonic acid gas forms but a small proportion of the atmosphere
which surrounds a growing plant. Yet there is no lack of it, for when
the leaf is at work forming sugar the particles of gas are rushing
into the leaf, and other particles come from elsewhere to take their
place. Every fire and every breath given off by an animal yields up
carbonic acid, so that it is constantly in circulation.
This is more easily seen by tracing the probable history of an atom
of carbon. We will suppose that it enters a grass leaf as carbonic
acid gas and becomes starch: next evening it will become sugar and
may pass from cell to cell up the stem to where the fruit or grain
is ripening. It will be stored up as starch in the grain. This grass
will become hay and in due course be eaten by a bullock. The starch
is changed and may be stored up in the fat of the animal's body. When
this is eaten at somebody's dinner, the fat will most probably be
consumed or broken up; this breaking up may be compared to a fire,
for heat is given off, and the heat in this case will keep up the
body-temperature of the person. The carbon atom will again become
carbonic acid gas, for it will take part of the oxygen breathed in,
and be returned to the atmosphere as carbonic acid gas when the
person is breathing.
Another atom of carbon might enter the leaves of a tree: it will be
sent down as sugar into the trunk and perhaps stored up as vegetable
fat for the winter. Next spring the vegetable fat becomes starch and
then sugar: as sugar it will go to assist in forming woody material.
It may remain as wood for a very long time, possibly 150 to 200
years: then the tree falls and its wood begins to decay.
The bark begins to break and split because beetles and woodlice and
centipedes are burrowing between the bark and the wood. Soon a very
minute spore of a fungus will somehow be carried inside the bark,
very likely sticking to the legs of a beetle. This will germinate
and begin to give out dissolving ferments which, with the aid of
bacteria, attack the wood. Our carbon atom is probably absorbed
into the fungus. Very soon the mushroom-like heads of this fungus
begin to swell and elongate; they burst through the bark and form a
clump of reddish-yellow Paddock-stools. A fly comes to the fungus
and lays an egg in it. This egg becomes a fat, unpleasant little
maggot which eats the fungus, and amongst others devours our carbon
atom, which again becomes fat in its body. Then a tomtit or other
small bird comes along and eats the maggot. That bird stays out too
late one evening and is eaten by an owl. The owl, satisfied with a
good meal, allows itself to be surprised and shot by a keeper. When
its body is nailed to a door and decays away, the carbon atom again
takes up oxygen and becomes carbonic acid gas, which escapes into the
atmosphere, and is ready for a fresh series of adventures.
We must now consider the water which with carbonic acid gas makes up
sugar, etc. All plants contain a large percentage of water. This may
be as much as 95 to 98 per cent in water plants, and 50 to 70 per
cent. in ordinary tissues; it is contained in every sort of vegetable
substance.
But there is also a stream of water or sap which is almost always
entering the roots, rising up the stem, and passing into the leaves.
On these leaves there are hundreds of minute openings called stomata,
by which the water escapes as water-vapour into the atmosphere. A
single oak leaf may have 2,000,000 of these stomata.
It is this current of sap which keeps the leaf fresh and vigorous; it
is also by this current that every living cell is supplied with water
and kept in a strong, healthy condition.
The amount of water used in this way is very great; in four months
an acre of cabbages will transpire or give out through its leaves
3,500,000 pints of water and an acre of hops from 5-1/2 to 7
millions. A single oak tree, supposed to have 700,000 leaves, must
apparently have given off into the atmosphere during five months
230,000 lb. of water.
Sometimes the water is so abundant in the plant that it collects
as drops on the tips of the leaves and falls off as fluid water. A
very young greenhouse plant (_Caladium nymphaefolium_) was found by
Molisch to give off 190 water-drops a minute, and in one night it
exuded one-seventeenth of a pint.
The water is found stored up in the stems or leaves of plants,
especially those of hot or dry climates. The Madagascar Traveller's
Tree, _Ravenala_, has a considerable amount of water in a hollow at
the base of its leaf, and it is possible to drink this water. The
usual story is to the effect that a panting traveller finds this
palm in the middle of the desert, and saves his life by quenching
his thirst with its crystal-clear water. Unfortunately the tree
never grows far from marshy ground or springs, and the water, which
I tasted for curiosity, had an unpleasant vegetable taste, with
reminiscences of bygone insect life.
These are, of course, exceptional cases; as a rule the tiny
root-hairs search and explore the soil; the sap or ascending current
passes up the stem and pours out into the atmosphere. There the
vapour is hurried off by winds, and eventually condenses and, falling
as snow or rain on the earth, again sinks down into the soil.
It is very difficult to understand how the sap or water rises in the
trunks of tall trees; we know that along the path of the sap inside,
the root-hairs and other cells in the root, the various cells in
the stem, and finally those of the leaf, are all kept supplied and
distended or swollen out with water. All these living cells seem to
have the power of absorbing or sucking in water,[3] and eventually
they are so full and distended within, that the internal pressure
becomes almost incredible. Wieler found in the young wood of a Scotch
fir that the pressure was sixteen atmospheres, or 240 lb. to the
square inch. Dixon, when experimenting with leaf-cells, found ten,
twenty, or even thirty atmospheres (150 to 450 lb. to the square
inch). No locomotive engine has cylinders strong enough to resist
such internal pressures as these. It is an extraordinary fact, and
one almost incredible, that the cells can stand such pressures.
[3] The ascent is assisted by the osmotic absorption of water at
the root and by evaporation at the leaves.
[Illustration:
_Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_
_London and New York_
A SENTINEL PALM IN THE ANDREAS CAÑON, CALIFORNIA
This and such palms are often placed at the mouths of cañons to
indicate water, and may, indeed, thus save the lives of passing
travellers.]
Yet these minute living cells not only exist but work at this high
tension, and, in some cases, they live to about fifty years.
In this favoured country of Great Britain, it is unusual to find any
serious lack of water. But in Italy or Greece, every drop of it is
valuable and carefully husbanded.
Sometimes in such arid dry countries, a small spring of water
will form around itself a refreshing oasis of greenery surrounded
everywhere by dreary thorn-scrub or monotonous sand. All the plants
in such a spot have their own special work to do: the graceful trees
which shade the spring, the green mosses on the stones, the fresh
grass and bright flowers or waving reeds, are all associated in a
common work. They protect and shelter each other; their dead leaves
are used to form soil; their roots explore and break up the ground.
It is true that they are competing with one another for water and for
light, but they are all forming a mutual protection, and producing an
annual harvest.
In a climate like our own we cannot, like the Greek, suppose a Nymph
in the shape of a lovely young woman watching over the spring, for
she would infallibly suffer from rheumatism and ague.
But every living cell in every plant in such an oasis depends upon
the water of the spring. All the plants there form an association
which can be quite well compared to a city or some other association
of human beings. They do compete, for they struggle to do the most
work for the good of the community, and they incidentally obtain
their livelihood in the process.
Most plant societies or associations such as those which cover Great
Britain are not so obviously dependent on one particular spring, but
the plants composing them are associated in a very similar way.
CHAPTER II
ON SAVAGES, DOCTORS, AND PLANTS
Savages knew Botany--First lady doctors and botanical
excursions--True drugs and horrible ornaments--Hydrophobia
cure--Cloves--Mustard--Ivy--Roses and Teeth--How to keep
hair on--How to know if a patient will recover--Curious
properties of a mushroom--The Scythian lamb--Quinine:
history and use--Safflower--Romance of ipecacuanha--Wars
of the spice trade--Cinnamon, dogwood, and indigo--Romance
of pepper--Babylonian and Egyptian botanists--Chinese
discoveries--Theophrastus--Medieval times--The first illustrated
book--Numbers of plants known--Discoveries of painters and poets.
If we look back to the time when all men and women were mere savages,
living like the Esquimaux or the Australians of to-day, then it is
certain that every person was much interested in plants. Nothing was
so interesting as daily food, because no one was ever certain of even
one good meal in the day.
So that in those early times there was a very sound, well-grounded
knowledge of roots, bulbs, and fruits. They knew all that were good
to eat, all that could possibly be eaten in time of famine and
starvation, and also every poisonous and unwholesome plant.
Some savage genius must have discovered that certain plants were
"good medicine"; that certain tree-barks helped to check fever, and
that others were worth trying when people had successfully devoured
more than they could comfortably digest. The life of a savage meant
tremendous meals, followed by days of starvation; even now, when
young children are fed on rice in India, a thread is tied round their
waist, and, when this bursts, they are not allowed to eat any more.
Very probably some of these early physicians were lady doctors
usually of a certain age. Men were too busy with their hunting
and warfare to have time to try experiments with drugs, to make
concoctions of herbs all more or less disquieting and to find out if
these were of any use.
So that such medicine-men or witches gradually came to understand
enough about poisons or fruits to make themselves respected and
even feared. They would, no doubt, make botanical excursions in
the forest, accompanied by their pupils, in order to point out the
poisonous and useful drugs.
It is worth noting, in passing, that this habit of botanical
professors going on excursions with medical students has persisted
down to our own times, probably without any break in the continuity.
But it was soon found advisable to make this knowledge secret and
difficult to get. They did not really know so very much, and a
mysterious, solemn manner and a quantity of horrible and unusual
objects placed about the hut[4] would perhaps prevent some irate and
impatient savage patient from throwing a spear at his wizard--or
witch-doctor.
[4] This is still the custom in the huts of the wizard or
medicine-man in West Africa, where one finds small cushions stuck
over with all sorts of poisonous plants, bits of human bones, and
other loathsome accessories.
Shakespeare alludes to this in _Macbeth_. "Scale of Dragon; tooth of
wolf; witches' mummy; maw and gulf of the ravin'd salt sea shark;
root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark; ... gall of goat and slips of
yew"; and so on.
Most of their cures were faith-cures, and they were, no doubt,
much more likely to be successful when the patient believed he was
being treated with some dreadful stew of all sorts of wonderful and
horrible materials.
This explains how it was that the knowledge of medicine became so
mixed up with pure charlatanism and swindling that no man could tell
which drugs were of real use and which were mere ornaments giving
piquancy and flavour to the prescription. It is not possible to say
that a snake's head, the brain of a toad, the gall of a crocodile,
and the whiskers of a tiger, were all of them absolutely useless.
Within the last few years it has been found that an antidote to
snake-bite can be obtained from a decoction of part of the snake
itself, and it has also been discovered that small quantities of
virulent poisons are amongst our most valuable and powerful remedies.
Whether the savages and their successors the doctors of feudal
times even down to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, suspected
or believed that this was the case must remain a rather doubtful
hypothesis, but there is no question "that the hair of the dog that
bit him" theory of medicine was very prevalent.
The following was a cure for hydrophobia of a more elaborate nature:
"I learned of a Friend who had tried it effectual to cure the Biting
of a Mad Dog; take the Leaves and Roots of Cowslips, of the leaves of
Box and Pennyroyal of each a like quantity; shred them small to put
them into Hot Broth and let it be so taken Three Days Together and
apply the herbs to the bitten place with Soap and Hog's suet melted
together" (Parkinson).
This prescription is not so preposterous as it sounds. Box and
Pennyroyal both contain essences which would be in all probability
fatal to the germ of hydrophobia, and the soap and hog's suet would
keep air from the wound.
Other prescriptions read like our modern patent medicines.
"Good Cloves comfort the Brain and the Virtue of Feeling, and help
also against Indigestion and Ache of the Stomach" (Bartholomew).
"Senvey" (the old name of mustard) "healeth smiting of Serpents and
overcometh venom of the Scorpions and abateth Toothache and cleanseth
the Hair and letteth" (that is, prevents or tends to prevent) "the
falling thereof. If it be drunk fasting, it makes the Intellect good."
Even in those days the people can scarcely have believed that
drinking mustard improved the intellect. Many of the remedies and
cures are obviously false, for example the following:--
"A man crowned with Ivy cannot get drunk."
"Powder of dry Roses comforteth wagging Teeth that be in point to
fall."
The fact that the surgeon was also a barber, and also a
"face-specialist," appears from the two following:--
"Leaves of Chestnut burnt to powder and tempered with Vinegar and
laid to a man's Head plaisterwise maketh Hair increase and keepeth
hair from falling."
Those whose hair turned grey could employ the following
prescription:--
"Leaves of Mulberry sod in rainwater maketh black hair."
If a doctor was not quite sure of the endurance of a patient under
these heroic remedies, he could easily find out if he would recover,
for it was only necessary to try the following:--
"Celandine with the heart of a Mouldwarp" (that is mole, _Scottice_
moudiewort) "laid under the Heade of one that is grievouslie Sicke,
if he be in danger of Death, immediately he will cry out with a loud
voice or sing; if not, he will weep."
In Lightfoot's _Flora Scotica_, there is an interesting account of
the Fly Mushroom (_Agaricus muscarius_) which is not very rare in
Britain, and which may be easily recognized by the bright red top or
cap, with whitish scales scattered over it, and a sort of ring of
loose white tissue round the stalk.
"It has an acrid and deleterious quality. The inhabitants of
Kamschatka prepare a liquor from an infusion of this Agaric which
taken in a small quantity exhilarates the spirits, but in a larger
dose brings on a trembling of the nerves, intoxication, delirium
and melancholy. Linnæus informs us that flies are killed or at
least stupefied by an infusion of this fungus in milk and that
the expressed juice of it anointed on bedsteads and other places
effectually destroys"--what we may describe as certain lively and
pertinacious insects with a great affection for man!
As a matter of fact the fungus is said to be a deadly poison.[5]
[5] Cooke, _British Fungi_.
These quotations are enough to show how the real medical knowledge
of those times was encrusted with all sorts of faith-curing devices,
sheer falsehoods, and superstitions. The most learned men of the
Middle Ages were almost invariably monks and hermits, for there was
nothing in the world of those strenuous times to attract a studious,
sensitive disposition. The spirit of their learning can be judged
from the wearisome disquisitions and lengthy volumes written about
the Barnacle Goose and Scythian Lamb.
In certain deserts along the Volga River in Russia, a peculiar
fern may be found. It might be described as resembling a gigantic
Polypody; the stem is about as thick as a lamb's body and grows
horizontally on the ground like that of the common fern mentioned;
thick furry scales cover the outside of its stem, which ends at the
tip in an elongated point. The blackish-green leaf-stalks springing
from the furry stem end in large divided green leaves.
It occurred to some medieval humorist to cut off the upper part of
the leaf-stalks, and to make a sort of toy lamb out of the four
leaf-stalk stumps and part of the woolly or furry stem.
This was palmed off as a wonderful curiosity of nature, as "a plant
that became an animal," upon the ingenuous tourist of the period.
Such a subject was thoroughly congenial to the learned mind in the
Middle Ages, and an enormous quantity of literature was produced in
consequence. The general theory is given in the following lines:--
"Cradled in snow and fanned by Arctic air,
Shines, gentle Barometz, thy golden hair,
Rooted in earth each cloven hoof descends,
And round and round her flexile neck she bends,
Crops the grey coralmoss and hoary thyme,
Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime,
Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam,
Or seems to bleat, a vegetable lamb."
Such is the old idea of a well-known fern, _Cibotium barometz_.
Yet the original researches of some African "Obi" wizard or red
Indian were not forgotten, and gradually came into practice.
[Illustration: THE GARDEN OF EDEN
The title-page of John Parkinson's "Paradisus." In the distance
may be seen a Scythian Lamb growing on its tree, and in the
foreground many plants are shown as well as Adam and Eve.]
It must be remembered that these savages were true scientific
experimentalists, and made discoveries which have been of infinite
service to mankind. We remember great men like Harvey, Lister, and
Pasteur, but we never think of the Indian who discovered quinine.
The quinine trees, the yellow variety or _Calisaya cinchona_, grow
in the mountains of north-eastern Bolivia and south-eastern Peru,
in wild, inaccessible places at heights of 5000 to 6000 feet. The
Indians probably experimented with almost every part of every
wild tree before they discovered the wonderful properties of this
particular species. The quinine in nature is probably intended to
prevent some fungus or small insect from attacking the bark: when
quinine is used in malaria, it kills the fever germ which attacks
the blood corpuscles of the sick person, so that it is of the utmost
importance in all tropical countries.
When the Jesuit fathers reached Peru and made friends and converts
of the Indians, they discovered this remedy. Soon after the Countess
de Chinchon, wife of the Viceroy of Peru, fell seriously ill of
fever and was cured by the use of Jesuit's bark or quinine. It was
introduced into Europe about 1638, but for a very long time the
entire supply came from South America. The British Indian government
were paying some £12,000 every year for South American quinine and,
at the same time, the supply was running short, for the Indians were
cutting down every tree.
At last, in 1859 (on the suggestion of Dr. Royle in 1839), the
adventurous journeys of Clements Markham, Spruce, and Robert Cross
resulted in the introduction of the Cinchona now flourishing in
Madras, Bombay, and Ceylon. In 1897 British colonies produced about
£43,415 worth of quinine, and the price is now only 7-1/2d. or 8d. a
pound!
Such drugs as Safflower are of very ancient date. It was commonly
employed in Egypt with other dyes and spices for embalming mummies.
It is now used with carbonate of soda and citric acid to give a pink
dye to silks and satins, and occasionally, in the form of rouge, to
ladies' cheeks! How did the ancient Egyptians discover that this
particular thistle-like plant (_Carthamus tinctorius_) had flowers
from which a red dye could be extracted by a tedious process of
soaking in water? The natural colour of the flowers is not red but
yellow.
The history of other drugs reads like a romance. Ipecacuanha, for
instance, was discovered by some unknown Indian who lived in the
damp tropical forests of Brazil and New Granada. A worthy merchant
in Paris obtained a little of the drug in the way of trade. Shortly
afterwards he became very ill and was attended by a certain Dr.
Helvetius, who was exceedingly attentive to him. The grateful
merchant gave the kind-hearted physician some ipecacuanha. In the
course of time the great King Louis XIV's son fell ill of dysentery,
and Helvetius received 1000 louis d'or for his ipecacuanha.
A very interesting and romantic history might be written about the
effect of drugs, dyes, and spices in developing trade. During the
time when Britain was struggling to obtain a share of the foreign
trade of Holland and France, such spices as Clove, Cinnamon, and
Pepper were of the greatest importance. The Dutch, especially,
adopted every possible method to keep the spice trade in their own
hands. They cut down the clove, cinnamon, and other trees, in all
the islands not directly under their control. They imposed the most
barbarous penalties on any interloper. For instance, any one who sold
a single stick of cinnamon in Ceylon was punished with death. When
the English captured the island in 1796, all such restrictions were
of course repealed. Nevertheless its cultivation remained a monopoly
of the East India Company until 1832.
Logwood (_Haematoxylon campechianum_) is closely connected with the
story of adventure and colonisation in the West Indies. Its use
was at first forbidden by Queen Elizabeth as it did not yield fast
colours; this was because the dyers of those times did not know of
any mordant to fix them. Yet this is one of the few vegetable dyes
which retain their position in the market in these days of aniline
colours, and it is said to be a large constituent, with brandy, of
cheap "port wine."
Indigo was known to the Romans, who imported it from India on
camel-back by way of the Persian and Syrian desert. In the fifteenth
century, when the Dutch began to introduce it in large quantities, it
was found to interfere with the "woad"[6] (_Isatis tinctoria_) which
was then a very important cultivated plant in Europe. In Nuremberg,
an oath was administered once a year to all the manufacturers and
dyers, by which they bound themselves not to use the "devil's dye,"
as they called Indigo. Its more recent history shows a very different
system. In Assam and other parts of British India, enormous sums of
money have been invested in indigo plantations. It has been estimated
that four million pounds was invested, and that a population of
something like 700 Europeans and 850 workmen to the square mile in
Behar, were entirely supported by indigo plantations.
[6] The same "woad" which was used by the Britons to paint
themselves with.
Now all these planters are ruined and the population is dispersed,
because German indigo manufactured from coal-tar is destroying
the sale of the British-grown material. The plant has pretty blue
flowers and belongs to the _Leguminous_ order. The dye is obtained by
steeping the leaves and young branches in water, and it is finally
turned out in blue powder or cakes.
Perhaps the most interesting of all these drugs is Pepper. The
Dutch, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, had a monopoly of the East
Indian trade, and they tried to cut down or burn all spice trees
except those in their own control. They could thus form a corner in
pepper, and alter the price as they felt inclined. At one period they
doubled the price, raising it from three shillings to six shillings
per pound. This annoyed the London merchants so much that they met
together and formed the "Society of Merchants and Adventurers trading
to the East Indies." This was of course the original source of our
great East Indian trade, and later on resulted in the Indian Empire.
At present, and for centuries past, the whole world is searched and
explored for drugs and spices. Our medicinal rhubarb for instance,
grows in China on the frontiers of Tibet; it is carried over the
mountains of China to Kiaghta in Siberia, and from thence taken right
across Russian Siberia to London and New York. It is closely allied
to the common or garden rhubarb, which grows wild on the banks of the
Volga.
It is only our duty to remember with gratitude all those long since
departed botanists who have made our life so full of luxury and have
supplied our doctors with all kinds of medicines.
The first doctors were of course just savage botanists, but as soon
as men began to write down their experiences, we find botanical
treatises. The first, and for a very long time the only, botanical
books were intended to teach medical students the names and how to
recognize useful flowers and drugs.
Medicinal herbs such as mandrake, garlic, and mint are found
described on those clay cylinders which were used in Babylon instead
of books, about 4000 B.C., that is some 6000 years ago! The Egyptians
thought that "kindly, healing plants," such as opium, almonds, figs,
castor-oil, dates, and olives, were derived from the "blood and tears
of the gods"; that would be about 3000 B.C. It is not known how far
back Chinese botany can be traced, but, by the twelfth century before
Christ, some three hundred plants were known, including ginger,
liquorice, rhubarb, and cinnamon.
Theophrastus, who flourished about 300 B.C., was a scientific
botanist far ahead of his time. His notes about the mangroves in the
Persian gulf are still of some importance. It is said that some two
thousand botanical students attended his lectures.[7] It is doubtful
if any professor of botany has ever since that time had so large a
number of pupils. Dioscorides, who lived about 64 B.C., wrote a book
which was copied by the Pliny (78 A.D.), who perished in the eruption
of Vesuvius. The botany of the Middle Ages seems to have been mainly
that of Theophrastus and Dioscorides. In the tenth century we find
an Arab, Ibn Sina, whose name has been commemorated in the name of a
plant, Avicennia, publishing the first illustrated text-book, for he
gave coloured diagrams to his pupils.
[7] Lascelles, _Pharm. Journ._, 23 May, 1903.
After this there was exceedingly little discovery until comparatively
recent times.
But Grew in 1682 and Malpighi in 1700 began to work with the
microscope, and with the work of Linnæus in 1731 modern botany was
well started and ready to develop.[8]
[8] Bonnier, _Cours de Botanique_.
It is interesting to compare the numbers of plants known at various
periods, so as to see how greatly our knowledge has been increased of
recent years. Theophrastus (300 B.C.) knew about 500 plants. Pliny
(78 A.D.) knew 1000 species by name. Linnæus in 1731 raised the
number to 10,000. Saccardo in 1892 gives the number of plants then
known as follows:--
Flowering Plants 105,231 species
Ferns 2819 "
Horsetails and Club-mosses 565 "
Mosses 4609 "
Liverworts 3041 "
Lichens 5600 "
Fungi 39,663 "
Seaweeds 12,178 "
-------
173,706[9]
[9] Saccardo, _Atti d. Congresso, Bot. Intern. di Genova_, 1892.
But, during the years that have elapsed since 1892, many new species
have been described, so that we may estimate that at least 200,000
species are now known to mankind.
But it is in the inner meaning and general knowledge of the life of
plants that modern botany has made the most extraordinary progress.
It is true that we are still burdened with medieval terminology.
There are such names as "galbulus," "amphisarca," and "inferior
drupaceous pseudocarps," but these are probably disappearing.
The great ideas that plants are living beings, that every detail in
their structure has a meaning in their life, and that all plants
are more or less distant cousins descended from a common ancestor,
have had extraordinary influence in overthrowing the unintelligent
pedantry so prevalent until 1875.
Yet there were many, not always botanists, of much older date, who
made great discoveries in the science. Leonardo da Vinci, the great
painter, seems to have had quite a definite idea of the growth of
trees, for he found out that the annual rings on a tree-stem are
thin on the northern and thick on the southern side of the trunk.
Dante[10] seems to have also understood the effect of sunlight in
ripening the vine and producing the growth of plants (_Purgatorio_,
xxv. 77). Goethe seems to have been almost the first to understand
how leaves can be changed in appearance when they are intended to act
in a different way. Petals, stamens, as well as some tendrils and
spines, are all modified leaves. There is also a passage in Virgil,
or perhaps more distinctly in Cato, which is held to show that the
ancients knew that the group of plants, _Leguminosæ_, in some way
improved the soil. I have also tried to show that Shelley had a more
or less distinct idea of the "warning" or conspicuous colours (reds,
purples, spotted, and speckled) which are characteristic of many
poisonous plants (see p. 238).
[10]
"Guarda il calor del sol che si fa vino
Giunto all' umor che dalla vite cola."
He is speaking of wine--that "lovable blood," as he describes it.
But if we begin with the unlettered savage, one can trace the very
slow and gradual growth of the science of plant-life persisting all
through the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, and recent times, until
about fifty or sixty years ago, when a sudden great development
began, which gives us, we hope, the promise of still more wonderful
discoveries.
CHAPTER III
A TREE'S PERILOUS LIFE
Hemlock spruce and pine forests--Story of a pine seedling--Its
struggles and dangers--The gardener's boot--Turpentine of
pines--The giant sawfly--Bark beetles--Their effect on
music--Storm and strength of trees--Tall trees and long
seaweeds--Eucalyptus, big trees--Age of trees--Venerable
sequoias, oaks, chestnuts, and olives--Baobab and
Dragontree--Rabbits as woodcutters--Fire as protection--Sacred
fires--Dug-out and birch-bark canoes--Lake dwellings--Grazing
animals and forest destruction--First kind of cultivation--Old
forests in England and Scotland--Game preserving.
"The murmuring pines and the hemlocks
Stand like harpers hoar with beards that rest on their
bosom."--_Longfellow._
Of course the Hemlock here alluded to is not the "hemlock rank
growing on the weedy bank," which the cow is adjured not to eat in
Wordsworth's well-known lines. (If the animal had, however, obeyed
the poet's wishes and eaten "mellow cowslips," it would probably have
been seriously ill.) The "Hemlock" is the Hemlock spruce, a fine
handsome tree which is common in the forests of Eastern North America.
These primeval forests of Pine and Fir and Spruce have always taken
the fancy of poets. They are found covering craggy and almost
inaccessible mountain valleys; even a tourist travelling by train
cannot but be impressed by their sombre, gloomy monotony, by their
obstinacy in growing on rocky precipices on the worst possible
soil, in spite of storm and snow.
[Illustration: _Canadian Pacific Railway_
A GIANT DOUGLAS FIR
This species of fir tree grows to an enormous height in British
Columbia. It is now being planted in many Scotch forests.]
But to realize the romance of a Pine forest, it is necessary to
tramp, as in Germany one sometimes has to do, for thirty miles
through one unending black forest of Coniferous trees; there are no
towns, scarcely a village or a forester's hut. The ground is covered
with brown, dead needles, on which scarcely even green moss can
manage to live.
Then one realizes the irritating monotony of the branches of Pines
and Spruces, and their sombre, dark green foliage produces a morose
depression of spirit.
The Conifers are, amongst trees, like those hard-set, gloomy, and
determined Northern races whose life is one long, continuous strain
of incessant endeavour to keep alive under the most difficult
conditions.
From its very earliest infancy a young Pine has a very hard time. The
Pine-cones remain on the tree for two years. The seeds inside are
slowly maturing all this while, and the cone-scales are so welded
or soldered together by resin and turpentine that no animal could
possibly injure them. How thorough is the protection thus afforded to
the young seeds, can only be understood if one takes a one-year-old
unopened cone of the Scotch Fir and tries to get them out. It does
not matter what is used; it may be a saw, a chisel, a hammer, or an
axe: the little elastic, woody, turpentiny thing can only be split
open with an infinite amount of trouble and a serious loss of calm.
When these two years have elapsed, the stalk of the cone grows so
that the scales are separated, and the seeds become rapidly dry and
are carried away by the wind.
These seeds are most beautiful and exquisitely fashioned.
The seed itself is small and flattened. It contains both resin and
food material, and is enclosed in a tough leathery skin which is
carried out beyond the seed into a long, very thin, papery wing,
which has very nearly the exact shape of the screw or propeller of a
steamer. This wing or screw is intended to give the seed as long a
flight in the air as possible before it reaches the ground. If you
watch them falling from the tree, or throw one up into the air and
observe it attentively, you will see that it twirls or revolves round
and round exactly like the screw of a steamship. It is difficult to
explain what happens without rather advanced mathematics, but it is
just the reverse of what happens in the steamer.
The machinery in the steamer turns the screw, and the pressure of the
water, which is thrown off, forces the boat through the water; in the
case of the pineseed, the pressure of the air on the flying wings
makes the seed twirl or turn round and round, and so the seed must
be a much longer time in falling. They often fly to about 80 or 100
yards away from the parent tree.
Once upon the ground, the seed has to germinate _if it can_; its root
has to pierce the soil or find a way in between crevices of rocks or
sharp-edged stones. All the time it is exposed to danger from birds,
beasts, and insects, which are only kept off by its resin. But it is
difficult to see, for its colour is just that of dead pine needles
and its shape is such that it easily slips into crevices. Then the
seven or eight small green seed leaves break out of the tough seed
coat, and the seedling is now a small tree two inches high. It may
have to grow up through grass or bramble, or through bracken, which
last is perhaps still more dangerous and difficult. It will probably
be placed in a wood or plantation where hundreds of thousands of its
cousins are all competing together. "In this case, the struggle
for life is intense: each tree seeking for sunlight tries to push
its leader-shoots up above the general mass of foliage; but all are
growing in height, whilst the lateral branches which are cramped
by the neighbouring trees are continually thrown off. The highest
branches alone get sufficient light to remain alive, but they cannot
spread out freely. They are strictly limited to a definite area; the
crown is small and crowded by those of the trees next to it, and the
trunk is of extraordinary length."
The above quotation from Albert Fron's _Sylviculture_ (Paris, 1903)
refers to an artificial forest cultivated and watched over by man.
But the trees in such forests have "extra" dangers and difficulties
to fight against. Even scientific foresters admit that they are very
ignorant of what they are trying to do. In fact, the more scientific
they are, the more readily they will confess how little they really
know.
Watch a labourer in a nursery transplanting young pine trees; each
seedling tree has a long main root which is intended to grow as
straight down into the ground as it possibly can. All the other roots
branch off sideways, slanting downwards, and make a most perfect
though complicated absorbing system. With his large hand the man
grasps a tree and lifts it to a shallow groove which he has cut in
the soil. Then his very large, heavy-nailed boot comes hard down on
the tender root-system. The main root, which ought to point down,
points sideways or upwards or in any direction, and the beautifully
arranged absorbing system is entirely spoilt. The wretched seedling
has to make a whole new system of roots, and in some trees never
recovers.
All sorts of animals, insects, and funguses are ready to attack our
young tree. Squirrels in play will nibble off its leading shoots.
Cattle will rub against its bark, and the roedeer, a very beautiful
creature, and yet a destructive little fiend from the tree's point of
view, nibbles the young shoots and tears the bark with its horns.
A tree's life is full of peril and danger. Yet it is most wonderfully
adapted to survive them. Take a knife and cut into the bark of a pine
tree, and immediately a drop of resin collects and gathers on the
wound. After a short time this will harden and entirely cover the
scar. Why?
There are in the woods, especially in Canada and North Russia,
hundreds of insects belonging to the most different kinds, which have
the habit of laying their eggs in the wood of tree-trunks. In those
regions the entire country is in the winter covered with snow and
ice for many months. Insects must find it difficult to live, for the
ground is frozen to a depth of many feet. Where are the eggs of these
insects to be stored up so that they can last through the winter
without injury?
There is one insect at least, or rather many, of which the Giant
Sawfly may be taken as an example, which have ingeniously solved
this problem. She painfully burrows into the trunk of a tree and
deposits her eggs with a store of food at the end of the burrow. A
drop of resin or turpentine, which would clog her jaws, makes this a
difficult task, but, as we find in many other instances, it is not
impossible, but only a difficulty to conquer. If it were not for the
resin, trees might be much more frequently destroyed by Sawflies than
they are.
The larvæ of the Sawfly is a long, fleshy maggot. Just at the end
are the strong woodcutting jaws by which it devours the wood and
eats its way out as soon as it feels the genial warmth of spring
penetrating through the tree-bark. Many other insects hibernate or
lay their eggs in tree-trunks. Some are caterpillars of moths, such
as the well-known Goat moth; others are beetles, such as one which
burrows between the bark and the wood of apple trees. The mother
beetle lays a series of eggs on each side of her own track. Each
egg produces a grub which eats its way sideways away from the track
of the mother. The track made by these grubs gets gradually wider,
because the maggots themselves grow larger and more fat with the
distance that they have got from their birthplace. We shall find
other instances of burrowing insects when we are dealing with rubber
plants.
This resin or turpentine is a very interesting and peculiar
substance, or rather series of substances. It is valuable because
tar, pitch, rosin, and colophony are obtained by distilling it.
When travelling through the coast forests of pine trees in the Landes
of Western France, one notices great bare gashes on the stems leading
round and down the trunk to a small tin cup or spout. These trees are
being tapped for resin, from which rosin is manufactured. It would be
difficult to find any obvious connexion between music and the Giant
Sawfly. Yet the rosin used by Paganini and Kubelik has probably been
developed in Conifers to keep away sawflies and other enemies. This
very district, the Landes in France, was once practically a desert,
and famous as such in French history. The soil was so barren that no
villages or cultivation were found over the whole length of it. Now
that it is planted with trees which are able to yield firewood and
rosin, it is comparatively rich and prosperous.
Storms are also very dangerous for tree-life. One can only realize
the beauty of a tree by watching a pine or ash in a heavy gale of
wind. The swing of the branches, the swaying of the trunk, the
balancing support of the roots which, buttress-like, extend out into
the soil, give some idea of the extraordinary balance, toughness,
and strength in trees. Except in the case of the common umbrella,
which is an inefficient instrument in high wind, engineers have
never attempted the solution of the problem satisfactorily solved by
trees. A factory chimney only 51 feet in height will have a diameter
at the base of at least three feet. This means that the height is
about seventeen times its diameter. But the Ryeplant, with a diameter
at base of 3 millimetres, may be 1500 mm. high! That is, the height
is five hundred times its diameter, and the Ryeplant has leaves
and grain to support as well as its own stem! In Pine forests on
exposed mountain sides there is almost always at least a murmuring
sound, which in a storm rises into weird howls and shrieks. With
Greek insight and imagination, the ancients supposed that spirits
were imprisoned in these suffering, straining pines. That is most
beautifully expressed in _The Tempest_, where the dainty spirit
Ariel had been painfully confined in a pine tree for a dozen years,
and "his groans did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts of
ever-angry bears."
One of the most interesting points in botany depends on the fact that
evil conditions of any sort tend to bring about their own remedy.
Endymion's spear was of "toughest ash grown on a windy site" (Keats).
The prosaic chemical analyses of German botanists have, in fact,
confirmed the theory there suggested, for it is found that the wood
of trees grown in exposed windy places is really denser and tougher
than that of others from sheltered woods.[11]
[11] Hartig finds the specific gravity of the wood in a tree is
increased from 0-60 to 0.74 when the surrounding wood has been
cut down.--_Bot. Central_, vol. xxx, p. 220.
If one realizes all these dangers from insects, animals, and storms,
the height to which some trees grow and the age to which they live
become matters for astonishment and surprise.
The tallest trees in the world are probably certain Eucalyptus of
Australia, which have obtained a height of 495 feet above the ground.
They are by no means the _longest_ plants, for there are certain
_rattans_ or canes, climbing plants belonging to the Palm family,
which may be 900 feet long, although their diameter is not more than
two inches.[12] There are also certain Seaweeds in the Southern
Ocean, off the coast of Chile, which attain a prodigious length
of 600 feet (_Macrocystis pyriferus_, or "Kelp"). That is not so
remarkable, for their weight is supported by other plants in the case
of the rattans, and as regards the seaweeds, by the water in which
they float.
[12] Bonnier, _Cours de Botanique_.
The next in order to the Eucalyptus are those well-known Mammoth
or Big trees of California (_Sequoia gigantea_). They grow only in
certain valleys in the Sierra Nevada, at an altitude of 5000-8000
feet. Their height is usually given as from 250-400 feet, and the
diameter sometimes exceeds thirty-five feet. Since they have become a
centre of the tourist-industry in the United States, various methods
have been adopted to make their size more easily realized. Thus a
coach with four horses and covered by passengers is (or used to be)
driven through a gateway made in one of them. The trunk of another
has been cut off some feet from the ground, and a dancing-saloon has
been made on the stump. It is at least doubtful if dancing would be
very agreeable upon such a cross-grained sort of floor! A complete
section of one of them was carried across the United States to make
a dining-room table for an American millionaire. The age of one of
these trees has been estimated at 3300 years. That is to say that
it was a seedling in 1400 B.C., and has been peacefully growing in
a Californian valley during all the time when Greece, Rome, Spain,
France, Britain, and of course the United States, developed their
civilizations. The specimen of the Mammoth tree in the Natural
History Museum in London was 1335 years old.
The possible age of many of our common trees is much greater than any
one would suppose. The "Jupiter" oak in the forest of Fontainebleau
is supposed to be 700 years old. Another oak which was cut down at
Bordya, in the Baltic provinces of Russia, was supposed to be about
1000 years old. Other millennial trees are or were another oak and
two chestnuts: the oak grew in the Ardennes, the chestnuts still
flourish, one at Sancerre (France), and the other the famous specimen
on Mount Etna. There are also eight olive trees in the garden of
Gethsemane at Jerusalem, which are certainly 1000 years old, and
were, according to tradition, in existence in the time of Jesus
Christ.
And yet all these trees are mere infants compared to Adanson's Baobab
and the Dragon tree of Orotava. The celebrated traveller alluded to
visited the Cape Verde islands in 1749 and found inscriptions made by
English travellers on the trunk 300 years before his time. From the
growth since then, he calculated that some of these trees were about
6000 years of age, and they were 27 feet in diameter.[13]
[13] Bonnier, _l.c._
[Illustration: A DRAGON TREE IN THE CANARY ISLANDS
Said to be about eight hundred years old]
The record is held by the Dragon tree of Orotava, in the Canary
Islands.
When the Spaniards landed in Teneriffe in 1402, its diameter was
very nearly 42 feet. It was, however, greatly injured by a storm in
1827, and finally destroyed in 1851. (The wood was then made into
walking-sticks and snuffboxes.) The age has been estimated at 10,000
years, or by other authorities at 8000 years only. The "dragon's
blood" of the Canaries, a well-known remedy in the Middle Ages,
was not, as is popularly supposed, derived from this tree, but was
obtained from a totally different plant.
But there is a hazy tradition to the effect that the story of the
Dragon which guarded the golden fruit in the island of the Hesperides
was nothing but a garbled account of this redoubtable veteran of the
plant world.
There is no particular advantage in growing to these enormous heights
and clinging to life in this way for hundreds and thousands of years.
Nature seems to have found this out and preferred the ordinary pines,
oaks, and larches, which are mature in a few hundred years. In a
thousand years, ten generations of larch or pine can be produced,
and, as each is probably better than its predecessor, a distinct
improvement in the type is possible. All these long-lived giants
belong in fact to the less highly specialized orders of plants.
They are like the primeval animals, the Mammoths, Atlantosauri, and
Sabretoothed Tigers.
Yet when we come to think of the many and diverse perils to which
trees are exposed, the existence of even these exceptional monsters
seems very wonderful.
After a violent storm which had blown down many of the trees in a
friend's park,[14] I visited the scene of destruction and discovered
what had apparently in almost every instance produced it. Rabbits had
overthrown these trees!
[14] Dunlop House, Kilmarnock.
They had nibbled away part of the cork and part of the young wood
on the projecting buttress-like roots at the base of the tree. In
consequence, water, bacteria, and fungus spores had entered at the
injured places, and part of the roots had become decayed and rotten.
When the gale began to sway them backwards and forwards and a severe
strain came on what should have been a sound anchoring or supporting
buttress, the rotten part yielded, and these fine, beautiful trees
fell a prey to the rabbit.
The influence of forests and timber on the daily life of mankind is a
most romantic and interesting chapter in history.
Every savage tribe, every race of man, however degraded or backward,
is acquainted with fire. Fuel is therefore a necessity of existence
for all savages, and not merely for cooking. There is a very
interesting passage in London's _The Call of the Wild_, when the
Dog "Buck" in his dreams remembers a hairy man crouching over the
fire with Buck's ancestor at his feet, whilst in the darkness all
round them the firelight is reflected from eyes of wolves, bears,
and even more terrible and dangerous brutes which have now happily
vanished from the world. For protection at night fire was an absolute
necessity. Even at that long-distant period, therefore, man had
commenced to attack the forest. Unless one has had to tend a wood
fire for twelve hours, it is difficult to realize what a quantity
is required. To prepare fire was a long, laborious, and difficult
operation; one piece of wood was placed on the ground and held in
position by the toes, a pointed stick was taken between the two palms
of the hand and twirled vigorously round and round until the heat was
enough to ignite a piece of rotten wood placed as tinder.
Therefore smouldering branches were kept always burning, as they
are to-day amongst the Fuegians and some other savages. It was a
sacred duty to watch this fire, and the woman (usually old) who was
entrusted with the task was very probably put to death if she failed.
From this very ancient savage custom probably arose the cult of the
Vestal Virgins in Ancient Rome.[15]
[15] It will be remembered that they were obliged to keep the
sacred fire always burning, and were put to death if they
misbehaved. The fire was never allowed to go out during the whole
of Roman history, and the custom has been even preserved in some
Roman Catholic convents and chapels.
Another very important factor in savage life was the canoe or piroque
necessary for fishing or to cross lakes and rivers. The first chantey
of Rudyard Kipling has a probable theory, and is a beautiful account
of how man first thought of using a floating log.[16] They hollowed
out the log and "dug out" the canoe, by first lighting a fire on it
and then scraping away the cinders; then the sides were pressed out,
and it was trimmed and straightened to the right shape. All this
was the idea of some paleolithic genius far more persevering and
ingenious than any marine architect of our own days.
[16] _Seven Seas._
"Birchbark" canoes are not so common as Dug-outs. The tree, the White
or Paper Birch, is found in Canada and the Northern United States;
those Indians who discovered that the light, waterproof cork-bark
could be fashioned into a canoe made a very great discovery, and
indeed it was their canoes that made travel or exploration possible
in North America.
When man began to long for a settled permanent home, it was
absolutely necessary to find a way of living in safety. Wolves,
bears, hyenas and other animals were abundant; neighbours of his own
or other tribes were more ferocious and more dangerous than wild
beasts. Some neolithic genius imagined an artificial island made of
logs in the midst of a lake or inaccessible swamp. Such were the lake
dwellings which persisted into historic times, and which are indeed
still in existence in some parts of the earth.[17]
[17] Munro, _Lake Dwellings_.
The trees were abundant; they could be felled by the help of fire and
an axe, and the lake dwelling gave a secure defence. The wood of some
of the piles supporting the great villages in Switzerland seems to be
still sound, though it has been under water for many centuries. Some
villages are said to have required hundreds of thousands of trees.
The forest afforded man almost everything that he used, bows and
arrows, shelter, fuel, and even part of his food.
Nuts and fruits would be collected and when possible stored. In
seasons of famine, they used even to eat the delicate inside portion
of the bark of trees.
But as soon as the first half-civilized men began to keep cattle,
sheep, and especially goats, more serious inroads still were made
upon the forest. Where such animals are allowed to graze there is
no chance for wood to grow (at any rate in a temperate country).
The growing trees and the branches of older ones are nibbled away
whilst they are young and tender. The days of the forest were nearly
over when cultivation commenced. Dr. Henry describes the process of
"nomadic" culture in China as follows: "They burn down areas of the
forest; gather one or two crops of millet or upland rice from the
rich forest soil; and then pass on to another district where they
repeat the destruction."[18] A very similar process of agriculture
existed until the eighteenth century in Scotland.
[18] _Royal Dublin Society_, vol. i. part v. No. 11.
[Illustration:
_Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_
_London and New York_
SHOOTING THE HOZU RAPIDS IN JAPAN
The logs in the long train of rafts are of bamboo tied together.
In spite of their fragile nature the lumbermen are so fearless
and agile that they cleverly steer the frail bundles with but few
accidents.]
Thus the forest was being burnt or cleared for cultivation. It was
devastated by black cattle, goats, and other animals, and it was
regularly exploited for fuel and building every day by every family
for centuries.
It is not, therefore, surprising that the ancient forests in Britain
have disappeared. Dr. Henry mentions one square mile of virgin
forest on the Clonbrock estate in Ireland. The _Silva Caledonica_
of the Romans is said to exist in Scotland at the Blackwood of
Rothiemurchus, at Achnacarry, and in a few other places. Of the
original oak forest, which covered most of England and Southern
Scotland, not a vestige (so far as is known to the writer) remains
to-day.
There are in places very ancient forests. A few miles from Retford
are considerable remains of Sherwood Forest, which is for ever
associated with that genial bandit Robin Hood. One huge oak (called
the Major) has or used to have a keeper always on guard and paid by
Lord Manvers, but there are hundreds of aged oaks all round it. Then
there is the Knightwood Oak and some other ancients in the New Forest.
But it is not certain that these even date so far back as the time of
Canute, for so far as the New Forest is concerned, it seems that this
was formed either by Canute or by William I. The Saxons seem to have
destroyed most of the English forests.
In Scotland oak forest existed as far north as the Island of Lewis,
in Caithness, Dornoch, Cromarty, and along Loch Ness, as well as
in every county south of these.[19] The deer forests and grouse
moors, now desolate, whaup-haunted muir-land and peat mosses, were
flourishing woods of magnificent Scots fir at no very distant
period. They ascended the hills on the Cairngorms to 1400 or 1500
feet, and in Yorkshire to 2400 feet.[20]
[19] Niven, _Bot. Section British Association_, 1901.
[20] Boyd Watt, _Cairngorm Club Journal_, vol. iv. No. 20,
January, 1903; Smith, Lewis, _Roy. Geog. Soc. Journal_.
Even in remote historical times, such as those of Canute, the
forests had become seriously and dangerously destroyed. This king
was apparently the first to artificially protect the woods as a
hunting preserve. He was followed by William the Conqueror and other
sovereigns. The game preserves of the landed proprietors to-day are,
of course, the remains of the same custom.
Fortunately, however, we do not kill poachers or cut off their right
hands, and we do not cut off the forepaws of poaching dogs, as used
to be done in medieval days.
This connexion of forests with game no doubt prevented the entire
disappearance of wood, but when, as is the case in England, the
comfort of pheasants is thought of more importance than the
scientific cultivation of forests, the result is often very
unfortunate.
The use and value of timber is, however, too important a matter to
take up at the end of a chapter.
CHAPTER IV
ON FORESTS
The forests of the Coal Age--Monkey-puzzle and ginkgo--Wood, its
uses, colour, and smell--Lasting properties of wood--Jarrah and
deodar--Teak--Uses of birch--Norwegian barques--Destruction of
wood in America--Paper from wood pulp--Forest fires--Arid lands
once fertile--Britain to be again covered by forests--Vanished
country homes--Ashes at farmhouses--Yews in churchyards--History
of Man versus Woods in Britain.
What was the first tree like? That is a very difficult question
to answer. Perhaps the first forests were those of the great coal
period, of which the remains, buried for untold ages in the earth,
became the coal which we now burn.
The flames and red-glowing heat of a fire are the work of the
sunlight which fell in these long-past ages through a steamy, misty
atmosphere, upon these weird, grotesque vegetables, unlike anything
which now exists upon the earth. Their nearest allies amongst living
plants are the little club-mosses which creep over the peat and
through the heather in alpine districts.
Of course no one can say exactly what these coal forests were like.
But although some modern authorities have questioned the general
accuracy of the descriptions of Heer and others, yet, as they have
not given anything better in the way of description, we shall
endeavour to describe them according to our own beliefs, and as they
probably existed in the Lanarkshire coalfield and other places in
Britain.
In that gloomy mirk of the Carboniferous epoch, an observer (if there
had been any) would have dimly perceived huge trunks rising to sixty
or eighty feet and divided at the top into a very few branches. All
branches were covered over by comparatively quite small leaves.
Not a bad idea of the Sigillarias, Lepidodendrons, etc., which
made the forest and can be obtained by carefully looking at a pan
of Selaginella such as one finds in almost every botanical garden,
and imagining this to be eighty feet high. Through the bottomless
oozy slime which formed the ground, horizontal runners and roots
penetrated in every direction. Great fern-like plants might be
observed here and there. Sluggish rivers meandered slowly through
these forests, carrying silt and refuse (their deposits are our
Cannel coals). In the water and in pools, or perhaps in the mud,
were curious waterferns with coiled-up crozier-like leaves. Perhaps
horsetail-like plants of huge size might have formed great reed-beds
to which those of to-day are as a plantation of one-year-old firs is
to a pine forest that has lasted for a century.
Fishes and crustaceans, or lobster-like creatures, crawled and
squattered through the slime, pursued by salamander-like animals with
weak limbs and a long tail. Some of these latter were seven to eight
feet long. Millipedes, scorpions, beetles and maybugs existed, and
huge dragonflies preyed on them.
But there is one very ancient group of trees, the Araucarias or
Monkey-puzzles, which are by no means uncommon even now. The ordinary
one (_Araucaria imbricata_) is often planted in the British Isles,
and it has, if you look closely at it, a most peculiar appearance.
It is like the sort of tree that a child would draw; it is a clumsy
attempt at one, and very different from the exquisite irregularity of
the ash or oak.
Its leaves are especially curious: they cover the branches very
closely, and are hard, rigid, and spiny. Its cones, though of the
nature of pine-cones, are yet quite unique. The seeds are edible, and
used to be an important article of diet to the Indians on the slopes
of the Chilian Andes, where monkey-puzzle forests used to exist. This
of course is a very out-of-the-way region; other species of Araucaria
are found scattered about the world in a most perplexing manner. One
kind grows in Norfolk Island, in the Pacific; another occurs in the
inner mountainous districts of Brazil; there are some in Australia
and others in New Caledonia.
But in the Jurassic period of geology, in the age of ammonites
and gigantic lizards and crocodiles, Araucarias were the regular,
ordinary trees. They grew all over Europe, and apparently as far
north as Greenland, and, indeed, seem to have existed everywhere.
Perhaps the spiny leaves discouraged some huge lizard, perhaps
Atlantosaurus himself (he was thirty feet high and one hundred feet
long), from browsing on its branches. Perhaps the Pterodactyls, those
extraordinary bird or bat-like lizards, used to feed upon the seeds
of the monkey-puzzle, and carried them in their toothed jaws to New
Caledonia, Australia, and Norfolk Island. Other improved types have
driven the monkey-puzzles from Europe, Asia, and Africa, and taken
their places, but in out-of-the-way districts of South America and
Australia they are still able to hold their own.
An ally of theirs, the Ginkgo or Maidenhair tree, seems to have been
extremely common in certain geological periods. To-day it has almost
entirely disappeared. A few trees were discovered in certain Chinese
temples, where they had been preserved as curiosities for centuries,
but it is almost extinct as a wild plant. The Bigtree group
(_Sequoia_ p. 47) was a companion of the Ginkgo in its flourishing
period. So also were the Sago palms or Cycads. All the ordinary
trees, Pines, Oaks, Beeches, and the like, did not appear upon the
earth's surface till a much later period.
The most important economic product of trees is the timber which they
furnish. Wood, as we have tried to show in the last chapter, has been
always of the greatest importance to mankind. It is easily worked,
durable, buoyant, and light, and it is used for all sorts of purposes.
Silver fir,[21] which is accustomed, when growing, to be continually
swayed and balanced by the wind, is preferred for the sounding-board
of pianos and for the flat part of violins, whilst Sycamore or hard
Maple is employed for the back and sides of the latter.
[21] The Romans used it for ships' masts and spars.
But there are enormous differences in different kinds of woods.
The colour of wood varies from white (Beech), yellow (Satinwood),
lemon-yellow and bluish red (sap and heartwood of Barberry), to dark
and light brown mottled (Olive), black (Persimmon), and dark brown
(Walnut). Some woods have a distinct smell or perfume. Cedarwood,
Sandalwood, Deal, and Teak, are all distinctly fragrant. The
Stinkwood of South Africa and the Til of Madeira have an unpleasant
smell.
More important in practice are the differences in the hardness and
weight of wood. The Ironwood of India cannot be worked, as its
hardness blunts every tool. It requires a pressure of something
like 16,000 lb. to force a square-inch punch to a depth of
one-twentieth of an inch in _Lignum vitæ_. Even Hickory and Oak (if
of good quality) require a pressure of 3200 lb. to the square inch
to do this. On the other hand the Cotton tree of India (_Bombax
malabaricum_) has exceedingly soft wood. It is quite easy to drive a
pin into the wood with the fingers.
Some woods are far too heavy to float: many tropical woods are
especially very weighty. Perhaps the Black Ironwood, of which a cubic
foot weighs 85 lb., is the heaviest of all. But the same volume of
Poplar, Willow, or Spruce does not weigh more than 24 lb.
There are many ancient and modern instances of the extraordinary
way in which timber lasts when at all carefully looked after. Thus
the Cedar which "Hiram rafted down" to make the temple of Solomon
(probably Cedar of Lebanon) seems to have been extraordinarily
durable. Pliny says that the beams of the temple of Apollo at Utica
were sound 1200 years after they were erected.
Cypress wood (_Cupressus sempervirens_) was often used to make chests
for clothes because the clothes moth cannot penetrate it, and it also
lasts a very long time. There is a chest of this wood in the South
Kensington Museum which is 600-700 years old. The Cypresswood gates
of Constantinople were eleven centuries old when they were destroyed
by the Turks in 1453. The fleet of Alexander the Great, and the
bridge over the Euphrates built by Semiramis, were made of Cypress.
This wood seems to have been of extraordinary value to the ancients,
and was used for mummy cases in Egypt, for coffins by the Popes, as
well as for harps and organ pipes.[22]
[22] Most of these interesting details are found in Boulger's
valuable treatise on "Wood."
Perhaps the most valuable woods are Box, which is used for woodcuts,
and Walnut, which used to be highly prized for gun-stocks, as much as
£600 having been paid for a single tree.
But the most interesting histories of trade in timber belong to the
commoner and more usual woods. The great woods of Jarrah (_Eucalyptus
marginata_) cover 14,000 square miles of Australia, but they are
being rapidly cut down and sawn up into small blocks to be carried
right across the world in order to form the pavement which London
cabmen and cab-horses prefer to any other.
One remembers also the beautiful Deodar forests of Afghanistan, and
the Himalayas. Logs of deodar were floated down the rivers to form
bridges or temple pillars in Srinagar, the capital of far Cashmere.
Nowadays great "slides" are made, winding down into the valleys from
the recesses of the hills. When winter approaches, water is sprinkled
on the logs which make the slide; this freezes and forms a slippery
descending surface, down which the deodar timber rushes till it
reaches the low ground, where it is cut up into railway sleepers and
takes part in the civilizing of India.
The fragrant Teak has an oleoresin which prevents the destructive
white ants from attacking it; it is the most valuable timber for
shipbuilding, and grows in many places of India, Malaysia, Java, and
Sumatra. It floats down the rivers of Burmah, coming from the most
remote hill jungles, and elephants are commonly used at the ports to
gather the trunks from the water and pile them ready for shipment.
The Birch is carried all the way from Russia to Assam and Ceylon,
in order to make the chests in which tea is sent to England and
Russia (native Indian woods are also used). It is also used in the
distillation of Scotch whisky, for smoking herrings and hams, for
clogs, baskets, tanning, dyeing, cordage, and even for making bread.
But one of the most curious and interesting sights in any seaport
is sure to be an old white Norwegian or Swedish sailing barque or
brigantine. She will have a battered, storm-beaten appearance, and is
yet obviously a comfortable home. The windows of the deck-house may
be picked out with a lurid green. The tall, slowmoving, white-bearded
skipper and his wife, children, and crew, not to speak of a dog and
cats, have their home on this veteran "windjammer." She carries them
from some unpronounceable, never-heard-of port in Norway, all over
the world. You may see her discharging a cargo of deal plank, through
the clumsy square holes in her stern, in a forgotten Fifeshire
village, in Madagascar, in China, or in the Straits of Magellan. All
her life she is engaged in this work, and her life is an exceedingly
long one, to judge from the Viking lines on which she is built.
Moreover, her work is done so economically that it used to be much
cheaper to use her cargo in Capetown than to utilize the beautiful
forests of the Knysna and King Williamstown.
But there are not wanting signs that the forests of Norway, of
Sweden, and even those of the United States, are doomed.
It is said that seven acres of primeval forest are cut down to supply
the wood which is used up in making the paper required for one day's
issue of a certain New York journal. What a responsibility and a
source of legitimate pride this must be to the journalists! Let us
hope that the end justifies the means.
Boulger calculates that in 1884 all the available timber from
4,131,520 acres of Californian Redwood was used in making the
sleepers of the railways then existing in the United States.
He finds that no less than 18,000,000 acres of forest are necessary
to keep up the supply of sleepers for the old lines and to build new
ones.
So that, if we remember the wood required for paper, firewood, and
the thousand other important requisites of civilized man, the United
States must soon exhaust her supply and import wood.
Then will come the opportunity of British North America. The Southern
forest of Canada, which extended for 2000 miles from the Atlantic to
the head of the St. Lawrence, has indeed gone or is disappearing into
pulpwood and timber, but there is still the great Northern forest
from the Straits of Belleisle to Alaska (4000 miles long and 700
miles broad), and in addition the beautiful forests of Douglas Spruce
and other trees in British Columbia covering 285,000 square miles.
It is the wood-pulp industry which is at present destroying the
Canadian forests. The penny and halfpenny papers, and indeed most
books nowadays, are made of paper produced by disintegrating wood:
it is cheap, and can be produced in huge quantities; nevertheless it
is disquieting to reflect that probably nineteen-twentieths of the
literary output of the twentieth century will be dust and ashes just
about the same time (some fifty years) that the writers who produced
it reach the same state.[23]
[23] Compare the report by the Society of Arts.
Yet, considering the amount daily produced to-day, the future readers
of fifty years hence who are now in their cradles, may consider this
a merciful dispensation of Providence.
One very curious use of wood may be mentioned here. Near Assouan,
on the First Cataract of the Nile, one discovers broken granite or
syenite needles, which had been intended by the ancient Egyptians
for monuments. Where the broken pillar lies, there are rows of
wedge-shaped holes cut in the rock.
They used to drive in wedges of dry wood and then wet them with
water. The expansion of the wood split the rock, though this is hard
granite or syenite. Very often the process failed because the stone
cracked. The same method is said to be still used in some quarries.
The destruction of the forest is really necessary. Most of the corn
land and rich pasture of the world has been at one time forest. It
could scarcely be such fertile soil if it had not been for the many
years during which leaf-mould fell on it, and the roots broke up and
penetrated the subsoil below. Canada, Russia, and the United States
are now passing through the same experience as that of Great Britain
in the time of the Romans, Saxons, and Danes.
But there is terrible waste by fire.
When the trees become dry and withered in the height of summer in
either India or the United States, some careless tramp may throw
aside a lighted match. If a fire once starts, it spreads with
enormous rapidity; great clouds of smoke roll over the surrounding
country, and every village sounds the alarm. Everybody rushes to
help and try to stop the conflagration, or if too late hurriedly
saves whatever he can get of his possessions. His log hut and all the
accumulations of years of saving may be turned into a heap of ashes
in a very few minutes.
But the crackling of the leaves and the flaming twigs and scorching
bark make such a volume of fire that nothing which man can do is of
any avail.
Of course every beast, every bird and insect is in the greatest
possible danger.
This is how a fire in New Zealand has been described by Mr. William
Satchell:--[24]
[24] _The Toll of the Bush._
"For a while it seemed that the battle must go to the wind, the
fiery monster withdrew, lay hidden, roaring angrily in the dry heart
of the woods; then insidiously he stretched forth his glittering
arms, first one, then another, and locking the shuddering trees in
an irresistible embrace, sprang once again erect. In an instant the
whole bush from edge to edge became a seething, rocking mass of
flames.
"'Fire! Fire!'
"Then, insignificant no longer, transfigured rather beyond all living
possibilities of loveliness, the bush stood revealed to its centre.
It became less a fire than an incandescence, waxing in brilliance
to the point when, as it seemed, it must perforce burst into
indistinguishable flame. Every leaf and twig of that fairy forest was
wrought and hammered in virgin gold, every branch and trunk was a
carved miracle of burnished copper. And from the golden leaves to the
golden floor, floatingly or swiftly, there fell an unceasing rain of
crimson flame petals, gorgeous flame fruits. Depth after depth stood
revealed, each transcending the last in loveliness. And as the eye
sought to penetrate those magic interiors there seemed to open out
yet farther vistas, beyond belief beautiful, as of the streets of a
city incorruptible, walled and towered, lost in the light of a golden
incomparable star."
"'Fire! Fire!'
"In the face of that vision of glory the cry rang out with all the
ineptitude and inappropriateness of the human weakling. On one side
the titanic forces of nature, inexorable, eternal; on the other the
man, frail of body, the creature of an hour, matching himself against
them.
"'Fire! Fire!'
"Sheltering his face from the insufferable heat, the Swede
hammered madly at the solid house-door. At the back, now utterly
unapproachable, the kitchen, the roof, and a part of the main wall
were already in flames. A few minutes--five at the most--would
complete the demolition of the house. To right and left the great
trees one after another went off like rockets, the roar of their
burning foliage shaking the very earth. A deafening crashing of
falling timber came at intervals from the bush beyond."
In some countries the destruction of the forests has had a very
serious effect on the climate. The rain which falls upon a forest is
partly absorbed by the leaves, and but a very small part of it is
carried off by burns and streams: most sinks down into the forest
soil, and is only gradually given back again after being taken in by
the tree roots and evaporated by the leaves.
But bare hills denuded of wood allow most of their rain to rush down
to the sea in dangerous spates of the rivers and burns, and then the
ground becomes afterwards very dry and burnt up. There are very many
countries now barren and desolate because they have been robbed of
the beautiful forests which once covered the springheads and mountain
valleys.
Perhaps Palestine is one of the worst instances. But it is when we
remember Babylon, Nineveh, and all the cities of the coast of Asia
Minor, as they were even a thousand years ago, and compare their
present barren, desolate condition, that the full meaning of mountain
forests becomes clear.
Where once there were thriving, prosperous cities with enormous
populations, now the goats graze or a few miserable peasants
carefully husband the water of a few miserable streams. The same
thing has happened in Mauritius, in the Cape Verde and Canary
Islands, and in many other places.
But men are now beginning to see how dangerous the destruction of
forests may be, and in many countries and especially in Britain, new
forests are being planted. Perhaps in time we may grow in Britain so
much timber that we shall gain something like £32,000,000 a year,
which is what we spend on imported woods.
At present plover, whaups, snipe, and grouse, or useless red deer,
inhabit what was once the Caledonian forest, and every thousand
acres of such land nowadays supports perhaps one shepherd and half
a gamekeeper. But when it is planted again with woodlands it will
afford a living to at least ten foresters, and surely a whole
gamekeeper as well.
In the lowlands of Scotland and in England one often discovers, in
walking over the hills, remains of cottages and farmhouses which have
now vanished. The people have gone into the towns, and the healthy
yeomen and farmers' boys have become weak-chested factory hands and
hooligans. Such sites of old farms can often be recognized by a
patch of nettles, and especially by eight or nine ash trees. These
were always planted near the houses to give a ready supply of wood
for spears. The ash, "for nothing ill," as Spenser puts it, would be
available also for repairing the handles of tools, carts, etc. Some
authorities say that it was the law of Scotland that these eight or
nine ash trees should be planted at every "farmtoon."
So also, when forests began to vanish in England, laws were made
to the effect that yew trees should be planted in every village
churchyard. Probably this was to ensure a good supply of bows for
the English archers, who, like the Scottish spears, were the best
soldiers of their kind in Europe.
[Illustration: A FOREST FIRE
Such fires frequently occur in New Zealand, and the Maoris have
to fly for their lives.]
So that if we try to compare the conditions of man and of the forests
in Great Britain from the earliest days, it would be something like
this:--
1. When the earliest inhabitants lived on shell-fish, seabirds' eggs,
nuts, and fruits, almost the whole country was covered by oak, Scotch
fir, or birch forests.
2. When man was a hunter of reindeer and other deer, horses, cattle,
and birds, he used much wood for fires and for building his lake
dwellings.
3. When man kept herds of swine to eat acorns, black cattle, goats,
and ponies, there would be many clearings and a great deal of open
wood in which the cattle roamed about.
4. When man grew corn and other plants, the forest vanished
altogether. Dr. Johnson said he scarcely saw a tree between Carlisle
and Edinburgh. Yet first the King, then the Barons, had their
parks and woodlands for preserving game. Moreover, the yews in the
churchyards of England, and the ash trees by the Scotch farmtoons and
peel-towers, were carefully looked after.
5. When great towns arose, and men became factory hands and steel
workers, rich men began to make plantations in the lowlands, and to
use the depopulated highlands for grouse moors and deer forests.
6. When men become wiser than they are now, it will be seen that
great forests are necessary on all waste-land and barren places, both
to keep a healthy country population and because it will pay.
CHAPTER V
FLOWERS
Man's ideas of the use of flowers--Sprengel's great
discovery--Insects, not man, consulted--Pollen carried to
set seed--Flowers and insects of the Whinstone Age--Coal
Age flowers--Monkey-puzzle times--Chalk flowers--Wind-blown
pollen--Extravagant expenditure of pollen in them--Flower of
the pine--Exploding flowers--Brilliant alpines--Intense life in
flowers--Colour contrasts--Lost bees--Evening flowers--Humming
birds and sunbirds--Kangaroo--Floral clocks--Ages of
flowers--How to get flowers all the year round--Ingenious
contrivances--Yucca and fig--Horrible-smelling flowers--Artistic
tastes of birds, insects, and man.
For many centuries flowers were considered as pleasing and attractive
decorations stuck about the world in the same way as they are put in
a drawing-room in order to give people pleasure. Very soon they were
found to be extremely useful in poetry, sometimes to point a moral
or disguise a sermon, like the primrose in _Peter Bell_, but more
generally to produce a good impression on the BELOVED OBJECT. Burns
puts the usual view of flowers very nicely in the following: "But I
will down yon river rove amang the woods sae green, and a' to pu' a
posie to my ain dear May." Possibly this is the meaning also in the
exquisite lines of Shakespeare about the pansy:--
"Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,--
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,--
And maidens call it, love-in-idleness."
Even if there is no particular meaning, the "little western flower"
gives point and beauty to the lines.
People only began to understand flowers about the year 1793, when
Christian Conrad Sprengel, Rector of Spandau, near Berlin, published
a very interesting work. He had discovered that the beauty of
flowers and their colour and shape were by no means intended solely
to please _human_ eyes, but that they were designed to attract and
allure the eyes of _insects_. Before his time there had been many
guesses. Indeed, Theophrastus (born 371 B.C., and often mentioned in
this work) seems to have quite well understood why flowers produce
pollen, and that the fruit would not set and form seed unless pollen
was carried to the female part of the flower. He mentions that the
Pistacio has both male and female plants, and that Palms only form
dates when the pollen is carried to the female tree. This experiment
with the Date-palm was tried in 1592 by an Italian (Alpino) in an
Egyptian tour, and the Englishman, Jacob Bobart, the Pole, Adam
Zaluzianski (the latter in the same year) confirmed the general idea.
Then in the year 1694 Rudolp Jacob Camerarius, a German, carried on
a few more experiments, but no real definite advance was made until
1793, in the very midst of the French Revolution.[25]
[25] The historical account by Bonnier, _Cours de Botanique_, is
very interesting and complete.
The great point of Sprengel's discovery was in its being an
intelligible explanation of the reason why flowers have bright
colours, scent, and honey. At his time and indeed for many years
afterwards, botanists looked on the stamens, petals, and other
parts of the flower exactly in the way that a stamp collector looks
at punctures and postmarks, that is without thinking about their
meaning. Now we find that they are always designed to fulfil a
perfectly definite purpose, and that all their details are contrived
accordingly.
This purpose is to carry the pollen from the stamens of one flower
to the stigma of another. The pollen can usually be recognized as
a yellowish or reddish dust formed in the stamens; this dust is
generally rubbed off on an insect's proboscis or on part of its body.
When the insect reaches another flower the pollen is scraped off by
a sticky or gummy stigmatic surface. When the pollen has been placed
on this surface it grows, germinates, and part of it unites with the
egg-cell of the young seed.
The latter is then, and not till then, able to become ripe and
mature. It may be compared to cross-breeding in animals, though the
process does not exactly correspond.
But all flowers do not require insects to carry their pollen. In
early geological periods we do not find any flowers like those that
now exist, nor in those early times were there any flies, bees, or
butterflies.
The cockroach seems to have existed in Silurian (whinstone) times,
and many gigantic and extraordinary insects lived in those damp
forests of ferns, club-moss, and horsetails, of which the remains
now form our British coalfields. Mayflies, plantbugs, and especially
dragonflies (some of them with wings two feet across) existed, but
none of these insects are of much use as pollen-carriers.
Even much later on, when screw pines, monkey-puzzle trees, ginkgos,
and bamboos formed the forests and woods of Europe, crickets and
earwigs existed; but it is not until that geological period in which
the chalk was formed (the Cretaceous age) that fossil plants like
most of those now familiar to us occur. These had flowers intended
for insects, and with the fossil plants we find the fossils of the
insects that visited them. Bees, butterflies, and ordinary flies
appeared upon the scene just as soon as there were flowers ready for
them. Mr. Scudder has even found the fossils of certain plants, and
with them the fossils of butterflies closely allied to the present
butterflies which now live on present trees allied to those fossils!
How then was the pollen of the first flowers carried?
It was in all probability blown by the wind or carried in water.
Even now poplars, alders, birches, and oaks rely chiefly upon the
wind to carry their pollen. These plants were amongst the first of
our modern flora to appear upon the earth. Some of them possess very
neat contrivances suited to the wind. The catkins of the alder, for
example, hang downwards, so that each little male flower is protected
from rain by a little scale or bract above it. The pollen is very
light, dusty, or powdery, so as to fly a long distance. The Scotch
fir (_Pinus sylvestris_) has male flowers in little cones. These are
upright, and the pollen of each stamen drops on to a small hollow on
the top of the stamen below. It is then blown away by the wind on a
fine dry day, but it is not allowed to get out in wet weather. It is
said that vast clouds of pine pollen occur in America, and that the
water of certain lakes becomes quite yellow and discoloured by it at
certain seasons. Each little particle of pollen has two minute caps
or air-balloons which give it buoyancy, so that it can float easily
immense distances.
A curious little herb, the Wall Pellitory, and another foreign
species, the Artillery plant, produces small explosions of pollen.
When it is touched, there is a little puff or cloud of dusty pollen.
Even the common Nettle does the same on fine dry days when it is in
full flower.
But of course this carrying of pollen by the wind is a very
expensive arrangement. It is so much a matter of pure chance that
a grain arrives at its right destination. Suppose that a flower
is giving out clouds of pollen, then the chance of a pollen grain
reaching a female flower only five feet away is very small, even if
the stigma of the female flower is a quarter of an inch in diameter.
The chance of pollen reaching it will only be about 1 to 1440; 1439
pollen grains will be wasted[26] for every one that reaches the
stigma. But even this is not quite a fair calculation, for if the
female flower is not down wind, none will reach it at all!
[26] The pollen from the great pine forests of the Italian Alps
blown up to the snow becomes used in nourishing the Pink or
Red Snow Algæ, which colours it a delicate rose-pink. In lower
grounds all such pollen becomes, like leaf-mould, a manure for
other plants. There is no _waste_, strictly speaking.
But if an insect goes to the catkin of an alder or any other male
flower, it will see the red points of the stigma and will very likely
go there at once. This shows how much more reasonable and efficient
insects will be.
The immense majority of flowers are, in fact, purple, blue, red,
yellow, or white, so that they are conspicuous, and stand clearly
out against the green of their leaves. It is well known to all who
have arranged flowers for the table that the green of the leaves of
different plants varies greatly in its shade and tint. Many greens do
not match special flowers at all, but it is the fact that the green
of any one plant is always quite harmonious, and agrees well with its
own flowers!
Besides varied and beautiful colours, sweet or strong scents and
supplies of honey or nectar are provided for insects.
How did flowers manage to produce all these attractions? No one has
answered that question. We know in a general sort of way that the
parts of flowers are modified leaves, and that petals and stamens
become yellowish or pure white because they do not form green
colouring matter like ordinary leaves.
It is also known that on the Alps or on any high mountain, where the
air is pure and the sun strong, flowers become rich, brilliant, and
vivid. In such places as the "Jardin" near Mont Blanc, the pure,
deep, rich blue of gentians, the crimsons, reds, and purples of other
flowers, impress the most casual and unobservant traveller. "White
and red, yellow and blue, brown and green stand side by side on a
hand's breadth of space." In that strong mountain air, also, perfumes
are stronger, purer, and of finer quality than in the lowlands. There
is a more intense, active, and vigorous life going on in flowers than
is required by the more prosaic industries in other parts of a plant.
Flowers also often live at a higher temperature than the surrounding
air.
Kerner has described how the little flowers of Soldanella penetrate
the snow by actually melting a passage for themselves through it (see
p. 103).
This high temperature and vigorous life, shown also by the rapid
transpiration of flowers,[27] seems to hint that colours and perfumes
appear in consequence of rapid chemical transformations.[28]
[27] _Pharmaceutical Journal_, May 20th, 1899.
[28] Buscalioni e Traverso, _Atti del Ist. Bot. di Pavia_, vol.
10, 1904.
It was, of course, by degrees that the extraordinary variation
in colour, which exists in nature, came about. No doubt bees,
bumble-bees, wasps, and the more intelligent flies were improved and
developed æsthetically. We can almost tell by looking at a flower
what sort of insect probably visits it.
Not only so, but there are the neatest imaginable contrasts and
blends of colour. The common Bluebeard Salvia, e.g., has the
uppermost leaves (three-quarters to an inch long) of a deep, rich,
blue-purple, which the roving Bumble-bee will see from a long way
off. The Bumble-bee flies to this great splash of her favourite
hue and for a second buzzes angrily, then she notes the small
_bright-blue_ patches on the upper lips of the small flowers below
the leaves which are set off by _white_ hairs of the upper and
_yellow_ hairs of the lower lip.
That bees really do understand and are guided by colour may be
gathered from the following unfortunate accident. A certain hive
of bees which had been brought up in a blue-striped skep became
accidentally scattered. They tried to find their way back to their
old home, but many strayed, and it was noticed that they had tried to
enter the doors of every blue hive, which were strewn with the bodies
of the unfortunate intruders.[29]
[29] Von Buttel, _Respen_.
The rich blue-purple of Aconite, the dark strong red of the Woundwort
(_Stachys silvatica_) are specially beloved by bumble-bees and
hive-bees. Butterflies like any bright colour. Those flies which have
a long, sucking proboscis, resemble the bees in their tastes, but all
these insects are quite capable of finding out where they can get
honey most easily, and visit flowers whatever the colour may be.
A very strange and wonderful fact is that quite a number of plants
prefer the dark, or rather the dim, mysterious light of the gloaming.
Then the Honeysuckle, the Evening Campion, the Night-scented Stock,
Tobacco, and Schizopetalon give out their strongest scent and open
out their white flowers as widely as possible. That is because they
wish to attract the owlet moth and others which come out at this
time, when there are fewer enemies and more security. If you look
at any of these moth-flowers at mid-day, they are for the most part
closed up, they are not particularly attractive, and they are giving
out very little scent. The contrast to their condition in the evening
is most striking.
Not only insects but birds are used to carry pollen. The gorgeous
little humming birds, with their brilliant metallic crimson,
bronze-green, and purple, are of the greatest importance in the New
World. In the Old World they are replaced by the tiny _Nectarinidæ_
or Sunbirds, with breastplates almost as exquisitely jewelled. They
prefer the most gorgeous reds and scarlets, such as that of _Salvia
horminum_, _Lobelia cardinalis_, and the like. Fuchsias are regularly
visited by them in Tierra del Fuego, where sometimes they may be seen
busily at work during a shower of snow. In South Africa they seize
the stem of a Redhot Poker (_Tritoma_) (_Kniphofia macowanii_), and
twisting their little heads round, they suck the honey from every
blossom in succession. Still more interesting it is to see them
perched on the edge of one of those great tumbler-like heads of
Protea (e.g. _P. incompta_) and dipping their slender curved beaks
repeatedly into the flowers. Then the little male bird will alight
on a branch and make the most elaborate preparation for a song of
triumph. Although helped out by fluttering of wings and much display
of feathers and tail, the song is a very faint cheep of the feeblest
description, and very difficult to hear.
Not only birds but even animals are sometimes called into the
service. There is a group of small mammals which live on the honey of
flowers. Even the Kangaroo is said to occasionally take a draught of
nectar from some of the cup-like flowers of the Australian Dryandra
(_Proteaceae_).
But one of the most interesting and extraordinary facts is the
manner in which flowers fit in. They begin early in the morning: one
blossom opens out and then another; all endeavouring to catch the
attention of some passing insect. _Allionia violacea_ opens at three
or four a.m., and closes about eleven or twelve. Some wild Roses open
about four or five in the morning, as well as the Chicory, Roemeria,
etc. Virginian Spiderwort, Dandelion, and Nightshade are ready at
six in the morning. A great many (Buttercups, White Water Lily,
etc.) are open by seven a.m. Most of these early flowers are shut at
noon. Others begin to close about three or four in the afternoon.
The regular evening moth-flowers open about six p.m., though _Cactus
grandiflorus_ does not open till nine or ten p.m., and closes at
midnight.[30] Extraordinary as these variations seem, they are easily
explained. Some open early because there are then few competitors. By
far the greater number are open from nine a.m. till one or two p.m.,
because those hours are the favourite working time of most insects.
[30] Linnæus and many others have made Floral Clocks. Kerner,
_Natural History of Plants_, describes the opening and closing of
flowers very fully.
Flowers live for very different periods. That of the Wheat only lasts
for fifteen or twenty minutes (its pollen is carried by wind), and
is then over. There are others, Hibiscus and Calandrinia, which only
remain open for three or four hours, but a Foxglove will last six
days, a Cyclamen ten days, whilst Orchids may last for from thirty
to eighty days (_Cypripedium villosum_, seventy days, _Odontoglossum
Rossii_, eighty days).
Thus the sun every day through the summer, as he calls into life new
swarms of insects, sees at every hour of the day new flowers opening
their petals to his genial warmth and ready for the new bees and
flies. The development of the flower and that of its insect are
probably simultaneous, and equally regulated by the sun's warmth.
Moreover the opening periods do not merely fit in during the day, but
each flower has its own special month, and even in Scotland there is
no month in which some flower may not be found in bloom. Any stray
wandering insect can get its draught of honey at any season of the
year.
This is a matter of some importance for those who keep bees, and
the following list may be of some use. _February_: _Crocus vernus_,
Snowdrop, Black Hellebore, and Hazel. _March_: The preceding, _Arabis
alpina_, Bulbocodium, _Cornus mascula_, _Helleborus foetidus_, Giant
Coltsfoot, Gooseberry, various species of Prunus and Pyrus, Willow.
_April_: The preceding as well as _Adonis vernalis_, _Barbarea
vulgaris_, _Brassica napus_.
It is not worth while noting those that bloom from May to September,
for there are hundreds of good bee-flowers in these months. In
_October_: Borage, Echium, Sunflowers, _Lycium europæum_, _Malope
grandiflora_, Catmint, Tobacco, Ocimum, Origanum, _Phacelia
tanacetifolia_, and others. Most of these last into November.[31]
In December and January very few plants are in bloom. The following
have been noted at Edinburgh Botanical Gardens: _Dondia epipactis_,
_Tussilago fragrans_, Snowdrop, _Geum aureum_, Hepatica, _Primula
acaulis_, _P. veris_, _Aubrietia deltoidea_, _Crocus imperati_, _C.
suaveolens_, _Erica herbacea alba_, Helleborus (3 species), _Polygala
chamaebuxus_, _Andromeda floribunda_; also Sir H. Maxwell[32]
mentions _Azara integrifolia_, _Hamamelis_ _arborea_, and
_Chimonanthus fragrans_. Of wild plants, Chickweed, Whin or Furze,
_Lamium purpureum_, and Dandelion can generally be found in the depth
of winter.
[31] Huck, _Unsere Honig u. Bienenpflanzen_. These are drawn up
for Germany, and cannot be warranted for this country.
[32] _Memories of the Months._
The contrivances which can be found in flowers, and by which the
insect is forced to enter exactly along the proper path, are endless.
Each flower has some little peculiarity of its own which can only
be understood by thoroughly examining the plant itself. It is not
therefore possible to do justice to the ingenuity of flowers in
a work of this sort. There are orchids which throw their insect
visitors into a bath of water, so that they have to crawl with wet
wings up a certain path where they touch the pollen masses and
stigma; others which hurl their pollen masses at the visitor. In the
Asclepiads a groove is provided into which the leg of the insect
slips, so that it has to struggle to get its foot out, and must
carry off the pollen masses, though it often fails and leaves its
leg behind. Some Arums and Aristolochias have large traps in which
they imprison the insects, and only let them go when they are sure
to be pollen-dusted. In one of these flowers there are transparent
spots on the large petal-prison, which so attract the insects that
they remain opposite them instead of flying out (just as flies do
on a window-pane). Salvia has a stamen which is like a see-saw on a
support; the bee has to lift up one end, which brings the other with
its pollen flat down on to its back. The Barberry has a sensitive
spot on its stamen; when the insect touches the spot, the stamen
springs up suddenly and showers pollen upon it. In Mimulus the two
flaps of the stigma close up as soon as they are touched, which will
be when they have scraped off any pollen; then when the creature
withdraws, covered with the flower's own pollen, none of this can be
left on its own stigma, as this is shut up.
But instead of reading, one should watch a bumble-bee visiting the
Foxglove flowers. The sight of her busily thrusting her great hairy
body into the bell, which almost exactly fits her shape, while she
gurgles with satisfaction, will teach the reader far more about
the romance of flowers than many pages of description. If he then
carefully examines the flower, he will see how the honey, the arched
converging stamens, and the style, are placed exactly in the right
place and where they will have the most effect.[33]
[33] Compare Shelley, who watched all day "the yellow bees in
the ivy bloom," but he "did not heed what things they be." Moreover,
though he appreciated the general spirit of the bee, it is very
unlikely that he saw any of them on the Ivy!
One orchid, _Angraecum sesquipedale_, has a spur eighteen inches
long, and the great Darwin suggested that there must be an insect
somewhere with a tube long enough to reach the honey. Such an insect,
a large moth, was actually brought home from Madagascar, the place
where this orchid occurs, after a lapse of many years!
Perhaps more remarkable than anything else are such cases as the
Yucca and the Yucca-moth or the Fig-wasp and the Fig.
The Yucca is a fine lily-like plant resembling the Aloes in general
appearance. A particular sort of moth lives entirely upon the Yucca.
When the flowers open, the mother-moth kneads up a ball of pollen and
places an egg inside. This ball she thrusts down the style into the
ovary of the flower. There a grub develops from the egg and eats the
pollen, yet some of this pollen fertilizes the young seeds. If Yuccas
died out the moth would be exterminated. If the moths were destroyed,
no Yuccas would ever set their seed!
The Fig has two sorts of flower. The one (caprifig) produces only
male or pollen-yielding flowers. The other is the true edible fig.
Inside the caprifig are the grubs of the fig-wasp, which rejoice in
the name of _Blastophaga grossorum_. When grown up these force their
way out of the caprifig and, flying to the true fig, the mother-wasp
lays her eggs in certain flowers which have been apparently
specially modified for the purpose. At the same time she covers the
ordinary flowers with pollen from the caprifig. Her progeny return
to the caprifig. Here again the future of a valuable fruit-tree
is absolutely bound up with the fortunes of a tiny and in no way
attractive wasp!
Another very remarkable case is that of those flowers (Stapelia,
etc.), which in colour and general marking closely resemble decaying
meat or other objectionable substances. Very often the smell of such
flowers is exceedingly strong, and resembles the ordinary smell of
putrid matter. In one case an artist employed to paint the flower had
to use a glass bell, which was put over it. He could only lift it for
a second or two at intervals in order to see the exact colour, before
the horrible odour obliged him to cover it over again. Blowflies and
others, which are in the habit of resorting to such substances, seek
out these flowers in great numbers and lay their eggs upon them. In
so doing they carry the pollen.
There are certain fungi which have quite as horrible a smell, and
some of them also resemble decaying animal matter. These are most
eagerly sought out by the same blow-and other flies (bright green
lucilias, yellow-brown scatophagas, bluebottles, etc.). But in the
case of these fungi it is the spores, not pollen, which is carried by
the insect.
The effect of this flowery sort of life is abundantly evident in
the structure of the insects themselves. Their mouth has been most
wonderfully modified into a complex sucking apparatus; their legs
have been transformed to act as pollen-carrying baskets, and the
habits and tastes of the insects have been modified in the most
extraordinary way.
Perhaps also the association of bright colours with a very pleasant
sensation--that of a full, satisfying meal--has raised the artistic
sensibilities of butterflies, sunbirds, humming birds, etc. For
certainly these flower-haunting birds and butterflies are remarkable
for their brilliant colouring. This has probably been brought about
by the preference of the females for the most brilliantly coloured
male butterflies and humming birds.
At any rate bright reds and blues are common to both bird or insect
and to the flowers that they frequent. But the most curious point of
this whole question lies in the fact that human beings of all grades,
South Sea Islanders, the Ancient Greeks, Peruvians, Japanese, Romans,
as well as the Parisians and Londoners of to-day, appreciate the
beauty of colouring and grace of form which are so obvious in the
world of flowers.
Yet man has had nothing whatever to do with the selection of either
these colours or shapes. Many of those which he considers most
precious (such as the weird, spotted, and outlandish Orchids of
Madagascar and South America) have very likely scarcely ever been
seen by man at all. It is to the artistic eye of the honey-bee,
bumble-bee, butterfly, and of the humming bird and sunbird, that we
owe these exquisite colours. The grace and beauty of outline probably
depend upon their perfect symmetry and on the perfect suitability of
every curve to its purpose.
Therefore it seems that the eyes of man, whether savage or civilized,
are pleased and comforted by these same colours that delight the
little brains of insects and birds.
This is indeed a mysterious fact.
CHAPTER VI
ON UNDERGROUND LIFE
Mother-earth--Quarries and Chalk-pits--Wandering atoms--The
soil or dirt--Populations of Worms, Birds, Germs--Fairy
Rings--Roots miles long--How roots find their way--How they
do the right thing and seek only what is good for them--Root
versus stones--Roots which haul bulbs about--Bishopsweed--Wild
Garlic--Dandelion, Plantain--Solomon's Seal--Roots throwing down
walls--Strength of a seedling root.
The word "Adam" means red earth. Poets and essayists still regularly
write about Mother-Earth and, in so doing, admit one of the most
interesting and wonderful facts in Nature.
If you go to some quarry or cliff where a section has been cut,
laying bare the original rock below; then (with Hugh Miller) you may
reflect on the extraordinary value of those few inches of soil which
support the growth of all our trees and of all our cultivated plants.
It is probable that plant-roots _never_ go deeper than about thirty
feet. All our food, our energy, and activity depend therefore on this
thinnest surface-layer of an earth which is 8000 miles in diameter.
But in most places the depth of true soil is far less than thirty
feet, generally it is not more than thirty inches, and by far the
most valuable part of it is a very thin layer five or six inches
thick.
It is in this true soil that the roots gain their nourishment, and
not only roots, for whole populations of worms, of germs, of
insects, even of birds and the higher animals, live upon it. To
it return the dead leaves, the bodies of dead insects, and waste
products of all kinds. Within it, they are broken to pieces and
worked up again by the roots of other plants in order to form
new leaves, new insects, and food for bird and beast. Just as in
engine-works, you may see old engines, wheels, and scrap-iron being
smashed into pieces; they are melted down and again worked up into
engines of some improved design.
[Illustration: THRASHING CORN IN CHILE
Mares are driven at the gallop round the circle, and so beat the
corn out of the ear with their hoofs. They do this for twenty
minutes at a time, and are then made to go the other way round.]
On a chalk-cliff, which dates from the long-distant Cretaceous
period, the entire thickness formed by the yearly work of plants for
millions and millions of years is often less than a foot in depth,
and probably only four to five inches are true soil.
But this is an exceptionally thin stratum, although it is capable of
producing rich turf, fat snails, and excellent mutton. In peat-mosses
and in those buried forests which form the coalfields, vegetable
matter may accumulate in deposits of thirty feet of coal. Yet these
stores of carbonaceous matter seem to be at first sight miserly and
selfish, at least from a vegetable point of view.
They resemble the gold and silver withdrawn from circulation in the
world by some Hindoo miser and buried deep within the earth. Yet
somebody is pretty certain to find out and make use of such stores
eventually.
In the case of the peat and coalfields, an animal of sufficient
intelligence to utilize them has already been produced, and now they
are used by man as fuel.
It is very important to remember that the soil is a sort of last home
to which the particles of carbon, of nitrate, and minerals always
return after their wanderings in the bodies of plants, of insects, or
of other animals. They probably rest but a short time before they
again set off on new adventures.
One might say the same of the water, and of the carbonic acid gas
and oxygen of the atmosphere, for the water, falling as rain upon
the earth, trickles down to the underground water-level. Then it
immediately begins to rise up between the particles of earth and is
promptly caught and sucked in by the roots, only to be again given
out by their leaves. The carbonic acid gas and oxygen also are always
entering and leaving the foliage. Even the nitrogen of the air is not
left alone in the atmosphere. There are small germs in the soil which
are able to get hold of it and make it into valuable nitrates.
More curious still is the fact that electric charges can be used
to change the comparatively useless air-nitrogen into useful
manures. Probably the farmer will some day make his own nitrates by
electricity.
The structure of the soil or earth is a most interesting and romantic
part of botany. It is true that a "radical" disposition is necessary
if one is to go to the root of the matter, but, unless we do this, it
is impossible to realize the romance of roots.
Down below is the unaltered rock, sand, or clay. Next above it comes
the subsoil, which consists of fragments of the rock below, or of
sand, clay, etc., more or less altered by deep-going roots. Even in
this subsoil, bacteria or germs may be at work, and the burrows of
worms and insects often extend to it. Next above the subsoil comes
the true soil; there is plenty of the stones, soil, sand, or whatever
it may be that constitutes the subsoil, but its richness consists
in its contents of valuable minerals, and especially of broken-up
leaves, corpses of insects, and manure. Above this true soil are
first the leaf-mould of two years ago, then that of the year before
last, and _on the top_ is the leaf-mould and other decayed products
of last winter.
All these upper layers are full of life and activity, which probably
goes on vigorously all the year round.
The population of worms is especially important. The worm is a
voracious and gluttonous creature: it is for ever swallowing bits
of leaves and rich soil. Inside its body there are lime-glands
which act upon the vegetable food and improve its quality as
manure. The worm comes up to the surface at night or early morning
and leaves the worm-casts upon it. The rain then washes the rich,
finely-divided matter of the casts down into the soil again. It is
said that there are about 160,000 worms at work in an acre of good
soil. Yet their life is full of danger. A keen-eyed population of
blackbirds, thrushes, starlings, peewits (plover), and partridges
are always watching for and preying upon the poor worm. Even in his
burrows, which may be six feet deep, he is not safe, for the mole
(_moudiewarp_) is also both very hungry and very active, and delights
in eating him.
In the soil also and even deeper in the subsoil are many insects;
some hibernate in the winter, and at other times actively gnaw the
roots of plants or devour dead leaves and twigs (see Chapter xxiii.).
Thus there are many burrows and holes, so that there is no want of
air in the soil, which is indeed necessary both for these creatures
and also for the roots of the plants.
Rain comes down through the soil, carrying with it carbonic acid,
mineral salts, and also germs or bacteria, which form perhaps the
most important population of all.
No work could be carried on without their help; it is bacteria which,
at every stage of decay, assist in breaking up leaves, twigs,
insects' bodies, worm-casts, and other manures. The way in which they
work is too difficult to explain here, but to get an idea of the
romance of the underground world one must try to picture to oneself
these swarms and myriads of germs and bacteria all incessantly and
busily engaged at their several duties. In the uppermost layers there
are probably in a single cubic inch of good soil from 54,000,000 to
400,000,000 of these microbes. Many are absolutely necessary to the
harvest; a few may be of little importance, but there are sure to be
some of those dangerous sorts which might devastate a continent with
disease in a single summer.
There are also quantities of other fungi. The fairy rings which one
sees year after year in widening circles of bright, fresh green
are the work, not of fairy footsteps, but of an underground fungus
(_Marasmius oreades_ and others). Its threads are thin, white, and
delicate; they attack the roots of grasses, etc., on the outer side
of the ring. It is therefore on this outer side yellow, dry, and more
or less withered. On the inner side, however, the grass is luxuriant
and of a rich bright green. Here the fungus has died off, and its
remains, as well as those of the plants which it destroyed, form a
rich manure for the new grass following on its track. Every year
the ring widens; at a certain time in summer one sees the irregular
line of mushroom-like fungi which are formed by the destructive
underground absorbing threads. This, however, is but one of the
underground fungi. There are many kinds; some are useful, others are
very destructive.
Upon the upper surface of the soil there falls not only rain, but
another sort of rain consisting of seeds, dead leaves, insects'
bodies, fungus spores, bacteria, and dust.
Every year when the ploughman turns the sod there is a revolution in
the whole of these populations.
So far nothing has been said about the roots themselves, which
penetrate, explore, and exploit all these layers of dead leaves,
soil, and subsoil.
The length of roots produced is very much greater than any one would
suppose. A one-year-old Scotch fir seedling when grown in sand
produced in a season a total length (branches, etc.) of no less than
thirty-six feet of root. The total surface of this root system was
estimated to be about twenty-three square inches. This little Scotch
fir after six months' growth was laying under contribution a cone of
earth twenty to thirty inches deep and with a surface of 222 square
inches. In certain kinds of corn the same author estimated the total
length of the roots as from 1500 to 1800 feet. S. Clark estimated the
length of the roots of a large cucumber plant as amounting to 25,000
yards (fifteen miles), and made out that it was occupying a whole
cubic yard of ground.
Clover roots are said to go down to depths of six or nine feet, but
many weeds go deeper still. Coltsfoot, for instance, may be found,
according to a friend of mine, living at a depth of twenty spades. In
Egypt and other places the roots of acacias go down to twenty feet or
even further, so that they can tap the water supplies, which are at a
great depth.
But a still more extraordinary fact is the manner in which the
root-branches arrange to grow in such a way that they search every
part of the soil.
The main root in many plants grows straight down, or as nearly as it
can do so. Its branches are inclined downwards at a quite definite
angle which is often 30°-45° to the surface. Moreover, these branches
come off in quite a regular way. Each keeps growing in its own
special direction to the east, south-east, or west, or whatever it
may be, of its parent root.
Have they some extraordinary sense of the direction of the points
of the compass? It is said that if a side root, which is growing,
say for instance downwards and westwards, is turned in some other
direction, it will after a time resume its original westerly voyage.
This fact is a most extraordinary one, if true, but it can scarcely
be said that it has been proved, and, as will be shown later, there
are other curious facts in the behaviour of roots which might explain
the experiment without assuming that roots know the points of the
compass.
If one cuts a branch of willow and plants it upside down in the
earth, it will very likely take root and grow. Its appearance will
be most extraordinary, for the roots will grow downwards, whilst the
branches, instead of growing in the direction of the old branches,
turn round and grow upwards.[34]
[34] Kerner and Oliver, _l.c._, vol. 1, p. 88.
Why do roots generally grow downwards? The fact is so familiar that
the difficulty of answering does not, at first sight, seem so great
as it really is.
Pfeffer, the great physiologist, has the following interesting
comparison. Suppose a man is trying to find his way in the dark, then
a single lingering ray of light gives him an impulse to walk towards
it.[35] So our root, also in the dark, feels the pull of gravity and
endeavours to grow downwards. Others have compared the direction of
gravity to the sailor's compass, and suppose that the root is guided
in the same sort of way.
[35] _Annals of Botany_, 1904.
But a young, vigorous root making or forcing its way in darkness
through stones and heavy earth is a most interesting and fascinating
study.
There are the most extraordinary coincidences in its behaviour. It
has the property of always doing exactly the right thing in any
emergency.
It is of course intended to keep below the ground and in the dark.
So we find that if roots are uncovered, they will turn away from the
light and burrow into the earth again. They avoid light just as a
worm would do.
Roots are of course intended to absorb or suck in water. If there is
a drain in the soil or a place where water collects, the roots will
grow towards that place. Very often they form a dense spongy mass of
fibres which may almost choke the drain. Along a riverside one can
often find great fibrous masses of tree roots near the water. But how
does the root learn that the water is there and turn away from its
original track to find it? It certainly does so!
Then again, Herr Lilienfeld has recently shown that roots seem able
to turn away from poisonous materials in the soil and to seek out and
grow towards valuable and nutritious substances. He found that peas,
beans, sunflower, and other roots were very sensitive to different
substances in the soil, and were directly attracted by what was good
for them and turned aside from what was unwholesome.
This property and the power of growing towards water probably explain
the mysterious sense of direction alluded to above, for roots will
take a line which has not been exhausted by their neighbours.[36]
[36] Lilienfeld, _Beihefte z. Botan. Centralblatt_, Band XIV.,
abth 1, pp. 131-212. The facts were denied by Newcombe and
Rhodes, _Bot. Gazette_, 36, 1904.
But of all these wonderful properties, the most remarkable is the way
in which roots find their way past stones and other obstacles in the
soil. They insinuate themselves into winding cracks and crawl round
stones with an ingenuity that makes one wonder if they can possibly
be without some sort of intelligence.
It is the very tip or end of the young root that seems to be
responsible; for if, in the course of its journeyings underground, it
should strike a stone or something hard, the root does not grow on
and flatten itself.
But some sort of message is sent back from the tip to the growing
part which is a short distance behind it. After this message has
been received, the growing part begins to curve sideways, so that
the tip is brought clear of the obstacle and can probably proceed
triumphantly upon its way. The inexplicable part is that the growing
part which curves has never been touched at all, but simply answers
to the message from the tip.[37]
[37] If the growing part itself touches a stone it curves round
the stone, not away from it--the reverse of the reaction at the
tip!
This is perhaps the most reasonable and intelligent behaviour found
in the whole vegetable world, and it is not surprising that Darwin
compared the root-tip to a brain.
These extraordinary responses fill one with astonishment, but
there are others still more interesting and remarkable. It will be
remembered that we have already shown how different the soil is at
different levels. The subsoil, soil, and uppermost layers are all
quite different from one another.
This may explain why it is that many plants seem to prefer to develop
their roots at one particular depth below the surface. Not only so,
but they find their own favourite level in the most persevering way.
If, for instance, you sow a barley-corn at too great a depth, the
seed germinates and forms a few roots, but it immediately sends out a
stem which grows upwards towards the light. As soon as this stem has
reached the proper place, which is just below the surface, there is
an enormous development of roots, which begin to search and explore
their favourite stratum of soil.[38]
[38] Pfeffer, _l.c._, p. 139.
In some few cases one can see in a dim sort of way the reason for the
level which certain plants prefer. Thus the underground stems of the
common Thistle, which are very long and fleshy, are found just a few
inches below the level usually reached by plough or spade. This makes
it very difficult to tear them out. Even if grubbers with long spikes
which reach as deep as these buried stems are driven through the
ground, it generally happens that the stems are only cut in pieces
and not dragged up. These hardy weeds are not much injured by little
accidents of this kind, for each separate bit will form upright
thistle stems next year. In fact if one cuts this fleshy subterranean
runner of the Thistle into pieces a quarter of an inch long, each
piece will probably become a Thistle.
Sometimes indeed these weeds are carried from one field to another
by pieces of them sticking in the very machines which are used to
eradicate them.
The Bishopsweed is one of the hardest cases. The writer was once
ambitious enough to try to dig up an entire plant of this horrid
weed. The first foot or so revealed no sign of the end of the
branching runners, and it was not until a hole about four feet deep
and five feet across had been excavated that there was any sign of an
end to the plant.
When it was at last removed, the original deeply buried stem was
found to give off branches which again branched in a most complicated
manner, until almost every green shoot of Bishopsweed[39] within a
space six feet in diameter was seen to be really a branch of this
one original plant! So to eradicate the plant it would have been
necessary to dig over the whole garden to a depth of at least five or
six feet.
[39] This weed is a cure for gout, and seems to have been called
Bishopsweed because it was supposed that gout was a common
ailment of bishops!
How did the stem get down to such a depth below the surface? This is
one of the most curious stories in plant life, and the process which
we shall now try to describe has only been explained within the last
few years.[40]
[40] By the classical researches of Rimbach.
The seed of the Wild Garlic (_Allium ursinum_) lies at first upon the
surface of the ground, but it is soon buried by a growth of the stalk
of the seed-leaf, which pushes the germ down below the earth. As soon
as it is buried, roots are formed and pass obliquely downwards, where
they become fixed by forming root-hairs all round themselves. These
root-hairs round every root hold its tip firmly in the earth; then
these same roots contract or shorten, which of course hauls down the
root a little deeper in the earth. One might compare it to a few men
hauling down a balloon by ropes attached to the car. About September
to November, roots of quite a different character are formed; these
explore the surrounding soil and gather in food and moisture.
Then the roots rest during the winter, when the buds and young leaves
are being formed. In April the buds begin to push out their leaves
and a new ring of roots appear. These April roots are quite different
from the September ones. They again fix themselves firmly and then
contract, becoming fully a third shorter than they were originally.
The bulb is dragged down still deeper below the surface. It flowers
in May and fruits in June and July. Then in September the same
series of operations begins again. The process goes on until the
plant is three to five inches below the ground.
It follows from all this, that every year the roots find new ground
to explore and utilize. Nor is the Wild Garlic at all exceptional in
this respect. A great many plants have roots which contract and drag
the bulb or stem after them deeper into the earth. Something of the
same sort happens, for instance, to Bramble branches. They arch or
droop over, when growing, so that the end touches the earth. On the
underside of the tip, as soon as it begins to rest on the ground,
roots are formed. These roots make their way into the ground, and
then, when fixed, they shorten or contract, so that the end of the
branch is dragged down to a depth of several inches. After this has
happened the old branch generally dies away, and a young, vigorous
Bramble develops from its buried tip.
Raspberry branches also are often buried; their roots become coiled
or rolled in a very curious manner. The end of the root becomes
firmly attached in the soil, and then the rest of it revolves like a
tendril so as to draw the stem deeper into the earth.[41]
[41] Scott Elliot and Fingland, _Trans. Nat. Hist. Soc. Glasgow_,
vol. 5, New Series, part ii., 1897-8.
On any ordinary roadside in the country one is sure to find the
rosettes of the common Dandelion and of the Rats-tail Plantain
(_Plantago major_). These are two of the most interesting plants in
the world, although they are vulgarly common. How is it that their
leaves are always at the level of the ground? The stem is always
growing upwards; every year fresh circles of leaves are formed above
the older ones. Yet the crown of the stem is never so much raised up
above the ground that the toe of a boot would be likely to knock it
off. It is always kept so deep in the earth, that it is by no means
easy to kick or "howk" the crown out of the ground.
The Dandelion root contracts very strongly at the end of the season,
and by this shortening or contraction keeps its leaves just at the
soil level. The Plantain sends out about forty to sixty oblique
downward-growing roots, which fix themselves in the soil by throwing
out branch roots. These forty to sixty roots are at first about ten
inches long, but, as soon as they are firmly attached, they contract,
and pull the stem with its crown of leaves about one-third of an inch
deeper. This is just enough to keep the leaves flat on the ground and
to prevent any possible injury from passers-by.
So that in finding their favourite level in the soil, plants are
often pulled or hauled about by the roots. But they are not always
moved by the roots. Even though buried in darkness, they seem able in
some way to tell when they are in the most favourable position.
Every gardener knows that Autumn Crocus and other bulbs do not remain
in the same position. They wander below ground in a curious and
inexplicable fashion.
The Solomon's Seal has an underground, fleshy stem, which prefers to
grow at a definite depth. If it is planted close to the surface, then
the point of the next year's little fleshy bud turns downwards; next
year it again turns downwards, and so on every year, until the stem
has reached its proper depth. Then it grows horizontally. Similarly,
if it is planted too deep it grows upwards.
Thus if one wishes to realize the underground life of plants, one
must picture to oneself:--
1. The usual descending roots, whose system of branching may be
compared to the ordinary branching above ground. It is often not
unlike the reflection in water of the tree itself, such as one might
see on a fine winter's day along the shore of some still lake.
2. The bold, exploring, horizontal runners of Couchgrass, Thistle,
Bishopsweed, etc., vigorously pushing their way at a depth too great
for the gardener's spade.
3. All sorts of bulbs, runners, and roots being slowly hauled or
dragged about till they get into exactly the right position, but
never remaining for two years in exactly the same place. All have
their favourite depth[42]--
[42] See Rimbach's researches.
Herb Paris 2/3 to 1-3/4 inches deep.
Solomon's Seal 1-1/3 to 2-1/3 " "
Cuckoo Pint (_Arum maculatum_) 2 to 4 " "
Colchicum (Autumn Crocus) 3-1/3 to 5-1/3 " "
Asparagus 6-3/8 to 13-1/8 " "
The water evaporating on the surface of the soil must, as it rises
from the permanent water-level below, pass the gauntlet of all
these thirsty rootlets and their hairs. Tree-roots will be ready to
intercept it at ten feet depth, many herbaceous plants will suck it
in at depths of five to six feet, and in the upper layers of soil it
will have to pass root-system after root-system from Asparagus to
Paris, so that very little will be lost.
Perhaps of more importance are the bacteria-germs, and dissolved
mineral salts in the rainwater as it trickles down from the surface.
The soil particle acts as a filter: at every inch of the descent some
of the bacteria and salts will be left, so that by the time the level
of Asparagus has been reached there will be exceedingly few, and the
water is comparatively speaking pure. The effect of this vigorous
underground life is often visible on the surface. Roots, and
particularly tree-roots, are often extraordinarily strong. Kerner, in
his invaluable _Natural History of Plants_, has a beautiful picture
of a young larch tree which had grown in a fissure of a huge boulder.
In attempting to grow, the root had forced up part of this stone. It
was estimated that it had lifted a weight of 3000 lb., though it was
only some ten inches in diameter.
Along a dry-stone wall, or even near houses, the growth of tree-roots
very often damages the entire wall, which may be entirely overthrown
if the tree is too near. The force of the growth of the roots is so
great that even a six-foot stone wall cannot keep them down.
Quite a young seedling root, in forcing itself through the soil, may
exercise a pressure of two-thirds to four-fifths of a pound!
This is of course necessary, if one remembers that it has to drive
itself through the earth, pushing aside and compressing the earth
particles along its course.
CHAPTER VII
HIGH MOUNTAINS, ARCTIC SNOWS
The life of a cherry tree--Cherries in March--Flowering of
gorse--Chickweed's descendants--Forest fires in Africa--Spring
passing from Italy to the frozen North--Life in the
Arctic--Dwarfs--Snow-melting soldanellas--Highland Arctic-Alpine
plants--Their history--Arctic Britain--Edelweiss--An Alpine
garden.
It is impossible to understand and very difficult to explain the sort
of life and consciousness which is enjoyed by plants.
That they do live is obvious; we know instinctively that they enjoy
fine weather in summer and gentle showers in spring, but we cannot
prove it.
Much of a plant's life is concealed and hidden from us. Even the few
explanations which have been given by certain observers are by no
means generally accepted.
This is true even as regards the case of the Cherry tree, which
has been experimented with, and fought over and argued about by
botanists, and yet we only know a very little about its inner life.
When the leaves fall in autumn, next season's buds are already formed
and are then about one-eighth of their full size. At this time the
tree contains enormous quantities of food-stores, for the whole
season's work of the leaves has been accumulating until this moment.
During the long winter's "sleep" the tree is by no means at rest. It
is arranging and packing up those stores in the safest place and in
the most convenient form.
Just as a bear, before it retires to sleep during the winter, takes
care to get as fat as possible, so the Cherry turns its starch to
fat, and stores it away in the innermost and least exposed parts of
the tree, that is in the central wood. As soon as the winter ends,
and indeed _before_ it has ended, preparations are beginning for the
great moment of the year. For weeks there is a slow, gradual, almost
imperceptible growth of the buds, then they develop with a rush,
and in six to ten days double or treble their weight. Then comes
the supreme moment, for the flower-buds suddenly burst open and the
Cherry is in active and vigorous bloom and covered all over with
exquisite blossoms. All last year's fats and starches are rapidly
used up. Very soon the young leaves are beginning to make sugar and
other food, which give some help during the ripening of the fruit.
The flowers are actively at work. One of our usual misconceptions
as to the nature of a flower is that it is an emblem of peace, of
restful enjoyment, of serene contemplation of its own beauty. That is
very far from being the truth. The petals are actively, vigorously
working. If one could take the pulse of a petal, which shows the
rapidity of its breathing, one would find that it is twice as fast as
that of the leaf. The work of changing water into vapour and pouring
it out goes on three times as quickly in the petals (as compared
with the leaves). Moreover their temperature is higher, and often
distinctly above that of the atmosphere.
This feverish activity of the flowers themselves is matched by
the hurrying crowds of excited and exhilarated insects which are
searching every blossom.
No wonder that the Japanese Prime Minister, in the midst of their
great and famous war, invited the whole cabinet to spend an afternoon
watching the cherry trees in bloom!
[Illustration: _Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_
_London & New York_
WISTARIA IN KAMAIDO PARK, JAPAN]
From the blossom of the springtime all through summer and autumn
follows one continuous spell of hard work. Day after day an endless
stream of food is entering the stem; night after night it is
condensed and arranged and repacked, until, when the leaves fall, the
period of slow and quiet preparation begins again.
Under certain conditions it is possible for gardeners to modify the
life of a cherry, and to make it bloom much earlier, but this is only
possible within well-defined limits. It is no use trying to force it
to bloom before January. It _must_ have a quiet time after summer.
But by beginning in January and by very carefully managing the
temperature, it can be made to produce fruit quite early in the year.
The following account is given to show how very carefully gardeners
have to work when they upset the ordinary course of Nature's events.
The plant is taken into a greenhouse, and the temperature kept as
follows:--
Day Night
Temperature. Temperature.
First week 48°-50° F. 41°-45° F.
Second week 50°-53° F. 45°-48° F.
Third week 53°-59° F. 48°-51° F.
Till flowering 59°-64° F. 51°-57° F.
Flowering period 46°-53° F.(!) 43°-50° F.(!)
After flowering 59°-64° F. 51°-57° F.
During development of stone 53°-59° F.(!) 48°-51° F.(!)
After development of stone 61°-66° F. 53°-59° F.
Ripening of fruit 68°-70° F. 59°-63° F.
Not merely strong, forcing heat, but a little judicious cold, is
necessary to get out the flowers and to ripen the fruit.[43]
[43] Schimper, _Pflanzengeographie_. The account is based on the
works of Pynaert, Sachs, Askenasy, etc.
Most flowers have very much the same general history as the cherry,
but it must not be supposed that they are all alike. The differences
are very interesting and curious.
Thus, for example, plants of our common Gorse, furze, or whin may
be found in bloom at almost every season of the year. There are at
least four seasons when there is that tremendous display of golden
blossom which made the great Linnæus fall on his knees and burst into
tears. These are about the 22nd March, 24th May, 15th August, and
21st November; yet there are enough odd flowers blooming in almost
every month to give some cause for the saying, "The gorse is out
of bloom when kissing is out of favour." The last practice, though
uncleanly and dangerous, not only on general grounds, but on account
of bacterial germs which may be transferred, has been authoritatively
condemned in the United States, but it is still more or less popular
in other countries at all seasons.
The Chickweed and some other of our annual weeds show a hardy
disregard of climate. Its seeds germinate and grow at any time, so
that flowers and seeds can be formed whenever there is a spell of
favourable weather. Now one chickweed can produce 3000 seeds. Suppose
that there are only five generations in the year, which is a very low
estimate. Then one seed of chickweed might produce 3000 × 3000 × 3000
× 3000 individuals in one season!
Other plants show much the same tendency. In fine warm autumns
a great many annuals bloom a second time. It is on record that
forty-four spring species bloomed in one warm November. At the Cape
and in other warm climates many of our annuals do not die at the end
of autumn, but go on growing. They become perennial.
It is even possible to make a Tree Mignonette by pinching off the
flower-buds, though this plant is usually an annual.
In fact plants are not absolutely confined to one rigid scheme,
but they can alter and modify their blooming time if they find it
convenient to do so. In the Mediterranean some blossom in early
spring and others in late autumn, whilst in the dry, hot, and dusty
summer very few flower.
In Central Africa during the dry season forest fires are by no means
rare. The trees are scattered, and the ground is only covered by
dried and withered grasses and sedges. One sees in the distance a
rolling cloud of smoke, and soon one comes to a line of flame. It is
not dangerous, not even very impressive, for a jump of three feet
carries you over the flame and on to a desolate wilderness of black
cinders, out of which stand up the scorched trunks and half-burnt
branches of gaunt, naked trees. A day or two afterwards, bright blue
and white and yellow flowers break out of those scorched branches and
also from the ground.
It is difficult to understand why this happens, but certainly it
is good for the flowers, which can be seen by insects from a long
distance.
But these are unusual cases. Generally the warm breath of spring
wakes up the bulbs and buds, and one after another has its moment of
flowering.
Spring travels towards the North Pole at an average rate of four
miles a day.
A pedestrian visiting Italy in the end of January might follow the
spring northwards, and if he wished to accompany it all the way, it
would be quite possible to do so without exceeding an ordinary day's
march. He would have to reach North Germany by the end of March,
Sweden in May, and by the end of June and July would find spring
beginning in the desolate Arctic regions.
Of course the presence of mountains would make this tour a little
difficult and devious, but still it is quite a possible undertaking.
It would be very interesting, for he would be able to watch the cold
and frost and chilliness of winter disappearing as the sun's rays
thaw out a greater and greater extent of the cold and frozen North.
The life of an Arctic plant is truly set in the midst of many and
great dangers.
For 250 days the ground is hard frozen and the temperature _never_
above the freezing-point. About the end of May it begins to rise
a little, but the plant has to crowd the whole of its life, its
flowers, fruits, and seeds, into the space of two months!
About the 23rd to the 29th June the first flower appears, then
follows strong, active growth in uninterrupted sunshine during July
and August. The flowers are brilliant in colour and richly produced.
The tiny dwarf Arctic plants are covered all over with blue or golden
yellow or white blossoms. All is in full activity and luxuriance.
Then suddenly, in a night, the icy grasp of winter falls upon them.
Hard-frozen flowers, buds, and ripening fruits remain chilled and
incapable of life from the 30th August until the end of May.
Of course, under such conditions, these hardy and vigorous little
plants cannot become trees or shrubs. To show the effect of the
climate upon them, a few British plants which are also Arctic may be
compared.
In In the
Great Britain. Arctic Regions.
Matweed
(_Matricaria inodora_) 6 in. to 1 ft. high 2 in.
Goldenrod
(_Solidago virgaurea_) 1-2 ft. 3-4 in.
Red Rattle
(_Pedicularis palustris_) 6 in. to 1 ft. 2-3 in.
Mugwort
(_Artemisia vulgaris_) 2 to 4 ft. 4-5 in.
Willow-herb
(_Epilobium palustris_) 1 to 2 ft. 2 in.
Grass of Parnassus
(_Parnassia palustris_) 6 in. to 1 ft. 1 in.
These wretched little dwarfs seem, however, to have pretty long
lives, and, as we have said, deck themselves in the most gaudy
colours every summer.
In the Alps of Switzerland and other temperate countries, the
flowering season is also a very short one and soon over. It is often
not more than six weeks, yet in that short time the rich blue of the
Gentian, the Alpine Roses, Soldanellas, Campanulas, and many others
make some of these grass slopes high up in the mountains a perfect
garden of loveliness.
Sometimes in passing over the snowfields of Switzerland just before
spring, one notices the pretty violet flowers of the Soldanella
swaying to and fro in the wind above the unmelted snow. One does
occasionally see in this country the Snowdrop in the midst of snow,
but then it has fallen after the Snowdrop had blossomed.
The Alpine Soldanella flowers whilst the earth is still covered. It
begins as soon as the ground below the snow is thawed. Each little
developing flower-stalk melts out a grotto in the snow above itself,
and so bores, thawing its way up into the air above. It has already
been mentioned that, inside a flower, the temperature is often higher
than the surrounding air. It is this higher temperature of the flower
which thaws a little dome or grotto in the snow above the head of
the flower.[44] When a flock of sheep are covered by a snowdrift,
a similar hollow is formed above them by their breath and the high
temperature of their bodies: they often seem indeed to be little or
none the worse for being buried. The Soldanella melts its way in just
the same manner.
[44] Kerner, _Natural History of Plants_ (Blackie), vol. 1, p.
468.
In this country we have no such magnificent chain of mountains as
the Alps, and yet we find on the Scotch and Welsh mountains quite a
number of real alpines.
There are, for instance, such flowers as Sea-pink (_Armeria_), Sea
Plantain (_Plantago maritima_), Scurvy-grass, and others, which
can be found on windy, desolate gullies and corries high up on the
Highland hills, and which also occur on the sea-coast, but _never
between the seashore and the tops of the mountains_. You might search
every field, every moor, and every riverside throughout the country,
but you would not discover those three plants anywhere between the
seashore and the summits.
At first sight it seems quite impossible to explain why this should
be the case. But all those three plants are found in the Arctic
regions, and the explanation is in reality quite simple.
At one time the shores of England and Scotland formed part of the
Arctic regions. Ice and snow covered the hills and mountains;
huge glaciers occupied the valleys and flowed over the lowlands,
plastering the low grounds with clay which they dragged underneath
them, and polishing and scratching any exposed rocks.
When the ice began to melt away and left free "berg battered beaches"
and "boulder-hatched hills," Lincolnshire and Yorkshire must have
been like the Antarctic regions in those days. This is how Dr. Louis
Bernacchi describes the Antarctic continent:--
"The scene before us looked inexpressibly desolate.... No token of
vitality anywhere, nothing to be seen on the steep slopes of the
mountains but rock and ice.... Gravel and pebbles were heaped up in
mounds and ridges. In some places these ridges coalesced so as to
form basin-shaped hollows. Bleached remains of thousands of penguins
were scattered all over the platform, mostly young birds that had
succumbed to the severity of the climate."
Great Britain must have been just as savage and desolate when
these hardy little Arctic plants colonized the shingles and rooted
themselves amongst the rocks.
They covered not only the seashore, but they probably made a
settlement wherever rock or land of any kind was exposed. These
original settlers have had three bands of descendants. One band has
remained ever since on the seashore of Great Britain; another set
gradually travelled northwards. As the ice melted away, leaving
the land bare, first in Denmark, then in Norway, and finally in
Greenland, this second set followed it, until now we find them far to
the northward, populating the Arctic regions of to-day just as they
did those of Britain in the Great Ice Age.
The third set of descendants would at first cover all the land and
rocks of the lower hills and valleys near the sea; then as the ice
and snow melted and exposed the higher mountain sides, they would
climb the hills and eventually reach the exposed summits where they
are now living. There they find themselves in an impossible, savage
sort of climate, in which they alone are able to exist. Violent
storms, drenching mist, scorching sunshine (when the rocks become
so hot that it is almost impossible to touch them), rainstorms and
months of snow and hard frost, cannot kill Scurvy-grass, Seathrift,
or Plantain, but there are few other plants which can stand such
conditions. Lower down on the flanks of the hills and in the valleys,
they have long since been dispossessed of the rich and fertile lands
by plants which can grow more rapidly and luxuriantly.
The little Alpine Creeping and Least Willows, for instance, some of
which get up to 3980 feet in Breadalbane, are mere dwarfs only a few
inches high, and totally different from their allies in the fertile
lowlands, which are trees eighty to ninety feet high.
Some of the Alpine plants which also occur in the Arctic regions have
not even been able to survive by the seaside in Great Britain. Their
nearest allies are in the Norwegian mountains.
It would be impossible even for shrubs to stand the violent winds and
snowstorms of these summits. Alpine plants are generally low-growing
mats. They are also often clothed all over in cottonwool, such as the
Edelweiss. This probably keeps them from losing too much water during
the dry season, when the rocks on which they grow are strongly heated
by the sunlight.
Yet, like the Arctic plants, they have rich, deep, and brilliant
colours.
A queer point is that they have got so accustomed to this stormy and
perilous existence that it is extremely difficult to grow them in a
garden. Like mountaineers, they dwindle and pine away in the richer
soil and softer air of the low grounds.
To make an Alpine garden, rocks and stones must be arranged with
pockets and hollows, like natural crevices and basins, between them.
Rich leaf-mould must be placed in these hollows. There must be good
drainage, and as much sunlight as one can possibly get.
CHAPTER VIII
SCRUB
Famous countries which were covered by it--Trees which are
colonizing the desert--Acacia scrub in East Africa, game and
lions--Battle between acacia and camels, etc.--Australian
half-deserts--Explorers' fate--Queen Hatasu and the first
geographical expedition recorded--Frankincense, myrrh, gums, and
odorous resins--Manna--Ladanum--Burning bush--Olives, oranges,
and perfume farms--Story of roses--Bulgarian attar of roses--How
pomade is made--Cutting down of forests and Mohammed.
A scrub or Half-desert does not seem at first sight to be in the
least interesting.
But if one remembers such places as Cordoba, Seville, Florence,
Genoa, Sicily, Athens, Constantinople, the great cities of Ephesus,
Corinth, etc., of St. Paul's Epistles, Persia, Arabia, Palestine, and
Carthage, surely the countries which have had such splendid histories
deserve a chapter to themselves. What achievements in war, in art, in
literature, and in romance are connected with these lands bordering
the Mediterranean or fringing the great deserts of Sahara and central
Asia!
The animals which belong to such country are also interesting. It
is the home of the camel, ass, horse, donkey, not to speak of the
giraffe, rhinoceros, gazelle, antelope, zebra, lion, and hyena.
The plants are full of interest too, and some of them are of great
importance to man. The Olive, Orange, Fig, Roses, and many perfumes
and spice-trees, are natives of scrub. In fact, it is the real centre
of all gums, frankincenses, and myrrhs.
As man depends upon plants and animals, and as animals also are
dependent on the plant world, it is the climate which really is
responsible for everything.
The world of plants is entirely and exactly regulated by the
character of the climate. What, then, is the climate of scrub?
Those countries enjoy brilliant sunshine, cloudless skies, and yet
there is sufficient rain to permit of irrigation and to prevent
the unmitigated desolation of the desert. When, as has happened in
many of these famous lands, the forests have been cut down and the
aqueducts have been neglected, they become arid, dry, and almost
useless. But when carefully and industriously worked, as they were in
the days of Greece, Carthage, and Rome, they produce results which
will for ever live in the history of the world.
The meaning of such half-desert climates and of the scrub which
covers them has been already suggested.
The scrub is trying to occupy the desert.
If one takes the sternwheel steamer at the First Cataract of the
Nile and passes southwards, the desolation of black rock and
"honey-coloured" sand of the Libyan Desert is at first unbroken.
But here and there the thorny trees of the "Seyal". Acacia show
the beginnings of a scrub region. Much further to the south, those
acacias and others become great forests which extend all along the
south of the Sahara Desert and furnish the valuable gums of the
Soudan.
If one passes southward through this forest of acacias, it alters in
character. The trees become taller, closer together, and climbing
plants and undergrowth become more frequent. Still further south,
one finds the regular tropical forest which is characteristic of the
tropics everywhere.
[Illustration:
_Photo G. F._
GATHERING OLIVES IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE]
The most interesting part, which is also the richest in big game, is
the intermediate zone between the desert and the acacia forest or
scrub.
All sorts of transitions are found. Sometimes there are thickets of
thorny bushes. Occasionally scattered clumps of woodland alternate
with stretches of grass or what looks like grass. Near the desert one
finds pioneer acacias dotted singly here and there; these are the
scouts or skirmishers of the army of trees which is trying to occupy
and colonize the desert.
This explains why this sort of scrub occurs in so many parts of the
world. On the European side of the Mediterranean, the dry climate
of Spain, the Riviera, and Greece must no doubt at one time have
supported a scrub vegetation. At present it is difficult to tell what
this was. There is a sort of scrub called _Maqui_ which covers parts
especially of Corsica and other Mediterranean countries. In Greece,
also, thorny, woody little bushes are very common.
But these are just what the goats, who are fiends from a vegetable
point of view, have been unable to destroy. We cannot tell what sort
of country revealed itself to the first Phoenicians when they landed
in Southern Spain to traffic with the savage inhabitants, or what met
the eyes of Ulysses when he made his great voyage to unknown lands.
But there are places in the world where man has never either kept
domestic animals or cultivated the soil. Possibly Spain and Sicily in
those early days were not unlike parts of British East Africa, such
as the Taru Desert between Mombasa and Kibwezi.
The following may give an idea of how this scrub or desert appeared
to me.
Gnarled and twisted acacias of all sorts and sizes, usually with
bright white bark and a thin, naked appearance, cover the whole
country. Amongst these one finds the curious _trees_ of Euphorbia.
In Britain Euphorbias are little green uninteresting weeds, but
here some of them are twenty to thirty feet high, with many slender
whip-like branches, but no leaves. Others are exactly like Cactus,
and take on weird, candelabra-like shapes. Nobody meddles with
them for, if the slightest cut is made in the bark, out pours an
acrid, white milk which raises painful blisters, and may even cause
blindness if a drop touches the eyes.
Almost all the plants are either covered with thorns or protected by
resins, gums, or poisonous secretions.
Between the scrubby trees the soil is dotted over by little tufts
of grass or sedge, but these are so far apart that the tint of the
landscape is that of the soil.
Game is abundant everywhere. Sometimes it is a small bustard or
a persistent, raucous guinea-fowl that affords a chance for a
good dinner. Occasionally a tiny gazelle, the "paa," with large
ears, springs out of the thorns and vanishes down the path. I saw
footprints of giraffes, and came across ostriches more than once. I
also made a persevering attempt to slay a Clarke's gazelle, an animal
with enormous ears and a long thin neck.[45]
[45] _Naturalist in Mid-Africa._
These long-necked creatures can see far above the usual short thorny
bush, and it is exceeding difficult to get near them. Water probably
exists under the stony grit soil, but at present one has to be
contented with that found in the stagnant pools at Taru, Maungu,
etc., which, if not occupied by the decaying remains of a dead
antelope, are, as a rule, drinkable.[46]
[46] _Naturalist in Mid-Africa._
These acacias are quite well fitted to live in this dry and arid
region. Their roots go down to twenty feet or more, so as to reach
the deep-seated water supplies.
Their leaves are generally adapted to resist any injury from the
strong glare of the sunshine. The gums, already alluded to, are also
very important, for any crack or break in the tree is promptly gummed
up, and there is no loss of precious water thereby. This gum will
also prevent or discourage burrowing and boring insects from getting
in; they would, if they tried to do so, become "flies in amber," like
those found in fossil resin. The trees are generally provided with
strong spines, which guard them from the many grazing animals which
try to devour the succulent leaflets.
The fight between the grazing animal and the plant is, in these
scrubs and half-deserts, very severe. In Egypt it is said that the
whole flora has been entirely altered by the camel and the donkey.[47]
[47] Floyer.
But in this case the battle is unfair. Man keeps those camels,
donkeys, and goats. He provides them with water and protects them
from lions, leopards, and snakes. In East Africa man has not yet
interfered, and the plants probably get the better of the animals.
In such places lions, leopards, and hyenas are common. It will be
remembered that a lion not very long ago stormed and took charge of a
railway station on the line to Uganda, and was only routed with very
heavy loss.
There is also some reason to suppose that the antelopes and other
creatures do help the plants in their efforts to colonize the Sahara.
Their droppings will very greatly improve the soil, and more vigorous
thickets and undergrowth will spring up when the soil is improved in
this way. Such a vigorous growth of plants will be better able to
resist the long eight or nine months' drought, and so help the wood
to develop, until perhaps it is too thick, and the trees are too
high, for the antelopes to graze upon them. In this manner the Acacia
scrub is slowly and painfully colonizing the desert.
It is not only in Africa that one finds these half-deserts or scrub.
There is the Brigalow Scrub in Australia, which has a curious
silver-grey shimmering appearance on account of the blue-grey
sickle-like leaves of the Brigalow Acacia. The foliage casts no
shade, for the leaves are flat and thin, and place themselves
edgewise to the light, so that there is no danger of the strong
light injuring them. Also in Australia is the Mallee Scrub, covering
thousands of square miles between the Murray River and the coast. It
consists of bushy Eucalyptus, six to twelve feet high. Its monotonous
appearance when seen from a small hill is very striking.[48] "Below
lies an endless sea of yellow-brown bushes: perhaps far away one
may observe the blue outline of some solitary hill or granite peak,
but otherwise nothing breaks the monotonous dark-brown horizon.
Everything is silent and motionless save perhaps where the scrub-hen
utters its complaining cry, or when the wind rustles the stiff
eucalyptus twigs."[49]
[48] Drude, _Vegetation der Erde_.
[49] Drude, _l.c._
There is a melancholy interest attaching to both the Mallee and
Brigalow, for in them lie the bones of many gallant and persevering
explorers. Nor is the East African thorn-tree desert without its
victims. The missionary, Dr. Chalmers, was lost near Kibwezi in the
Taru Desert.
[Illustration: THE EGYPTIAN QUEEN HATARU'S EXPEDITION
The ships of the expedition are drawn up along the shores of Punt
(in Somaliland), and incense trees are being carried on board.
Notice the baboons on board ship, and the rays and sword-fish in
the water.]
There are a certain number of valuable plants found in these
half-deserts or scrubs. Perhaps the earliest geographical
expedition of which we have a good account (with illustrations) is
that sent by the Egyptian Queen, Hatasu, from Thebes, about three
thousand years ago. She built on the Red Sea a fleet of five ships,
each able to carry from fifty to seventy people, and sent them to
the land of Punt, which was probably Somaliland. The natives lived
in round huts built on piles like the ancient lake dwellings. The
object of the journey was to obtain incense. No less than thirty-one
incense-bushes were dug up with as much earth as possible about their
roots, and carried to the ships, where they were placed upright on
the deck and covered with an awning to keep off the sun's rays.
Whether they did really survive the journey and grow in Egypt is
uncertain. Sacks of resin, ebony, cassia, apes, baboons, dogs,
leopard-skins, and slaves, as well as gold and silver, were also
taken away. The Queen of Punt accompanied them. From her appearance
it is not probable that the Queen of Sheba was any relation, although
some writers have supposed that Sheba and Punt were the same place.
The whole story is represented in coloured bas-reliefs in the temple
at Tel-el-Bahiri, near Thebes.[50]
[50] Rawlinson, _Story of Egypt_.
The incense here alluded to was a very valuable drug in Egypt on
account of its use in embalming mummies. Quite a number of gums,
resins, and the like, are obtained from Somaliland and similar
half-desert countries. The frankincense of the Bible, which may
be the incense of Hatasu, is obtained from _Olibanum_ produced by
various species of Boswellia. In February and March, cuts are made by
the incense gatherers in the bark of the trees. Tears of resin soon
appear and become dried by the sun over the wound. The best kinds
still come from Saba, in Arabia, where the Romans obtained it in
the time of Virgil. Besides Olibanum, frankincense contains Galbanum
(_Ferula galbaniflua_) and Storax (_Storax officinale_). Equal parts
of these were mixed with the horny shield of a certain shell-fish.
When the last is burnt, it has a strong pungent odour. The Galbanum
is now found in Persia, and Storax in Asia Minor, both half-desert
countries. The true Myrrh (_Commiphora myrrha_) is also found in East
Africa and South-west Arabia.
The name is supposed to be derived from Myrrha, the daughter of
Cinyras, King of Cyprus, who in consequence of a great crime was
banished to Arabia and became the tree which bears her name. The
myrrh of the Sacred Oracles was used as incense at least 3700 years
ago, and it is mentioned by Moses (Genesis xxxvii. 25).
The sovereign of England used always to present gold, frankincense,
and myrrh in the Chapel Royal, London, on the feast of the Epiphany,
and, strange though it may appear, the symbolic offering is still
made each year by our present king.
Balm of Gilead (_Balsamodendron Gileadense_) belongs to scrub or
half-desert regions. Cleopatra obtained plants from Jericho for her
garden at Heliopolis. The Jews used to sell it regularly to the
merchants of Tyre.
It is still valuable, for the essence is worth from £2 to £3 per lb.
The opoponax described by Dioscorides belongs to the Orient. It
yields a valuable gum resin, which is much used in perfumery
(_Pastinaca opoponax_). It also is obtained by incisions in the
bark[51] of the tree.
[51] Ridley, _l.c._; Lindley, _l.c._; Maisch, _Materia Medica_.
In fact a very large proportion of these fragrant sweet-smelling
substances, Myrrh, Cassia, Bdellium, etc., come from these sunny
Eastern lands, which are not exactly deserts but very close to them.
Manna, e.g., is obtained from the flowering Ash (_Fraxinus ormus_)
in Sicily by transverse incisions being made in the bark, so that
the brownish or yellowish viscid juice exudes and hardens on the
wound. _Ladanum_ is a varnish or gluey coating found on the leaves of
_Cistus creticus_, which grows in Crete. In old times the glue was
collected from the beards of the goats which had been browsing on
the plant. Although this method, no doubt, increased the strength of
the perfume, it has been abandoned, and the ladanum is obtained by a
"kind of rake with a double row of long leathern straps." The straps
take the glue from the leaves. It is used as a perfume in Turkey.
Another very interesting Eastern plant sometimes seen in
old-fashioned country gardens in Britain is the "Burning-bush"
(_Dictamnus fraxinella_). Like a great many of these half-desert
plants, it is full of an acrid, ethereal, odorous substance. On a
calm, hot summer's day, this material exudes from the leaves and
surrounds the plant with an invisible vaporous atmosphere. Such an
atmosphere probably assists in preventing the water from evaporating
or being transpired from the leaves.[52]
[52] This was suggested by Tyndall, but has been denied by others.
Now if one places a lighted match a little below the leaves or
flowers this vapour catches fire, and there is a display of flames
and smoke with little explosions, followed by a strong smell. The
plant may be injured if it is set on fire too frequently, but
generally does not seem to be any the worse for the experiment.
The Mediterranean is the home of the Myrtle and Olive, of Oranges and
Lemons, of Figs and Vines, of Almonds and Raisins, as well as of
many other important and interesting plants.
The olive crop in Italy yields about ninety millions of gallons of
olive-oil every year. The olives are collected as soon as they become
ripe, and are crushed in circular stone troughs with a perpendicular
millstone. The paste is then pressed in bags and afterwards clarified
by passing through cotton wool.[53] To the eye of a foreigner the
white gnarled stems and silver-green foliage of the olive groves are
not particularly attractive.
[53] _Journal Society of Arts_, August, 1896.
Near Burriana, in Spain, one may walk for miles through the
plantations of oranges. The dark-green glossy leaves and golden
fruit of the orange make a most beautiful contrast, but the dry,
thirsty soil, and the careful way in which the water is regulated
and supplied by small gutters, most jealously watched over, make the
tourist realize the difficulty of agriculture in so dry and arid a
country.
The Myrtle is not a very important plant nowadays, though its berries
are still eaten and myrtle wreaths used to be worn by the bride at
every wedding. In classical times it was sacred to Venus, but the
victors in the Olympian games were also crowned with myrtle, and the
magistrates at Athens had the same privilege. It is no longer used as
a medicine and for making wine. It is really a native of Persia, but
has been introduced to the Levant, Italy, France, and Spain.
It is along the Riviera that one finds a very curious and interesting
industry. This is the manufacture of perfumes and essences from the
petals of flowers. A great many different flowers are used, such as
the Garden Violet, Mignonette (a native of Egypt imported in 1752),
Lily of the Valley, Tuberose, "the sweetest flower for scent that
grows," Jonquil (_Narcissus jonquilla_), Heliotrope (imported from
Peru in 1757), Spanish Jasmine (_J. grandiflorum_), which is a native
of Nepaul, and was brought to Europe in 1629, and various Roses.[54]
[54] Heuzé, _Les Plantes Industrielles_. Most of the following
details are obtained from this valuable work.
These Roses have had a long, interesting, and honourable history.
No one knows when they were first cultivated. Solomon had his
rose-gardens at Jericho. Queen Cleopatra spent some £400 on roses
in one day, and Nero is said to have beaten this record by wasting
4,000,000 sesterces (£30,000) in roses for a single banquet.
Rosewater is said to have been first produced by an Arab physician
called Rhazés in the tenth century. When Sultan Saladin recovered
Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, the pavement and walls of the
Mosque of Omar were washed and purified with rosewater. That stout
warrior Thibault IV, Count de Brie et de Champagne, brought back
roses from Damascus on his return to his native land. That was the
origin of the valuable Provence roses. The Lancastrians chose a
Provence rose as their badge at the beginning of the Civil Wars of
the Roses in England.
Otto of Roses, or the essential oil, was discovered by Princess Nour
Jehan at the court of the Great Mogul, and she received as her reward
a pearl necklace worth 30,000 rupees. The price of otto of roses
seems to have been about £320 per pound in Persia and India when the
traveller Tavernier visited those countries in 1616.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, peers of France had to
present bouquets and crowns of roses to the assembled Parliament.
At present there are very important rose plantations in France,[55]
Bulgaria,[56] and in the Fayoum in Egypt. In France about ten or
twelve thousand roses are grown on two and a half acres. The season
is from April to May. Women gather from twenty to twenty-five pounds
daily, and obtain from twopence to threepence for two and a half
pounds. Each tree will give about a quarter of a pound of roses. The
petals are distilled to make rosewater.
[55] 4,400,000 pounds of roses were produced in France in one
year.
[56] In 1899 Philippopolis produced 1800-2000 kilogrammes of otto
of roses, worth 700 to 800 francs the kilo. (_Pharm. Journ._
Sept. 1st, 1900).
Some 12,000 people on the slopes of the Balkans, at Kerzanlik and
other places, entirely depend upon their rose plantations. These are
on light soil, fully exposed to the sun, at over 1200 feet above the
sea. It is interesting to find that the pure mountain air strengthens
the perfume, for these Balkan roses are fifty per cent. richer in
essences than those of lowland plants.
Another interesting plant much cultivated in the Riviera is the
Cassier (_Acacia farnesiana_). It is really a native of India, but
was introduced from the West Indies to Europe in 1656. Cannes,
Grasse, Antibes, and Nice are the places where it is most cultivated.
Its flowers appear from July to November. An old tree may yield as
much as twelve to twenty pounds of flowers, worth about five to
six francs. But 116 pounds of flowers only yield about a pound of
essence, so that it is not surprising that this last is worth £60 the
pound.
The cultivation is a little uncertain, for a temperature of three or
four degrees below the freezing-point kills the trees.
The pomades made from many of these flowers are produced as follows:
A series of trays are covered with fat or grease; the petals are
placed on the grease and replaced by fresh petals every twenty-four
hours or so; in the end the grease is so saturated with scent that it
forms pomade or pomatum.
Thus these half-desert countries are by no means without interest
from a botanical point of view. The conditions of life are no doubt
hard both for plants and animals. The scent so richly produced
depends upon the strong sunlight and pure air. It is very useful,
partly because it attracts those useful insects which carry the
pollen, but also because such odours are distasteful to grazing
animals. The gums, incenses, thorns, and spines are all of great use
to the plant in its dangerous struggle for existence with hungry
camels and thirsty soil.
When men understood how to irrigate the soil, and before they were
foolish enough to cut down the forests which once guarded the
mountain springs, these half-deserts were exceedingly prosperous;
they were full of vigorous intellectual life, and of strong, hardy,
and industrious peoples. Asia Minor, Turkey, Greece, and the Northern
Coast of Africa from Morocco to Egypt, were rich and wonderful
countries.
But it was not only the destruction of the forests that has ruined
them. The curse of Mohammed, the fatalism produced by his religion,
and the slavery which is a necessary part thereof, have destroyed the
people in mind, body, and spirit. Even in Greece, Algiers, and Cyprus
there has been as yet but small recovery.
In the future, not merely these countries, but Northern Nigeria,
British East Africa, and South-west Cape Colony, may have as rich
a history as Greece, if British brain and energy are helped by the
strong muscles of the African.
CHAPTER IX
ON TEA, COFFEE, CHOCOLATE, AND TOBACCO
English tea-drinking--Story of our tea--Assam
coolies--Manufacture in India and China--Celestial
moisture--Danger of tea--The hermit and his
intelligent goat--Government, coffee and
cafés--Chicory--Chocolate--Aztecs--Kola and its curious
effects--Tobacco--Sir Walter Raleigh--Great emperors
and tobacco--Could we grow tobacco?--Story of a Sumatra
cigar--Danger of young people smoking tobacco.
On every day throughout the year English people drink about 600,000
lb. of tea. That is about 270 tons, which would form, when made into
the beverage, a lake quite large enough to float a man-of-war! No
other civilized nation takes its tea in the reckless way that we do.
Yet our fellow-subjects in Australia drink even more than ourselves.
Almost the whole of this tea is grown in British colonies or
possessions, manufactured by British subjects, and imported in
British ships.
The coolies who work in the tea-gardens of Assam and Ceylon, the
Englishman who manages them, the engineers in Glasgow and Newcastle
who made the machinery, the shipbuilders, shipowners, and crews, are
all fellow-countrymen of those who drink the cup that cheers. Every
sixpence in the £8,000,000, which is our yearly account for tea,
finds its way into the pockets of our fellow-subjects either at home
or abroad.
[Illustration: _Photo_
_Skeen & Co._
WEIGHING THE DAY'S WORK
The women in the Ceylon Tea Gardens bring in their baskets in the
evening. These are then weighed as shown and the labourers paid
accordingly.]
Every one would suppose that a trade like this, which benefits
everybody, would be very carefully fostered by Government.
Far from it, for this is one of those articles that are always being
attacked by Chancellors of the Exchequer, who seem to have a special
ill will against tea.
Indeed, it is so heavily taxed that it is extremely difficult to make
a profit on tea-gardens. Elsewhere in this chapter some other very
curious facts will be found illustrating the extraordinary habits and
methods of the British Government.
The author does not try to explain these facts, but only points them
out; a nation that can manage to exist at all when such things are
done by its Government is a nation to which one is proud to belong.
The Tea-plant is a native of China and Assam. It is a very handsome
shrub resembling a camellia, with dark, glossy, green leaves and
beautiful flowers. It is said to have been used in China about 2700
B.C., and the first plantations in India were made with Chinese seed.
But a Mr. Bruce reported the presence of an indigenous wild tea in
Assam.[57] Three botanists who were sent to investigate the question
suggested that this Assam variety was only the Chinese plant run
wild, and advised the introduction of Chinese seedlings. This was a
very unfortunate mistake, for the wild Assam plant gives much better
results.
[57] Watt, _Economic Dictionary of the Products of India_. This
valuable work of reference should be consulted for interesting
details as to all the plants cited in this chapter.
The jungle is first cut down and cleared away by the native tribes,
with the help of elephants. Then at the right season, i.e. after the
rains begin, the Indian women and coolies go into the plantations.
They carry on their backs a basket supported by a band across the
forehead. These women nip off the first two leaves and a bud with
their finger and thumb and throw them into the basket over their
shoulders. When the basket is full they take it back to the factory,
where their gatherings are weighed. The actual manufacture is, in
India and Ceylon, all performed by machinery. The tea is first
emptied on to trays in a shallow layer: a pound of tea when so spread
out covers more than a square yard. These trays are then placed in a
room which is heated to a high temperature, for "withering." After
six hours it is passed through a machine which "rolls" or gives a
twist to the leaves. It is then "fermented" on cement floors, where
the tea is covered by strips of moist muslin. It is again rolled and
afterwards dried or "fired." The sifting out of the different sorts
or blends, and also the packing of the tea in chests, are done by
machinery.
That is the Indian system of manufacture, in which there is scarcely
any hand-labour.
In China the rolling, and indeed every stage of the process, appears
to be done by hand. It is obvious that in the handling, pattings,
and rollings of the tea by Chinese coolies, "celestial moisture" may
be imparted to it. In spite of this, however, the export of Chinese
tea is steadily diminishing. In the old days, the Liverpool "tea
clippers," fast and beautiful sailing-ships, raced each other home
from China in order to get the first tea upon the market.
Tea is sometimes dangerous, and especially when it is allowed to
stew on the fire for hours at a time. Besides _theine_, which is the
stimulating, active part of it, and which is a bracing tonic to the
nerves, _tannin_ is also found therein. When meat is taken with a
large amount of _tannin_, the latter acts on the meat exactly as it
does on hides in a tanning factory. It forms a substance resembling
leather, which taxes the powers of the strongest digestion.
Once upon a time in those fertile mountains of Abyssinia which have
never yet been explored by the white man, there was a very holy and
pious hermit. He used to live entirely on the milk of a few goats
which he carefully tended with his own hands. One morning he noticed
that one of these goats showed signs of unusual excitement. It was
frisking about, and obviously was exceedingly well pleased with
itself.
That was not a usual experience with the holy recluse, who watched
the animal carefully. He soon discovered that it was in the habit of
grazing on the bright red berries of a very handsome shrub in the
hills. The anchorite tasted those fruits and discovered that he also
became both pleased with himself and somewhat excited.
His disciples soon discovered a brightness and exhilaration, an
unusual "snap," in the good man's sermons, and they watched him and
also discovered _Coffee_!
The author refuses to take the responsibility of more than the
discovery of the above story. Coffee was, however, introduced into
Arabia by the Sheikh Dabhani in 1470. It was taken to Constantinople
about 1554, and about a hundred years later coffee-houses and _cafés_
were regular and habitual daily resorts in London and Paris.
As usual with stimulants of all kinds, the watchful eye of a moral
Government discovered something objectionable in coffee, and Charles
II in 1675 imposed heavy taxes, or rather forbade the use of it
altogether.
There was in 1718 a coffee-plant in the botanical gardens at
Amsterdam, and in that year some of its seeds were sent to Surinam,
in Dutch Guiana. Apparently the millions of shrubs in the enormous
coffee plantations of the New World are all descended from this
particular Amsterdam plant.
This New World coffee is by far the most important supply. Brazil
alone exports about £19,000,000 worth of coffee, and that from the
New World forms about 82 per cent of the total world's production.
The story of coffee in Ceylon is a tragedy. There happened to be in
the jungle a particular fungus (_Hemileia vastatrix_) which got its
living on the leaves of wild plants belonging to the coffee order
(_Rubiaceæ_) and others. When Arabian coffee was introduced, the
fungus began to attack its leaves. The result was the utter ruin of
the industry. It is said that about £15,000,000 was lost by this
_Hemileia_ disease in Ceylon.
The plantations require a great deal of care. The shrubs have to
be carefully pruned, and the preparation of the coffee bean is
not a very easy matter. It is really the seed of a bright red,
fleshy berry. The pulp or flesh has to be removed, and also both
a horny skin, the "parchment," and a thin delicate membrane, the
"silverskin," in which the seed is enclosed. Coffee is not nearly so
much used in Britain as in some other places, and particularly in
Holland, for the Dutch drink about twenty-one pounds per head in the
year, whilst we in Great Britain only use about three-quarters of a
pound.
It is in fact not very easy to make good coffee, and it is absolutely
necessary to grind and roast the beans just before using them. Very
often also too little coffee is used.
Tinned coffee is often adulterated with either Chicory or Endives,
but those are only the two most important impurities, for burnt
sugar, biscuits, locust-beans, date-stones, rye, malt, and other
substances are ground up and mixed with coffee.
The use of chicory is, however, more or less recognized. It is
the roots which are ground up and mixed with it. They contain no
_caffeine_, which is the active part of the coffee bean, and are
quite harmless. At one time chicory was grown in Essex and other
English counties, and was a distinctly profitable crop.
Here again come in the mysterious ways of the British Government.
The cultivation of chicory was absolutely forbidden by the Inland
Revenue Department; but a considerable amount is still grown in
Belgium and is imported to this country. Those who prefer chicory
with their coffee have to pay a heavy duty; but the Belgian farmer
is allowed and the British farmer is forbidden to take up a paying
and profitable industry! The plant is allied to the dandelion. It
occasionally occurs in this country as a weed, and is a rather
striking plant with bright blue flowers.
Another of these useful productions which also suffers from a heavy
duty is Cocoa or Chocolate. There are a great many different plants
called Co Co, or by some name very similar to it. The Cocoanut Palm
furnishes not only the nuts but the fibre or coir enclosing them,
as well as a great many other useful substances. The _cocaine_
used by dentists, and which deadens or stupefies the nerves of
the teeth, is derived from the leaves of a Peruvian shrub, "Coca"
(_Erythroxylan Coca_). These leaves are chewed in the mouth and have
very extraordinary effects, especially on the Indian labourers. They
are a strong nerve stimulus and take away any feeling of hunger or
fatigue. It was by the use of coca leaves that the postmen of the
Inca emperors in Peru were enabled to carry messages at the rate of
150 miles a day. Then again the Cocoes of the West Indian Islands is
a sort of Yam (_Colocasia antiquorum_). Coco-de-mer is the fruit of a
palm common in the Seychelles Islands (_Lodoicea Seychellarum_).
The cocoa which gives the ordinary chocolate and cocoa of the
breakfast table is the seed of a tree (_Theobroma cacao_). The name
is derived from [Greek: theos], god, and [Greek: brôma], food. It may
be translated, "That which the gods browse upon."
This plant is one of those which were cultivated by that ancient,
powerful, semi-civilized nation, the Aztecs of Mexico. They have
almost entirely vanished; at any rate their descendants, if they have
any, exercise practically no influence in the world, but they have
left us chocolate. They fully appreciated the plant, and even more
than we do, for they worshipped it with grateful and superstitious
awe.
In their tombs, chocolate flavoured with vanilla was placed, in order
to provide the ghost with sufficient sustenance for his or her aerial
flight to the Land of the Sun. Columbus brought home some cocoa
on his return from his first voyage. The Jesuit fathers in Mexico
greatly helped in developing the plantation of cocoa in the days of
the Spaniards. At present the largest amount comes from Ecuador,
which produces about 50,000,000 pounds weight.
It is a small tree, twenty to thirty feet high, growing in the warm,
moist, and sheltered forests of Central and South America. It has
a large fruit, within which are the numerous cocoa beans, "nibs,"
or seeds. The tree does not bear until it is five years old. The
fermentation and drying of the beans require some care.
[Illustration: _Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_
_London & New York_
A TOBACCO PLANTATION IN CUBA]
Chocolate is made from the powdered cocoa mixed with sugar and other
materials. Chocolate, like tea and coffee, depends for its effect
on an extremely powerful drug, _theine_ or _caffeine_, of which it
contains minute proportions. There are very few other plants known
which possess this powerful substance. Amongst these is the Kola nut,
which is everywhere regularly employed in West Africa. On the way up
to the barracks at Freetown, Sierra Leone, natives were always to be
seen seated by the roadside; they sold kola nuts to the soldiers, who
were thereby enabled to walk steadily and uprightly past the sentry,
and to return his challenge in a clearly articulate voice, although
they might previously have been somewhat injudiciously convivial in
the town. This kola is one of the very strongest nerve tonics; under
its influence men can endure severe physical and mental strain.
Like the others, however, a depressing reaction inevitably follows,
accompanied by insomnia, headache, and other evil effects.
When one comes to ask, Why do those few plants out of all the vast
multitude of the vegetable world possess such extraordinary virtues?
it is difficult to find an answer. Possibly some obscure insect or
fungus enemy finds _caffeine_ poisonous.
Nor can one find any reason for the curious properties developed in
the Tobacco leaf by fermentation, except a possible protection to
the leaf from the attacks of insects. No doubt the leaf, even in its
natural state, would be too strong for them.
Tobacco is a native of Central America. The name _Nicotiana tabacum_
is derived (the first) from a certain Jean Nicot, Ambassador to the
King of Portugal, and the second from the Haytian name for a pipe.
On Columbus's voyage in 1492 the use of tobacco was noted. The story
of Sir Walter Raleigh's servant, who threw a bucket of water over
his master when the latter was smoking a pipe, is not supported by
much evidence, but it seems to be probable that Sir Walter did smoke
his pipe on the way to the scaffold.
At any rate it was cultivated in Europe by the year 1570, and Spenser
speaks of the "soveraine Weed, divine Tobacco."
From the first it was detested by all governments and authorities.
James I published a very intemperate _Counterblast against Tobacco_.
It was prohibited by the Czar of Russia in 1635, and by the King of
France. The great Sultan Jehanghir in India, Sultan Amurath II in
Turkey, Shah Abbas the Great in Persia, and the Emperor Kang Ching
in China, all prohibited the use of tobacco in their respective
dominions.
Yet none of these great rulers were able to check its progress. The
"Herb of Amiability," or the "Queen Herb of the rude Barbarian" as it
is described in Chinese, prevails almost over the whole earth. There
is scarcely a people or tribe in existence which does not use it.
But almost everywhere it is either heavily taxed or a Government
monopoly; in the latter case it is always exceedingly bad. We
ourselves import tobacco worth about £4,500,000 in the year, and
pay a heavy duty. The world probably smokes from 1,800,000,000 to
2,000,000,000 pounds of tobacco every year.
The plant is a very pretty one, with large leaves and long pinky or
white flowers, which are open and strongly scented at night. It is
an annual, and is not at all difficult to cultivate. There is an
impression in this country that it is a tropical plant, but by far
the greatest amount of our tobacco comes from temperate countries.
Large quantities are grown in Germany, in Hungary, and in other parts
of Europe. As a matter of fact tobacco was once cultivated in both
England and Scotland.
There is evidence to show that in 1832 it was successfully grown in
Roxburghshire, where 1000 pounds an acre was obtained. The land was
let at about £5 to £6 per acre. Experiments of recent years have also
proved very encouraging, and in fact it is difficult to see how any
reasonable doubt can exist as to the fact that it would be perfectly
easy to grow plenty of that sort of tobacco which we now obtain from
Holland and Germany. A prominent Irish statesman has admitted this:
"There was no doubt but that tobacco could be grown in Ireland, but
whether there are Irishmen patriotic enough to smoke it, _is_ very
doubtful."[58]
[58] Wrightson, _Journal R. Agr. Soc._, Second Series, vol. 10,
part ii. p. 312; Jenkins, _Ibid._, vol. 11, part i. p. 192; De
Lanne, _Ibid._, vol. 23, part i. p. 213. Carter, _Tobacco in
England_.
Of course every one knows that the differences in tobacco depend
chiefly on the preparation, but the _Constitutional_ objection to
tobacco, illustrated by the above remark, is the real reason why it
is not grown.
Oliver Cromwell sent his troopers to ride down the growing crops.
Charles II imposed a penalty of £1600 per acre. Modern statesmen are
flippant and unfair.
The reason of course is that a large income is cheaply obtained by
taxing imported tobacco. If this were at all interfered with, new
taxes, which would certainly be unpopular, would be required.
There is a good deal of interest in the story of the tobacco
plantations. Many prisoners of the Civil War in England were sold to
Virginia and other places. Even nowadays there is some romance in
the history of a cigar. In the Dutch island of Sumatra the jungle is
cleared away by the natives under the orders of an English manager.
Chinese coolies are then imported. The estate provides each coolie
with tools, tea, a barber, and sufficient cash to buy rice, fish, or
pork, as well as a little over for his opium, to spend in fireworks,
and to propitiate his demons.
The coolie grows the tobacco, which is bought from him and
manufactured by the estate. Some of it goes to India, where it is
used as the outer wrapper of cigars.[59]
[59] Dunning, _Tobacco_, 1876.
For adulterating tobacco all sorts of leaves are occasionally
employed, such as those of the dock, chicory, burdock, foxglove,
comfrey, elm, coltsfoot, plantain, beech, cabbage, lettuce (steeped
in tar oil), etc., etc.
The substance nicotine is a deadly and dangerous poison. When young
people smoke tobacco, it has been quite conclusively proved that they
will very probably not reach their full growth, but be miserable
weaklings, stunted, half-developed, and below the proper standard of
a man.
This is not surprising, if one reflects on the constitution of
tobacco smoke. This contains "nicotine, empyreumatic resin,
oil, ammonia, carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, hydrocyanic acid,
sulphuretted hydrogen, carburetted hydrogen, and paraffin."[60]
[60] _Journal Society of Arts_, March, 1896.
CHAPTER X
ON DESERTS
What are deserts like?--Camel-riding--Afterglow--Darwin in
South America--Big Bad Lands--Plants which train themselves
to endure thirst--Cactus and euphorbia--Curious shapes--Grey
hairs--Iceplant--Esparto grass--Retama--Colocynth--Sudden
flowering of the Karoo--Short-lived flowers--Colorado
Desert--Date palms on the Nile--Irrigation in Egypt--The
creaking Sakkieh--Alexandria hills--The Nile and Euphrates.
Across the whole of Africa, at its very broadest part, from the
dominions of the Emperor of the Sahara at Cape Juby on the Atlantic,
and to the very borders of British India, stretches a desert of the
most uncompromising character. It is famous in history: the strongest
races of man, the great religions of the world, as well as most
cultivated plants and domestic animals, have originated in some part
of this dreary waste.
One cannot really appreciate deserts unless one has really seen them.
But it is necessary to try to describe what they are like.
Sometimes the desert is a wilderness of broken, stony hills covered
by angular pieces of shivered rock. In other places the soil is hard,
and is everywhere covered by pebbles or shingle. Often it is a mere
waste of sand blown into downs and hillocks which look sometimes like
the sand dunes by the coast, and elsewhere like the waves of the sea.
One finds valleys in the desert quite like ordinary ones in shape,
but instead of water there is only sand in sweeping curves and
hollows, like the snow-wreaths and drifts in a highland glen.
Rocks stand out of this, but their projecting faces are polished
smooth and glittering or deeply cut by the flinty particles scraping
over them continually in storms and hurricanes.
The traveller on camel-back, where his waist has to act as a sort of
universal joint giving to every unexpected jolt and wrench of his
rough-paced mount, suffers from the heat, for nowhere else in the
world are there such high temperatures. He suffers from thirst, and
still more from the dust which fills eyes, mouth, nostrils, and ears.
Yet the dry pure air is most exhilarating.
In the evening there is a feast for the eyes in the glorious
_afterglow_ when the sun has just set. The light from below the
horizon produces an ever-changing, indescribable play of colour from
violet to salmon pink and through the most delicate shades of yellow,
blue, and rose, until everything fades and there reigns only the
mysterious silence of the beautiful starlit night.
No wonder the air is dry and pure, for rain only falls on perhaps
eight days in the year in some places (Ghardiaia).
Yet plants manage to exist even where there is only about seven
inches of rain annually.
But this seems still more extraordinary if one remembers that sand
may be almost glowing hot during the day, whilst in winter it may be,
at night, cooled below the freezing-point.
Yet a desert absolutely bare of plants is an exceedingly rare
phenomenon. Such do occur. Darwin speaks of "an undulating country,
a complete and utter desert." This is not very far from Iquique in
South America. "The road was strewed with the bones and dried skins
of the many beasts of burden which had perished upon it from fatigue.
Excepting the _Vultur aura_, which preys on the carcases, I saw
neither bird, quadruped, reptile, nor insect. On the coast mountains,
at the height of about 2000 feet, where, during this season, the
clouds generally hang, a very few cacti were growing in the clefts
of rock; and the loose sand was strewed over with a lichen which
lies on the surface quite unattached. ... In some parts it was in
sufficient quantity to tinge the sand, as seen from a distance, of
a pale yellowish colour. Farther inland, during the whole ride of
fourteen leagues, I saw only one other vegetable production, and that
was a most minute yellow lichen, growing on the bones of the dead
mules."[61]
[61] Darwin, _Naturalist's Voyage round the World in the Beagle_,
p. 387.
Rydberg, speaking of the Big Bad Lands in South Dakota, says that
there are in some places great stretches of land consisting of cañons
separated by small ridges, in which not a speck of green is visible
over several sections.[62] (A section is more than a square mile.)
[62] Schimper, _l.c._, p. 674.
But though Aden looks exactly like "a barrack stove that no one's
lit for years and years," plants grow there. Even in Egypt, when
one has left the Nile inundation limit, a botanical eye very seldom
fails to detect plants of one sort or another even in a dangerous and
thorough-going desert.
Plants are almost as hardy as men; they can adapt themselves to
almost any climate.
In some curious and inexplicable way the very dangers of the climate
seem to produce automatically a means of resisting it. The chief
peril, of course, is a loss of the precious water through the
leaves. When the skin or epidermis of a plant is being formed, the
walls of its cells are laid down, layer by layer, one inside the
other, by the secretion of the living matter inside. In a dry desert
the loss of water by evaporation will be so rapid that these layers
of cell-wall are much thicker than in ordinary plants. The very
fact that they are thicker and less penetrable tends to prevent any
further loss of water.[63]
[63] Schimper, _l.c._, p. 653.
So that plants in a dry climate have the power of altering themselves
to resist its dangers.
Another author found that, in Scandinavia, plants of the same species
can acclimatize themselves if necessary. Sheep's Sorrel which had
grown on dry, droughty gravel banks only lost 10 per cent. of its
water in the first two days, when it was artificially dried. Other
Sheep's Sorrels, which had been luxuriating in meadows where they had
no lack of moisture, lost no less than one third (33 per cent.) of
their water when dried in the same way.
That is interesting, because very likely our readers might in
crossing a desert be perishing of thirst when a Bedouin Arab would be
perfectly happy. The plants have learnt to do without water just in
the same way as the Arab has done.
Of the many interesting desert plants, the Succulents, Cacti,
Euphorbias, and others of the same extraordinary, fleshy, dropsical
appearance, come first.
When a Cereus plant (one of the American Giant Cacti) was dried,
it did not lose the whole of its water for 576 days. That is
probably the longest time "between drinks" on record. A Houseleek
(_Sempervivum_), which has to grow on dry rocks where it has no water
for days together, remained quite fresh for 165 days.
[Illustration: GIANT CACTUS NEAR ACONCAGUA VALLEY, CHILE
This plant was about 8 feet high. The darker part on the tallest
branch is the dark red flower of the parasitic horanthus. The
thorns covering the branches are quite distinct.]
There are several reasons why these plants took so long to dry
up. To begin with, they have inside their stems and leaves certain
substances which hold water and delay its escape. Moreover their
extraordinary shapes are of very great assistance. They prefer
globular, round, circular, pear-shaped, or cylindrical forms.
Suppose you were to cut such a round mass into thin slices and lay
them out flat, it is quite clear that they would cover a much greater
surface. Thin leaves also, if squashed up into a round ball, would
have a very much smaller surface.
The water can only escape from the surface exposed, so that these
condensed round balls and fleshy columns have far less water-losing
surface than ordinary leaves.
As a matter of fact, it was found by calculation that the surface of
an Echinocactus was 300 times less for the same amount of stuff as
that of an Aristolochia leaf. If the actual loss of water from the
Echinocactus, as found by experiment, was reckoned as one unit per
square inch, then the amount of water lost from a square inch of the
Aristolochia was no less than 5000 units!
This shows that these odd, outrageous shapes of Prickly Pears, Cacti,
and other succulents are an extraordinary help to them. We have
already pointed out in a previous chapter how necessary their spines
and prickles are if they must resist rats, mice, camels, and other
enemies.
What we may call the "hedgehog" type of plant is also very common in
desert countries. There are many woody little, much branched, twiggy
shrublets, which bristle all over with thorns and spines. They are
not at all fleshy, but do with the least conceivable amount of water.
Another striking characteristic of the desert flora is noticed by
every one. Almost every plant is clothed either in white cottonwool,
like the Lammie's Lug of our gardens, or else in grey hairs. The
general tint of the landscape is not green, but it is rather the
colour of the soil silvered over by these grey-haired plants.
The reason of this is, of course, quite easy to understand. We put
on a thick overcoat if we are going to walk in a Scotch mist, to
keep out the moisture. These plants cover themselves with hairs or
cottonwool to keep the moisture inside. It does not escape easily
through the woolly hairs on the skin.
One very strange plant should be noticed here. This is the Iceplant
(_Mesembryanthemum cristallinum_). Every part of it is covered with
little glittering swellings which shine in the sun like minute ice
crystals. The swellings contain a store of water, or rather of
colourless sap, which makes it able to exist in dry places. Dr.
Ludwig says that a torn-off branch remained quite fresh for months on
his study table. It is probable that these peculiar pearl or ice-like
swellings also focus the sunlight, acting like lenses, upon the inner
part of the leaf, but that is not as yet fully understood.
There are two grasses, growing in the desert, which are of some
value; both are called Esparto or Halfa. They are very dry, woody,
or rather wiry grasses, especially common in Algeria, Tripoli, and
also found in Spain. One of them, _Stipa tenacissima_, grows in rocky
soil in Morocco, Algeria, and Tripoli. The Arabs search for it in
the hills, and dig it up by the roots; they then load their camels
with the grass and bring it to the ports whence it is sent to London
or other places. A very good and durable paper is made from it, and
ropes, mats, and even shoes are also produced from the fibre. Part
of the "esparto" is, however, furnished by another grass (_Lygeum
sparteum_). The natives sometimes tie a knot in a halfa leaf, which,
according to them, cures a strain of the back. The Stipa is also
used as fodder, but it is not nutritious and is indeed sometimes
dangerous. In one year Britain imported 187,000 tons of esparto,
worth nearly £800,000. The yield is said to be about ten tons per
acre.
Another very interesting plant at Tripoli and in the North African
Desert generally, is a sort of broom, the Retama (_Retama Raetam_).
It is not very unlike the common broom, but has long, leafless,
whip-like branches covered by bright pink-and-white flowers. It
can often be seen half submerged in waves of sand, and struggling
nevertheless to hold its own. As it has no leaves its loss of water
is very much kept down. This is the Juniper of the Bible, and it is
still used for making coals.
The length of the roots is very great in most of the broom-like,
"hedgehog," and other plants. A quite small plant not more than six
or eight inches high will have a root as thick as one's thumb. Even
at a depth of four or five feet below the surface its root will be
as thick as the little finger, so that the root-length is at least
twenty times the height of the visible part above ground. These
thirsty roots explore the ground in every direction, and go very deep
downwards in their search for water.
Another very interesting plant in the Egyptian Desert is _Citrullus
Colocynth_, from which the drug colocynth is prepared. The great
round yellow-green fruit and finely divided bright green leaves may
be seen lying on the sand. It remains green all the summer, but
appears not to have any particular protection against loss of water.
It is always supplied by its roots with underground water. If a stem
is cut through it withers away in a few minutes. This is found also
in Asia Minor, Greece, and Spain. The pulp of the fruit contains
a strong medicinal substance; it is a drastic purgative, and in
overdoses is an irritant poison. This was probably the Wild Vine or
gourd which the young prophet gathered, and which produced "death
in the pot." He probably mistook it for a water melon. It is still
plentiful near Gilgal (2 Kings xiv. 38-41).[64]
[64] Ridley, _Pharmaceutical Journal_, May 19th, 1900.
Below the surface of the earth, of course, there is not nearly the
same dryness or danger of losing water, so that there are often a
great number of bulbs, tubers, and the like hidden in the soil. There
they wait patiently, sometimes for a whole year or even for a longer
period. So soon as a shower of rain falls they start to life, push
out their leaves, and live at very high pressure for a few days.
After a shower of rain, the Karoo in South Africa, for instance, is
an extraordinarily beautiful country. There are bulbous Pelargoniums,
a very curious leafless cucurbitaceous plant (_Acanthosicyos_),
hundreds and thousands of Lilies, Irids, and Amaryllids. A single
scarlet flower of a Brunsvigia can be seen more than a mile away!
These tender and delicate, exquisitely beautiful bulbs flourish
amongst the succulent Euphorbias and Mesembryanthemums, between the
hedgehog-like thorny plants and the woody little densely-branched
mats of the permanent flora. The rain stimulates even these last to
put out green leaves and flowers, but their time comes later on, when
by the return of the usual drought every leaf and flower and the
fruit of every bulb has been shrivelled up, turned into powder, and
scattered in dust by the wind.[65]
[65] Scott Elliot, _Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin._, vol. 18, p. 243.
Then the Karoo becomes unlovely, desolate, and barren-looking, with
only its inconspicuous permanent plants visible.
The above description applies to bulbs and perennial plants with
underground stores of food. Yet these are by no means the only plants
which manage to exist in the Egyptian and Arabian desert. After a
shower of rain a whole crowd of tiny annuals suddenly develop from
seed; they come into full flower and have set their seed before they
are killed off by a return of the desert conditions, when the effects
of the rain have died away. These plants are not really desert plants
at all, for they only grow during the short time that it is not a
desert. They are like the Ephemerid insects which live for a summer
day only.
Nor is it only in Egypt that we find such ephemerals. Mr. Coville
found them in the Colorado desert in North America. The plants
are quite different, but similar conditions have brought about an
entirely similar mode of life on the other side of the globe! In
Colorado they seem to be much influenced by the quantity of rain.
Mr. Orcutt, after the great rain of February, 1891, found plants of
Amaranthus (allied to our Love-Lies-Bleeding), which were ten feet
in height, but in 1892 he found specimens of the same in the same
place only nine inches high, though they were perfect plants and in
full flower; in this last year there was only the usual very scanty
rainfall.
It is, however, in deserts when man has set to work and supplies
water and strenuous labour, that the most wonderful results appear.
The whole of lower Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, Damascus, Baghdad,
Palmyra, and other historic cities, show what the desert can be made
to produce.
As one slowly steams up the Nile from Philae or Shellal towards Wady
Halfa, there are places where the brown, regular layers of the Nubian
Sandstone form cliffs which advance almost to the water's edge. Yet
there is a narrow strip of green which fringes the water.
It is upon the actual bank itself, which is a gentle slope of ten
to fifteen feet, that Lupines, Lubia beans, and other plants are
regularly cultivated. This narrow green ribbon remains almost always
on each bank. Where the cliffs recede, one notices a line of tall,
graceful date palms, mixed occasionally with the branched Dôm palm
(the nut of which yields vegetable ivory).[66] Tamarisks, conspicuous
for their confused, silvery-green foliage, can be noticed here and
there. The Acacias are common enough, and sometimes one of them is
used as a hedge. It is a spreading, intricately-branched little
shrub, with very white branches and stout curved thorns.
[66] Used to make billiard balls.
If one lands and strolls along the banks below the palm trees or
amongst plantations of barley, wheat, or lentils, one sees the
native women in their dark green robes gathering fruits or digging.
Goats and donkeys are tethered here and there. There are sure to be
castor-oil bushes. Small but neat pigeons, with a chestnut-coloured
breast and bluish-banded tails are perching on the palms or acacias,
and utter their weak little coo. The air is suffering from the
horrible creaking and groaning of a "sakkieh" water-wheel. This
is made entirely of acacia wood, and is watering the plantations.
Sometimes it seems like a crying child, then, perhaps, one is
reminded of the bagpipes, but its most marked peculiarity is the
wearisome iteration. It never stops. One of them is said to supply
about 1-1/2 acres daily at a cost of seven shillings per diem.
Exactly the same instrument can be seen pictured on the monuments of
Egypt 4000 to 5000 years ago. The "shadouf" is of still older date.
This is a long pole bearing at one end a pot or paraffin tin and
balanced by a mass of dried mud or a stone. All day long a man can
be seen scooping up the coffee-coloured water of the Nile and pouring
it on the land for the magnificent sum of one piastre a day.
Where not irrigated, the soil is dry and parched and can only carry
a few miserable little thorny bushes. The entire absence of grass on
the brick-like soil has a very strange effect to English eyes.
The Date Palm, however, requires a little respectful consideration.
If one enters a thick grove and looks upwards, the idea of Egyptian
architecture as distinguished from Gothic and others is at once
visible. It has quite the same effect as the great hall of columns
near Luxor. The numerous stems ending in the crown at the top where
the leaves spring off was quite clearly in the minds of the architect
at Karnak and other temples. It goes on bearing its fruits for some
two hundred years, and begins to yield when only seven years old.
It revels in a hot, dry climate with its roots in water, and seems
to require scarcely any care in cultivation. Yet during the first
few years of its life it is necessary to water the seedling. A
single tree may give eight to ten bunches of dates worth about six
shillings. Generally it is reproduced by the suckers which spring out
from the base of the tree.
Dates make a very excellent food, not merely pleasant but both
wholesome and nutritious. Sometimes toddy is made by fermenting the
sap, but this is a very wasteful process, as it is apt to kill the
tree.
The stones are often ground up to make food for camels. The feathery
leaves are exceedingly graceful. When quite young they are not
divided, but they split down to the main stalk along the folds, so
that a full-grown leaf affords but little hold to the wind.
In some parts of Egypt, as for instance at Mariout, which is some
fifteen miles from Alexandria, the wild flowers are probably more
beautiful than anywhere else in the world. Amongst the corn and
barley, which can be there grown without irrigation, masses of
scarlet Poppies and Ranunculus are mingled with golden-yellow
Composites, bright purple Asphodels, and hundreds of other Eastern
flowers. The result is a rich feast of colour indescribable and
satisfying to the soul.
So that these deserts under the hand of man rejoice and blossom as
the rose.
Why is it that, as Disraeli has pointed out, civilization, culture,
science, and religion had their origins in the desert? The answer is
not difficult to see: for there is a dry, healthy climate; the severe
strain of a long day's journey is varied by enforced leisure, when,
resting at his tent-door, the Arab is irresistibly compelled to study
the stars and to contemplate the infinite beauty of the night. It
seems also to have been in the desert of the old world that man first
learnt to cultivate the soil. In fact, it was only by irrigation on
great tracts of alluvium, such as were furnished by the Nile and
Euphrates, that the enormous populations of Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh,
and the other great monarchies could be maintained. So that city life
on a big scale first developed there.
CHAPTER XI
THE STORY OF THE FIELDS
What was Ancient Britain?--Marshes and
bittern--Oak forest--Pines--Savage
country--Cornfield--Fire--Ice--Forest--Worms--Paleolithic
family--The first farmers--Alfred the Great's first Government
agricultural leaflet--Dr. Johnson--Prince Charlie's time--Misery
of our forefathers--Oatmeal, milk, and cabbages--Patrick
Miller--Tennyson's _Northern Farmer_--Flourishing days of 1830
to 1870--Derelict farmhouses and abandoned crofts--Where have
the people gone?--Will they come back?
When the eyes of man first beheld Britain, what sort of country was
this of ours? It is very interesting to try to imagine what it was
like, but of course it is a very difficult task. Still it is worth
the attempt, for we ought to know something of what has been done by
our forefathers.
Where the great rivers Thames, Humber, Tyne, Forth, Clyde, Mersey,
and Severn, approached the seashore they lost themselves in
wildernesses of desolate, dreary fenlands. Here a small scrubby wood
of willow, birch, and alder; there a miles-wide stretch of reeds
and undrained marsh intersected by sluggish, lazy rivers, or varied
by stagnant pools. The bittern boomed in those marshes. Herons,
geese, swans, ducks, and aquatic birds of all sorts found what is
now Chelsea a paradise, only disturbed by the eagle, harrier-hawk,
vulture, and the like.
Neither at the mouth nor even much higher up in its valley-course,
was a river a steady stream in a defined bed. Such beds as it had
were probably four or five times their present width; they would be
quite irregular, meandering about, changing at every flood, full of
islands, loops, backwaters, and continually interrupted by snags of
trees.
The rolling hills of the lowlands would be an almost unbroken forest
of oak, except where perhaps level land and the absence of drainage
produced a marsh or horrible peat-moss. But when we say forest, we do
not mean a glorified Richmond Park.
In good soil there might indeed be tall and magnificent trees. But it
would be quite impossible to see them! The giants of the forest would
be concealed in an inextricable tangle of young trees, brushwood,
fallen logs, creepers, and undergrowth. Where the soil was sandy or
stony, it might be a scrub rather than a forest, of gnarled, twisted,
and stunted oaks, or possibly thickets of sloe, birch, rowan,
hawthorn, brambles, and briers.
Every stream would be "wild water" leaping down waterfalls and
cutting out irregular, little woody ravines. Here and there boulders
and escarpments of rock would break through the forest soil, which
would be mossy, thick with undergrowth, and entangled with rotting
fallen trunks and branches, crossing at every conceivable angle. The
higher hills were covered by a dreary, sombre pine forest. It was of
a monotonous, desolate character. Greenish-grey tufts of Old Man's
Beard lichen hung from the branches. The ground, treacherous, and
broken by boulders, peaty hollows, and dead logs, would be shrouded
in a soft, thick cushion of feathery Mosses, with Blaeberry, Ferns,
Trientalis, Linnea, Dwarf Cornel, and other rare plants. Through
it descended raging and destructive torrents which here might be
checked and foamed over dead logs, whilst in another place they cut
out bare earth-escarpments or started new waterfalls which ate back
into the hills behind.
At the summit of the higher hills, bare rock crags projected out of
occasional alpine grassy slopes, or irregular terraces, ravines, and
gullies. Below, these alpine ravines ended in a peat-moss, which
scattered, dwarfed, distorted, and miserable-looking Scotch Firs and
Birches painfully endeavoured to colonize. Here and there on very
steep hillsides, wiry, tussocky grass might be growing instead of
forest or peat.
A horrible, forbidding, and desolate land, where Deer, Irish elk,
bison, bear, wolf, boar, wolverine, badger, and fox, alone enjoyed
themselves.
Now consider our country to-day. Mark the "trim little fields"; "that
hedge there must have been clipt about eighty years"; "The lifting
day showed the stucco villas on the green and the awful orderliness
of England--line upon line, wall upon wall, solid stone dock and
monolithic pier."[67] The road, carefully macadamized, sweeps on
correct and straight or gracefully curving from neat village to
countrytown. In the heart of the country the roadsides are scraped
bare to produce that hideous tidiness which is dear to the soul of
the County Council roadman. That is if an individual whose life is
spent in stubbing up roses, briers, and every visible wild flower,
can possibly possess a soul! Those fields without a rock, or even
a projecting stone, have been drained, dug over, and levelled with
the greatest possible care. The very rivers have been straightened
and embanked; the rows of pollarded willows have been planted;
they may, when in flood, overflow, but the results are very soon no
longer visible. Even on the moors and in the depths of the Highlands,
black-faced sheep, draining, and the regular burning of the heather,
have quite transformed our country.
[67] Kipling.
The original woods have long since vanished: those which now exist
are mostly quite artificial plantations, and the very trees are often
strangers to Britain.
The story of the Herculean labour by which our country, once as
wild and as savage as its early inhabitants the Icenians and
Catieuchlanians (and probably with lineaments as barbarous as those
of the Coritanian and Trinobant), has been changed to peaceful,
fertile meadowlands or tidy arable, is one long romance. To tell it
properly would require a book to itself. In this chapter we shall
only try to sketch what may have happened on one particular cornfield
which exists on the trap-rocks of Kilbarchan, near Glasgow.[68] The
reader must bear in mind that even this is a very ambitious attempt!
It is an exceedingly difficult undertaking.
[68] As the story probably differs in detail for every district,
the author is obliged to confine himself to ground which he has
actually seen and studied.
The subsoil in this particular cornfield (on Pennell Brae) lies upon
the trap-rock formed by one of those gigantic lava-flows which cover
that part of Renfrewshire. The whole district at that time must have
been exactly like Vesuvius during the late eruption. Its scenery
in this early miocene period consisted of glowing molten rock,
accompanied by flames of fire, electrical storms, clouds of gas,
dust, ashes, and superheated steam.
[Illustration: THEN--
A landscape in Ancient Britain.]
[Illustration: AND NOW
The same landscape at the present time. Notice how the outline
of the hills has been softened and its shape rounded. The forest
has almost vanished and the river is bridged and confined within
definite banks; in fact, only the ravine remains much the same.]
Every plant and every animal must have been exterminated. That
was unfortunate, for, at that time, Pines, Oaks, Guelder Rose,
Willows, as well as Sequoias allied to the Mammoth tree and
Sassafras, may have lived in Scotland along with tapirs, opossums,
marsupials, and other extraordinary beasts.
When the lava cooled and became trap-rock, it was at once attacked
by frost, by wind, and by rain. Then by a very slow process of
colonization, vegetation slowly and gradually crept over the
trap-rock and rich mould and plant remains accumulated. At a much
later date, there was another wholesale destruction. This time, it
was the great Ice Sheet coming down from the Highland hills. Probably
it drove heavily over the top of Pennell Brae and worked up into fine
mud and powder every vestige of the miocene vegetation.
The very rocks themselves would be scratched, polished, and rounded
off. When the glaciers melted away and left the surface free, it
would consist of these rounded rocks alternating with clay-filled
hollows. The trap-rock below would be covered by a subsoil due to
particles of trap, of Highland and other mud, with remains of the
miocene vegetation. Upon this surface, frost, wind, sunshine, and
rain would again begin to perform their work.
But the subsoil, thus wonderfully formed by fire in the miocene,
by frost in the glacial, and by weather in our own geological
period, very soon felt the protecting and sheltering effect of a
plant-covering.
First a green herb rooted itself every here and there amidst the
desolate boulder-clay or perhaps in a crevice where good earth had
accumulated. Then the scattered colonists began to form groups; soon
patches of green moss united them. Then a continuous green carpet
could be traced over a few yards here and perhaps on a few feet
somewhere else. But when things had got as far as this, progress
became much more rapid, and soon the whole site of the future
cornfield was covered over by a continuous green carpet. Only, every
here and there, hard stones and uncompromising trap-rocks remained
still protruding from the green covering.
In another chapter this first covering of the soil will be described
at length.
So far it has been _subsoil_ and _underlying rock_, but now the roots
begin to disintegrate and work up the subsoil; the earthworm has his
chance, and forms true _soil_. On this particular hillside, the water
would drain away and there would be no danger of mosses strangling
and choking the Blaeberry and the Heather. The worm flourished and
multiplied, and the soil became rich and black. Here and there a Sloe
or a Rowan, or Poplar, or perhaps Alder and Birch, began to appear.
In certain places Whins and Brooms, Brambles and Briers, diversified
the hillside. Then a few Scotch firs began to push their way up,
through the thickets. At first they were very small and stunted, but
as each one formed a dense, deep-going mass of hardy roots, they were
able to investigate the riches of the subsoil. Every year the amount
of leaf-mould above increased, until the original moss-covering was
utterly destroyed and a pine forest (see Chap. XXVIII.) occupied
Pennell Brae.
About this time, a paleolithic family may have encamped on the side
of the cliff near a little stream which can still be traced. The camp
was only a few sticks and branches, with a skin or two for shelter
from the north wind. The women lopped down fir branches for firewood,
and cut up the young trees. The children set fire to the shrubs on
dry days and paths ran here and there through the forest. This would
be about 198,000 B.C.
Every year meant a further very gradual, slow destruction of the pine
forest.
About 60,000 B.C., our paleolithic hunters with chipped-stone
weapons would be obliged to travel further to the north. New savages
with round heads and polished-stone weapons would make life in
Renfrewshire too uncertain and too diversified by massacres. These
last possessed seed corn, a few fruit trees as well as goats, cattle,
and perhaps a few hardy, shaggy ponies. At first these settlers
would be obliged to live in a lake dwelling, say in Linwood Moss,
which is close at hand. They would then drive their cattle over the
surrounding district, and camp in slightly-built villages. Near at
hand, probably on the hill, they would build a (round) camp or fort,
where they could fly for safety in the continual fights and invasions
of the period.
Sooner or later a village would be built near Pennell Brae. One
summer day the villagers attacked the wood that covered it; they cut
down all the small brushwood and hacked through the bark of every big
tree. After a few weeks, when the trees were dead, the wood was set
on fire. Then a rough fold made of rude wattle and daub was formed,
and every night the cattle and sheep were driven in.
After three or four years, this fold would be ploughed up by
exceedingly rude instruments. Barley or certain kinds of wheat would
be grown year after year until the crop was not worth gathering.
When that happened, another fold would be ploughed up. Probably the
whole of Pennell Brae went through this rude sort of agricultural
treatment at one time or another. At the same time goats, cattle, and
the demand for firewood, obtained in the most reckless and wasteful
manner, would have very seriously interfered with the forest.
Although no doubt great changes for the better were introduced, the
spearmen of Wallace of Elderslie close by had their "infield" land,
which was practically the sheepfold as above described, and their
"outfield" or grazing commons. Even down to 1745 the above system was
practised (see below).
But when men's minds were stirred up and invigorated by the great
Revolution of 1788-1820, all sorts of new agricultural discoveries
were made. Yet the cornfield on Pennell Brae was probably not drained
or enclosed by stone walls and hedges until 1830 to 1840! About 1870,
it was more profitable to its owner than it has ever been since,
though even now it forms part of our British farmlands which yield,
on the whole, a larger amount of oats per acre than those of any
other country in the world (except possibly Denmark).
Let us however look a little closer into the long, long period during
which the "fire and stone-axe methods" of farming prevailed. Before
the Romans landed there seem to have been no towns.[69] There was but
little cultivation, for the Britons wore skins and lived chiefly on
milk and flesh.
[69] Mr. Chisholm, _Geographical Journal_, November, 1897.
In the time of King Alfred, the increase of population made
it necessary to take more trouble about farming, so we find a
description of what the good farmer ought to do. We might call this
the very first Government leaflet, and it has led to the Agricultural
Leaflets published by the Board of Agriculture for Great Britain and
Ireland.
"Sethe wille wyrcan wastbaere lond ateo hin of tham acre aefest sona
fearn and thornas and figrsas swasame weods."
He was to clear off fern, bracken, thorns, sloe, hawthorn,
bramble, whin, and weeds. The names of the months give some idea of
Anglo-Saxon methods of farming. May was _Thrimylce_, because the
cows might then be milked thrice a day. August was _Weodmonath_
(weed-month), November _Blotmonath_, or blood-month, because the
cattle were then killed to supply salt beef for winter time.[70]
[70] Sir H. Maxwell, _Memories of the Months_, First Series.
Very much later in history, after our English friends had laid
waste and depopulated Scotland, so that woods sprang up again
everywhere, and again long after that time when the gradual increase
of population had again utterly destroyed those woods, a certain Dr.
Johnson travelled from Carlisle to Edinburgh. This gentleman declared
that he saw no tree between those places. This statement must not be
taken too literally, for he had written a dictionary and considered
himself not merely the _Times_ but an _Encyclopædia Britannica_ as
well.[71]
[71] This may of course have been an exaggeration, a sort of
joke. But he had no right to make jokes on such a subject.
The Earl of Dundonald (in 1795) thus describes the agriculture of
1745 (Prince Charlie's days): "The outfield land never receives any
manure. After taking from it two or three crops of grain it is left
in the state it was in at reaping the last crop, without sowing
thereon grass-seeds for the protection of any sort of herbage. During
the first two or three years a sufficiency of grass to maintain a
couple of rabbits per acre is scarcely produced. In the course of
some years it acquires a sward, and after having been depastured for
some years more, it is again submitted to the same barbarous system
of husbandry" (that is used as a fold and then ploughed up). In the
same year (1745) in Meigle parish, the land was never allowed to lie
fallow: neither pease, grass, turnips, nor potatoes were raised. No
cattle were fattened. A little grain (oats or barley) was exported.
In 1754 or thereabouts, there was only one cart in the parish of
Keithhall. Everything was carried about on ponies' backs, as is the
case nowadays in the most unsettled parts of Canada. The country in
places was almost impassable. Bridges did not exist, and the roads
were mere tracks. In Rannoch the tenants had no beds, but lay on the
ground on couches of heather or fern. These houses were built of
wattle and daub, and so low that people had to crawl in on hands and
feet and could not stand upright.
"In the best times that class of people seldom could indulge in
animal food, and they were in use to support themselves in part with
the blood taken from their cattle at different periods, made into
puddings or bread with a mixture of oatmeal. Their common diet was
either oatmeal, barley, or bear, cleared of the husks in a stone
trough by a wooden mallet, and boiled with milk; coleworts or greens
also contributed much to their subsistence, and cabbages when boiled
and mashed with a little oatmeal."[72] Potatoes were introduced in
Dumfriesshire some time after 1750, and the use of lime as manure at
about the same time. Even in 1775 the roads were such that no kind of
loaded carriages could pass without the greatest difficulty.
[72] Mr. John Murray, of Murraythwaite, referring probably to
1780, from Singer, _Agricultural Survey of Dumfriesshire_, 1812.
There is a most fascinating account in Dr. Singer's work of a
strong man's difficulties in starting reasonable agriculture in
Dumfriesshire about the year 1785. This was Patrick Miller, of
Dalswinton. (It was on Dalswinton Loch that he tried the very first
steamboat.) "When I went to view my purchase, I was so much disgusted
for eight or ten days that I then meant never to return to this
county. A trivial accident set me to work, and I have in a great
manner resided here ever since.... I have now gone over all of this
estate, and this I have done without the aid of a tenant.... I need
not inform you that the first steps in improvement are draining when
necessary, inclosing sufficiently, removing stones, roots, rubbish
of every kind, and liming.... These operations cost me, I reckon,
about £11 per acre upon an average; and I lay my account with being
repaid all my expenses by the first three crops, but at any rate by
the fourth. When the land which I make arable will give at least (if
brought from a state of nature) twenty times the rent when I began to
improve it."
Major-General Dirom, of Mount Annan, writing from that place in 1811,
says that all over Scotland for about thirty years (from 1780-1810)
he has seen "cultivation extending from the valleys to the hills,
commons inclosed, wastes planted, and heaths everywhere giving way to
corn: ... extension of towns and villages, by new lines of excellent
roads, magnificent bridges and inland navigation ... our rapidly
increasing population, by our now exporting great quantities of grain
from parts of Scotland into which it was formerly imported, and by
the superior comfort and abundance which appear in the domestic
economy of the inhabitants." If you read any newspaper of to-day
published in Canada or in the Argentine Republic, you find exactly
the same process at work, and the same enthusiasm about it. Even in
1840-1850 all these improvements were still vigorously going on.
Look at Tennyson's _Northern Farmer_ (old style):--
"'An I a stubb'd Thurnaby waäste.
Dobbut looök at the waäste, theer warnt no feeäd for a cow,
Nowt at all but bracken an fuzz, an looök at it now.
Warnt worth nowt a haäcre and now there's lots o feeäd,
Four scoor yows upon it an some on it down i seeäd."
Even in his days, the good farmer was following King Alfred's
directions. About 1830-1850 most of the land was in good bearing, and
the roads were sufficiently good to admit of the stage-coach with
four horses. But they after all lasted but a very short time before
the railways again entirely altered the conditions of country life.
As we have seen, rents were in places, five times as large in
1820-1830 as they had ever been previously.[73] Therefore it was that
about this time the gentlemen's houses were in many places rebuilt
on a more magnificent scale. Then also were begun those circles and
strips, or belts of plantation, which are now conspicuous features
of the Scotch lowlands. An enormous majority of these plantations
are not more than eighty years old. I think avenues were planted in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The fashion about 1820 was
to destroy them as unnatural, at least in England. Unfortunately no
respect was paid to the economic practice of forestry, with very
unfortunate results for the proprietor.
[73] The agricultural rents in Dumfriesshire were valued in 1656
at £13,225, in 1790-1800 as £109,700, in 1808 £219,037 10s. 8d.
In 1905 the value per acre was from £1 to £2.
The rest of this chapter is necessarily unpleasant and distressing
reading, but it is necessary if we are to understand the romance
of the fields. As one wanders over the grassy pastures of Southern
Scotland, where the black-faced sheep foolishly start away, and where
one's ears are irritated by the scolding complaints of the curlew
or whaup, it is no rare accident to find a few broken-down walls, a
clump of nettles, and badly grown ash trees. That was once a farm
steading, where a healthy troop of children used to play together
after walking three or more miles barefoot to school. The ash trees
were planted at every farm "toon," for the Scottish spear was a very
necessary weapon until recent times. Often also, upon some monotonous
grouse moor, one sees the ridges that betoken a little croft where a
cottager lived.
In one parish (Troqueer) over seventy country cottages have been
abandoned during the lifetime of a middle-aged person.
Many families, of which the laird was often the best farmer in the
district and his own factor, have disappeared. The fine houses, with
their parks and shootings, are let to strangers, who come for a few
weeks or months, and then leave it in charge of a caretaker. Before
this recent development, the "family" lived all the year round upon
the land; they spent their income chiefly in wages to the country
people. Where once forty or fifty people were employed all the year,
there are now but three or four. The big house with shuttered windows
and weed-grown walks, is a distressing and saddening spectacle.
Of course such changes must occur. The farmer's and the cottar's
children are now carrying out in Canada, Australia, or the United
States, what was done in Scotland from 1780-1830. India, South
Africa, and China have been developed by the brains and hold the
graves of many of the laird's sons.
Yet this poor old country, abandoned of her children, shows signs of
revival. Both the poor and the rich are beginning to find out that a
country life is healthier, quite as interesting, and sometimes quite
as profitable as the overcrowded city with its manufactories, mills,
and offices. All new countries are beginning to fill up, and there
is some hope that a new and vigorous development of farming may make
the countryside once more vigorous, prosperous, and full of healthy
children.
CHAPTER XII
ON PLANTS WHICH ADD TO CONTINENTS
Lake Aral and Lake Tschad--Mangrove swamps of West
Africa--New mudbanks colonized--Fish, oysters, birds,
and mosquitoes--Grasping roots and seedlings--Extent
of mangroves--Touradons of the Rhone--Sea-meadows of
Britain--Floating pollen--Reeds and sedges of estuarine
meadows--Storms--Plants on ships' hulls--Kelps and tangles in
storms--Are seaweeds useless?--Fish.
The way in which the savage, rugged, inhospitable Britain of the Ice
Age changed into our familiar peaceful country formed the subject of
the last chapter.
But plants do far more than cover the earth and render it fertile,
for some of them assist in winning new land from the sea or from
freshwater lakes. The Sea of Aral, for instance, or Lake Tschad are
rapidly becoming choked up by reeds and other vegetation. Blown sand
from the deserts around is caught and intercepted by these reeds, so
that fertile pastures are gradually forming in what used to be the
open water of a deepish lake.
By far the most extraordinary of all these plants which form new land
are the Mangroves.
They are only found in the tropics or sub-tropical regions, and are
always along the sea-coast. It is where a river ends in a delta,
dividing into intricate and confused irregularly winding creeks, that
the mangroves are especially luxuriant.
Such a river will have probably flowed through hundreds of miles of
the most exuberant tropical forest, where growth is never checked by
the cold grasp of winter.
Its waters are yellowish brown or _café au lait_ coloured, because
they are full of mud and of decaying vegetation, with dead leaves and
decaying branches floating on the surface. So full are such rivers of
decaying material that they have a distinct and unmistakable smell,
which has been compared to "crushed marigolds."
So soon as the muddy water reaches the sea, most of its mud is
deposited and forms great banks and shoals of shifting odoriferous
slime, which confuses and interferes with the discharging mouths of
the river.
It is upon these changing, horrible-smelling banks of bottomless
slime that the Mangrove is especially intended to develop.
If one takes a canoe in such a delta and paddles inwards on the
incoming tide, a dense forest of glossy-green mangroves will be found
to cover the whole coast-line, and also to extend far inland by the
winding creeks, lagoons, and river channels.
The whole theory of the mangroves becomes clearly revealed as soon
as the water begins to sink at low tide. First one notices that the
stem of every mangrove ends below, not in a single trunk, but in an
enormous number of arched, stilt-like supporting roots. Not only the
stem but the branches also give off descending roots, which branch
into four or five grasping arched fingers as soon as they get near
the water. When they reach the mud, these fingers grow down into it
and form a new supporting root to the tree. It is very difficult
to give any idea of the extraordinary appearance of these mangrove
roots.
Imagine an orchard of very old apple trees in winter, and suppose
that one were to cut off every tree and plant it upside down in
black mud, and also to crowd them so closely together that the
branches were all mixed and confused. This may give an idea of the
odd and strange appearance of the root-system in a mangrove forest.
Upon these arching roots, even on those which are not yet attached,
multitudes of oysters may be seen. There is also a little fish (a
sort of perch) which climbs up on to the roots or out of the mud
below, and gasps or squatters about in it.
As to the mud itself, it is a horrible, greasy, oozy, black or
blue-black slime of bottomless depth. "It is full of organic,
putrefying, strongly-smelling material, clearly full of bacteria.
The water itself is sometimes covered by a dirty, oily scum, and
air-bubbles rising from the bottom, spread out on the surface and
let loose their microbes in the atmosphere."[74] There are many
crocodiles, which may be seen reposing on the mud above high tide. It
is difficult to distinguish them from a rough log of wood, but it is
still more difficult to kill them, for their scales turn any ordinary
bullet. There is scarcely any experience more exasperating than when,
after one has taken a long, careful, and accurate aim, one observes
the sleeping brute suddenly wake and scurry down into the water with
a hideous leer on its face. Sea-cows or manatees are said to live
in these creeks. Little ducks of many kinds rise in hundreds and
thousands, but the commonest bird is the "curlew" (either a whimbrel
or closely allied to it). During the day they sift the mud with
their long curved beaks for insects, and at sunset fly down in vast
numbers to the mudbanks near the sea. A miserable little white crane
called "Poor Joe" is common, and has the same habit. It is not worth
shooting, and it is quite aware of the fact. Herons, cormorants,
and other birds are often to be seen. Monkeys sometimes visit the
mangroves, probably to eat oysters or crabs. There are several kinds
of crablike creatures which climb up the roots and may be seen
running about all over them. But during the three weeks spent by the
writer in the Mahéla creeks of Sierra Leone, it was the insects that
made the deepest impression upon him; as soon as the evening falls
the mosquitoes appear in myriads and in millions. Such creeks and
mangrove swamps are always feverstricken and dangerous, and probably
enjoy the very worst climate in the whole world. Of course nowadays,
when Sir Patrick Manson and Dr. Ross have discovered that the
mosquito carries the malaria germ, it is possible with great care to
guard against malaria. One has also the satisfaction of knowing that
the mosquito itself cannot be perfectly at ease with all these tiny
parasites attacking its digestive organs.
[74] Warming, _Lehrbuch der OEcol Pfl. Geog._
At first sight such swamps appear to be useless, impossible, and
dangerous. But that is not the case. No one, of course, would ever
willingly reside in mangrove swamps, and the mangroves themselves are
of scarcely any use to man, although the bark does sometimes furnish
a useful tanning material; but, indirectly, the mangroves are one of
the most important of all Nature's geographical agents.
On those horrible, slimy, shifting mudbanks no other plants could
manage to exist. If one looks carefully at the seaward side of the
last of the mangrove swamps, then it is easy to see that they are
colonizing and reclaiming the mud.
Not only do the roots depending from the branches grasp and colonize
new mud, but the seedlings are also specially adapted to fulfil the
same office.
They remain a long time attached to the parent fruit; they also grow
to a considerable length before they fall off. When ready to fall,
they have a distinct seedling stem, which swells out towards the
base and ends in a pointed root. The seedling is, in fact, like a
club hanging upside down and with a pointed end. When it does fall,
it goes straight down deep into the mud; then it promptly forms some
anchoring roots, and the young mangrove is fixed in new mud and
begins to develop. So that the forest continually grows towards the
sea.
Such mudbanks soon become pierced by roots in every direction. Then
the leaves of the mangroves themselves, as well as silt, soil, and
rubbish floating in the water, gradually accumulate about and around
these roots. This must raise the level of the ground. Eventually
the soil becomes hardened and is above the level of the water. When
this happens, the mangrove, which likes salt water about its roots,
becomes unhealthy and the ordinary jungle trees kill it and take its
place. Thus in course of time, when the jungle is cleared, fertile
ricefields may be thriving on what was once a pure, or rather impure,
mudbank.
In this way, by the continual development of the mangroves, enormous
stretches of land are being added to the continents, and the process
continues so long as the character of the coast-line favours it.
The shore-line covered by these mangrove swamps is enormous. In
fact, within the tropics one finds them almost everywhere along the
seashore, but coral, rock, or an exceedingly dry climate such as that
of Arabia or Northern Peru, prevents their growth. Central and South
America, West and East Africa, India, Polynesia, Australia, and much
of the Asiatic coast-line, is covered by mangroves.
[Illustration: _Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_
_London and New York_
A RICEFIELD IN CHINA
The proprietor and two of his coolies are in front of the paddy
field. The young rice plants can be seen growing in the water.]
Theophrastus speaks of those in the Persian gulf, and that
exceedingly shrewd botanist has some valuable notes about them worth
reading even to-day.[75]
[75] Drude, _l.c._; Schimper, _l.c._; Warming, _l.c._; _Colonial
Reports_, No. 3, Miscellaneous. Schimper, _Indo-Malayische
Strandflora_.
In temperate countries, such as our own, the districts where great
rivers enter the sea are for the most part aguish and rheumatic, but,
of course, there is nothing so startling and extraordinary as the
mangrove swamps.
Yet, even in temperate countries, the work of winning or gaining
new land plods steadily onwards, and it is performed by humble,
inconspicuous little plants.
Where the Rhone enters the Mediterranean, there are some 40,000 acres
of sandy and clayey land called the Camargue. The bare sand near the
sea is often flooded and swept by violent storms in winter; anything
which tries to grow there is usually carried[75-b] off and destroyed.
[note 75-b] Drude, _l.c._; Schimper, _l.c._; Warming, _l.c._; _Colonial
Reports_, No. 3, Miscellaneous. Schimper, _Indo-Malayische
Strandflora_.
But, after a time, one finds here and there a solitary plant of a
kind of Saltwort (_Salicornia macrostachya_) which has withstood the
strain: its branches gather a little sand and hold it together, and
its roots gradually explore and tie down the soil around it. Next
winter it can stand the sweep and scour of the stormy water; next
summer other plants begin to grow on this tiny sand-heap, and the
"touradon," as it is called, is now fairly well established. It goes
on growing until it may be, after a few years, six feet in diameter.
Eventually the salt gets washed out of the soil and these little
heaps become united by a continuous covering of green plants in which
shrubs and then trees begin to grow.[76] By this time of course the
sand has accumulated farther out to sea and the same process is going
on there.
[76] Flahault, after Schimper, _l.c._
In Britain we have the "sea meadows" of Sea-grass, which covers the
submerged sand and mudbanks near the mouths of great rivers.
The waving green grasslike leaves form a rich submarine meadow. They
are used for stuffing pillows and cushions, especially in Venice, but
their real importance in the world depends upon their being able to
tie down and fix permanently those unseen shifting banks which form a
real danger to all navigation.
These plants are very remarkable. They lived, no doubt, at one time
on the land, like most of the flowering plants. But, like the whale
and the seal, they have been driven to take refuge below the ocean.
They are not easily seen, and, indeed, one may wander for years along
the sea-coast and never suspect that great meadows of Zostera (the
Eelwrack, Grasswrack, or Sea-grass) are flourishing under water.
But, one might ask, how is the pollen of its flowers carried?
Obviously neither insects nor the wind can be of any service. The
pollen of Zostera is, however, of the same weight exactly as the
water, so that it neither rises to the surface nor sinks to the
bottom, but floats to and fro until it reaches the outspread styles
of another plant. This is perhaps the most remarkable arrangement
known for the carrying of pollen.
Sometimes along the seashore, or especially on the muddy foreshore
of an estuary or tidal river, one can watch those plants which are
trying to form new land. One finds generally that there is a broad
stretch of marshy meadow interrupted and intersected by small ditches
and little winding streams. As one gets towards the shore, Sea-pink,
Scurvy-grass, an Aster, and other plants, not to be found elsewhere,
become common. Then stretching out into the mud there are rows of
curious reeds and sedges.
Try to pull up one of these reeds, and you will find a strong,
buried, stringy stem, with hundreds of anchoring roots. These are the
pioneers which first fix the sand.
Over the surface of the sand between these upright stems, one often
comes upon a most beautiful, glossy, dark-green, velvety cushion.
It is composed of a seaweed called Vaucheria, whose twined and
interlaced threads form a thick, silky cushion. But it is only
beautiful to look at from above. If you pull up a piece of this
cushion, you will find that it is growing on black and loathly mud,
with many wriggling worms and horrible animalcula. First these
pioneer reeds, then this soft, silky carpet of vaucheria, and then
the sea-pinks and other estuarine marsh flowers gradually creep
forward and extend over the bare muddy sand, so winning it from the
sea for the use of cattle.
In the worst winter storms, when the waves are thundering heavily
over these sands, it seems as if nothing could resist them. Yet if
you go down when the storm is over, no harm has been done: there is
the silky green cushion of vaucheria, and there are the lines of
pioneer sedges and reeds quite undisturbed!
The reeds bend and sway, yielding to the water; the seaweed is slimy
and oily, and the water cannot injure it. But yet the strength of
these seaweeds is extraordinary, and, indeed, almost incredible.
More remarkable still, perhaps, are those seaweeds which grow upon
rocks, often where the full strength of the waves beats upon them.
After a heavy storm, when, perhaps, the great timbers of groins and
the heavy concrete blocks of an esplanade have been shattered to
pieces and tossed all over the shore, one may go down to the shore
and there will be no visible difference in the kelps and tangles of
the rocks. Scarcely any seem to have been broken away. Indeed, if
one looks in the rubbish left by the last high tide, one finds that
when one of these Alarias has been broken away, it is often because
the stone itself has been torn out of the rock! One finds broken off
stones with the seaweed still attached to them.
The reason is that the outside of the seaweed is oily, slimy,
or slippery, so that the water gets no hold of it. The stem and
substance is also elastic and surprisingly strong, so that the daily
tossing and wrenching when the tides come in and go out has no effect
in tearing it away.
But if you go down to a dry dock and look at the hull of a ship
which has come in to be cleaned and scraped, you will see that it is
entirely covered by seaweeds and shells.
That ship has been driven through the water perhaps at ten miles an
hour or more, and yet those delicate-looking seaweeds have held on!
It is more surprising still if you can get some of them and examine
them with a microscope, for amongst them are tiny, delicate, graceful
little fronds and sprays which one would think consisted of nothing
but jelly. Yet they have been able to thrive and grow on the ship's
hull while it has been hurrying day and night through the sea, in
calm or in tempest, and in currents of hot or cold water.
Those seaweeds were called by Horace _Algæ inutiles_, or useless
seaweeds; but are they useless?
Go down to a little pool and watch them waving in the water. Could
anything be more beautiful than these little graceful red, yellow,
or brown sprays? All sorts of seaslugs, shrimps, and minute animals
of weird and wonderful design are clearly living on them. Fishes live
upon these animals, and fishes are an extremely useful and excellent
food for man.
CHAPTER XIII
ROCKS, STONES, AND SCENERY
An old wall--Beautiful colours--Insects--Nature's
chief aim--Hard times of lichens--Age of
lichens--Crusts--Mosses--Lava flows of great
eruptions--Colonizing plants--Krakatoa--Vesuvius--Greenland
volcanoes--Sumatra--Shale-heaps--Foreigners on railway
lines--Plants keep to their own grounds--Precipices and
rocks--Plants which change the scenery--Cañons in America.
At first sight, and when one is striding along at some four miles an
hour, there seems to be nothing at all interesting in an old wall.
But if one stops and carefully examines the stones, there is a great
deal that is interesting.
Rocks and walls possess a fascination of their own. Probably at least
2000 British plants are _only_ found upon them, and yet of these, the
vast majority are so small and inconspicuous that an ordinary person
never perceives a single one of them.
It is perhaps on rocks or old walls near the sea that this stone
flora is most richly developed. The nearly circular orange-yellow
patches of the Lichen _Physcia parietina_ are quite distinct and
conspicuous. But any old wall, provided it is well out in the
country, is pretty sure to be interesting.
At first it seems to have only a dull grey or neutral tint. But if
one goes to four or five feet distance, one discovers that many
shades of brown, red, white, and black go to make this grey.
But the extraordinary beauty of such a wall is only visible when one
peers and scrutinizes the surface very slowly and carefully with the
eyes six or seven inches away from it.
In doing this, one is often troubled by rude and ribald boys. A
botanical friend indeed complained that he had been for months
avoided and shunned as a dangerous wandering lunatic on account
of his botanical enthusiasm. But true botanists get accustomed to
disagreeable incidents like that, and pay no attention to the vulgar
crowd.
The change in an old wall when one looks at it from a few inches
distance is most remarkable. The entire surface is spotted or dusted,
sprinkled or entirely covered by thick lichen stains and crusts.
The original colour of the stone is nowhere visible. The lichens show
the most delicate shades and contrasts in colour; all pleasing and
all blending together in harmonious general tones. The fruit of these
lichens is like a minute saucer or platter generally with a thin rim
or border, but it is exceedingly small, probably only one-sixteenth
of an inch in diameter, or even less. The smallest of these crust
lichens form continuous, very thin, coatings, covering the stone; and
against this background the little saucer-like fruits show up quite
distinctly.
The coating itself varies from "bright yellow, pale ochre, citron,
chestnut colour, to mouse colour, different shades of grey and green,
cream colour, lead colour, blue-black or pure black, tawny, brown,
rusty red or pure white." The cups of one kind (_Lecidea_[77]) are
black, whilst those of _Lecanora_ are generally reddish-brown. But
they may be a ghostly pale hue which stands out plainly against the
grey-green background of the frond.
[77] _Lecidea_ has at least 230 species on British stones and
rocks (Leighton).
Sometimes they are of the richest deep crimson or lake, set against
a pure snow-white crust. Those of _Lecanora vitellina_ are, though
tiny, a brilliant yellow, and quite startling when first one notices
them. Many of these contrasts and shades are never used by artists,
and even from the mere artistic point of view they have great
interest.
But if, after spending a few minutes in carefully looking over the
rocks at a distance of six or seven inches, one stands up and goes
back to four or five feet away, the whole of this colour scheme fades
away and there is only the monotonous indeterminate grey or neutral
tint of the wall.
Now why is this? Why should these delicate and exquisite shades be
wasted on such minute and scarcely distinguishable forms?
There are always two sides from which one can look at any subject,
namely the _inside_ and the _outside_.
From the inside (that is from the point of view of the little lichen
itself) these colours are decidedly useful. Small insects crawl about
on such walls or hover a few inches in front of them, and to those
insects these cups will be as conspicuous and attractive as a scarlet
geranium is to ourselves.
Just as we habitually go to look at a geranium, so those insects fly
towards the cups and crawl about on them. Then when the spores and
dust of the lichen begin to stick in their hairs and feet, they go to
a bare place and clean or brush them off. Thus the spores and dust
are carried to a new part of the rock, where they will grow if they
can find an unoccupied place. The taste in colour of these insects,
moreover, is apparently not very different from that of man.
But perhaps a still more interesting point of view is that from the
outside. Why are those lichens there? What are they doing, and are
they of any use?
The general scheme of Nature is to cover the whole world with green,
so that every ray of sunlight may find a working leaf or green frond
ready to welcome it and use it. Nature abhors bare rock, barren sand,
and empty water, and never ceases to try to bring it under that
beautiful covering of green plants and active vegetable life which
supports both man and animals.
We all know that there is a romance in the story of man's colonies.
First the explorer searches out the country; then the pioneer
frontiersman settles and builds his log-hut or rough shanty. Next
comes the frontier village, which may perhaps in many years' time
become a crowded city where active, valuable work is carried on.
The story of the colonizing of rocks and stones by plants is just
as vividly interesting. These tiny lichens are almost the first
pioneers, and prepare the ground for those that follow. Upon that
bare rock, life is terribly severe. The frost shatters it, sunshine
heats it until it almost burns the hand in summer. Floods of rain or
of sleet beat against it, and it may be frozen over for weeks.
What plant can stand such conditions? Only these minute, tiny, scarce
visible lichen films!
Gradually new lichen crusts develop upon it. They cover over the
first pioneers; first they suffocate them and afterwards devour their
remains. Nature is very businesslike and severe in her working. The
lichen crust may be now about one-sixteenth of an inch thick. It is
a very slow process. There is a story of a boy who noticed a patch
of lichen near his father's door. He went away to Kamschatka or
somewhere and came back a very old man of eighty-five years; but he
found that the lichen patch was just the same size as when he went
away. That, however, is just a story!
At any rate, one of these little crust-lichens called _Variolaria_
has been known to increase half a millimetre in size (about a
sixtieth part of an inch) between the end of February and that of
September.
Now if one tries to realize what the life of such a lichen crust
or crottle must be, it is obvious that the stone below it must be
a little corroded or weathered, and remains of the first choked
pioneers, bacteria, and possibly tiny insects or animalcula will be
under the crust, which may now be one-sixteenth of an inch thick.
It is the turn now of other lichens to colonize it. These may be the
little trumpet or horn and cup lichens, _Cladonias_, or perhaps the
larger grey kinds, _Parmelias_ and _Physcias_, which have leaf-like
fronds and form circles of perhaps eight to ten inches in diameter.
The crust-lichen is overgrown, broken up, disorganized, and devoured
by the _Parmelias_ and _Cladonias_, who are helped by bacteria,
insects, and animalcula which shelter below them. These leafy lichens
grow much more rapidly.
They may increase two-thirds of an inch in one year.
But very soon after this, one notices a few inconspicuous green
mosses; at first in crevices between the stones or in hollows,
and not remarkable, they soon increase and form trailing sprays
or branches which grow very quickly. Branches of moss four or
five inches long extend over the leafy lichens in a season. The
_Parmelias_ and _Cladonias_ struggle on, but they cannot keep pace
with the rapid life of the moss, and soon our wall is covered by
beautiful moss turfs.
Underneath such a turf there may be an inch or so of good soil (dead
moss and dust with lichen and insect bodies). Worms, insects, etc.,
shelter and flourish and multiply in this soil.
But the turn of the moss is coming. Here a few grass-blades, there
a tiny plant of Sandwort, possibly a Rock Bedstraw, begin to root
themselves in the moss.
If people would only let the wall alone, it would soon be festooned
with hanging plants, and producing quantities of grass, but somebody
is sure to find that it looks very untidy, and everything is torn off
the wall, which again looks new and raw and clean. Then of course the
pioneer lichens begin again!
Some very interesting and remarkable facts have been discovered about
the way in which lavas and basalts have been occupied by the plant
world.
In the great volcanic eruption of 1883, the whole island of Krakatoa
was covered by hot lava and glowing ashes. In 1884 and 1885 the
sunsets were remarkable for a curious fiery red or orange glow,
which was popularly supposed to be due to the volcanic dust of that
explosion. It is said that the dust travelled three times round the
earth, though I do not know on what authority.
However, on Krakatoa island there was left a clean "slate." There
were neither bacteria, nor leaf-mould, nor living plants of any
kind; no spores or seeds could have endured the fiery furnace of the
eruption.
Three years afterwards the botanist Treub visited the island. He
found that the rocks had been first covered by thin layers of minute
freshwater Algæ, but that ferns were then occupying and inhabiting
the lavas. Eleven kinds of ferns, and but very few other plants, were
discovered.
People were interested in this, and Dr. A. F. W. Schimper then
visited another volcano which had been pouring out huge streams of
lava in 1843. He found that there were still plenty of ferns, but
also numbers of shrubs and other plants. Yet even then there were
no trees, and there was no continuous mantle of green plants such
as we are accustomed to in this country. He also found many plants
growing on the lava which are generally found on the branches of
trees, that is, which can do without a thick layer of soil. He also
found quantities of a pitcher plant, Nepenthes (which lives mainly on
insects caught in its pitchers).
This does not at first sight seem to agree at all with what has been
given for the walls. It is true that sometimes in the Highlands,
or Lowland and Lakeland Hills, one comes across quantities of the
Bladderfern and others growing on the "screes." (These last may
be described as streams of broken, angular stones, filling small
gullies, and spreading out at the base over a considerable space.)
Often these ferns seem to be all that can thrive in amongst the
stones. But in a mild and temperate country like our own, one would
expect things to proceed differently.
And in fact they do so. Every one must have noticed a green stain
which covers wet walls, stones, stucco, even marble statues, and
especially tree bark in wet or damp situations. This is a minute
green seaweed rejoicing in the name of Pleurococcus. It is a pretty
object for the microscope.
This, of course, is the first stage of colonization. It is followed
by mosses of sorts.
But there is a more interesting series still in a climate resembling
our own. The lava-flows from Mount Vesuvius have been investigated by
several observers.
There it was found that the first inhabitants were _lichens_ and
small green seaweeds; then "different mosses occupied the lava over
which a certain quantity of vegetable dust had been scattered." After
this, scattered ferns and even small shrubs could be seen even on
flows which were red-hot only twenty years before, whilst on old
lava-fields herbs, shrubs, bushes, trees, and even true woods had
developed.[78]
[78] Engler, _Humboldt's Centenaarschrift_, 1889.
Yet in Greenland lava-flows dating from 1724-29 are still only
covered by crust-lichens and a very few of the stone-mosses! In
Sumatra, on the other hand, the volcano of Tamboro, which in 1815
had entirely destroyed its vegetation, was covered with a fine young
wood in 1874![79] The strong heat and abundant moisture of Sumatra
favours, whilst the horrible climate of Greenland prevents, the rapid
growth of good soil. Just as cities of 20,000 inhabitants can spring
up in a few months in the Western United States, whilst the Esquimaux
of Greenland have not managed as yet even to live in villages!
[79] Warming, _Lehrbuch der Oekol. Pfl. Geog._
The full beauty of this gradual colonization and occupation of bare
rock and stones only impresses one properly if one tries to trace the
stages, but it is an interesting history.
Near Glasgow one sees great heaps of shale or blaes (generally
_blackband_), which are often mistaken for natural hills. This is or
was virgin soil, never occupied by plants, and entirely destitute of
leaf-mould or any sort of organic plant-food.
If one scrambles to the top of one of these heaps, it is easy to
see all the details of the occupation. Long underground runners of
coltsfoot and of horsetail are climbing up the sides, fringes of
creeping buttercup, couchgrass, and other hardy weeds occupy, every
year, a little more of the flanks, but, on the top, one very soon
finds that the dust of the atmosphere, aided by weathering, has
afforded a chance to mosses, to hawkweeds, and other rock plants.
These in time cover the top, and soon hardy grasses and weeds form a
regular turf on the top of the shale.
It is interesting to scramble to the top of one of these heaps,
especially in summer. One then begins to realize how every plant
attends strictly to its own business.
All over the sides of the heap there will be hundreds of a rare
groundsel (_Senecio viscosus_), which is not really a native, and
_never_ occurs except on such places. In a grass field close by
hundreds of thousands of Ragwort (_Senecio jacobæa_) make a glorious
golden carpet; in the marshy part of the meadow the Water Ragwort
(_Senecio aquaticus_) may be found. In the cottage gardens and here
and there along the roadside the groundsel (_Senecio vulgaris_) is
flourishing abundantly.
These plants never interfere with or encroach upon one another's
grounds. Every year thousands of ragweed and groundsel seeds must be
blown on to the shale-heap, but they never manage to grow there.
It is only the foreigner (_S. viscosus_), accustomed to a very hot
and dry climate, and with sticky leaves which catch atmospheric dust
and probably insects, that can exist on the bare shaly sides. These
slopes of shale are easily heated by the sun, and at the same time
radiate the heat rapidly away, so that the Viscid Groundsel must have
a very hard time of it. When its roots have worked up the shale a
little, and its dead leaves have covered the surface with mould and
organic matter, then possibly others (true British plants) can get a
footing and suppress it.
Along railway tracks, also, the ballast forms a very hot, a very dry,
and a very barren soil. Many of the regular railway-track plants are
foreigners from the far south, even from the sunny shores of the
Mediterranean. They are mostly annuals, such as the little Toadflax
(_Linaria minor_), which can just manage to exist under those
conditions.
Of course, the sides of the banks and of cuttings on railways are
generally formed of good earth or soil, and support a rich and
flourishing flora of true Britons.
Besides these slow, laborious lichens, mosses, and others which
attack rock, there are other plants which are generally called rock
plants, though they behave quite differently.
These are those fine hardy Hawkweeds, Roseroots, Sempervivums, Mew,
and others which establish their roots in cracks or crevices of the
rocks.
Such cracks are soon full of good soil, for the wind blows decayed
leaves and dust into them, and the roots are always burrowing into,
eating into, and shattering the rocks. Most of them have a circle of
leaves which are pressed flat to the ground. Thus they escape the
violent winds and storms always common on such crags and precipices.
The flowers, however, supported on tough, strong, and flexible
stalks, sway freely to and fro in the wind, and can be seen by
insects a long way off.
These rock plants are of some importance as stonebreakers and
pioneers in a very interesting process.
Wherever a cliff or precipice of stone is exposed, it is "weathered."
Water gets into the cracks and freezes in winter. But when water is
frozen it expands or widens, and as this happens to the water in the
crevices and cracks of rocks, pieces of rock are shivered and broken
off. Besides frost and wind and rain, these rock plants help to
attack the cliff. Their roots get into the crevices, and there widen
and expand, tearing off great slabs and splinters of rock which fall
down to the foot of the cliff.
Down below plants are every year growing over and covering up or
"happing up" with green these bare fragments and splinters. A
considerable amount falls down every year, so that the ground is
always being raised up below the precipice. At the brow or edge above
the precipice, there is also always a loss of rock and stone every
year.
So that every year the bare rock exposed becomes smaller and smaller,
until eventually a steep, green, grass-covered slope covers over the
entire site of that precipice.
Moreover that is not by any means all that plants do in the way of
changing the scenery of the country. Look at the outlines of the
hills in any part of Great Britain except in the broken, jagged,
rocky mountain ranges of Scotland and Wales (also Cumberland,
Westmorland, parts of Derbyshire and Dartmoor tors). Everywhere there
are smooth, flowing, gently undulating rises and falls. No sharp,
abrupt descents break these graceful sweeping curves. If you compare
the scenery of a cañon in the rainless deserts of Western America,
the contrast is very striking. There the sides of the valleys are
steep cliffs; it is all harsh, precipitous, horrible country, which
is obviously very unpleasant and very unattractive to civilized
people.
It is this green covering of plants which makes the difference.
The rain that falls is not allowed to cut out ragged ravines; it
is intercepted and soaks into the grasses, which so keep a smooth,
gentle outline over hill and valley.
If you notice the effect of a heavy shower of rain on a road or
bare earth, you will see how soon tiny valleys and cañons and beds
of streamlets are cut out. But on the green fields beside the road,
there is no change in the surface at all! It seems to be quite
unaffected by the heaviest storm of rain.
CHAPTER XIV
ON VEGETABLE DEMONS
Animals and grass--Travellers in the elephant grass--Enemies
in Britain--Cactus _versus_ rats and wild asses--Angora
kids _v._ acacia--The Wait-a-bit thorn--Palm roots and
snails--Wild yam _v._ pig--Larch _v._ goat--Portuguese and
English gorse--Hawthorn _v._ rabbits--Briers, brambles,
and barberry--The bramble loop and sick children or ailing
cows--Briers of the wilderness--Theophrastus and Phrygian
goats--Carline near the Pyramids--Calthrops--Tragacanth--Hollies
and their ingenious contrivances--How thorns and spines are
formed--Tastes of animals.
By far the greater number of wild animals live by eating vegetables.
If one thinks of the elephant's trunk, the teeth of a hippopotamus,
or even of the jaws and lips of mice, rats, and voles, the thoroughly
practical character and efficiency of their weapons become the more
astonishing the more one reflects upon them.
Yet the defences adopted by plants are just as wonderful, and are
often most ingenious.
It seems at first remarkable that the most usual food of animals,
grass, should be apparently unprotected. It is upon grass that the
great herds of bison, of buffalo, of antelope, and guanaco, are or
were supported. Yet grass is so wonderfully reproductive, produces
such enormous quantities of buds and foliage, and grows in such
luxuriance, that there is no fear of its being killed out.
There are many places in the world where vegetation defies the
attacks of the animal world. Neither man nor elephant can live
comfortably in the thick jungles of West Africa and the great forests
of Brazil. Nor can either man or elephant utilize great tracts of
country in Central Africa which are covered by the Elephant Grass.
For, perhaps, four or five hours the weary caravan plods on through a
sort of burrow, two feet wide, made in this gigantic grass. The stems
are ten feet or more in height, and nearly meet overhead. There is
nothing whatever to be seen except the narrow path. The atmosphere is
stifling and hot. To cut a new road a few hundred yards long through
it involves hours of labour. It is only when there has been a long
drought that it is possible to set fire to the Elephant Grass, and
then for a very short time the young growing shoots can be grazed.
But no cattle can break through when it is fully grown.
The very exuberance of vegetation in such cases prevents any harm.
Perhaps it is best to show how, even in Great Britain, all plants
have many dangerous foes. The roots of trees are nibbled by mice,
voles, and sometimes by swine. The bark is injured by cattle,
roedeer, reddeer, fallowdeer, who tear the bark with their horns,
and especially by rabbits and hares. The leaves are eaten by the
same animals and also by horses, goats, sheep, etc. The young buds
are attacked by squirrels, who also break off the leading shoots of
certain firs when they happen to be in a playful mood.
But it is in cultivated lands and in open, rather dry and arid
country that one finds the most interesting weapons in the fights
between plant and animal. It is in such places that some of the most
beautiful and useful creatures have their home. The horse, ass,
camel, goat, and sheep probably belong to those wonderful lands
which border the great deserts of Africa and Asia. These animals have
been obliged to travel far and fast, and to perfect their bodily
strength in order to pick up a living.
[Illustration: _Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_
_London and New York_
CULTIVATED BAMBOO IN A CHINESE PLANTATION
These giant grasses are sometimes one hundred and twenty feet
high and one foot in diameter. They at times grow at the rate of
three feet per day, and are used for all sorts of purposes, such
as scaffolding poles, flower-pots, as a vegetable, etc. etc.]
They have been taught (perhaps we should say learnt) by the thorns
and briers of the wilderness.
The Cactus, Prickly Pears, or other succulent plants which belong
to true deserts, are covered over with most curious and interesting
spines. A row of little projections runs down each edge of the
round fleshy stem. On each projection there is a rosette of spines.
Sometimes these are long, slender, and diverging; in other cases they
are short, stout, and curving over.
Now imagine a guanaco in South America, or even a rat or mouse, which
is perishing of thirst in the arid desert where such things are
found. It will be seen that it is by no means easy for it to taste
the water in the juicy stem, for even the thin muzzle of a rat could
scarcely get between the thorns.
Kerner describes how the wild asses in South America root up or try
to split the Cacti with their hoofs to get at the juicy tissue of the
unarmed lower parts. Yet they often receive dangerous wounds in doing
so from the frightful spines of Melocactus[80] and others.
[80] Kerner, _l.c._, vol. I, p. 447.
It is very interesting to see a flock of Angora goats in South Africa
attacking an Acacia. The kid is a pretty, white, fluffy little
creature, with the most meek, mild, and innocent expression. Yet it
is a quarrelsome little brute. In a few minutes an Acacia will be
despoiled, broken, and robbed of its foliage by a flock of them,
although it bristles all over with long spines, of which there are a
pair at the base of each leaf.
Even the _Kameeldorn_, Camelthorn Acacia, or the Wait-a-bit in South
Africa cannot defend itself.
The Wait-a-bit (_Wacht een beetje_) is so called from the ingenious
nature of its spines. There are two together, of which one is
straight and the other curved round like a hook. Both are very sharp
and strong, so that an incautious traveller is sure to injure himself
and his clothes. The straight one runs into his tender flesh, whilst
the curved one fixes itself in his clothes.
It is by thorns, spines, and prickles that plants often protect
themselves against the attacks of grazing animals. But it must be
remembered that these are by no means the only safeguard. Plants
produce poisonous, bitter, or strong-smelling substances which keep
off their enemies, and these indeed often afford a more efficient
protection (see Chap. III.). These thorns, etc., can be produced in
the most unexpected places. There is one rule, however, namely that
they are invariably found in the exact spot where they can be most
useful.
Thus there are certain palms which possess green, juicy leaves,
much relished by snails. These are protected by a sort of spine
entanglement formed upon certain roots, which grow at the base of
the leaves. Nor is this the only case in which spines are found on
roots. There are certain South African bulbs (_Moræa_) which are
protected from the wild pigs by a dense mass of spiny roots.[81] On
my march to Uganda from Mombasa, I was very much astonished to see an
extraordinary Wild Yam. It had a huge underground tuberous part full
of starchy matter, but it was quite impossible for any marauding wild
boar to get at it, for it was entirely enclosed in a sort of arbour
of long, arching roots densely covered by stout spines, which made a
perfect protection.[82]
[81] Scott, _Annals of Botany_, vol. 11, p. 327.
[82] Scott Elliot, _Naturalist in Mid Africa_.
It is more usual to find thorns developed on the branches or stems.
Generally these are formed on the outside towards the end of the
branches. In the Alps, larches have to suffer from the attacks of
goats which nibble off the ends of the young shoots. The part behind
the scar dries up, but fresh twigs are put out from further back
along the branch, until the tree becomes a closely branched, twiggy,
bristling mass which looks like the clipped yews in old gardens. But
so soon as it has grown tall enough to be above the reach of the
goats, an ordinary larch stem develops and may grow into quite a
respectable tree. This fact is given by Kerner von Marilaun (_l.c._,
p. 445), and is very instructive, as explaining why it is that so
often the ends of the branches become hard thorns: the green leaves
and twigs are hidden and protected.
One of the neatest examples of this is the Portuguese Gorse or Whin,
which resembles a little cushion with every branch ending in strong
thorns and every leaf terminated by a stout spine.
The common Whin, Furze, or Gorse, is very nearly as perfect an
example of thorniness and spininess. The Southdown sheep do not seem
to injure it on those beautiful Sussex downs so famous for succulent
mutton, yet in the early spring, or in a very wet season, one often
finds in the grass at the foot of the bush (or even in the bush
itself) small shoots which would be taken at first sight as belonging
to some other plant. These little shoots are grey with hairs and have
soft trefoil leaves which are quite unprotected, for their spines are
quite soft. They are probably seldom eaten, for most of them are in
the shelter of the old spiny bushes.
Yet even the old bushes can be used as fodder for sheep if they are
crushed and ground up so as to break the thorns and spines. The Gorse
is a very hardy plant, and is said to be only out of flower "when
kissing is out of fashion" (see p. 100).
There is still some uncertainty as to the exact way in which animals
set to work when they are eating thorny or spiny bushes. This makes
the arrangement of the thorns sometimes a little difficult to follow.
Moreover it is often not so much the leaves as the juicy bark in
winter and early spring that is required. Sometimes everything above
ground is eaten down.
Rabbits, for instance, do not as a rule touch the Hawthorn, yet Mr.
Hamilton says, "The second winter after planting was very severe and
this hedge was eaten down to the very ground by rabbits. For about
600 yards I do not think that a single plant was missed."[83] In
frost and snow almost every plant is attacked by rabbits, and indeed
by any grazing animal.
[83] Mr. Thomas Hamilton, _Researches by Lanarkshire Teachers_,
1902-3.
Remembering that it is very often the young juicy shoots that are
sought after, it is quite easy to see why the young Rose suckers and
shoots from the base of the stem fairly bristle with long and short
prickles. These latter are generally straight, not curved like those
of the long arching branches which are supposed to hook themselves
on the branches of the surrounding trees. The young light-coloured
branches of the cultivated Gooseberry are flexible, and hang over in
such a way as to make it difficult for an animal to reach the bark: a
cow or sheep, if it wished to eat these branches, would begin at the
hanging tip and make a sort of upward tearing jerk while its tongue
gathered the branch into its mouth. If one copies this with the hand
it is easy to see how the length and arrangement of the prickles and
the flexible nature of the spray would make such a proceeding on the
cow's part most uncomfortable.
So also in the Barberry, the young juicy upright shoots which spring
from the older branches have stout three to seven-branched prongs
pointing downwards, of the most efficient character. Each is really
a modified leaf and is found below each bud. Even the mere idea of
an animal's tender lips or tongue tearing at these shoots from below
gives one a momentary shudder. In the younger, wavy branches of the
Barberry the spines are straighter or more diverging. The young
leaves of the short bud above alluded to are also most efficiently
protected by their spines. The Hawthorn has a curious arrangement of
very long stout thorns, behind which the leaves are sheltered. The
younger flexible branches have smaller spines, which become efficient
in winter and tend to prevent animals from eating the bark. The
Cockspur thorns are 4 to 5-1/2 inches long, and extremely like the
spur of a gamecock.
Bramble prickles are generally curved back in order to hook or cling
to the branches of other trees, but any one who has tried to force
his way through a clump of brambles knows the difficulty of doing so.
The loops made by the branches fixing themselves in the ground (see
p. 93) were at one time given credit for healing various diseases.
Children in Gloucestershire used to be dragged backwards and forwards
under these loops; in Cornwall also people afflicted with boils were
made to crawl under them. Even cows when suffering from paralysis
(supposed to be due to a shrew-mouse walking over them) were dragged
through the Bramble-loop, in which case Professor Buckman remarks,
"If the creature could wait the time of finding a loop large enough
and suffer the dragging process at the end, we should say the case
would not be so hopeless as that of our friend's fat pig, who, when
she was ailing, had a mind to kill her to make sure on her."[84] The
brambles and briers of Gilead and Ezekiel were probably brambles of
which _Rubus discolor_ is common in Palestine,[85] and the Butcher's
Broom (_Ruscus aculeatus_). This last plant is really of the Lily
family, and its flat leaf-like branches end in a sharp spine. The
rabbit does not eat it.[86]
[84] Lindley's _Treasury of Botany_.
[85] Ridley, _Pharmac. Journ._, May 19, 1900.
[86] Maxwell, _Memories of the Months_, First Series, 1, pp.
74-76.
Amongst foreign thorny and spiny plants it is very difficult to make
a selection.
Theophrastus (one of the very earliest botanists--see p. 37)
describes a class of shrub very common in Phrygia, in which the
leaves are produced at the base of the young shoots, which latter end
at the top in branch thorns. These thorns, therefore, entirely cover
the foliage and keep off that vegetable demon the goat. Some of the
Crucifers, Roses, Composites, Labiates, etc., take on this habit in
goat-infested countries.[87]
[87] Kerner, _l.c._
In Egypt, near the Pyramids, one often finds _Carlina acaulis_, a
little thistle which has no stem, but is merely a flower seated in
the middle of a rosette of leaves which lie flat on the sand. In the
centre there is a circle of sharp spines, each of which is from one
to two inches in length. The nostril of a hungry camel or donkey is
sure to be pierced if it tries to eat the leaves. The spines of this
thistle, like those of our Carline and the _Centaurea calcitrapa_
(thistle of the Bible), spring from the bracts surrounding the
flower.
The ancient "calthrops" or "crawtaes" (first used by the Romans) were
designed from the spines of the last-named plant[88] (_calx_, heel,
and _trappa_, snare.) It had four iron spines, so that, however it
was thrown down on the ground or in a ford, a spine was sure to stick
up and to lame man or horse.
[88] Ridley _l.c._
[Illustration: 1. Old Roman Calthrops, left on roads, fords,
etc., to lame horses.
2, 3. Fruits of Tribulus, showing efficient spines. Animals'
feet, in passing, must catch them. They are more efficient than
Calthrops.]
The Tragacanth plant has also very neat spines. They are the
persistent spiny stalks or midribs of the older leaves from which
the leaflets have dropped away. The fresh green leaflets are quite
protected inside these withered spines.
Several grasses have leaves which end in sharp or needlelike points.
One of these, _Festuca alpestris_, actually produces bleeding at the
nostrils of grazing cattle, and is detested by all the shepherds of
the Alps.
The Holly is one of our most beautiful trees, as John Evelyn points
out: "This _vulgar_ but _incomparable_ tree.... Is there under
_Heaven_ a more glorious and refreshing object of the kind than
an impregnable _hedge_ of near _three hundred_ feet in _length_,
_nine_ foot _high_ and _five_ in _diameter_: which I can show in my
poor _Gardens_ at any time in the year, glittering with its arm'd
and vernished _leaves_? The taller _Standards_ at orderly distances
blushing with their natural _Coral_."[89] This apparently was the
identical hedge into which Peter the Great used to trundle his
wheelbarrows. The barrows contained his courtiers. There was a nice
run from the top of rising ground close at hand. It was at Sales
Court, Deptford.
[89] Evelyn, _Silva_.
The spiny leaves of the Holly are unfortunately not nearly strong
enough to save it from its enemies. The bark is apparently of a
particularly delicious and toothsome nature, for sheep, cattle, and
the ubiquitous rabbit are always delighted to destroy the trees.
It has been noticed that wild hollies have at the base very spiny
leaves, but that higher up on the tree (above the reach of cattle)
the leaves have no spines at all. Sir Herbert Maxwell, in his
_Memories of the Months_,[90] takes up this question. It is best to
give the description in his own words:--
[90] Third Series, p. 60.
"I strolled out along the banks of Tay in that noble woodland which
is continuous from Dunkeld to Murthly. Here there are many fine
hollies, some on the river banks and cliffs, others on level ground,
planted by no hand of man. There was not one of these which did
not confirm my observations first made many years ago, and hardly
one which did not bear evidence of special growth--not merely as a
reaction against pruning or cropping, but _as a precaution_ _against
any such contingency_--so regular and deliberate as to suggest that
these trees are something more than unconscious automata.
"Many of these hollies are thirty feet high, with foliage down to
the ground. They carry spinous leaves up to a height of three or
four feet; above that level all the foliage is absolutely smooth
and spineless. One tree rose from the ground in two bare stems, and
the lower branches did not reach below the browsing level. But from
between the two old stems rose a young shoot about four feet long,
clothed throughout its entire length with intensely prickly leaves.
This tree was growing in an enclosed wood where cattle could not
come; still, roedeer might be about, and the holly armed its young
growth at the low level, although the leaders of the old stems, not
less vigorous in growth, bore leaves as smooth as a camellia's. I
noted one particularly suggestive tree, an unhealthy one. The growth
had died back along most of the branches, which stood out bare and
dry; but a recuperative effort was in progress; fresh and luxuriant
growth was bursting along nearly the whole height of the stem, and
the foliage of this was vigorously prickly up to about four feet,
and smooth above that height. I noticed many instances of localised
prickly growth where boughs, originally above the browsing level,
and clothed with spineless leaves, had been weighed down and cropped
by cattle. But this is merely a vigorous reaction against external
injury, such as makes a clipped holly hedge bear spinous foliage from
base to summit."[91]
[91] _Memories of the Months_, Third Series, p. 366.
This quotation shows that there is no doubt as to the facts. It is
true that one finds cultivated hollies showing many variations.
Sometimes all the leaves are spiny, both above and below. In other
varieties none of the leaves possess spines at all. Yet it must be
admitted that these are facts and cannot be denied.[92]
[92] I had expressed some doubt in my _Nature Studies: Plant
Life_.
Moreover, the Osmanthus, with its holly-like leaves, the Evergreen
Oak, and some Junipers are found to show exactly the same curious
difference. The perilously-situated lower leaves are more spiny than
those which are above the reach of grazing animals.
Kerner von Marilaun[93] also has remarked a similar protective
arrangement in _Gleditschia chinensis_ and in the Wild Pear. Trees
of the latter, when they are young, "bristle with the spines into
which the ends of the woody branches are transformed"; but tall trees
twelve to fifteen feet high are entirely without thorns!
[93] _l.c._, vol. I, p. 433.
It is when one meets coincidences of this nature that the full
meaning of plant life begins to dawn upon the mind.
How is it that the plant knows the time to produce its spines, and
the time to refrain from doing so?
There are certain queer facts that have been given on good authority
as to the causes which tend to produce thorniness and spininess.
Linnæus, _Philos. Bot._, p. 215, § 272, says:--
"Spinosae arbores cultura saepius deponunt spinas in hortis."
Lothelier found that Barberries grown in a moist atmosphere had no
spiny leaves, and that the thorns were far less woody under those
conditions, whilst in a perfectly arid and dry atmosphere only spines
were formed; a strong light also tended to produce spines.
Professor Sickenberger grew a desert plant (_Zilla myagroides_) in
the Botanic Garden at Cairo, and found that its spines were much
weaker and more slender than the strong rigid thorns which cover it
in its natural desert.
Professor Henslow[94] found that the spiny form of the Rest Harrow,
when grown in a rich soil with an abundance of water, gradually loses
its spines. All these experiments certainly show that a dry desert
sort of life, and possibly strong sunlight, favour the development of
spines and thorns.
[94] _Origin of Plant Structures_, pp. 38-40.
Of this there cannot be any reasonable doubt, for the extraordinary
quantity of thorny, spiny things in deserts shows that there must be
some connexion between such a life and their production (see Chapter
X.). In such places animals are always abundant. But these hollies,
pears, and other plants show exactly the opposite to what we should
expect. It is when the head of the young holly reaches the sunlight
and feels the wind that its leaves become harmless!
If one remembers the case of the young larch and its goat enemies on
page 181, it is perhaps possible to think that the lower branches
and twigs were for untold generations exposed to laceration and
biting. Thus, suffering from the loss of water by these regular
annual wounds, the leaves developed their spines in response. So far,
belief is not more difficult than it is with regard to the origin
of any variety. But whenever, by reversion to their ancestral type,
the original not-spiny leaves developed on the top of a tree, that
tree would have an advantage, for every leaf on it would be more
economically produced; a smooth leaf would not require to spend food
in order to make spines. Such trees, spiny below and smooth above,
would be best fitted to survive, healthier and more vigorous, and in
the end would leave more descendants.
At the same time, such a case as this reveals again that mysterious
and exquisite purposefulness which a reverent mind discovers in
Nature everywhere.
At the same time, as we have already pointed out, we are exceedingly
ignorant of many of the very commonest facts. Léo Errera, the great
Belgian botanist (whose recent death has been a terrible loss to
science), collected together some facts as to the taste of cattle for
various spiny and thorny plants; he found that cattle wished to eat
the following: Buckthorn, whin or gorse, raspberry, brambles, the
Scotch thistle, the creeping thistle, as well as musk, welted and
slender thistles, sow thistle, and saltwort.
They avoided: Barberry, the petty and German whin, rest harrow, the
carline, and the other thistles not given above, as well as the
common juniper.
They disdained or despised: Sea holly, common holly, milk thistle,
_Lactuca_, and _Urtica urens_.[95]
[95] Errera, _Un Ordre de Recherches trop négligé_. See also
Ludwig, _Biologie d. Pflanzen_, p. 210.
So far as the holly is concerned, it is certainly not despised
by sheep and rabbits in this country. But how few are the plants
investigated! Several of the commonest British plants are omitted
just because no one has taken the trouble to watch them.
Here, then, is an opportunity of discovering something new, fresh,
and interesting which should be well within the reach of any one who
passes his life in the country.
CHAPTER XV
ON NETTLES, SENSITIVE PLANTS, ETC.
Stinging nettles at home and abroad--The use of the nettle--Sham
nettles--Sensitive plants--Mechanism--Plants alive, under
chloroform and ether--Telegraph plant--Woodsorrel--Have plants
nerves?--Electricity in the Polar regions--Plants under electric
shocks--Currents of electricity in plants--The singing of trees
to the electro-magnetic ear--Experiments--Electrocution of
vegetables.
The common nettle is one of our most interesting British plants. It
is exposed to great danger; one sees it growing not only in pastures
and parks, but in waste places, along roadsides, and near cultivated
ground. Yet it is very seldom either eaten or even touched. Cattle do
occasionally eat the young shoots. But this is exceptional, for even
in fields where there are plenty of cattle great clumps of nettle
luxuriate and increase in size every year.
The stinging hairs are hollow and shaped rather like a narrow bulb
or flask; the tip is slightly bent over and rounded (not sharp);
the hairs contain formic acid. If one grasps the nettle or strokes
it in a particular way (from below upwards) the hairs are pressed
flat against the stem or broken, so that no wound is made by them in
the skin and consequently they do no harm. But if the point of the
hair pierces the skin, the well-known irritation is set up. That is
because formic acid is poured into the wound. Besides the stinging
hairs which keep off all the larger animals (including man) there are
others, shorter and thickly set, which do not sting at all, but are
intended to keep off snails.[96]
[96] _Gard. Chronicle_, 32, 390.
The pain produced by our common nettle is, however, a very trifling
matter compared with that produced by some of the foreign species.
One of the Indian kinds was used to excite and irritate bulls when
they were intended to fight with tigers in the games which used to
be held at some Indian Courts. Another found in Timor is called the
Devil's Leaf; the effect of its sting may last for twelve months and
may even produce death. But a still more dangerous stinging plant
is a handsome tree (_Laportea moroides_) found in Australia. It is
often 120-140 feet high, and has fine dark-green leaves often one
foot in length. The sting is so powerful that even horses are killed
by touching its leaves. The sting of _Jatropha urens_ is so strong
that people become unconscious. In Java also the sting of _Urtica
stimulans_ continues to smart for twenty-four hours, and may produce
a fever which is very difficult to shake off.[97]
[97] Lindley, _l.c._; Ludwig, _l.c._
Yet our common nettle is the favourite food-plant of the caterpillars
of the Small Tortoiseshell, Red Admiral, Peacock, Camberwell Beauty,
and other butterflies.[98] These caterpillars are possibly more
intelligent than many of our country folk, who do not know that the
nettle is a very useful plant, as the following statements most
clearly prove. Its young leaves make an excellent spinach, and it
was, according to Sir Walter Scott, formerly cultivated in Scotland
as a pot-herb. Pigs, turkeys, geese, and fowls like the leaves when
they are chopped up. It is said that the dried leaves and seeds will
make hens lay in winter time. The seeds, under pressure, yield quite
a good oil. A yellow dye can be obtained by boiling the roots with
alum. An excellent string can also be made from the inner bark of the
stems, which has, in fact, been used to make twine and even clothing.
The nettle is also valuable as an external stimulant in cases of
paralysis.
[98] _Memories of the Month_, First Series, p. 73.
A plant with so many wonderful properties would not be so common as
it is, or so little disturbed, if it were not for its powerful stings.
There are one or two plants which are extremely like the nettle
at first sight. Lord Avebury has an illustration in his excellent
little book[99] in which it is most difficult to tell which are White
Deadnettles and which are stinging nettles. No doubt the harmless
deadnettle is helped to escape injury by this resemblance. The Hemp
Deadnettle and some Campanulas are also very like it when growing.
These also are sham nettles and may escape in the same way.
[99] _Flowers, Fruit, and Leaves._
There are several common greenhouse Primulas which also produce
irritation of the skin. When handled by gardeners a painful smart is
set up which lasts for some time. _Primula obconica_ is the worst
of these, but _P. sinensis_, _P. cortusoides_, and _P. Sieboldii_
sometimes have the same effect. In all these cases it is due to a
peculiar secretion of certain glandular hairs.[100]
[100] Nestler, _Sitz. d. K. Akad. d. Wiss. Wien_, vol. 3, p. 27.
The methods of protection against grazing animals so far described,
such as stinging hairs, thorns, spines, etc. (see page 190), are
obvious enough, but perhaps the most ingenious system of defence is
that exhibited by the Sensitive Plant and a few others.
When man or any heavy animal is approaching certain Indian plants,
their leaves suddenly drop, and the leaflets close together. The mere
shaking of the ground or of the air produces these extraordinary
movements in the sensitive Woodsorrel (_Oxalis sensitiva_), in two
Leguminous plants (_Smithia sensitiva_ and _Aeschynomene indica_),
and in several Mimosas.
When one leaf-tip of _Mimosa pudica_, the Sensitive Plant (_par
excellence_), is touched or injured, a series of changes begin. All
the little leaflets shut up one after the other; then the secondary
stalks drop; after this the main stalk of the leaf suddenly droops
downwards. After a short interval, the next leaf above goes through
identically the same movements. If the shaking or injury is severe,
every leaf from below upwards moves in the same way.
One probable advantage of these movements can be understood from the
behaviour of flies, which alight upon the leaves and make them drop.
The flies are startled and go away. Grazing animals will consider
such behaviour in a vegetable as very uncanny, and will probably go
to some other less ingeniously protected plant.
Of course such extraordinary behaviour has been a challenge to the
botanical world, and there is an overwhelming mass of speculation,
and observations about the Sensitive Plant.
It has been proved that the movements are caused by the thickened
part at the base of the main stalk of the leaf. This is swollen, and
full of water, and much thicker than the stalk itself. It is by this
thickened portion that the leaf is kept at its proper angle. When the
tip of the leaf is shaken or injured, the cells on the under side of
this swollen part allow their water to exude into the spaces between
them, and in consequence down comes the leaf-stalk.
This is not, by any means, a full or even a sufficient explanation.
There is certainly some peculiar sending of messages from the tip of
the leaf to the swollen part itself. It is not safe to say that it is
a nerve message, but the process resembles the way in which messages
are sent by the nerves in animals. Not only so, but the contraction
of the under side and a corresponding expansion on the upper side,
resembles the muscular movements of contraction and expansion in
animals.
It must always be remembered that plants are alive; their living
matter is not in any way (so far as we know) essentially different
from that of animals or of man. Their living matter (protoplasm) in
leaf-stalks and leaves is cut up into boxes or cells, each enclosed
in a case or wall of its own. Yet these are not entirely independent
and unconnected, for thin living threads run from cell to cell, so
that there is an uninterrupted chain of protoplasm all along the
leaf, leaf-stalk, and stem.
In this particular case of the Sensitive Plant, the leaves at night
regularly take up the position which they adopt when injured or
shaken during the daytime.
The easiest way to produce the shrinking of the leaves is, as has
been mentioned, to hold a lighted match a little below the leaf-tip.
Severe shaking, a strong electric shock, or a railway journey will
also produce closing of the leaves.
Under chloroform or ether, or if the atmospheric pressure is suddenly
diminished, the leaves will also fall. In some respects they are very
lifelike, for if too often stimulated they become "fatigued," and
will not react unless a sufficient interval of rest is allowed them.
The reaction occurs very soon if the plant is in good condition: in
less than one second it begins, and the leaf-stalk may fall in two
to five seconds, but the recovery is very slow.
Vivisection is a cruel sort of proceeding, although it may sometimes
be necessary. The most curious vivisections have been performed on
Mimosa. When the leaflets are cut off, it is possible, on a stimulus
being applied, to see water oozing out of the cut surface of the
stalk. This would go to show that it is the water being discharged
from the leaf-base that produces the movement.
There are, however, many points in the behaviour of the Sensitive
Plant which have not yet been explained.
Possibly the curious Semaphore or Telegraph Plants, whose leaflets
suddenly and without any obvious reason move with a jerk through an
angle of several degrees, may also be protected from animals by this
uncanny and unusual behaviour.
But though the Sensitive Plant is certainly protected from grazing
animals by these movements, other advantages may be derived. Heavy
rain, for instance, such as occurs in the tropics, will not injure
its delicate leaves. Dust-storms will not damage it, and at night
there will be no loss of heat by radiation. The "shrunk" or folded
condition of the leaflets will decrease any chance of injury by
raindrops, for the rain will not fall on the broad surface of the
leaflets. A nearly vertical leaf also will not suffer the loss of
heat which a horizontal one would endure.
Besides the plants mentioned above, there are several others in which
by a rather severe shaking the leaves can be made to fold up. This is
the case with the common Woodsorrel (_Oxalis acetosella_), with the
False Acacia (_Robinia_), and a few others.
The former has a peculiarly delicate leaf. In cold, wet weather its
leaflets hang limp and numb from the leaf-stalk all day. In fine
weather they are spread out horizontally. On a fine sunny afternoon
its leaflets may sometimes take a mid-day sleep, for they hang
loosely down in the same way that they do in cold, wet weather or at
night.
But in the Woodsorrel these movements are not for protection against
grazing animals.
There are other examples amongst plants of a distinct sudden movement
which begins whenever part of the plant is touched. The movements of
tendrils have been already referred to. The Venus' Fly Trap and the
Sundew will be mentioned when we are discussing Insectivorous Plants.
There are also several flowers in which the stamens suddenly spring
up when they are touched by an insect (Barberry, Centaurea, and
Sparmannia), and in Mimulus the style-flaps close when touched (see
p. 70).
All these cases seem to involve some sort of mechanism which replaces
the nervous system of animals.
No very definite laws have yet been discovered as to the way in which
plants are affected by electricity, but enough is known to show that
there are many interesting discoveries in prospect.
Professor Lemström has made some interesting experiments in the Polar
regions which go to show that the rich development of plant life in
that desolate region may be connected with the peculiar electrical
conditions of the Polar atmosphere; the aurora borealis, which is a
common phenomenon there, being also produced by those conditions.
Several writers have claimed that slight electric shocks given at
frequent intervals help the growth of plants and especially quicken
the germination of seeds, but it can scarcely be said that this has
been proved.
When a branch or leaf-stalk is wounded or injured by being
tightly clamped in a vice, then it will be found that a current
of electricity passes from the injured spot to the part that is
untouched, and then in the reverse direction.
Changes of current are also produced when a leaf is suddenly exposed
to light for a short time and then shaded.
One of the most interesting observations is that made by Major
Squiers near Lorin Station, in America, where the California Gas
and Electric Corporation of San Francisco has a long-distance
transmission telegraph line. The power is transmitted at a voltage
of 56,000 with a frequency of sixty cycles per second (three-phase).
Major Squiers, from previous experiments, thought that a note
corresponding to this frequency might be heard in a telephone
receiver. The following was the result:--
"Upon connecting the telephone between two nails driven in any
growing tree along the route of the line, and at a reasonable
distance therefrom, the telephone responded to this note with great
clearness, and when the distance was not more than 100 feet, the
sound was very loud. For this experiment no microphone need be used,
nor any source of electromotive force other than that induced in the
tree itself, the telephone being connected directly between two nails
driven into the tree....
"Several kinds of trees of various sizes and forms were examined
along this power transmission line, and all were found to be singing
with a loud voice the fundamental note characteristic of the line
current. Indeed, the strip of vegetation along this line has thus
been singing continuously, day and night, for several years, since
the operation of the line began; it needed only the electro-magnetic
ear to make the sound apparent....
"The general appearance of vegetation along this route is certainly
vigorous."[101]
[101] Squiers, "On the Absorption of Electro-magnetic Waves by
Living Vegetable Organisms," December 3, 1904.
An interesting little experiment was carried out by the author in
Glasgow, with the kind help of Professor Blyth, at the Glasgow and
West of Scotland Technical College. By attaching one wire to the
upper part of the stem of a young pot-plant whilst the other wire
was inserted in the base of the stem, it was easy to show that an
electric current was passing--at any rate, during the daytime. In the
evening, however, this was not at all distinct. That such currents do
occur in living trees seems to be admitted. A similar current was not
found in a stick of dead-wood. The mere passage of the water through
the plant in transpiration might, however, cause such a current, for
the water is evaporated at the leaves.
A strong electric shock may of course _electrocute_ a plant by
killing the cells. It is possible to cause the Mimosa leaves to close
by means of an electric shock.
CHAPTER XVI
ON FLOWERS OF THE WATER
The first plant--Seaweeds in hot baths--Breaking
of the meres--Gory Dew--Plants driven back to
the water--Marsh plants--Fleur-de-lis--Reeds and
rushes--Floating islands--Water-lilies--_Victoria
regia_--Plants 180 feet deep--Life in a pond, as seen by
an inhabitant--Fish-farming--The useful Diatom--Willows
and Alders--Polluted streams--The Hornwort--The Florida
Hyacinth--Reeds and Grass-reeds--The richest lands in the
world--Papyrus of Egypt--Birds and hippopotami--Fever and ague.
What was the first green plant? When was the surface of the earth
first covered with flowers? Such questions are quite impossible
to answer. We cannot even tell how plants ever came to exist on
the earth at all. Wonderful as are the stories of the hardihood of
bacteria, of spores, and of seeds, it is not possible to imagine that
they could have been whirled or drifted through infinite space to
this particular planet.
Yet it is at least probable that the first real plant on this world
was a seaweed or alga.
In Germany and Austria there are certain springs in which the water
coming from immense depths is at an exceedingly high temperature.
These hot springs are used as natural hot baths, and have many
interesting peculiarities. Amongst others there is the fact that
certain seaweeds or algæ are found luxuriating in the hot water. Some
of these can even live in springs with a temperature of 176° F.!
Such algæ may have remained living in exceedingly hot water ever
since that long distant time, the very first of all the geological
periods, when there was no distinct separation betwixt land and
water, and when the waters which were below the firmament had not
been separated from those which were above it. Then the world seems
to have been all fog and mist at a very high temperature.
But all theories on the origin of the world might be briefly
summarized by the last nine words!
At any rate, the first plant was almost certainly a seaweed or alga
not unlike those which produce the so-called "breaking of the meres."
At some seasons the water of certain lakes, usually quite clear
and pure, becomes discoloured, turbid, and everywhere crowded with
multitudes of tiny, bright, verdigris-green specks. The fish at
once begin to sulk, refuse to take the fly, and live torpid at
the bottom of the water. The minute green particles consist of a
certain seaweed or alga. Mr. Phillips put the head of a common pin
in the water so as to obtain a very small drop. When placed under
a microscope, this minute amount of water was found to contain 300
individual algæ.[102] This was in Newton Mere (Shropshire), and as
this lake extends over 115 acres, it is possible to imagine the
millions upon millions of algæ which must have existed in it. The
names of these seaweeds are many thousand times longer than the algæ
themselves, and it is not really necessary to give them. One of
them, however, _Aphanizomenon flos-aquæ_, has been noticed "tingeing
with its delicate green hue the margin of the smallest of the Lochs
Maben, in Dumfriesshire."[103] Yet it is not so big as the dot on
the _i_ in its name. Many other cases have been recorded of lakes
that were coloured sometimes a "pea-green," or even brown or red by
similar tiny little seaweeds. As we shall see, the water of such
lakes generally contains a very large amount of suspended or floating
vegetable life.
[102] Cooke, _British Freshwater Algæ_, on the authority of
Phillips, _Trans. Shropshire Natural History Society_.
[103] Dickie, _Journal Bot. Soc. Edin._, vol. 3, p. 79.
Another curious appearance is _Gory Dew_. Patches of a deep blood-red
or purple colour are found on the ground or on walls. They have just
the appearance of recently-shed blood. This also is due to an alga
(_Porphyridium cruentum_). Dr. Cooke quotes from Drayton as follows:
"In the plain, near Hastings, where the Norman William, after his
victory found King Harold slain, he built Battle Abbey, which at
last, as divers other monasteries, grew to a town enough populous.
Thereabout is a place which, after rain, always looks red, which some
have attributed to a very bloody sweat of the earth, as crying to
Heaven for vengeance of so great a slaughter."
The ordinary "Rain of Blood" which appears on _not too fresh_ meat,
and looks like minute specks of red-currant jelly, is due to one of
the Bacteria (_Micrococcus prodigiosus_).
The original algæ or seaweeds probably had descendants which migrated
to the land and eventually after many geological periods became
our flowering plants and ferns. But the earth has become so richly
supplied with plants of all sorts and kinds that it is now by no
means easy for any plant to find a roothold for its existence. So
that a considerable number have been forced back to the water, and
have accustomed themselves to live in or even under water in company
with their lowly cousins, the seaweeds, who remained below its
surface.
These water plants are very interesting. They are always competing
with one another. There is a perpetual struggle going on round every
pond and loch, and by every river side.
If you look carefully round the edge of a loch or pond which lies in
a grass field, certain series of plants are generally found to follow
one another in quite a definite way. The first sign of water in grass
is generally the presence of moss or "fog" between the grass-stems
and the appearance of what farmers call the "Blue Carnation Grass."
It is not a grass but a sedge (_Carex glauca_ or _C. panicea_) with
leaves rather like those of a carnation. A little nearer the border
of the pond, there may be a tall coarse grass (_Aira caespitosa_
or _Festuca elatior_). Next there is almost certain to be a fringe
of Rushes. Where the Rushes begin to find the ground too wet for
them, all sorts of marsh plants flourish, such as Water Plantain,
Cuckoo-flower, the Spearwort Buttercup, Woundwort, and the like.
As soon as the actual water begins, one finds, whilst it is still
shallow, the Flag series of yellow or purple Irises, Bogbeans, Marsh
Cinquefoil, Mare's Tail, and Sedges of various kinds. In this part
the water ranges from an inch or two to about eighteen inches deep.
The Flag or Iris is a very common and yet interesting plant. It
has a stout, fleshy stem lying flat on the mud, and anchored to
it by hundreds of little roots. The flower is the original of the
Fleur-de-lis, or Lily of France, which took the fancy of the King of
France as he rode through the marshes towards Paris. (It is true that
there are some unromantic authors who hold that the emblem was really
intended to represent a frog or toad!)
The flower consists of three upright petals and three hollow sepals,
which make so many canals leading down to the honey, and roofed over
by an arched and coloured style. As the bee hurries down the canal
to its nectar, its back is first brushed by a narrow lip-like stigma
and then dusted with pollen. The leaves overlap in a curious way,
and, when they have withered, their stringy remains serve to protect
the fleshy stem. _Orris root_, which is used in perfumery, is the
stem of the _Iris florentina_.
Most of the other plants in this Flag series will be found to
have prostrate main stems growing under the water, but giving off
flowering and foliage stems which stand up above it, so that the
leaves and flowers are above the surface.
In the next part of the pond, where the water is from eighteen inches
to nine feet deep, masses of reeds will be found usually swaying,
sighing, and whispering in the wind. There are many kinds, such as
Bulrushes, Phragmites, Horsetail, Scirpus, etc. It seems to be the
depth, the exposure to wind, the character of the soil, and other
unknown factors, that determine which of those will be present. All
of them are tall, standing well above the water; their main stem is
usually flat on the bottom of the pond, or floating horizontally in
the water, but giving off many upright branches.
Floating islands are often formed by some of these horizontal main
stems breaking off and being carried away. Those Chinese who possess
no land make floating islands of such reeds for themselves, and grow
crops on them. There are hundreds of such islands in the Canton River.
[Illustration: _Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_
_London and New York_
A LEAF RAFT
Victoria Regia, the giant water-lily of the Amazons. Those shown
are in a public park in Minnesota and are able to support the
weight of a child. In their native home the leaves are said to be
ten feet in diameter.]
Beyond the reeds, one sees the large flat, floating leaves and
beautiful cup-like white or yellow flowers of the Water-lilies. They
grow in water which is not more than fifteen feet deep. Their long
stalks and leaf-stalks are flexible and yield readily, so as to keep
the flowers and leaves floating. There are narrow submerged leaves
as well. The actual stem of the White Water-lily is about three
inches in diameter, and stout and fleshy. It is full of starchy
material, and lies upon the mud deep down at the bottom of the pond.
There are many advantages in the position of the flowers, for bees,
flies, and other useful insects can reach them easily, but slugs,
snails, and other enemies cannot do so. The little seeds have a
curious lifebelt-like cup, which enables them to float on the surface.
Of course, our own British water-lilies cannot compare with the
magnificent _Victoria regia_ of the tropics. Its petals are white
or pink on the inside, and its gigantic leaves, six feet or more in
diameter, can support a retriever dog or a child. There used to be
some of them at Kew Gardens. A curious point about these enormous
floating leaves is that they are covered with little spiny points on
the under side and at the margin; that is probably to keep some sort
of fish from nibbling at the edges.
But to return to our pond. Beyond the water-lily region and so long
as the water is from twelve to twenty-four feet deep, Pondweeds are
able to grow, and their leaves may be seen in the water, whilst their
stalks stand up above the surface so as to allow wind to scatter the
pollen.
This depth of twenty-four feet seems at first sight very great, but
it is a mere nothing compared with the regions entirely below the
water, where certain Stoneworts (_Chara_) and Mosses have been found
flourishing. The former has been dredged up from depths of ninety
feet, and a little moss was discovered in the Lake of Geneva growing
quite comfortably at a depth of 180 feet below the surface.
But it is quite impossible to appreciate the wonder and beauty of the
life in a pond unless by a strong effort of the imagination.
Suppose yourself to be a fish two or three inches long, and
accustomed to the dim, mysterious light which filters down through
the water from the sky above. Every here and there great olive-brown
leaf-stalks and stems cross and, branching, intercept the light.
Everything, the surface of the mud, the stems and branches of the
submerged water-plants, is covered by an exquisite golden-brown
powder, which consists of hundreds and thousands of "Diatoms." Here
and there from the Pondweed and other stems hang festoons or wreaths
or threads of beautiful green Algæ. Little branching sprays of them,
or perhaps of the brown kind, are attached here and there to the
thick stems.
Even the very water is full of small, floating, vivid green stars or
crescents or three-cornered pieces which are free floating Algæ or
Desmids. Other diatoms are also free or swim with a cork-screwing
motion through the water. Great snails and slugs crawl upon the
plants, and weird large-eyed creatures, with a superfluity of legs
and an entire absence of reserve as to what is going on inside their
bodies, skirmish around. So that such a pond is full of vegetable
activity. The free-swimming diatoms and desmids make up the food of
the snails and crustaceans. These latter in turn are the food of
fishes.
It is even possible to-day by carefully stocking an artificial pond
with water plants, by then introducing Mollusca and Crustacea, and
finally by the introduction of "eyed ova" or fry of the trout, carp,
or other fishes, to produce a regular population of fishes which can
be made more or less profitable, and the process can be spoken of
as "fish-farming." Unfortunately there are a great many gaps in our
knowledge as to what fish actually feed on, and we know even less
about what the Mollusca and Crustacea require.
There is, however, a distinct annual harvest of these minute
seaweeds, of which different sorts appear to develop one after the
other, just as flowering plants do. The two months January and
February, which are almost without flowers, are also those in which
most of these minute vegetables take their repose in the form of
cysts or spores.
But these diatoms are too important and too interesting to be
dismissed in such a cursory manner. Each consists of a tiny speck
of living matter with a drop or two of oil enclosed in a variously
sculptured flinty shell. They have, in fact, been compared to little
protected cruisers which pass to and fro in the water and multiply
with the most extraordinary rapidity.
If you (1) use dynamite to blast a rock, (2) if you employ a
microscope or telescope, (3) if you paint an oil picture, (4) if you
make a sound-proof partition in a set of offices, the probability is
that it has been necessary to use the substance diatomite in each
case. This consists of the accumulated shells of myriads of diatoms.
Nor does that represent by any means the whole of the usefulness of
these tiny seaweeds. The oil shales, such as occur in Linlithgowshire
and elsewhere, are supposed to be the muddy, oily deposits of such
ponds as we have endeavoured to describe. The oil found in the shales
was probably worked up by these diatoms in long-past geological ages.
It may be used to-day either (1) to drive motors, (2) to light lamps,
(3) to burn as so-called "wax" candles, (4) to eat (as an inferior
sort of chocolate cream).
Interesting as these diatoms are, it is not really possible to
understand their structure without the use of a microscope, so that
we must pass on to another side of the activity of water plants.
Let us, for instance, notice some of the ordinary plants to be found
along a riverside. Willows and Alders are the ordinary trees, because
they are specially fitted to stand the danger of being regularly
overflowed. They easily take root, so that branches broken off and
floated down are enabled to form new trees without much difficulty.
In the United States, it has become a custom to plant Willows along
the banks, because they are then not so liable to be broken down and
worn away. Yet when a big Willow tree has become undermined, the
weight of the trunk may cause it to fall over towards the water, so
that a large section of the bank may be loosened and serious damage
may be done if it is torn away by a heavy flood.
Amongst such Willows, should be mentioned the "cricket bat" kind,
which has to be grown with the very greatest care, and of which a
single tree may be worth £28.
Many of our rivers are, alas, sadly polluted by artificial and other
impurities which kill the fishes and destroy the natural vegetation.
When this happens a horrible-looking whitish fungus (_Apodytes
lactea_) coats the stones and banks under water and the water swarms
with bacteria. This fungus and the bacteria are really purifying the
water, for they break up the decaying matter in it.
The oily or slimy character of the outside skin of all submerged
plants is of very great importance to them. It allows the water to
glide or slip over them without any friction.
Still keeping to our river bank, let us look for submerged plants.
What is that dark green feathery plume? It is the Hornwort
(_Ceratophyllum_) gently wriggling or moving from side to side. It
has probably never been still for a moment since it first began
to grow. Take it out of the water, and it collapses into a moist,
unpleasant little body, but as soon as it is put in its natural
element again it is seen to have a thin flexible stem along which
there are circles of curved, finely divided leaves. Watch it in
the water and one is filled with astonishment at the perfection of
the shape, arrangement, and character of the leaves, which enables
them to hold their place even when a flood may cover them with an
extra twenty feet of water! The same sort of leaf, but with great
difference in detail, is found in the submerged Water Crowfoot,
Water Milfoil, Potamogetons, and others which live under the same
conditions.
If it were the St. John's River, we might see that extraordinary
Florida Hyacinth which has swollen, gouty-looking leaf-stalks,
and grows with such extraordinary rapidity that it covers the
whole surface of rivers, choking the paddle-wheels of steamers and
destroying the trade in timber, for no logs can be floated down when
it covers the water. Its rosettes float on the surface, and are very
interesting to examine. If you upset one or turn it upside down in
the water, the "buoys" or swollen stalks act as a self-righting
arrangement, and it slowly returns to its proper position.
But in most rivers, one is certain to come across backwaters where
it is impossible to force a boat through on account of the reeds and
other marsh-plants.
There are places on the Danube where hundreds of square miles are
occupied by waving masses of the feathery-plumed Phragmites, almost
to the exclusion of any other sort of vegetation. Giant specimens of
it eighteen feet high have been observed.
The same reed occurs in North and South America and far up towards
the Arctic regions. At first sight it seems as if this was a mistake
of Nature; why should so much of the surface be occupied by this
useless vegetable? But it is necessary to say a little more about
its habits and its object in life.
The most interesting and curious point is the way in which it grows
in dense thickets; the main stem is really horizontal and below the
water, but it gives off a number of upright stalks. Now every flood
will carry in amongst the stalks quantities of silt and rubbish.
Those upright stems will sift the water: all sorts of floating
material, sand, silt, dead leaves, fruit, etc., are left amongst
them. So that such a marsh or bed of Phragmites is gradually, flood
by flood, collecting the deposits of mud, and the bed becomes every
year more shallow. At the edge of the marsh there is scarcely any
water visible, and grasses and other plants are beginning to grow
between the Phragmites stems. Eventually these latter are choked out,
and a marshy alluvial flat occupies the site of the old reed-bed.
So that the work of Phragmites is of the greatest possible
importance: it has to form those fertile alluvial flats which are
found along the course of every great river, and which are by far the
most valuable lands in the whole world.
Look, for instance, at the population of Belgium, Holland, and Lower
Germany, and notice how dense it is upon the alluvial flats where the
Meuse, Rhine, and other rivers approach the sea. It is just the same
in Britain. London lies on the great alluvial flats of the Thames,
Glasgow on the Clyde, Liverpool on the Mersey. In China it is the
Yang-tze-kiang valley (especially near its mouth); in India, the
Ganges, of lower Bengal, and in the Argentine the La Plata River,
which show the greatest accumulations of humanity. In every case it
is the rich flat alluvium, which is exceedingly fertile when drained
and cultivated, that has originally attracted so many people.
Lower Egypt is the gift of the Nile, but it is not so much the Nile
as these neglected water plants which made the rich lucerne, cotton,
and food crops of Lower Egypt possible. Amongst the Egyptian Reeds
one especially is of great importance. The _Papyrus antiquorum_,
ten feet high, has much the same habit as our Phragmites and other
water plants. It forms dense, almost impassable thickets, sometimes
completely occupying and choking a small valley, or leaving only
a passage, often changing and half choked, through a larger one.
This, with other plants, makes the "sudd" of the Nile, which is one
enormous accumulation of marsh plants and reeds floating on the water
and covering a length of over 500 miles.
It was from the Papyrus that the ancient Egyptians made their paper.
The stems are six to seven inches in diameter. "The pith of the
larger flowering stems ... cut into thin strips, united together by
narrowly overlapping margins, and then crossed under pressure by
a similar arrangement of strips at right angles, constitutes the
Papyrus of antiquity."
These great marshes and reed-beds are full of interest to
naturalists. The Fens of Lincolnshire and the Norfolk Broads show the
way in which water plants keep hold of the worn and travelled rubbish
of the hills, and prevent most of it from becoming useless, barren
sea-sands. These places, however, like the sudd of the Nile, and
the Roman "Campagna," have an evil reputation so far as climate is
concerned. This used to be the case even in lower Chelsea, in London
(where snipe were shot not so very long ago). It is as if Nature had
desired to do her own work in peace and without being disturbed, for
fever, ague, mosquitoes, and malaria are very common. Yet a certain
number of people always live in such places. In France, e.g., the
leeches in the great marshes near the Landes form a source of riches.
Such reeds also are or were the home of the hippopotamus, crocodile,
and other extraordinary animals. The extinct British hippopotamus
no doubt found in the Chelsea or other marshes a home as congenial
to its tastes as is the sudd of Egypt to its living descendants or
allies. In other places the enormous quantities of water birds,
myriads of ducks, geese, swans, regiments of flamingoes, snipe, and
the like, have called into existence peculiar kinds of industry in
fowling and netting that are not without importance. The decoys in
the Fens yield hundreds of birds for the London market, and the
duck-punts with their huge guns also bring in quantities of wild fowl.
But all this industry is very trifling compared with that of
Phragmites and its associates, who have strained from the water of
the Thames most of the ground on which London now stands.
CHAPTER XVII
ON GRASSLANDS
Where is peace?--Troubles of the grass--Roadsides--Glaciers
in Switzerland--Strength and gracefulness of
grasses--Rainstorms--Dangers of drought and of
swamping--Artificial fields--Farmer's abstruse
calculations--Grass mixtures--Tennis lawns--The invasion of
forest--Natural grass--Prairie of the United States, Red Indian,
Cowboy--Pampas and Gaucho--Thistles and tall stories--South
Africa and Boers--Hunting of the Tartars--An unfortunate Chinese
princess--Australian shepherds.
Where should one seek for peace on earth? The ideal chosen for one
well-known picture is a grassy down "close clipt by nibbling sheep,"
such as the fresh green turf of the South Downs.
Others might prefer the "Constable country," near perhaps the famous
"Valley Farm" of which the picture now hangs in the National Gallery,
and especially in early spring. At any rate, once seen, one remembers
for ever afterwards those glossy-coated, well-fed, leisurely cows
grazing hock-deep in rich meadows full of bright flowers and graceful
grasses, through which there winds a very lazy river bordered by trim
pollarded willows.
The charm of the South Downs and of Constable's meadows depends upon
their peaceful quiet, and the absence of any sign of the handiwork of
disturbing man.
But such meadows are entirely artificial. They could no more
exist in nature than a coal-mine, if it were not for man's help.
Moreover, they are in a state of perpetual war! No plant within them
experiences the blessings of peace from the time it germinates until
the day that it dies.
Each plant is fighting with its neighbours for light, for air, for
water, and for salts in the soil, and it is also trying to protect
itself against grazing animals, against the vole which gnaws its
roots, and against the insects and caterpillars which try to devour
its buds.
Besides its own private and individual troubles, it is but one of a
whole company or army of plants which, like a cooperative society,
occupy the field.
Other societies, such as peat-moss, thickets, and woods, try to drive
out the grasses and cover that particular place in its stead. The
Grassland companions are also always trying to take up new ground,
and to cover over any which is not strongly held by other plants.
A road, for instance, is always being attacked by the grassland near
it. It is sure to have a distinct border of Rat's Tail Plantain,
Dandelion, Creeping Buttercup, and Yellow Clovers. These are the
advanced guard of the grassland. However heavily you tread upon these
plants, you will do them no injury whatever, for they are specially
designed to resist heavy weights. But, if the road were only left
alone, these bordering plants would be very soon choked out. The
ordinary buttercup would replace the creeping species, and white or
red clovers take the place of the little yellow ones, whilst grasses
would very soon spring up all over it.
But of course the roadman comes and scrapes off all the new growth of
colonizing grasses, etc. Then the plantains, dandelions, and yellow
clovers patiently begin their work again.
[Illustration: _Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_
_London & New York_
THE FELLING OF GIANT TREES IN CALIFORNIA
These sequoias grow to from 250 to 400 feet high, though they are
not quite the tallest trees in the world.
(See page 47.)]
In Switzerland, in those valleys in which the glaciers are melting
away, leaving stretches of bare mud, scratched stones, and polished
rock, plants immediately begin to settle there. A Swiss botanist
watched the process during five or six years, and describes how
first the yellow Saxifrage (_S. aizoides_) establishes itself. Next
season Coltsfoot, willow-herb, Oxyria, and two grasses had planted
themselves. During the third season another grass came in. By the
fourth season, Fescues and yarrow had appeared, and by the fifth
season, five grasses, clovers, and yarrow had formed a regular
grassland upon the new untouched soil.[104]
[104] Coaz, _Mittheilungen d. Naturf_, Berne, 1886.
In such cases, Nature, who abhors bare ground, is endeavouring to
clothe it with useful vegetation.
The fights which are going on are of the most ruthless character.
Many weeds are said to produce some 30,000 seeds in one year, and
every plant which grows in a meadow is scattering thousands of seeds.
But of course the number of plants remains much the same, so that
29,999 seeds are wasted (or the seedlings choked out) for every one
that grows up!
It is probably because of this perpetual warfare that the growth of
the grasses is so vigorous, and their whole structure so perfectly
adapted. If you watch a flowering grass, you are sure to notice how
narrow is its stem compared with the height. A factory chimney only
fifty-eight feet high requires to be at least four feet broad at
the base, yet a ryeplant 1500 millimetres high may be only three
millimetres broad near the root. Man's handiwork, the chimney, is in
height seventeen times its diameter, but the height of the grass is
500 times its diameter.
The neatness of design, the graceful curves and perfect balance in
the little flowering branches at the top of a haulm, is always worth
looking at, and particularly in the early morning when it is beset
with sparkling drops of dew.
It is all wiry, bending and swaying to the wind so as to produce
those waves which roll across a hay-field, and on which the
shimmering light is reflected and changes colour. The fight for light
and air, the struggle to get their heads up above their competitors,
produces all this exquisite mechanism.
It is true that a heavy rainstorm may beat the stems flat down to
the ground, but, as soon as the weather becomes dry again these
same stems will raise themselves up and become upright; they have a
special sensitiveness and a special kind of growth which enables them
to do this.
There are two special dangers which all such artificial meadows have
to withstand. Let us see what will happen if such a meadow begins to
dry up through a sinking of the level of the water below the soil.
Each grass has its own special favourite amount of moisture. It likes
to have its water at just one particular depth below the surface.
Unfortunately there are not nearly enough sympathetic and careful
observations of the preferences of each individual grass. A Danish
author has worked out the facts in certain localities (Geest).
Suppose first that the water-level of the wells, etc., is 6-1/2
to 9-3/4 feet below the surface. This suits the Meadow Poa grass
(_Poa pratensis_) exactly. It will grow luxuriantly and flourish.
Now suppose the weather is very wet, so that the water rises in the
wells till they are three to four feet deep. The Roughish Poa (_P.
trivialis_) prefers this moister soil, and it will grow so vigorously
that it will kill out the other kind. If it is a season of very
heavy floods, or if the drains become choked so that the water rises
to within fourteen to twenty-five inches of the surface, then the
tufted Aira (_Deschampsia caespitosa_) will kill out the other kinds
and flourish abundantly. But if the water rises higher than this the
marsh series comes in (see Chap. XVI.).
So that the thirsty grasses of the meadow are helped or hindered in
their fight for life by changes in the water away down in the soil
below their roots.
Even in Great Britain one can see distinct differences in very dry
and very wet summers, but all these pastures, meadowlands, and
hay-fields are, as we have already mentioned, as much due to man's
forethought and industry as a factory or coal-mine.
It is very difficult to realize this. The best way is to go to the
National, or any other good picture-gallery, and look carefully
at any landscapes painted before the year 1805. You will scarcely
believe that the country as painted can be the land we know. Where is
the "awful orderliness" of England? Where are the trim hedges? Where
are the tidy roadsides and beautifully embanked rivers that we see
to-day?
As a matter of fact, until the great Macadam made good roads and
the great Telford and other engineers built stone bridges, it was
impossible to rely on getting about with carts and carriages.
Gentlemen's coaches and wagons used to be literally stuck in the mud!
Horses were drowned at fords, or died in their struggles to pull very
light loads through mud which nearly reached the axles of the wheels
(see Chap. XI.).
Besides the change due to roads, fences, drains, and farm buildings,
the very grasses themselves are growing unnaturally. The farmer has
selected and sown what he thinks best.
He is obliged to do so, because grasses vary so much. Some of them
shoot up quickly and die after the first year. Others live for two
years, whilst a great many bide their time, developing very slowly,
and not reaching their full growth until the fourth or fifth year.
Some are tall and vigorous, others are short; some flower early in
the season, and others very late. Many send out quantities of suckers
or runners at the base, so that they form a dense, intricate turf--a
mass of stems and roots thickly covering the ground.
A farmer wants his pasture to begin early and to continue late; he
must have a good first year's crop, and it must remain good for years
afterwards. So that his calculations as regards the proportions of
the different grass seeds which he requires are of the most abstruse
character.
To sow such "permanent pasture," prepared by blending together
grasses and clovers with an eye to all the above necessities, there
will be needed some seven million seeds for every acre.
The art consists in coaxing the good, lasting, nutritious ones to
make both tall hay, rich aftermath, and a close, thick turf below,
and, until these are ready, to use the annual and biennial grasses.
Such beautifully shaven, green, soft turf as one sees in the lawns
of cathedrals or the "quads" at Oxford and Cambridge has been most
carefully and regularly watered, rolled, and mown for hundreds of
years. It is not easy to keep even a tennis-lawn in good condition.
Little tufts of daisies appear. Their leaves lie so flat that they
escape the teeth of the mower, and they are not so liable to be
injured by tennis-shoes as the tiny upright grass-shoots which are
trying to spring up everywhere. The Plantain is even worse, for it
is specially built to stand heavy weights, and it has several roots
which divide and branch like the prongs which fix teeth in the jaw,
so that it is very difficult to howk it out.
Thus our grasslands in Britain are unnatural and artificial
productions. If the field drains are choked, moss or fog and rushes
appear. Still more interesting, however, is what happens if the
farmer is not careful to destroy the taller weeds, such as Dock,
Ragweed, Cow Parsnip, Thistles, and the like. If you walk over a
grass-field in early spring, you are sure to see some of these
pests. At this stage they have a very humble, weak, and innocent
appearance: they are quite small rosettes or tufts. Yet they are
crowded with leaves, which are hard at work busily manufacturing food
material. Soon they begin to shoot up. Their leaves overreach all the
neighbouring grasses. Their roots spread in every direction, taking
what ought to go to the "good green herb intended for the service of
man." They finally accomplish their wickedness by producing thousands
of seeds, which are scattered broadcast over the fields.
By this time the farmer sees what is going on, and endeavours to cut
them down; but it is a long, slow, and laborious proceeding. One
year's seeding means seven years' weeding.
Yet these tall Thistles and Ragweeds are only the first stage of
a very interesting invasion. Look around the field corners, on
railway-banks, or in old quarries, where man has left things alone.
You will see these same tall herbs (the Ragweed, etc.), but you
are sure to find a place where they are being suppressed by Rasps,
Briers, and Brambles. These are taller, stronger, and more vigorous
than the herbs, and they also last longer, for their leaves are still
at work in November. This is the second stage of the invasion. But
if the place has been long neglected, Hawthorns and Rowans, Birch and
Ash will be found growing up. These last show what is happening.
A wood is trying to grow up on the grassland. If left alone, an oak
or beech forest would, after many years, spread over all our grass
pastures and hay-fields. These tall herbs are the pioneers, and the
briers and brambles are its advanced guard.
As a matter of fact, by far the greatest part of our agricultural
land _was_ a forest, but it has been cut down, drained, dug, weeded,
hedged, and "huzzed and maazed" with agricultural implements and more
or less scientifically selected manures, until it is made to yield
good beef, excellent mutton, and almost the largest crops per acre in
the world.
Natural grasslands exist, however, in every continent.
The great Steppes of Southern Russia and the pastures that extend
far to the eastward even to the very borders of China, the Prairies
of North America, the Pampas of Argentina, the great sheep-farms of
Australia, and a large proportion of South Africa, consist of wide,
treeless, grassy plains, where forests only occur along the banks of
rivers, in narrow hill-valleys, or upon mountains of considerable
altitude. Upon these great plateaux or undulating hills the rainfall,
though it is but small in amount, is equally distributed, so that
there is no lengthy and arid dry season. Take the American Prairie,
for instance. These valuable lands, once the home of unnumbered
bison and hordes of antelopes, lie between the ancient forests of
the eastern states and the half-deserts and true salt deserts of the
extreme west. Rivers, accompanied in their windings by riverside
forests, are found (especially in the east). The real prairie has
a blackish, loamy soil, covered sometimes by the rich Buffalo or
Mesquite grass, which forms a short, velvety covering, not exactly a
turf such as we find in England, but still true grassland. It is only
green in early spring.
[Illustration: A BUSHMAN DIGGING UP ELEPHANT'S FOOT
The Bushman is levering up the root of elephant's foot to get the
starchy food inside. He does it by a stick run through a rounded
stone. The woman has caught a lizard for the boy to eat.]
From the spring onwards until the end of summer there is an endless
succession of flowers. The first spring blossoms appear in April;
great stretches are covered with Pentstemons, Cypripediums, and
many others in May and June; then follow tall, herbaceous Phloxes,
Lilies, and Asclepiads, but perhaps the most characteristic flora
blossoms still later on, when every one "wants to be in Kansas when
the Sunflowers bloom." Over these prairies used to travel the great
wagons or "prairie schooners." The cowboy, who almost lives on
horseback, watches over great herds of cattle and troops of half-wild
horses. Yet his life is, or used to be, almost as free, comfortless,
and uncivilized as that of the buffalo-hunting Indian who preceded
him. One must not forget to mention the prairie-dog--able to utilize
the abundant grass, and diving into a safe refuge underground when
threatened by the wolves or other carnivorous creatures, which, of
course, multiplied exceedingly, thanks to the jack-hare, antelopes,
and bisons.
The Pampas in South America is a similar grassland. On the east
it stops at the woodlands along the great Plate River, but on the
west it becomes gradually more dry and arid, until long before the
Andes are reached it is too dry even to carry sheep, and can only be
described as a half-desert.
"It is a boundless sea of grasses fading into the distant horizon,
which can only be distinguished when the sun is rising or setting."
Yet amongst the grasses are hundreds of flowers, and, a fact which
is very remarkable, many of them, such as Fennel, Artichoke, Milk
Thistle, Burdock, Rye Grass, etc., are European plants which have
dispossessed the natives over miles of country, exactly as the gaucho
has driven away or exterminated the Indians who lived there. It is
covered by tufts of grass betwixt which appears the rich alluvial
earth, yet in good years it may become almost a perfect grass floor.
"The colour changes greatly, for in spring when the old grass is
burnt off, it is coal-black, which changes to a bright blue-green as
soon as the young leaves appear; later on it becomes brownish green,
which again changes when the silver-white flowers come out to the
appearance of a rolling, waving sea of shining silver."
Here would be the place to mention how an army encamped upon the
Pampas finds itself next morning imprisoned and doomed to perish
miserably in a forest of giant thistles which has sprung up during
the night. There is no doubt that thistles and other weeds are very
tall in both South and North America. Fennels are ten to twelve feet
high, and even little Chenopodiums (such as in England may reach
eighteen inches), become in South America seven to eight feet high,
but the tallness of some of the stories is more remarkable even than
that of the plants!
Over the Pampas used to roam thousands of guanacos (a creature of the
most unlovely type, which resembles both a camel, a mule, a deer,
and a horse); here also were Darwin's ostriches (_Rhea Darwinii_)
and other game, which were caught by the lasso and by the peculiar
"bolas" of the Indians. They used to surround the herds and then
massacre them by hundreds. The "tuco tuco" also, which is a burrowing
rodent with habits very like those of the prairie dog, finds plenty
of sustenance in the abundant grasses. Upon them subsist pumas,
foxes, and other carnivores.
We have said that the Pampas gradually changes from being very
fertile on the east to being almost a desert on the west. Here is
the place to mention a very interesting, if not romantic, fact.
The guanaco does _not_ travel hundreds of miles in order to die in
one particular spot as soon as it feels ill, but it does resort
especially to certain spots. There the grass is often a bright, fresh
green, for it is plentifully manured, and consequently the guanaco
helps to encourage the good grasses to occupy a half-desert. On the
eastern side of the Pampas great changes are beginning to appear. The
owners of the great camps, haciendas or cattle-ranches let off small
parts of their land to Italian "colonists." These people grow crops
of Indian corn, and when that has been reaped, the valuable Alfalfa
or Lucerne is sown down. This forms the most exquisite and valuable
pasture, and consequently far more Shorthorn and Durham cattle can be
maintained.
There are in South Africa enormous grassy plains, where once
springbok and other game used to exist in enormous herds (Wangeman
records having seen a herd of antelope four miles long), in spite of
lions and other beasts of prey, and in spite also of the Boer, who
was as much a horseman as the gaucho or Red Indian. The great buck
wagons of South Africa were almost as much the real homes of the
Boers as the two-roomed huts which make up his "farms."
The great Steppes of Russia and Siberia are also grasslands. "As seen
from a distance hills covered by the Stipa grass resemble sand-hills,
but, when nearer at hand, the sand-grey colour changes into a
silvery white, and these ever-moving grasses remind one of the
waves of the ocean and, in spite of their monotony, leave a pleasant
impression."[105]
[105] Schimper, _l.c._; Drude, _l.c._
Tulips, Hyacinths, Veronicas, Periwinkles, Scotch Thistles,
Euphorbias, Wormwoods, and other of our common plants or their near
cousins, make up most of the flora of the Steppes. Yet there are
hundreds of others, for it is a vegetation very rich in species.
If one reads in Gibbon's stately language of the mode of life of the
Huns, the Scythians, and those other barbarians who, originating
in these huge grasslands, occasionally overflowed and overwhelmed
the civilization of declining Rome, the resemblance to Red Indians,
Pampas Indians, cowboys, gauchos, and Boers is not a little striking.
Read, for instance, the magnificent account of the great hunting
matches of the Tartar princes. "A circle is drawn of many miles in
circumference, to encompass the game of an extensive district; and
the troops that form the circle regularly advance towards a common
centre, where the animals, surrounded on every side, are abandoned to
the darts of the hunters." Both the Red Indians of the Prairie and
the savages of the Pampas used to surround and destroy the game in
exactly the same way.
The unfortunate Chinese princess given over for political advantages
to a prince of the Huns, "laments that she had been condemned by her
parents to a distant exile, under a barbarian husband, and complains
that sour milk was her only drink, raw flesh her only food, a tent
her only palace." This describes exactly the ordinary life and home
of the Huns. "The Scythians of every age have been celebrated as
bold and skilful riders; and constant practice had seated them so
firmly on horseback, that they were supposed by strangers to perform
the ordinary duties of civil life--to eat, to drink, and even to
sleep--without dismounting from their steeds." Red Indians of Pampas
and Prairie, cowboy and gaucho, lived exactly in the same way.
In those pages of Gibbon which treat of the Huns, Scythians, and
other hordes, one recognizes sometimes the wagon of the Boers;
sometimes a migration of the East African Masai; then perhaps it is
a weapon that is really the lasso, or a disposition and character
exactly paralleled by the Crows and Blackfeet. Even the great grass
plains of Australia, where the kangaroo, the wallaby, and the dingo
have been replaced by the sheep and the "Waler" horse, one finds, in
the shepherd and squatter, traits that remind one of the gaucho or
the cowboy.
Nor is this in the least extraordinary, for when a scanty rainfall
produces those great limitless rolling seas of grass, Nature provides
first large herbivorous animals to eat it down as well as carnivorous
beasts to keep their numbers in control, until such time as a race of
horsemen appears, whose domestic cattle replace the bisons, guanacos,
kangaroos, and antelopes, and so assist in replenishing and subduing
the earth.
CHAPTER XVIII
POISONS
Poisoned arrows--Fish poisons--Manchineel--Curare--A wonderful
story--Antiaris--Ordeals--The Obi poison--Oracles produced by
poisons--Plants which make horses crazy and others that remove
their hair--Australian sheep and the Caustic Creeper--Swelled
head--Madness by the Darling Pea--Wild and tame animals, how
they know poisons--How do they tell one another?--The Yew tree,
when is it, and when is it not poisonous?
Even to-day all embryo chemists and doctors are required to "pass" in
the recognition of the more important medicinal plants.
But their knowledge is probably very superficial as compared with
that of a bushman in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa. Every
man, woman, and child in such a tribe knows thoroughly every plant
that grows in the neighbourhood. His diet is a varied one, for it
includes maggots, fish, frogs, snakes, white ants, and other horrible
ingredients, but he lives mainly on roots, bulbs, and herbs of sorts.
In times of famine he has had to obtain the most intimate knowledge
possible of many plants, that namely which is obtained by eating
them, and he has most carefully observed the poisonous kinds. These
latter have given him, too, a very powerful weapon, for it is the
poisoned arrows which give him the chance of killing game, otherwise
utterly beyond his reach. He is on the fair road to becoming a
hunter and tribesman, instead of being only a member of a morose,
outcast family, always wandering and always hungry.
Probably poisons were first used in fishing. Many vegetable drugs,
when thrown into pools and lakes, have the property of stupefying or
killing the fish. A great many of these fish poisons are known, and
it is quite easy to use them.
Amongst the Dyaks of Borneo, screens of basketwork are placed along
a stream to prevent the fish escaping. Then the Dyaks collect along
either bank in their canoes. Everybody has a supply of the root
of the tubai (_Menispermum sp._), which they hammer with stones
in the water inside the canoe, so as to extract the poison. At a
given signal the poisonous stuff is baled into the river, and very
soon afterwards a scene of wild excitement begins, for the fish are
speared or captured with handnets as they rise, stupefied, to the
surface. The women scoop up the small fry in their nets.[106]
[106] Ling Roth, _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, vol. 22, London, 1892;
and Mason, _l.c._
Even at the Sea of Galilee, Tristram mentions that Arabs sometimes
obtain their fish by poisoned bread-crumbs. In the South Sea Islands,
at Tahiti, a poison is obtained from the nuts of a kind of Betonica,
and is used to catch the fish among the reefs near shore.[3] In West
Africa several fish poisons are in use (e.g. seeds of _Tephrosia
Vogelii_), and probably the same methods are used almost everywhere.
They are by no means extinct even at home, for the occasional poacher
sometimes uses fish poisons.
2 Tristram, _Land of Israel_; Mason, _Origin of Inventions_, p. 298.
Arrow poison is, however, much more important, and is used by a
great number of tribes in almost every part of the world. In 1859,
in a war with the Dyaks of Borneo, the English army lost thirty men
by poisoned arrows. They are deadly weapons, for the dart is a very
thin piece of reed or cane, which has been dipped in the Upas poison
(_Antiaris toxicaria_). It is propelled from a blow pipe, which in
practised hands is able to carry 250 feet. One or two of these darts
may cause death in two hours' time. The Spaniards, in their conquest
of the West Indian islands, were often defeated by the poisoned
arrows of the Caribs. The wounded died in agonies of suffering and
delirium, sometimes protracted for twenty-four hours after receiving
the wound.
The poison in this case is supposed to have been the Manchineel
(_Hippomane_).
It is a handsome tree, but a very dangerous one, for the slightest
cut on the surface produces a flow of a very fine white milk which is
acrid and poisonous. This juice produces temporary or total blindness
if the slightest speck enters the eyes, or even if one sits over
a fire made of its wood. It is probably not true that people are
killed if they merely sleep below it, and grass will probably grow
quite well under its shade, although there are stories which deny
this. Blowpipes and poisoned darts are used by many savages in Asia
and South America. Perhaps the Curare or Woorali poison is the most
wonderful of the South American kinds. The tree, _Strychnos sp._,
grows along the Amazon and in the Guianas. The poison is obtained
from the wood and bark, and several other vegetable substances are
mixed with it. (This is a very common feature of native drugs and
increases the chances of doing _something_.) It is a blood poison,
and a very deadly one. Large animals like the tapir stagger about,
collapse, and die after a very few steps, if they have been wounded
by a dart. Humboldt declares that the earth-eating Otomaks were able
to kill their antagonists by the mere pressure of their poisoned
thumbnails.
In Africa it is more usual to find poisoned arrows shot from a bow.
The exquisitely beautiful seed of _Strophanthus Kombe_ is used as an
arrow poison. The plant is a climber found in forests or bush, and
has large woody pods about seven to twelve inches long. When these
are open, the inside is seen to be full of the small yellowish seeds;
each ends in a fine awn three to four inches long, which carries at
the end a beautiful tuft of the finest silky hairs. The seed-coat is
also covered with silk hairs. When viewed against a black surface,
there is no more lovely object in nature. Yet from the seed-coat a
very deadly poison is obtained; probably snake-venom and various
gluey substances form part of the mixture, which is daubed on the
arrows. Dr. Kolbe saw the Hottentots plastering their arrows with
the poison of the hooded snake. Bushmen use a Lily bulb, _Haemanthus
toxicarius_, but sometimes add part of the inside of a small
caterpillar.
Another African poison which is not so well known is the
_Acokanthera_, which was the ingredient in the arrows obtained by the
writer in British East Africa.
North America is singularly free from these unsportsmanlike and
horrible weapons, but they were not unknown in Europe in very
ancient times. Pliny speaks of the Arabian pirates as poisoners,
and allusions to their use of deadly arrows can be found in Horace,
Ovid, and Homer. In the _Odyssey_, the hero goes to Ephyra (Epirus?)
to purchase a deadly arrow poison, but he is refused for fear of the
eternal gods. Poisoned arrows were employed by the Celts in Gaul, and
also by the Saracens in the War of Granada in 1484.
Yet even in the time of Homer the sense of humanity seems to have
decided against poisoned arrows as being both unnecessary and cruel,
just as, in our own times, explosive bullets have been condemned, and
are no longer used by civilized nations. But we should remember that
until man became so expert with the bow and spear and so civilized by
tribal fights as to be able to do without poisons, they were a very
useful help in the struggle for civilization. Hundreds of thin pieces
of bamboo about six inches long were regularly carried by certain
African tribes. When dipped in poison and afterwards placed in paths
in the ground, they formed a very efficient protection against
barefooted enemies.
The Antiaris alluded to above is the famous Upas tree of Java. The
tree was _said_ to grow in a desert with not another living plant
within ten miles of it. Such was the virulence of its poison that
there were no fish in the waters. Neither rat, nor mouse, nor any
other vermin had ever been seen there; and when any birds flew so
near this tree that the effluvia reached them, they fell dead--a
sacrifice to the effects of its poison. Out of a population of
sixteen hundred persons who were compelled, on account of civil
dissensions, to reside within twelve or fourteen miles of the tree,
not more than three hundred remained alive in two months. Criminals
condemned to die were offered the chance of life if they would go to
the Upas tree and collect some of the poison. They were provided with
masks (not unlike our modern motor-veils), and yet not two in twenty
returned from the expedition.
All the foregoing statements were for years implicitly believed. They
were vouched for by a Dutch surgeon resident in Java. Medicine is a
profession, and Holland is a country which would in no way lead one
to expect such magnificent mendacious audacity!
For the whole of the preceding statements about Antiaris is pure
romance. The inner bark of young trees, when made into coarse
garments, produces an extremely painful itching, whilst the dried
juice is a virulent arrow poison.
Hellebore and Aconite were the favourite poisons of the Marquise de
Brinvilliers and other specialists of the Middle Ages. The Christmas
Roses or Hellebores were known to be poisonous fourteen hundred years
before the Christian era, and are still used in medicine. Aconite,
which has a tuberous root-stock, is dangerous, for it is occasionally
eaten in mistake for the horse-radish, to which it has a faint
resemblance. All kinds of aconite are poisonous. That of one of the
Indian species is used to tip the arrows employed in shooting tigers.
Trials by ordeal were very common in ancient times. The theory was
that an innocent person was not injured by certain drugs, which,
however, proved immediately fatal to the guilty.
Such trials at one time were customary in almost every part of the
world. They were supposed to be perfectly just, so that no man could
be held guilty of the death of those who succumbed. In practice,
however, they were almost invariably corrupt. The _Tanghinia
venenifera_ of Madagascar was regularly used in ordeals, and is
probably still employed by certain tribes. The seeds are exceedingly
poisonous, but, if the authorities wish the accused person to escape,
a strong emetic is mixed with the powdered seeds, and the poison has
no time to act. This, however, is seldom the case, for in any savage
nation no one who is popular and in good esteem with the king or
other people in authority is at all likely to be accused. The fact
of his being accused means in most cases that he is already condemned
to die. Another ordeal plant is the Calabar Bean (_Physostigma
venenosa_), found in West Africa. The plant is a climber belonging to
the _Leguminosæ_, and the seeds, which are about an inch in diameter,
are very deadly. The seed is conspicuously marked by the long,
dark, sunken scar, where it was attached to the pod. Besides being
exceedingly poisonous, it has also a curious effect upon the pupil of
the eye, which is contracted by this drug.[107]
[107] The pupil of the eye is _enlarged_ by belladonna.
Another famous poison is produced from _Datura stramonium_ and allied
species. In tropical and sub-tropical countries, one is almost
sure to find specimens of this handsome plant along almost every
roadside. It is in fact one of the commonest tropical weeds. The
leaves are large with fine spinose margins, and the flower is most
conspicuous, as it is four or five inches long. This is supposed to
be one of the drugs employed by the Obi wizards and witches. The most
horrible rites, accompanied by atrocious cruelties, were performed
amongst certain West African tribes and are continued amongst their
descendants, the freed slaves of the West Indies and of the Southern
United States.
Even to-day no white man is allowed to learn anything of the
proceedings, but some form of devil-worship or Shamanism, accompanied
by incantations and the use of poisonous drugs, still flourishes.
Preparations of various sorts of Datura or Thorn-apple produce
sometimes stupefaction, sometimes frantic, furious delirium, and
sometimes death.
It is used in medicine as a narcotic and diuretic. Burton says
that the Arabs smoke the leaves in pipes as a cure for influenza
and asthma. It is sometimes used in Europe for neuralgia and even
epilepsy. On the other hand, the priests of the ancient Peruvians
used Datura to produce the ravings mistaken for inspiration, and it
is supposed that the priests of Apollo at Delphi employed an allied
species for the same purpose. In India, China, West Africa, and
amongst the American blacks, it is still very commonly used.
A firm belief existed in the Middle Ages that every plant was a
good remedy for something. There is a real basis in fact for this
superstition, because every plant in the world has, so far as it
can do so, to protect itself. The attacks of all sorts of grazing
animals, from the mouse to the elephant, as well as the infinitely
more dangerous and destructive insects, bacteria, and fungi, have
to be provided for. By far the commonest form of protection is to
develop within the plant strong medicinal or strongly smelling
substances. These are far better as protective agents than the thorns
and spines characteristic of deserts and half-deserts. We have
already glanced at the turpentines and resins of Coniferous forests
and at the odorous gums, frankincense, and myrrh of the Acacia scrub.
The use of poisons as protection is eminently characteristic of
three of the natural orders. The Buttercups (_Ranunculaceæ_), the
Potato order (_Solanaceæ_) and the Lilies. Of the first named, the
celery-leaved, and indeed all Buttercups, are extremely poisonous;
so also are all Aconites and Hellebores, as well as Marsh Marigold,
Adonis, Clematis, and Larkspur.
Others, though not poisonous, are strongly medicinal, such as Blake
Snakeroot, Hydrastis, etc. It is therefore inadvisable to use any of
this order for food unless other people have eaten it without any
inconvenience!
The beauty of the Lily order does not prevent it from being a
particularly dangerous group of plants. Perhaps the worst poisons in
this order are those of the Meadow Saffron (_Colchicum autumnale_),
Herb Paris, Veratrum, Sabadilla, Lily of the Valley, Tulip, and Crown
Imperial bulbs. Chamælirium, Trillium, Squills, Garlic, Solomon's
Seal, Aloes, and the Sarsaparillas are all well-known medicines.
The order _Solanaceæ_ is perhaps the most interesting, for it
includes such dangerous poisons as Tobacco, Datura, _Atropa
belladonna_ (Deadly Nightshade), Henbane, Bittersweet (_Solanum
dulcamara_), Common Nightshade (_Solanum nigrum_), and a very great
many important drugs. Even the common potato contains a poisonous
secretion _solanin_, and it is dangerous to eat green potatoes or
the foliage. Yet the Tomato or Love Apple (so called because it was
supposed to excite tender feelings) is both nutritious and delicious.
Chillies and Cayenne Pepper (_Capsicum spp._) are also commonly used
as condiments.
Such poisonous orders should of course be avoided, but much
more dangerous are those deadly plants which appear as it were
accidentally in orders which are amongst the most useful friends
of man. Amongst the grasses there is the deadly Darnel (_Lolium
temulentum_), a first cousin and not very unlike the very commonest
and one of the most useful grasses--Rye Grass (_Lolium perenne_).
Then in the useful Carrot order, there are such dangerous and even
deadly plants as Fool's Parsley, Water Dropwort, and Cowbane.
_OEnanthe crocata_ (Water Dropwort) is one of the very commonest
marsh and ditch plants in Great Britain. It is perfectly well known
to botanists as distinctly poisonous, yet in 1902 a veterinary
surgeon brought me some of the tuberous roots to name, and told me
that six fine young cows were lying dead on a neighbouring farm
through having eaten them!
A particularly useful order of plants (_Leguminosæ_), the Beans
and Peas, contains a few poisonous species. It is said that in
every year children are sure to be killed by eating the seeds of
the Laburnum, and to this order belong also the Calabar Bean and
Crab's Eyes. The last named is only fatal when introduced below the
skin in small quantities. The seeds of the Bitter Vetch (_Lathyrus
sativus_) produce paralysis of the legs in man and also in horses.
The Crazy or Loco weed of North America is sometimes eaten by horses
in the Western United States. The wretched animals stagger about as
if intoxicated, and eventually die. Belonging to this same order is
the Wild Tamarind, or Jumbai, of Jamaica (_Leucæna glauca_). It is a
weedy-looking acacia, and extremely common in all tropical countries.
Dr. D. Morris thus alludes to it:--[108]
[108] British Association, Liverpool, 1896, Section K.
"Mr. Robert Russell, of St. Ann's, informs me that horses feeding on
the leaves of this plant completely lose the hair from their manes
and tails. This ... statement was supported by the testimony of
so many people acquainted with the facts that there was no reason
to doubt it. Many years afterwards (in December, 1895), I renewed
my acquaintance with the plant in the Bahamas. The plant was much
more plentiful there than in Jamaica; it was, in fact, distinctly
encouraged in the former islands as a fodder plant. The people were
fully aware of the singular effect it produced on horses, and added
that it also affected mules and donkeys. Its effect on pigs was still
more marked. These animals assumed a completely naked condition, and
appeared without a single hair on their body. Horses badly affected
by Jumbai were occasionally seen in the streets of Nassau, where
they were known as 'cigar-tails.' Such depilated animals, although
apparently healthy, were considerably depreciated in value. They
were said to recover when fed exclusively on corn and grass. The
new hair was, however, of a different colour and texture, 'so the
animals were never quite the same.' One animal was cited as having
lost its hoofs as well, and in consequence it had to be kept in
slings until they grew again and hardened. The effects of the Jumbai
on horses, mules, donkeys, and pigs were regarded as accidental--due
to neglect or ignorance. The plant was really encouraged to supply
food for cattle, sheep, and goats. The latter greedily devoured it
and were not perceptibly affected by it. It will be noticed that
the animals affected were non-ruminants, while those not affected
were ruminants. The probable explanation is that the ruminants, by
thoroughly mixing the food with saliva and slowly digesting it, were
enabled to neutralize the action of the poison and escape injury.
The seeds probably contain the deleterious principle in a greater
degree than any other part of the plant. It was a common experience
that animals introduced from other localities suffered more than the
native animals. The latter were either immune or had learnt to avoid
the plant as noxious to them."
That animals resident in a district are not poisoned by plants which
are often fatal to sheep and cattle when on the march through it, has
been often observed in Australia. The great "mobs" or droves of sheep
passing slowly on their travels through the bush to a new district
are often poisoned by the Caustic Creeper (_Euphorbia Drummondi_).
"The head swells to an enormous extent, becoming so heavy that the
animal cannot support it, and drags it along the ground"; but this
does not apparently happen to resident cattle. Similarly for the
Darling Pea or Indigo (_Swainsonia galegifolia_). At one place this
was growing abundantly where some travelling horses were hobbled for
the night. "They had been on the road some nine weeks, and were up to
this date caught without any difficulty. On this occasion ... their
eyes were staring out of their heads, and they were prancing against
trees and shrubs.... When driven they would suddenly stop, turn round
and round, and keep throwing their heads up as if they had been hit
under the jaw.... Two out of nine died, and five others had to be
left at the camp."[109]
[109] _Plants Reputed Poisonous to Stock._ Bailey & Gordon,
Brisbane.
In other natural orders we find one or two dangerous plants amongst
a whole series of perfectly harmless or useful forms. The Oleander,
in the Olive order, Corncockle (_Lychnis floscuculli_), in the Pink
order, _Lactuca Scariola_ amongst _Compositæ_ and others are all
cases in point. So also is the Yew amongst _Coniferæ_, etc.
How do animals recognize these particular plants as being dangerous
whilst all their allies are harmless? But the reader will answer that
they do not; it is well known that animals _are_ killed by eating
poisonous plants, therefore poison cannot possibly be any protection
against animals.
This is one of those interesting questions in which the suppression
of apparently irrelevant details produces confusion.
As a matter of fact, wild animals, or even domesticated animals in
nearly a wild state, do _not_ eat the poisonous plants of the country
in which they and their forefathers have been brought up--that is
provided that they are either adult or are accompanied by full-grown
animals. Almost every case of cattle-poisoning in Great Britain
occurs when young calves, foals, or lambs are turned loose in the
fields without any mature older head amongst them. Sometimes valuable
stable-bred animals are lost, especially by eating yew-leaves, but
there are exceedingly few instances of full-grown cattle being
caught in such foolishness. When cattle, horses, or sheep are turned
loose in a new country, plenty of cases do occur, and it is possible
that they might make mistakes with unknown foreign plants which had
escaped into their pastures here.
But almost every case of poisoning, even of cattle, shows that it is
young cattle who foolishly eat foxgloves, dropwort, buttercup, etc.,
and occasionally die thereby.
Wild animals, who are of course brought up by their mothers, never
seem to be poisoned. They probably recognize the dangerous plant
by colour, smell, or taste. As a matter of fact, many are rendered
conspicuous by some lurid sort of colour, such as bright red or
purple. There is a general garishness of appearance about many of
them. Aconite, Foxglove, Herb Paris, Henbane, and Nightshades all
show this peculiar appearance. In Java it is said that the natives
keep away wild pigs by planting hedges of certain species with
purplish-red leaves around their plantations.
Perhaps the most interesting point of all is that it seems to be
quite justifiable to conclude that animals do, somehow, manage to
tell their offspring and each other what they should and should not
eat.
Youth, with its tendency to rash experiment, is thus kept in check by
the mature experience of age.
But it must be admitted that it is exceedingly difficult to arrive at
the facts in any particular case.
I shall be rash enough to give an opinion as to the actual facts
in connexion with the common Yew (_Taxus baccata_). The seeds are
poisonous to poultry and pheasants, but the fleshy part round the
seed is eaten with impunity by many wild birds (blackbirds, etc.).
The leaves are sometimes poisonous and even fatal to horses, cattle,
sheep, donkeys, and goats, but they are not eaten by or are harmless
to roedeer. When, however, e.g., horses are killed by eating yew, it
is generally found that they have been grazing on cut-off branches
which have been left lying on the ground. In this condition probably
some specially poisonous substance is developed in them.
As regards rabbits, it would be extremely comforting to believe that
they would eat yew-leaves or anything else which would kill them,
but, so far as one can judge, they can eat all sorts of things which
ought to do so with perfect impunity.
CHAPTER XIX
ON FRUITS
Bright colours of fruits--Unripe fruits and their
effects--An intemperate Fungus--Oranges--Prickly pear and
the monkey--Strong seeds--Bill-of-fare of certain birds--A
wood-pigeon and beans--Ants and seeds--Bats, rats, bears,
and baboons--The rise in weight of a Big Gooseberry--Mr.
Gideon and the Wealthy Apple--Crossing fruits--Breadfruit and
banana--Dates--Figs--Olives--Pineapples by the acre--Apples and
pears--Home and Canadian orchards.
AT Christmas time and during late autumn, there is but little colour
in the country. Most green grasses have become a dull greyish-green,
and the leafless brown and grey branches of the trees are not, at
first sight, particularly interesting.
But amongst this monotony of sober colouring, points of bright red
or flaming scarlet may be noticed here and there. Sometimes it is
a spray of Hips (the fruit of the Rose), or it may be a cluster of
Hawthorn berries. At Christmas the Holly is positively gaudy with its
bright scarlet fruit set off by the shining dark green leaves.
Most fruits are some shade of red, but every fruit is conspicuous and
easily seen.
[Illustration: _Queensland Government Photo_
PINEAPPLES AS A FIELD CROP
This is one of the important harvests in some parts of
Queensland.]
There is the most extraordinary range in colour. The Snowberry and
Dwarf Cornel are pure white. The Mistletoe is a yellowish green.
Pure yellow fruits are not common, but some of the Cucumber orders
and Lemons are lemon or orange-yellow. The bluish-black of the
Blaeberry or Bilberry, of the Bramble, and of many Plums and Prunes,
goes along with a rather peculiar shade of green in the leaves which
sets them off. The black Elder berries, on the other hand, have
bright red or pink stalks which contrast prettily with them. The
colours of apples vary: many of them have been rendered a gorgeous,
glossy red through cultivation. One of the most beautiful colour
contrasts in Nature is found in the rich black of the Olive, with its
background of shining white twigs and silver-green leaves. Another
very curious harmony is that of the Spindle tree fruit, which has
a hard dull red case that opens to display the seeds: these are
enclosed in a bright orange fleshy cup.
Changes often occur. The Lily of the Valley fruit is at first green,
then becomes flecked with red, and finally is a rich scarlet. Juniper
berries change from green to purple.
Now there is always some meaning in Nature for any series of facts
such as these. Why are these fruits so brightly coloured and so
conspicuous?
Birds and other animals are intended to scatter the fruits and
seeds, and so the fruits must be easily distinguished at a distance.
The seeds are taken to some other place, where they germinate and
form a new plant. This furnishes the clue and guide to many other
peculiarities in fruits and seeds.
The pleasant smell of ripe apples, plums, strawberries, and other
fruits, also attracts birds and other animals. But the sugary juice
and delicious flesh is developed entirely for the purpose of making
it worth a bird's while to eat it. The amount of sugary matter is
enormous, and the seeds seem very small and inconspicuous compared
with this luscious mass. The sugar is produced very rapidly towards
the end of the ripening period.
A Cucurbita fruit, for instance, may increase in weight at the rate
of·0032 ounce per minute. All who have gathered strawberries know how
quickly they ripen.
The way in which the sugar is formed is not understood, but unripe
fruits contain bitter, unwholesome acids and essences which may
produce colic or very unpleasant effects if the fruits are eaten
green. Thus the colour is a guide to the animal, who is not supposed
to eat the fruit until it is ripe; if eaten green, the seeds inside
the fruit are quite destroyed and cannot germinate. Yet animals are
so greedy that young birds, young animals of all sorts (even girls
and boys) will and do eat green or half-ripe fruit. In this present
year there is no doubt that many children have suffered for having
done this. Yet if we come to think of it, throughout all the millions
of years during which fruits have ripened, Nature has every year
clearly told young pterodactyls and other lizards, young birds, young
monkeys, and young people to wait till the fruit is ripe. None of
them have learnt to do so.
When investigating by experiment, on the vile body, the properties of
plums, strawberries, and other fruits, you are sure to find here and
there one that has decayed and become rotten. In most cases this is
because a bird has pecked a hole in it, or because the outside skin
has been broken by a wasp. The sugar has then begun to ferment. Why
does it do so?
If you gather a few fruits, put them into a jar of sugar-water, and
leave it after closing the mouth with a bunch of cotton wool, then
in a day or two fermentation begins and alcohol is produced. That
is because, on the outside of the fruit, there were hundreds of an
objectionable little fungus. It lives upon sugar and turns the latter
into alcohol. This yeast fungus is really a living distillery. It
lives in the midst of alcohol all its life, dying eventually (like
the Duke of Clarence in his butt of Malmsey wine) by alcoholic
poisoning, which it has brought about by its own work. This little
yeast fungus can only be seen with a microscope. From a rotten fruit
it drops on to the ground, where it remains all winter. Next spring
certain small insects (green-fly and the like) carry some of these
yeasts from the earth to next year's fruits. But the skin of the plum
or apple, or the hairs on a gooseberry, or the delicate, waxy bloom
on a grape, will prevent these insects or wasps from laying open the
sugar inside the fruit to the attacks of yeasts and other fermenting
fungi.
Some fruits appear to have "favourites"; they seem to prefer that
large animals should eat them. If you look carefully at a piece of
orange peel, and cut a small piece across, you will see distinctly
small resin pits full of a curious essence which gives the
characteristic taste to marmalade. This bitter stuff will prevent
wasps from touching the sugar. It is, however, a valuable material,
and some kinds of lemons, etc., are grown chiefly for this oil,
which is obtained by scraping the peel with a little saucer which is
studded with short pins.
A still more extraordinary fruit is the prickly pear; this is very
delicious though very difficult to eat. Indeed, only monkeys and man
seem able to enjoy it. The sugary part and the seeds form a little
round mass in the inside. The outside part, though also fleshy,
contains hundreds of minute mineral needles, which stick in the
tongue and lips and cause most painful inflammation. The monkey eats
the prickly pear with very great caution, getting his fingers into
the top and scooping out the sugary part. Man requires a teaspoon to
do this satisfactorily.
Another very curious point about these fleshy fruits (and also
ordinary ones) is the strength of the seed inside. It does not look
very strong.
But an orange seed, for instance, will not be in the least injured
if you put it between two glass plates and gradually press upon the
upper one up to even a pressure of some thirty pounds. Even hemp
seed, which seems quite weak, will endure a weight of four pounds. It
is impossible to break a prune stone, or to injure a date stone, by
standing with your whole weight upon it.
Such strength is necessary because many of these seeds are eaten
by birds and ground up in their crops with bits of china, stones,
shells, and the like, which the birds pick up just to help them in
crushing their food.
Fruits and seeds would seem to be exposed to some danger when they
are lying on the ground. Horses or other heavy animals might tread on
them. But the strength of seeds and their shape is such that no harm
is likely to accrue. For instance, I arranged a thin layer of garden
earth (a quarter of an inch thick) on a glass plate; upon the earth I
placed four hemp seeds; then I put a 58-lb. weight on the top of the
seeds. They were not in the least injured, although the seed of the
hemp is not a particularly tough one. Under such conditions the seed
simply slips into the earth.
This is made easy for it on account of its shape, which is generally
rounded above and below. A transverse section of a seed would be in
shape like the arch of a bridge and its shadow in the water, at least
in many cases. There are also usually wonderfully thickened cells in
the shell or coat of a seed, which makes it tough and strong.
The following are a few cases of strong seeds or fruits:--Cotton seed
bears a weight of 19 to 20 lb.; the hard fruits of the Dogrose,
33 lb.; Castor-oil seed, 17 lb.; Hornbeam nuts, 27 lb.; Pine seed
(various sorts), from 11 to 22 lb.; Yew seeds, 16 lb.; Peas, 50 to 56
lb. In every case they are not at all hurt by these pressures.
As regards the animals for whom fruit or seeds are of great
importance, birds are of course the commonest. The following is part
of the bill-of-fare of a few of our common birds:--Thrushes eat
blaeberries (bilberries), brambles and mulberries. Missel-thrush (or
mavis) is especially fond of the mistletoe.
Now the berry of the mistletoe is exceedingly sticky and glutinous,
and in the course of the bird's meal these sticky strings get on to
the bill and feathers, so that the mavis wipes its bill on the branch
of a tree. When it does so the seed becomes attached to the branch,
and is drawn close to the latter when the viscous matter dries up,
and so takes root on the branch.
Nightingales and robins eat strawberries and elderberries; blackbirds
are very fond of strawberries, gooseberries, and raspberries.
Wood-pigeons eat beechmast, acorns, and, according to Pliny,
mistletoe-berries also, but this latter author has not been confirmed
by later observers. Some of the wild African pigeons are exceedingly
fond of castor-oil seeds. When travelling through the Central African
bush, it is often necessary to shoot your dinner (if you are to have
any at all), and castor-oil bushes can be relied upon to produce
pigeons, if you are content with and are able to shoot them.
There is a widely-spread belief in the country that a great quantity
of berries means that a very severe winter is going to follow. But
as a matter of fact the winter of 1904 was not a severe one, and yet
there were enormous quantities of berries.
We are still ignorant of many details about birds and berries. It is
not quite clear how the seeds are not destroyed, though experiments
have shown that they are not injured, by passing through the body
of a bird. Kerner von Marilaun, for instance, tried the fruits and
seeds of 250 different plants which were offered to seventeen birds,
as well as to marmots, horses, cattle, and pigs. He found that from
seventy-five to eighty-eight per cent. of the seeds germinated
afterwards so far as regards the blackbird, song-thrush, rock-thrush,
and robin. Quail also bring seeds from Greece and the Ionian Islands
to Sicily.
Mr. Clement Reid says: "Some years ago I found ... in an old
chalk-pit the remains of a wood-pigeon which had met with some
accident. Its crop was full of broad-beans, all of which were growing
well, though under ordinary circumstances they would have been
digested and destroyed."[110] Such accidents are common.
[110] Reid, _Origin of the British Flora_.
But it is not only birds which eat fleshy fruits and seeds. Even the
tiny, industrious ant drags about seeds of certain plants. Sometimes
they gather up corn or grasses, such as ant-rice, and store them
for use in winter. They even bite off the growing root to prevent
the seeds germinating and spoiling. Occasionally they seem to carry
the seeds by accident, as, for example, those of the cow-wheat and
a few others which resemble their cocoons in size, colour, and
form. In other cases there is a little fleshy excrescence on the
seed which they are fond of eating. Cyclamen, snowdrop, violet, and
periwinkle seeds are supposed to be carried in this way. Many animals
occasionally or regularly eat fruits. There are, for instance,
the flying-foxes or fruit-eating bats of Madagascar and tropical
countries, which may be seen hanging from the upper branches of
trees by their toes, with their heads tucked away under their wings.
When disturbed a little fox-like head appears, and after much
chattering, scolding, and expostulation, the creature unhooks itself
and flies away with a strong flight not unlike that of a crow. Horses
are occasionally fed on peaches in Chile. Rats eat the coffee cherry,
and do a great deal of harm in coffee plantations.
In Cashmir the mulberry and other fruit trees are sometimes visited
by sportsmen, who often find bears feeding on the fruits. Pigs, of
course, eat all sorts of fruit, and several other mammals do the
same, but it is especially monkeys that live chiefly on fruit. They
plunder the banana plantations, and in South Africa melon-patches
require to be most carefully watched to prevent baboons from
destroying them.
It is said that the baboons watch the plantations from a distance,
and will only come down if they think no one is there: so five people
walk to the patch, and while four go away again, one of them remains
in hiding to shoot the baboons, who cannot tell the difference
between four and five.
Man himself is, and has always been, a great eater of fruit. Not only
so, but he has enormously improved and altered wild fruits until
they are modified into monsters of the most extraordinary kind. The
ordinary wild gooseberry weighs about 5 dwt. But even in the year
1786 some of the cultivated forms weighed double this amount (10
dwt.), and in 1852 gooseberries which weighed more than 37 dwt. were
in existence. What size the largest big gooseberry may be this year
is not very easy to say, because the public Press is at slack times
too energetic about the question. The most usual way of improving
fruits is by selecting the finest specimens for reproduction. It is
by this means that the original wild banana, which is a rather small
fruit with very large seeds and very little flesh, has been altered
into something like 150 varieties, of which the immense majority
have no seed at all. This is a very extraordinary fact, because the
seed is the reason for the existence of the fruit. Of course, all
such varieties must be reproduced by suckers (like the banana) or by
grafts, or in some such non-sexual manner. Seedless varieties exist
of the Cucumber, Fig, German Medlar, Diospyros, and Orange.
In the case of seedless varieties of the Vine, it has been found that
it is necessary to carry pollen to the flowers to fertilize them, and
the seedless fruit is also very much smaller in this case, not more
than a quarter of the size of one that has seeds.
The following instance is typical of the manner in which many
well-known kinds of fruit have been developed, though the
perseverance shown by Mr. Gideon is certainly not common. About the
year 1855 this gentleman began planting apple trees of about thirty
named varieties. For nine years he continued his experiments. He not
only planted trees, but also sowed apple seed sufficient to produce
a thousand trees every year. Yet the cold winters were so severe
that at the end of ten years one small seedling crab apple was the
solitary survivor. One seedling of this turned out to be hardy enough
for the climate of Minnesota, and this, the "wealthy" apple, has been
of great importance to the Northern Mississippi growers. It is to be
hoped that the name has been justified in Mr. Gideon's case.
[Illustration: _Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_
_London & New York_
BANANA CARRIERS IN JAMAICA
A West Indian negro thinks nothing of walking twenty miles with
loads such as these.]
Many other cases could be mentioned of a chance variety produced as a
wild plant, and then propagated non-sexually for long periods, e.g.
the New Rochelle Bramble, which was found by the roadside, and
which turned out to be exceedingly valuable. It is by crossing or
hybridizing that the most extraordinary results have been obtained.
Sometimes with plums, the hybrids of the first generation are nearly
double the size of their parents. Some of the crosses are between
different plants. The Loganberry, for instance, is said to be a cross
between a Raspberry and a Bramble. It ripens in July, and is said to
be far in advance of either of its parents as regards juiciness and
acidity.
In most cases, however, the crosses are between well-established
varieties or races of the same species, and both hybridizing and
selection are employed to get the desired result.
There are several tropical fruits which, with the possible exception
of wheat and oats, are more important to mankind than anything else.
The Breadfruit (_Artocarpus incisus_), which is very common in the
South Sea Islands, has a large fruit the size of a melon. When baked
in an oven heated by hot stones, it forms a satisfying meal: it is
rather like new bread, but has very little flavour. Coarse cloth is
made of its bark, and the wood is used as timber. The tree also has
a milky juice containing indiarubber, and is employed for caulking
the canoes. The most interesting point for botanists about this plant
is that the fruit is made up of thousands of little flowers, and the
fleshy part is really the stalk. Fossil trees of this genus (of the
chalk period) are found in some parts of Europe.
Still more important to mankind is the Banana (_Musa paradisiaca_).
It is wheat, corn, and potatoes all in one, in tropical and
sub-tropical countries. It is found all over the world wherever there
is a hot, moist climate and shelter from wind. It is a most generous
plant as regards the amount which it will produce. It will yield
about 19-1/2 tons of dry fruit on a single acre, which is about
forty-four times the amount given by potatoes and 133 times that of
wheat. Moreover, it differs from almost every other fruit in being
both "rice and prunes," that is, it is nutritious and wholesome, and
yet at the same time succulent. There are still people who declare
that the taste is that of "cotton wool and Windsor soap," but that
is a frivolous and unjust remark. It is very difficult to prepare
it exactly in the right way for export to Great Britain, and the
slightest change in temperature or period of gathering has the most
distressing results.
As with many other tropical fruits, the countries where it is most
carefully produced and where the trade is most important are just on
the borders of the tropics. There Europeans can keep enough vigour
and vitality to supervise and watch over the labour of natives. It
is in the Canary Islands, Queensland,[111] and Jamaica that the
cultivation is most carefully looked after. The yield may be from
five hundred to a thousand bunches per acre, and the value of the
trade is enormous. A plantation is not very beautiful, because
the huge leaves break up into irregular, ragged pieces which look
untidy. The flowers are visited by the beautiful little honey-sucking
sunbirds and humming-birds. Monkeys also are very fond of the fruit.
[111] Queensland in 1900 had 6215 acres, and produced 2,321,108
bunches of bananas.
In the tropics it grows everywhere, and with extremely little
trouble. It is a doubtful blessing to the negroes, for they get their
food so easily that they tend to become incorrigibly lazy. Jam,
champagne, brandy, and meal can be made from the banana. When this
meal can be prepared satisfactorily, it may partly replace wheat in
temperate countries. Besides this, the leaves are used for thatching,
and the stalks which make the stem contain a valuable fibre which is
used for string and rope.
In Egypt and all along the great deserts of Sahara and Asia the
graceful stately Date palm gives the favourite food of the people
(see Chap. X.).
The Arabs grind up the stones to make food for camels, and sometimes
ferment the sap to make toddy. The trees are either male or female.
The Arabs knew that it was necessary to pollinate the female flowers
with male pollen long before the meaning of the process was realized
in Europe.
The Fig, a native of the Persian Gulf, is cultivated all along
the Mediterranean and in India, Australia, and California. It is
sometimes fifteen to thirty feet high, and reaches a very great
age. There is one at Finisterre said to be several centuries old.
It yields fruit worth about £14 an acre. The most interesting point
about the Fig is the way in which the Fig-wasp carries the pollen
(see Chap. V.).
Olives are also one of the most important and characteristic
Mediterranean trees. The crop in both Spain and Italy is worth
about £8,000,000 to £9,000,000 annually. In California it is also
successfully cultivated, and pays very well. The peculiar taste of
the dessert olive is obtained by soaking it in lime or potash, and
then in vinegar or salt.
The Pineapple is one of the most delicious fruits, and is interesting
in every way. The little sharp spines on the edges of the leaves
keep animals off, and also make it a little difficult to harvest.
The workmen must wear leather trousers to prevent their being cut
and torn by the leaves. In Queensland the pineapple is grown in big
fields, and about ten thousand fruits (worth about one penny each)
can be got from a single acre. It is also grown in the West Indies,
in India, and in other tropical countries. If you examine the horny
outside skin of the fruit with a sharp penknife, you will find that
each little piece of the mosaic is a flower in itself; with a little
care the bracts, three sepals, three petals, and six stamens can be
distinguished. The whole stem and all its flowers unite to make a
compound fruit. Most varieties have no seeds. It is a native of South
America.
It is, however, our home fruits, Apples, Pears, Gooseberries,
Strawberries, Raspberries, and Currants, that are most important
to us in Britain. The Wild Crab Apple is found from Drontheim, in
Norway, to the Caucasus, and grows over the whole of Europe. Apples
were known to the Greeks and Romans.
Unfortunately, in our own climate there are great dangers in the
orchard. A touch of frost when the flowers are ripe will very likely
kill the tender, green, baby apple. It is perhaps in Canada and
North America that the growing of apples and pears is most carefully
looked after. Our beautiful old orchards in Devonshire and other
places, with comfortable grass below the trees, and moss-covered,
picturesque, ancient trunks, are not found in the New World. The
regular lines of young trees in bare, carefully-kept earth, with
every stem whitewashed and treated with the most scientific monotony,
produce a most valuable return. But in this country those who are
careful and scientific sometimes obtain extraordinary results. It
is on record that a man with a holding of twenty-nine acres near
Birmingham made £600 a year from this small plot and paid £250 for
labour on it.[112]
[112] _Journal Royal Horticultural Society_, vol. 27, part iv.
Mr. Gladstone also said that the future of British farmers depended
upon jam. Yet it must be remembered that the trees take a long time
to come into bearing, and the crop is most uncertain.
CHAPTER XX
WANDERING FRUITS AND SEEDS
Ships and stowaway seeds--Tidal drift--Sheep, broom, migrating
birds--Crows and acorns--Ice--Squirrels--Long flight of
birds--Seeds in mud--Martynia and lions--The wanderings
of Xanthium--Cocoanut and South Sea Islands--Sedges and
floods--Lichens of Arctic and Antarctic--Manna of Bible--The
Tumble weeds of America--Catapult and sling fruits--Cow
parsnips--Parachutes, shuttlecocks, and kites--Cotton--The use
of hairs and wings--Monkey's Dinner-bell--Sheep-killing grasses.
The ways in which fruits and seeds are scattered abroad over the face
of the earth form one of the most fascinating chapters in the story
of Plant Life.
There is an infinite number of ingenious contrivances, so many indeed
that it is not at all easy to explain them.
However, suppose yourself seated on a grassy cliff near Eastbourne or
Brighton.
Looking lazily out over the blue waters, you see Norwegian timber
ships and steamers of all kinds, from the little coasting "Puffing
Billy" to the huge liner departing for Australia or South Africa.
Plants are probably using every steamer; in the straw of the packing
cases, in the cargoes of corn or grain, in the ore, and in the
ballast, there are sure to be seeds. Such stowaways are mostly weeds,
but of course many valuable garden, farm, orchard, and forest seeds
are being intentionally exported.
Looking down on the seashore, you will notice the high-water mark,
a yellowish brown line of floated rubbish which is quite distinct
even at a distance. If you now go down and examine it closely (not
a particularly pleasant operation, seeing that so much is in a
decomposing condition) you will find many seeds amongst the corks and
bits of straw, seaweed, and objectionable, if lively, animalcula, and
very likely also pieces of plants, such as willow branches, which
might quite easily take root.
On the coast of Norway, and on our own western seaboard, the fruits
of a West Indian bean (_Entada scandens_) are occasionally to be
found, and its seeds are probably able to germinate. We know that in
long-past geological ages they were floating round the estuary of the
Thames, where they occur as fossils. It has been found by experiment
that fruits and seeds are not killed although they have floated for a
year or more in salt water. Thus ocean currents are utilized to carry
fruits and seeds.
But from our comfortable seat on the South Downs, still more can be
learnt of wandering seeds. The wind which blows across the downs
carries with it hundreds of winged or hairy fruits, all of them
exquisitely fashioned as miniature airships, aeroplanes, or other
winged contrivances. The wind is an important distributer of seeds.
One of the South Down sheep is trailing behind it a piece of bramble
which has caught in its wool; others, which have been grazing on the
broken cliff-edge where Agrimony, Forget-me-not, and Burdock are
flourishing, are certain to have spiny or sticky fruits entangled
in their wool. Animals therefore carry seeds in their wool or fur.
If it should happen to be a fine, sunny afternoon, and if there are
any plants of Broom near by, it is quite likely that you may, every
now and then, hear a faint, sudden crack. This will be the Broom at
work scattering its seeds by itself. The little pod, when it dries,
contracts in such a way that it splits with a sudden explosive pop,
and the seeds are sent flying to a distance of three or four feet.
This curious fact was observed in 1546 by the naturalist Boek. The
Whin and many other plants act in the same way, for the dry fruit
becomes elastic and coils up spirally, flinging away the seed.
But here also, on the southern shore of England, we are at a main
station of arrival and departure for migrating birds. A Landrail or
other marsh bird might be flushed in France, and might quite easily
cross the Channel with French mud sticking to its plumage. In this
mud, or in its crop, there may be seeds or fruits which will be left
in an English pond. This method is probably a very important one,
for these plants growing in duck-haunted places are amongst the most
widely distributed of all.
Mr. Reid has a very interesting discussion on this point. The crow or
rook could quite well cross the British Channel now. In the days when
Britain was covered with ice and snow, the gap between the French and
the English shore was only half the present width. There was at that
time much flat land with oak forest bordering the French coast.
Mr. Reid shows that it is probable that rooks regularly carry about
acorns in the cup, for he found seedling oaks associated with empty
acorn husks, stabbed and torn in a peculiar way. "On October 29th of
1895, in the middle of an extensive field, bordered by an oak copse
and scattered trees, I saw a flock of rooks feeding and passing
singly backwards and forwards to the oaks. On driving the birds away,
and walking to the middle of the field I found hundreds of empty
acorn husks and a number of half-eaten, pecked acorns."[113] So that
crows may have brought the acorns that colonized Britain with oak
forest in the earliest historical period.
[113] Reid, _Origin of the British Flora_.
Another means of dispersal is not so obvious on the South Downs. In
the Arctic region a glacier breaks away at its tongue into icebergs,
which float off and are stranded somewhere perhaps hundreds of miles
distant. Upon these icebergs are stones and soil and plants which
may be carried to a great distance from their original place. In the
Glacial period or Great Ice Age, ice may have been an important help
in distributing plants, but at present it is difficult to find a good
example.
From all this it is clear that in order to carry plants to new
countries and new homes, everything that moves on the earth's surface
can be employed. Not only the wind, but ocean currents, river waters,
icebergs, and floating ice are used. Migrating birds, mammals, and
especially the most restless and unsettled animal of all, viz. man,
are at work consciously and deliberately, or unconsciously and
accidentally, carrying the seeds to form new forest, grasslands, or
harvests in other countries.
The subject is in truth so vast that it is difficult to select the
most interesting and important cases.
The way in which squirrels, rats, voles, and lemmings devour nuts and
the like often leads to the distribution of the fruit. A squirrel
may, like a human being, forget where its store was buried, or be
driven from the place. Then some of those forgotten nuts will grow
into trees.
Birds are known to travel enormous distances. It is said that one
little Arctic bird travels from Heligoland to Morocco in a single
flight. It would not, at first sight, seem likely that seeds and
fruits could be carried by birds; yet Darwin saw that this might
possibly be the case. The mud and slime in which so many birds find
the small insects which they require is full of seeds. An Austrian
botanist, Kerner von Marilaun, examined the mud scraped from the
beaks, feathers, and legs of a number of wading and marsh-birds. He
found in it the seeds of no less than thirty-one different water
and marsh plants (Grasses, Sedges, Toad-rush, etc.). This showed,
as is very often the case, that Darwin was the first to discover a
very important point. It is also interesting to find that these ugly
little freshwater mud and marsh plants are at home almost everywhere,
from the Arctic circle to Tierra del Fuego and from Peru to Japan.
The most extraordinary cases known of sticking fruits and spines
are the Martynias and Harpagophytons of South Africa. The fruit is
covered by hooked claws, and becomes a regular pest wherever it
occurs. Deer, antelopes, and other animals get their hoofs entangled
in the fruit, and the wretched creatures have to limp about until the
hard thorny fruit is trodden to pieces. Dr. Livingstone says that the
fruit gets into the nostrils of grazing animals which cannot possibly
remove it themselves, and so have to wait patiently till the herdsman
comes to take it out. According to Lord Avebury, lions may sometimes
be destroyed by these horrible fruits. When a lion is rolling on
the sand, the claws (an inch long) stick in his skin, and when the
lion tries to tear it away with his teeth his mouth gets full of the
fruits and he cannot eat, and perishes miserably of starvation.[114]
[114] Ludwig, _Biologie d. Pflanzen_.
[Illustration:
_Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_
_London & New York_
A COCOANUT GROVE IN CEYLON]
Some of our common British fruits are most perfectly planned to stick
or entangle themselves in the wool of sheep or in people's clothes.
These, such as the Goosegrass (Robin-run-the-Hedge), Burdock,
Forget-me-not, Sanicle, Avens, etc., have very often been described.
It is only necessary to examine one's clothes after a walk through
rough, broken ground to discover some of them, and the ingenuity
and neatness of their tiny hooks, harpoons, or prongs can then be
realized. We shall give one or two instances of some other spiny
plants. There is, for instance, Xanthium, which is one of the Daisy
flowers or Composites. Unlike most of this order, its little fruits
possess no wind-hairs. The outside of the head of flowers is covered
by strong curved little crooks. These get so entangled in wool or
hair that they become a perfect pest to wool merchants. In 1814
Xanthium was unknown in the Crimea, but by 1856 it had covered the
whole of the peninsula. In 1828 the Russian cavalry horses brought it
on their manes and tails into Wallachia, from whence it travelled to
Servia. Servian pigs carried it into Hungary. In 1830 it was taken
in wool to Vienna. By 1871 it had reached Paris and Edinburgh. In
1860 Frauenfeld saw horses in Chile whose manes and tails were so
felted together with thousands of these fruits that the animals could
scarcely walk. In Australia, where it first appeared in 1850, it has
caused a very serious loss to the wool merchants and squatters. The
loss has been put at 50 per cent. by some authorities.[115]
[115] Ludwig, _l.c._, after Ihne, Frauenfeld, Shaw.
We have already alluded to the transference of fruits and seeds
by ocean currents. In the _Challenger_ expedition, no less than
ninety-seven kinds of marine floating fruits were observed.
Amongst these the most important is the Cocoanut. The nut sold in
this country is not the whole fruit, but only the inside shell.
In the natural state this is enclosed in a dense mass of fibres,
which form the valuable "coir" used for brushmaking and a variety of
purposes.
The entire outside of the fruit is covered by a smooth white skin.
The whole fruit is about the size of a man's head, and is so light
that it floats easily in the water. It has in fact been carried by
the waves to uninhabited islands all over the South Seas. It is a
very great blessing to Polynesia, for a tree yields thirty to fifty
nuts, and four of these nuts will furnish enough food for one day.
Coprah and the oil extracted by boiling the inside are also valuable.
Spirit or toddy can be made from the young buds. The leaves are used
for thatching and the trunk for timber.
There are other very curious palm fruits which are also carried by
water. Sir Joseph Hooker mentions the large, round fruits of Nipa, as
big as a cannon-ball, turned over by the paddles of the steamer in
the muddy waters at the Ganges mouth (_Himalayan Journal_).
In this country a search in the rubbish left by a spate or freshet
along a riverside is sure to furnish many floating fruits or seeds.
Most of these are small and rather difficult to see. Perhaps the most
interesting are those of the Sedges. The real fruit is only about
one-sixteenth of an inch in size, but it is enclosed in a little sack
or bag a quarter of an inch long and with a narrow opening, so that
it floats quite easily. Many willow branches, pondweeds, hornweeds,
and the like, are also found in the rubbish left by floods, and these
can often take root.
It is, however, in the exquisite modifications of those fruits which
are blown by the wind that we find the most beautiful contrivances
of all. They are effective also. Seeds are often so small as to
be like dust particles, and such may be carried in the air to
almost incredible distances. That of _Goodyera repens_ weighs only
1/200,000,000 of a pound, that of _Monotropa_, ·000,000,006 lb. It
is no doubt by the wind that the spores of lichens are carried from
one mountain to another. On a map of the world the distance from the
Arctic to the Antarctic, between the North and South Poles, seems
enormous. Moreover, the amount of water, desert, tropical forest,
and cultivated land in this extent of country is very great. There
are but few rocks on which lichens could manage to grow. And yet of
the Antarctic Lichens in the South Polar regions, and which are also
European species, more than 73 per cent. are found in the Arctic or
North Polar regions.[116]
[116] Darbishire, _Trans. and Proc. of Bot. Soc. Edin._, vol. 23,
part 1.
An Arctic lichen spore probably travelled from Scandinavia to
the German and Swiss Alps, another journey took it to the Atlas
Mountains, thence to Abyssinia, again to Mount Kenia, and from there,
somehow, it wandered to the South Orkneys or King Edward VII Land.
While talking of lichens, one must not forget the Manna of the Bible
(_Lecanora esculenta_) and two other species, which form warted,
wrinkled masses on rocks. It breaks off and may be carried away by
the wind, or in heavy rain it may be washed into depressions of the
soil, where a man can pick up 8 to 12 lb. in a day.
It "is used as a substitute for corn in years of famine--being ground
in the same way and baked into bread.... It is also remarkable that
all the great so-called rains of manna, of which news has come from
the East to Europe, especially those of the years 1824, 1828, 1841,
1846, 1863, and 1864, occurred at the beginning of the year, between
January and March, i.e. at the time of the heaviest rains.... The
inhabitants of the district actually thought that the manna had
fallen from heaven, and quite overlooked the fact that this vegetable
structure grew and developed (although only in isolated patches and
principally as crusts on stones) in the immediate neighbourhood of
the spots where they collected it."[117]
[117] Kerner, _Natural History of Plants_, vol. 2.
Amongst the wind-blown fruits and seeds there are cases in which
entire plants are dragged out of the soil and hurried away by the
wind, which rolls them over and over. They may be blown along for
days together. The seeds drop out by the way. In this country one
rarely sees anything of the sort, but in the Prairies of North
America, when under cultivation, these tumble-weeds are a serious and
expensive pest. Sometimes the farmers dig trenches to catch them, or
they may put up fences against which the tumble-weeds become piled or
heaped up until they blow over the top.
It is not very much use to give the names of these weeds, for they
are mostly rare or not British species. Such tumble-weeds are
generally nearly spherical in general form and have a short, rather
weak, root which is easily torn out of the ground. In some grasses,
such as "Old Witch," a well-known pest of the United States, the
grass-stalk, with many flowers on it, is pulled out of its sheath and
blown away.
But it is more usual for the fruits or seeds themselves to break
off the parent plant, and to be carried away by the wind. To this
end we find the most extraordinary changes. Although the flower may
droop from its stalk, the latter becomes upright and grows quite
a considerable length when the seed or fruit is dispatched on its
wanderings. This will raise the fruit or seed as high as possible
above the surrounding grasses.
Then in some cases the fruit opens to allow the seed to escape.
Small holes appear in it, or the fruit splits. As the dry, elastic,
withered stalk swings to and fro in the wind, the seeds are swung out
of these openings, and starting with a certain momentum the wind will
carry them often to a surprising distance from their parents. In wet
or rainy weather these holes or slits generally close together, and
no seeds are sent forth on their travels. The little holes in the top
of a poppy-head by which the seeds are swung out have little flaps,
which close over and shut them up in wet weather.
Some plants make a sort of catapult to sling or hurl their fruits.
Kerner von Marilaun was the first to describe some of these curious
arrangements. He had brought home some fruits of _Dorycnium
herbaceum_ and laid them on his writing-table. "Next day as I sat
reading near the table, one of the seeds of the Dorycnium was
suddenly jerked with great violence into my face." Some of the
neatest catapult fruits are those of _Teucrium flavum_. (There
is a British species, the Woodsage, but it has not got the same
arrangement.) When the petals have fallen off, the four small fruits
are left inside the cup-like sepals; the flower-stalk when dry is
very elastic, and if an animal touches the sepals it swings violently
and shoots out one of the fruits. But that is by no means the whole
of the process: there are hairs arranged spirally in the throat of
the sepals, and these give a spin or twirling motion like that of a
rifle-bullet to the fruit. The fruit also flies out of the sepals in
a line of flight which is inclined at an angle of about forty-five
degrees to the horizon; at this angle, as is well known, the
trajectory or distance travelled will be the greatest possible.
But by far the best way to understand these questions is to try
with some common weeds in the country towards the end of summer or
beginning of autumn. If either the Cow Parsnip or wild Angelica,
or Myrrhis, be gathered and kept till it is quite dry, then if you
take it by the stalk and swing it to the full extent of the arms
the fruits fly off to fifteen (or more) feet away. Every part is
elastic--not only the main stalk, but the thin separate stalks of
the flowers and also the delicate piece by which each half-fruit is
attached. The half-fruits themselves are also so made that they are
of exactly the right shape to take a long flight.
Ever since the days of Icarus, one of the unsatisfied ambitions of
mankind has been to fly like a bird, to "soar into the empyrean," and
to be no longer chained to the earth's surface.
It is a very curious study, that of the many and diverse inventions,
almost always useless and very often fatal, by which men have
endeavoured to solve this problem. Every one of these can be
paralleled amongst the many neat contrivances of wind-borne fruits
and seeds. The principle of the "parachute," which is more or less
like an umbrella, is found in both fruits and seeds. One of the
most beautiful is the Dandelion fruit, where a series of the most
exquisite branched hairs springs from the top of the slender shaft
which carries the little hard fruit. Most of the Composite or
Dandelion order have, however, more of the "shuttlecock" idea. There
is a row or crown of stiff and spreading or feathery hairs.
[Illustration: _Stereo Copyright, Underwood & _Underwood_
_London & New York_
COTTON-FIELDS IN GEORGIA, U.S.A.
Negroes picking the cotton harvest.]
The classical person above alluded to seems to have copied the
bird's wing, sticking on feathers with wax, which of course melted
in the sun with the usual result to the inventor of flying machines.
Many seeds have regular wings which act like those of the bat or
flying squirrel. One of the most exquisite of all is the seed
of Bignonia. The Dahlia fruit has also a flying wing, and a great
many others might be mentioned. Major Baden-Powell experimented with
kites, which were supposed to raise a man high enough in the air to
take observations of the enemy's movements. But a most exquisite
"kite" is that of the Lime tree. The little fruit is hung from a
broad, flying bract, and as it very slowly sinks to the ground it
solemnly turns round and round. That is because the pressure of the
air acts on the flat bract just as it does on an aeroplane, and
forces it to revolve. So the fruit remains a long time in the air,
and may be carried to nearly a hundred yards away from its parent
tree.
The Traveller's Joy (_Clematis_) and the Cotton have their seeds
covered all over by many entangled hairs, which act like a piece of
fluff, so that the wind blows the seed away.
No one has discovered the original wild Cotton plant. The robes of
the priests in Egyptian temples were made of it. It was introduced
into Spain by the Arabs when they invaded that country. When the
Spaniards attacked the half-civilized Indian people of Central and
South America, they found cotton was regularly cultivated there.
Its history in England is rather interesting. In the days of Queen
Elizabeth the great English industry was the production of woollen
cloth from Yorkshire sheep. A penalty of £20 was imposed, even as
late as 1720, on any person who imported or even wore cotton cloths.
Yet this was unable to stop the growth of the trade which, thanks to
the Flemings and Huguenots who took refuge from religious persecution
in this country, eventually became our gigantic textile industry
employing millions of factory hands.
The advantage of these wings and hairs is at once seen if one
compares the time that a fruit or seed takes to fall through a given
height, first with its wings or hairs, and then after they have been
cut off.
An Artichoke fruit, for instance, will take nearly eight seconds to
reach the ground from a height of a few feet. But if you cut away its
hairs, it will touch the ground in a little more than one second. A
Sycamore fruit of which the wing has been removed falls to the ground
in about a quarter of the time that it takes when it has not been
injured, so that the wing helps it to fly to four times the distance
that it could reach if it had none. The Ash fruit also remains twice
as long in the air as it would do if it had no wing; and so on.
We shall finish this chapter by describing two very extraordinary
cases.
The Sandbox tree is a native of tropical America. The fruit, as
large as an orange, consists of a number of rounded pieces, each
with a single seed inside. When ripe each piece splits off, making a
noise like the report of a pistol. The plant is sometimes called the
Monkey's Dinner Bell. These pieces may be thrown to a distance of
fifty-seven feet from the parent plant.
Even more remarkable are the hygroscopic grasses. There are four
of them, which are widely separated as regards distribution, for
one (_Stipa capillata_) lives in Russia, another (_Stipa spartea_)
in North America, a third (_Aristida hygrometrica_) is found in
Queensland (Australia), and the fourth (_Heteropogon contortus_)
belongs to New Caledonia.
Yet all these four grasses are said to kill sheep, and do so in a
manner that is almost identical. The mechanism is as follows.
The fruit is like that of most grasses, enclosed in a folded leaf,
the bract (or glume), which in these particular cases is produced
into a very long fine tapering hair or awn. This awn is sensitive to
changes in the _moisture_ of the air. It is strongly hygrometric:
in wet weather it straightens itself, and it coils into corkscrew
spirals in dry weather. The widened part of the base, which contains
the grain, tapers into a sharp, very hard point; upon this there are,
on the outside, many stiff hairs, which point backwards away from the
sharp tip.
Now, suppose this fruit to fall on the ground, the awn or tail is
sure to be entangled in neighbouring grasses or herbs, but the hard
point will rest upon the ground. Every coil and twist made by the
entangled awn or tail will push the point a little deeper into the
earth, and the backward-pointing stiff hairs will prevent its being
pulled out of the soil.
Therefore all these modified contrivances ensure that the seed will
bury itself.
But supposing that one of these fruits falls upon a sheep's back.
Then an exactly similar process will go on. The seed will be forced
through the skin into the body of the sheep. In fact, if it should
fall above any soft or vulnerable part of the animal, the sheep will
very likely be killed.
As a matter of fact, sheep are said to be killed by these grasses in
all those four countries, distant though they are from one another.
We have endeavoured in this chapter to give some faint notion of the
hundreds and thousands of ingenious contrivances utilized by plants
in order to ensure the dispersal and future prosperity of their
children.
Every species is always trying to colonize new ground, to seek fresh
fields and new pastures. Plants are not content to keep to the old
habitats, but every species tries to scatter its pioneers over
all the neighbouring country, so that, as often happens, if it is
exterminated or suppressed in one locality, new generations luxuriate
elsewhere.
CHAPTER XXI
STORY OF THE CROPS
Bloated and unhealthy plants--Oats of the Borderers, Norsemen,
and Danes--Wheat as a wild plant--Barley--Rye--Where was
the very first harvest?--Vine in the Caucasus--Indians
sowing corn--Early weeds--Where did weeds live before
cultivation?--Armies of weeds--Their cunning and
ingenuity--Gardeners' feats--The Ideal Bean--Diseased
pineapples--Raising beetroot and carrot--Story of the travels of
Sugar-cane--Indian Cupid--Beetroot and Napoleon.
It is difficult to understand the amount of labour and toil that has
been spent on farmlands and pastures, if one only considers England.
It is often impossible to discover one square mile still covered by
the natural wild plants. It is all under corn or arable, or rich
artificial meadowland.
But from a Scotch hillside, as one looks down at the fertile valley
below, one can see _first_ where the mosaic of hedges and dykes
stops, _then_ where, after a narrow stretch of rough grass pasture,
the cultivation ends; finally, where, ridge after ridge, rolling,
heathery moorland, without enclosures and without any sign of man's
handiwork, rises up to the highest peaks.
This fills one with a respect and reverence towards our forbears,
which is increased by a study of corn, turnips, and potatoes.
Every one of these plants is a thoroughly unnatural, artificially
bloated, and overfed sort of creature. Its constitution, as is usual
with those who habitually overeat themselves, is delicate and unsound.
No cultivated plant could exist for more than a season if man did not
look after it and protect it from its rivals and weeds. Moreover,
they are a curiously assorted lot.
Wheat probably came from Asia Minor, Swedes from Scandinavia,
Mangelwurzel from the Mediterranean, and Potatoes from Chile. Turnips
and Carrots are indeed native Britishers, though the original wild
carrot or turnip would never be recognized as such by any ordinary
person.
The history of every one of them is interesting. The Oat is the
true Teutonic and Scandinavian grain, which has more "fibre" than
any other cereal. There is an interesting passage in Froissart's
_Chronicles_ describing the commissariat of those hardy Scotch
borderers who raided and ruined the northern English counties
whenever they felt inclined to do so.[118] They lived for the most
part on the cattle of their enemies, but each man carried a small
sack of oatmeal and a griddle, or iron plate, on which to make
oatcake. So that each man supported himself. His little rough pony
also was quite able to look after itself.
[118] Or whenever they could do so successfully. (_Publisher's
note._)
That hardy plant, the Oat (_Avena sativa_) can be cultivated as far
north as 69.50° N. lat. It is a native of Siberia and Western Europe.
It was oatmeal that supported the Norsemen who conquered Normandy
and England, and who even dominated the Mediterranean. The Swedes
of Gustavus Adolphus and the Danes of Canute also lived mainly upon
oatmeal and porridge. It is true that in England oats are abandoned
to the horses, but those horses are the best in the world. There
can, of course, be no question as to whether the Scotch or English
are the best!
The history of Wheat is a very complicated one; there are a great
number of varieties and sub-species, all closely allied to our
ordinary wheat, and difficult to distinguish from it. One variety
occurs as a wild plant from Mesopotamia, near Ararat, over Servia,
the Crimea, and as far as Thessaly, where entire hills are covered
by it. This grain seems to have been cultivated at Troy, for Dr.
Schliemann has found it at Hissarlik. It was, however, in cultivation
long before the days of Achilles; it was grown by the Stone Age
people, who lived in the lake dwellings of Switzerland. Another kind,
"spelt" wheat, seems to have been the mainstay in ancient Egypt, in
Greece, and all through the Roman Empire. It is now very rare, though
it is still grown in Spain and in other countries where the soil is
poor.
Grains of the true Wheat have been discovered in the Pyramids of
Egypt, so that it also is very ancient. To-day Wheat extends to
Norway (69° N. lat.), and may be grown up to 4400 feet on the
Alps.[119] India, United States, Russia, the Argentine, Chile,
Australia, and many other countries, produce great crops of this
useful and nourishing food. Its fibre is 3 per cent., albuminous
matter 11-1/2 per cent., and carbo-hydrates 66·5 per cent. Oat has
10 per cent. fibre, 11-1/2 per cent. albuminous, and 57 per cent.
carbo-hydrates.
[119] Hackel, _True Grasses_.
One guess as to the origin of Wheat is that the first-named
(Mesopotamian sort) is the original wild plant. By cultivation in the
rich alluvial valleys of Mesopotamia and Egypt, improved kinds were
formed. These have eventually replaced both "spelt" wheat and the
wild race, but could only do so when richly-cultivated fields were
ready for them. On poor soil and with bad cultivation, "spelt" is
said to be even now the most profitable crop.
Wild Barley grows in Arabia and from Asia Minor to Baluchistan. It is
very important in the colder regions of Northern Europe, in Tibet,
and in China, but with us "John Barleycorn" is chiefly used for
brewing.
Rye also comes from Asia Minor. It was not apparently known in Europe
until the Bronze period, but is now "the chief cereal of the German
and Slavonic nations." The black rye-bread is familiar to all who
have travelled on the Continent. The straw is good fodder, and is
used for making hats and for paper.[120]
[120] Hackel, _True Grasses_.
A very interesting point on which, however, it is quite impossible
to come to a definite decision, may be noticed here. We will suppose
what is quite as likely as any other theory, viz. that man as a
gardening creature first settled somewhere in the Euphrates or
Caucasian valleys.
What wild plants, then, would have been available for his experiments?
This particular region is an interesting and remarkable one. Most of
our common British plants occur along the shore of the Black Sea to
the Caucasus (apple, pear, nut, turnip, cabbage, carrot, and others,
are all probably to be found there). On the Babylonian side of the
mountains, there is a warm sub-tropical climate in which almost every
useful plant can be grown. The desert also contains a few other
valuable plants.
Near Ararat, Noah might have found rye, wheat, and barley growing
wild. The Wild Vine also grows on the south of the Caucasus. "It
grows there with the luxuriant wildness of a tropical creeper,
clinging to tall trees and producing abundant fruit without
pruning or cultivation."[121] In that favoured district, the olive
and the fig, the melon and cucumber, onions, garlic, and shallots,
and other common garden and medicinal plants, can be found. Not far
away is the native country of the camel, the ass, the horse, and most
other domestic animals.
[121] De Candolle, _Origin of Cultivated Plants_.
[Illustration: _Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_
_London & New York_
RICEFIELDS IN THE CEYLON HILLS
The buffaloes are puddling up the soil before the seed is
planted.]
Were these hillsides of Ararat or thereabouts, the first place where
man sowed and reaped a harvest?
At any rate, in those flat, fertile, alluvial plains of the
Euphrates, and also in Egypt, the first great cities arose.
But even in the later Stone Age, which may have been about 58,000
B.C., some of these Caucasian plants seem to have been in cultivation
in Switzerland. Probably every subsequent invasion, first that of
races with bronze weapons, and then of others in the Iron Age,
brought with it new cultivated plants.
The Oat seems to be an exception to the rule, for, so far as one can
gather, it was not a native of Asia Minor.
The first harvest was, however, in all probability, a very casual and
occasional kind of thing.
Mason (_Origin of Inventions_, page 192) has described such a kind
of cultivation which was in existence amongst the American Indians
quite recently. "A company of Cocopa or Mohave or Pima women set
forth to a rich and favoured spot on the side of a cañon or rocky
steep. They are guarded by a sufficient number of men from capture
or molestation. Each woman has a little bag of gourd seed, and when
the company reach their destination she proceeds to plant the seeds
one by one in a rich cranny or crevice where the roots may have
opportunity to hold, the sun may shine in, and the vines with their
fruit may swing down as from a trellis. The planters then go home
and take no further notice of their vines until they return in the
autumn to gather the gourds" (E. Palmer).
There is an interesting point about the cultivation of those early
savage peoples who built up for themselves unhealthy but elaborate
wooden dwellings in the Swiss lakes, in order to escape wild beasts
and human beings who were even more dangerous and ferocious than they.
Weeds occurred in those cornfields, cultivated by stone implements,
some 60,000 years ago.
The seed of an Italian weed had been introduced with their corn, and
was discovered in Switzerland!
Weeds are an extremely interesting group. A proverb about the
hardiness and multiplication of weeds can be discovered in almost
every language. "Ill weeds grow apace," _Unkraut verbessert nicht_,
and so on. They are very common. In fact weeds, wayside, and
freshwater plants, have by far the widest distribution of all. There
are twenty-five species which can be found over at least half the
entire land surface of the earth, and more than a hundred occupy a
third of it.[122]
[122] Drude, _Handbuch Pflanzengeographie_, p. 107.
Moreover, many of our common weeds existed in Britain when the
glaciers and ice melted away, and there were as yet no people able to
cultivate the ground.
The Creeping Buttercup, Chickweed, Mint, Persicaria, Dock, and
Sheep's Sorrel had already colonized the country, before the Great
Ice Age came upon them, and at least fourteen weeds were here when
the first corn-raising savages landed in Britain.[123]
[123] Reid, _Origin of the British Flora_.
At first sight it is difficult to understand where and how they
lived. One discovers a very few, however, if one botanizes very
carefully along the seashore, or on river banks where landslips have
occurred, and in other such places where bare ground exists which is
not the result of cultivation.
There these weeds fulfil a very important and useful purpose. The
"red smear" of a landslip is soon tinted green with Coltsfoot,
Chickweed and the like, and the bare earth, which was useless and
supported no green covering, is very soon made once more a part
of the earth's fruitful field. In such places the weeds are soon
overcome and suppressed by the regular woods, grass, or thicket of
the district.
It is far otherwise in arable land, where man desires to keep the
ground bare in order to give his own domestic plants the best part of
the soil.
Let us look for a little at what actually happens in an ordinary
cornfield. It is not merely one generation of weeds, but whole
armies, that the farmer has to contend with.
When the young corn is growing up (1) the bright yellow Charlock
grows much more rapidly, and the whole cornfield is golden with it.
The Charlock grows to some eighteen inches high, flowers, and sets
its seed before it is suppressed by the growth of the cornstalks,
which, of course, may be three or four feet or more in height.
(2) Another series of weeds, such as Spurrey, are growing in the
shelter of the tall stalks, and their flowers are ripened and their
seed scattered long before the corn is cut. (3) Another series, such
as Polygonums, etc., become ripe and are about the length of the
corn, so that when it is cut and thrashed the seed of the Polygonum
accompanies the grain and is probably sown with it. (4) Then there
are such weeds as the False Oat grass, etc., which are taller than
the Oat, and whose seeds are blown off and scattered all over the
field before the harvest. One would think that those exhausted the
series, but far from it: the farmer cuts and carries the crop, and
for two or three days the ground is almost bare, but if you revisit
the field a week afterwards you can no longer see the ground. The
cut-off yellow stalks of the corn are set off by a dark continuous
green carpet of flourishing weeds. This last, (5) the "waiting
division" of the weeds, remain quietly until the corn is removed and
then get through their flowering and seeding before the field is
ploughed up or covered by grass.
Now if one thinks for a little over the cunning and ingenuity of
these proceedings, it is obvious that each single weed has somehow
learnt how to develop exactly at the right time. Those especially
which are intended (by themselves) to form part of the seed mixtures
must flower exactly at the same time as the corn. As a matter of
fact, most seed mixtures are often full of weeds. In a single pound
of clover seed, no less than 14,400 foreign seeds, including those of
forty-four different weeds, have been discovered.[124]
[124] _Report of the Botanical Department N.J. Agricultural
Experiment Station_, 1891.
Others scattered on the ground will probably be buried and remain
five to seven years below the surface, yet they are ready to come up
flourishing as soon as they get a chance.
How has this been brought about? It is only since about 1780 to 1820
that our present system of farming has prevailed. In these 125 years,
these weeds have found out exactly how to establish themselves.
The explanation is probably a very simple one. Every weed which did
not bloom and seed exactly at the right time was killed and left no
seed. This encouraged the others, who have gradually brought about
the neat little arrangements above described. A process of selection
has been at work. Those that would not modify their arrangements to
suit new methods of farming have been suppressed.
But it is in some of the cultivated plants themselves that one sees
the most extraordinary results of selection.
The Wild Cabbage is still to be found on sea-cliffs on the
south-western coast of England, and the Wild Turnip occasionally
occurs in fields. There is nothing particularly interesting or
attractive about either of them.
Yet from the one has been produced cabbage, cauliflower, seakale,
brussels sprouts, broccoli, and kohlrabi; and the other has given the
endless varieties of turnips. For the most part these extraordinary
changes have been brought about in a perfectly straightforward way,
by just choosing the biggest and finest sorts for seed.
Some of the feats performed by gardeners in this way are almost
incredible. A United States seedsman evolved the idea of a perfect
bean from his inner consciousness. It had a particular shape which he
described to a noted grower of beans. Two years later his ideal bean
was produced!
The growers of pineapples used to have a great deal of difficulty
on account of the pineapple cuttings becoming unhealthy. Sometimes
63 per cent. were more or less diseased. Then certain growers began
to carefully select disease-proof pineapples, and finally reduced
the percentage of diseased cuttings to four per cent. Another French
observer (M. Roujon) by continually selecting the smallest seeds, was
able to obtain corn only eight inches high.
But by far the most interesting and important researches have
been those dealing with roots and tubers. Several people have, in
fact, done in a few years what it took primitive man centuries to
accomplish.
Thus, in 1890, E. v. Proskowetz obtained some seeds of the wild
Sea-beetroot which is found on the south coast of France. By very
careful selection he was able in the year 1894 to get good beetroots
quite like the ordinary cultivated ones. These were biennials
(not annuals like the wild plant), and had a large percentage of
sugar--16·99 per cent. This was by selection in good and fertile
soil.[125] Vilmorin also obtained quite good carrots in the fourth
generation by cultivating the wild form in rich and good soil, and
selecting the best.
[125] Perceval, _Agricultural Botany_.
In fact there are in natural wild plants great differences between
individuals, and when such plants are cultivated in good soil, where
they have far more to eat than they require, the result is that they
produce extraordinary and monstrous types.
These types are, however, more or less delicate, and are weak in
constitution and easily killed. To prevent such variations those who
wish to keep a race of seed pure are careful to keep it growing on
poor land.
In 1596 the Hyacinth (_Hyacinthus orientalis_) was introduced from
the Levant. In 1597 there were four varieties, and in 1629 eight
kinds were known, but in 1768 two thousand forms of hyacinth were
named and described.
Besides selection, the method of hybridizing or crossing is often
used in order to obtain new or valuable strains. Generally both
hybridizing and crossing are employed. This method has long been
practised. Bradley, in 1717, writes as follows: "A curious person may
by this knowledge produce much rare kinds of plants as have not yet
been heard of"; and, in fact, peaches, potatoes, plums, strawberries,
and savoys have all been greatly improved by hybridizing and
selection.[126] By crossing certain kinds of corn, such as the
Chinese Oat and the wild European Oat, varieties have been produced
by Messrs. Garton which at the Highland and Agricultural Society's
trials produced 84, 87, and 99 bushels per acre, as compared with 58
bushels yielded by the ordinary Scotch Oat.[127] With potatoes also
astonishing results have been got.
[126] Masters, _Nature_, July, 1899.
[127] _Journal Farmers' Club_, February, 1900.
[Illustration: _Queensland Government Photo_
SUGAR CANE IN QUEENSLAND
The cart is being loaded up to carry the canes to the factory,
where it will be crushed by the latest and most perfect
machinery.]
One single potato was sold for £50 not very long ago.
The Potato, like the Indian corn, tobacco, and a few other plants,
is an inhabitant of the New World. Of other cultivated plants the
native country is not known. No one knows where, for instance,
Sugar-cane was first cultivated, but it has nine Sanskrit names, one
of which, _khand_, is, or has probably at one time been familiar to
us as sugar-candy. It was well-known when the Institutes of Manu were
written, but that may have been somewhere between 2000 B.C. and A.D.
20.
One of the Hindu Indian deities, Kámadeva, who corresponds to Cupid,
the God of Love, carries a bow made of sugar-cane, with a string
which is composed of bees.
"He bends the luscious cane and twists the string
With bees: how sweet! but ah! how keen their sting,
He with five flowerets tips the ruthless darts
Which through five senses pierce enraptured hearts."
From India it seems to have been carried by Alexander the Great
to Asia Minor, for it is mentioned by Herodotus. In the time of
the Crusades it was discovered in Syria, and the Venetians learned
something about it when the Crusaders returned to Europe. The
Spaniards introduced the Sugar-cane to the Canary Islands in 1470.
Then the Dutch took it to Brazil, and when they were expelled from
that country by the Portuguese they transferred their canes to the
West Indian Islands. Our English islands, Barbados (1643) and Jamaica
(1664), soon found the cultivation a very profitable undertaking.[128]
[128] For full details see Watts, _Economic Dictionary of
Products of India_; Muller, _Select Extra-tropical Plants_.
The variations in price of sugar became in process of time of a very
serious nature. In the year 1329 it is said that in Scotland a pound
of sugar was worth one ounce of standard silver. But from 1780 to
1800 the price fell to 9d. The East Indian sugar began to compete
with that from the West Indies about this time, but this was very
soon crushed out by imposing a duty of £37 per cwt.
The West Indies were then very flourishing, but even before this the
fatal word _beet-sugar_ had already been heard. It was nothing at
first but an interesting experiment by Professor Marcgraf in a German
laboratory, who had extracted a little cane-sugar from beetroot in
1747. But in 1801 the beet was already in cultivation. Napoleon saw
England's monopoly of the cane and judiciously encouraged the beet.
The result of his far-seeing policy only became manifest a few years
ago, for then the West Indian Islands, which we conquered and guarded
against Napoleon at such fearful expense of blood and treasure, were
almost worthless; Continental beet-sugar had ruined our colonial
planters and our home refineries. It is in fact a most curious and
interesting example of how a little judicious encouragement by a wise
and far-seeing Government may destroy the profits of victory in a
long, glorious, but yet ruinous war.
CHAPTER XXII
PLANTS AND ANTS
Meaning of Plant Life--Captive and domesticated germs--Solomon's
observations denied by Buffon but confirmed by recent
writers--Ants as keepers and germinators of corn--Ant
fields--Ants growing mushrooms--Leaf-cutting ants--Plants
which are guarded by insects--The African bush--Ants boarded
by Acacias and by Imbauba trees--Ants kept in China and
Italy--Cockchafer _v._ ant--Scale insects--A fungus which
catches worms.
The world of plants supports all animal life, from the mite to the
elephant. There are most intricate relations between one form of life
and another. Thus a Rose tree attacked by an aphis or green-fly may
be succoured by the slim ichneumon, or other thin-waisted fly, which
lays its egg in that of the aphis. Another insect, say a spider,
catches the ichneumon. A starling may eat the spider, and be itself
eaten by an owl.
So that ichneumon and starling are friends to the Rose, whilst the
other insect, the spider, and the owl are enemies. Yet both the
starling and the spider are probably, almost certainly on the whole,
friends of the Rose, although they are unfriendly in this special
case.
With all other similar series or changes the final term is either a
bird or animal of prey or mankind.
Until we introduce the idea of man as the culminating point of the
series, the whole of it seems to be without any special meaning or
advantage.
But when we think of how man utilizes the work of plants and animals,
then the whole scheme becomes intelligible and complete; it is like a
well-rounded story with a worthy and adequate end.
Moreover, what man has done so far is only an instalment of what he
will probably succeed in doing. All who have brought up caterpillars
or bees know that their greatest difficulty arises from certain
minute insects or fungus enemies. We already know enough about these
latter to fight them with some chance of success, but there are
hundreds of other spores and germs floating in the atmosphere, and
coming to rest on animals, on clothing, or on the leaves or petals
of plants. These germs are now just as wild as, and infinitely more
dangerous than the furious aurochs, the disdainful wild asses, or the
ferocious wolves that our forefathers succeeded in domesticating.
Those bacteria, or germs, for instance, which are only one-thousandth
of a millimetre long, are only visible by the help of a microscope.
A row of three hundred thousand of them would be required to make
an inch in length! Yet one of these germs can be mature and divide
into two new germs in twenty minutes. In forty minutes there would be
four, in an hour eight, and so on. The number after twenty-four hours
is almost incredible.
These little germs stick to our clothes, fingers, lips, money,
newspapers, and anything that is often handled. They hover in the
air we breathe, permeate the food we eat, and inhabit water, and
especially milk, in enormous numbers. Some of them are deadly. One
might easily decimate a whole population, as indeed happened in the
South Sea Islands when smallpox was introduced. Others are harmless
and even necessary.
But to-day if you go into a bacteriological laboratory you will find
hundreds and thousands of little glass tubes all neatly labelled and
stoppered with cotton wool. If you read those labels you will see
that the bacteria of all sorts of horrible and loathsome diseases
have been captured and imprisoned. There is the deadly anthrax
bacillus peacefully discolouring gelatine; in another, possibly
the germs of hydrophobia may be undergoing a process of taming or
treatment.
Each of these colonies of germs is under perfect control, and in
many of them their natural wickedness has been so much alleviated
that they are now useful aids to the doctor, who gives his patient a
mild dose of the disease in order to accustom his system to resist
accidental infection by the original type.
Yet what has been done already is only an earnest of what will no
doubt be accomplished. Every farmer and ploughboy will in time sow
his own bacteria; every dairymaid will make all sorts of cheese, from
Camembert, Rochfort, to Gorgonzola, by sowing the right kind of germ
upon it.
Man will no doubt cultivate the whole earth in the way that he now
cultivates Europe and Great Britain, and will obtain mastery not only
over his domesticated plants and animals, but over fungi, bacteria,
and insects also.
Even if man had never risen above the state of the Banderlog of Mr.
Kipling, there are other animals which cultivate and even combine
together for warfare and conquest. In some respects they are better
disciplined even than man himself, and they can defy all sorts of
mankind except civilized man.
Possibly if man had not arisen on the scene, these insects might
have developed some sort of civilization like that imagined by Mr.
Wells in his story of the moon. We are only concerned with the
relations of these ants to plants. Those who are interested in their
conquests and civilization must consult the excellent account by Mr.
Selous in his _Romance of the Insect World_.
The most interesting points about them are as follows. They gather
a harvest and store it up for the winter. This habit of the ant was
well known to the ancients, and is mentioned by Solomon. At the
time of the French Encyclopædists, when the fashion of the times
was all for destruction and disbelief, the fact that ants do so
was ridiculed and flatly contradicted, and especially by the great
naturalist Buffon. They pointed out that ants hibernated during the
cold weather, and therefore required no food for the winter, so that
Solomon's story was absolutely ridiculous.
For nearly a hundred years people forgot that Palestine and those
other countries where the habits of ants had been reverently observed
possessed a climate much too warm and mild to make the ants hibernate.
After careful study it has been discovered that the ants thoroughly
understand the first stages of brewing!
The corn which they gather is not eaten by them in its hard winter
condition. When taken into the winter nest of the ants this corn
would very soon germinate and grow into a plant, but the ants manage
to prevent this by some method which is not yet understood. If such a
nest is left alone by the ants, the corn immediately begins to grow,
but it is not allowed to do so till it is required for food. Should
the store of corn get damp by heavy rain, or mould appear upon it,
then the careful ants bring up their store into the sunlight and dry
it there.
When it is required for food germination is permitted, but is soon
stopped: the ants nibble off the growing rootlet of the seed. Then
when the grain absorbs water and begins to change its starch into
sugar, the ants suck in the sugar and reap the reward of all this
labour and skill.
In the conduct of this germination of the grain they are, of course,
far in advance of all the savage races of mankind.
There are certain South American species which go at least one step
farther. They have their own fields--spaces three or four feet in
diameter--which are entirely occupied by one single grass, the
so-called Ant-rice (_Aristida stricta_). Dr. Lincecum states that the
ants "work" these plantations very carefully, removing every weed or
other plant that comes up, and sowing every year the new seed at the
proper season.[129]
[129] _Proceedings Linnean Society_, 1861. Dr. MacCook adds
nothing essential, and in no way disproves Dr. Lincecum's
statements.
These facts are sufficiently strange and startling, but there are
even, apparently, species still more intelligent, who not only sow
and reap, but actually prepare a soil and reap a crop of mushrooms,
or at least, if not of mushrooms, of fungi. These wonderful little
insects gather leaves and cut them into fragments of an appropriate
size; they are then collected together so as to form a bed, and the
fungus is introduced to this. The fungus is kept at a certain stage
of growth by very careful treatment; the fruit-bearing ends are
nibbled off, so that the young shoots come up indefinitely. The ants
feed upon these fungus shoots, and get a crop indefinitely prolonged.
This is, of course, a system of agriculture far beyond that employed
by any tribe of savages. Only man in a relatively advanced stage of
agriculture grows mushrooms for himself. These facts, startling as
they may seem, are apparently quite well authenticated and have not
been seriously questioned.
There are a great number of leaf-cutting ants who are, indeed,
amongst the most dangerous of the many insect pests in South America
and elsewhere. Wallace (_Revue Scientifique_, 179, p. 29), in
speaking of the Saauba or leaf-cutters, describes how he placed a
large heavy branch across the route of one of their columns.
The long line of laden ants was checked, and the greatest confusion
set in at the head of the column. Each ant, for several feet down the
column, then laid down its leaf, and all set to work to tunnel under
the obstacle. This was managed in about half an hour's time, and the
column then proceeded on its way.
Amongst other interesting and curious facts connected with these
extraordinary insects is that some kinds are actually kept up by
certain plants as a sort of standing army or police.
There are no less than 3030 species of plant which keep these
standing armies of ferocious ants, or if they do not keep them, at
any rate lay themselves out to attract them. The kinds which are
attracted live upon sugar, and are strong, active, and extremely
good fighters. When travelling through the bush in Africa, it is not
unusual in some places to touch inadvertently one of these protected
trees. In a moment one's hand and arm are covered by ants whose heads
are dug deep down into the skin, biting with all their strength.
It is of course impossible to describe all the plants which protect
themselves against injurious insects and even large animals in this
way, but two of them must be mentioned.
There are certain Acacias which are particularly interesting. Like
most of this order, they have large hollow spines instead of
stipules at the base of the leaf. It is inside these spines that the
troops of the police-insects live. These Acacias (Oxhorn Acacia,
as well as _A. sphærocephala_ and _A. spadicigera_) also produce
_sugar_, which is secreted by peculiar gland-like organs on the
stalks of the leaves, and even _albuminoids_, for at the tips of the
leaflets there are peculiar little bodies which contain albuminous
matter.
The Imbauba tree (_Cecropia spp._) also possesses a standing army of
these ants. It puts them up in the hollow pith in the centre of the
tree, which is divided into large roomy spaces and makes a convenient
nest. There is a minute opening by which they run in and out. On one
occasion a naturalist found that the ants had been benumbed by a
period of very cold weather, and in consequence had neglected their
duty, and the trees had been stripped of their leaves by leaf-cutting
kinds.[130]
[130] Belt, _Naturalist in Nicaragua_.
These last mentioned, the leaf-cutting ants, are especially dreaded
by owners of plantations. Foreign or introduced plants are not
specially guarded against their ravages by special secretions, as
is the case with the native flora, so that the coffee and cocoa
plantations are often severely injured. In some places man has copied
those Acacias and Imbaubas, for in the orange plantations of the
province of Canton, in China, ants' nests are collected and placed on
the trees. Moreover, the different trees are connected together by
bamboos, so that the ants can easily pass, as on a bridge, from one
tree to another.
Near Mantua, in Italy, the same system seems to be adopted, and
ants' nests are carefully placed near the fruit trees. Their use
can be quite well understood, for Forel, in his work on the Ants of
Switzerland, estimates that _one ants'_ _nest will require_ a supply
of 100,000 insects a day during the season.
It is quite common to find ants crawling about on the outside of the
large heads of the Garden Centaury and a few other Composites. If one
looks carefully, one finds that there are streaks of honey to be seen
coming from the scales. The honey is not produced in the flowers,
and seems at first sight to be of no use at all so far as the plant
is concerned, but that is very far from being the case. Here comes
a cockchafer or other destructive beetle, intent on absolutely
devouring and destroying the young flowers. At once the pugnacity and
wrath of the ants are aroused. They take up a menacing and ferocious
attitude, and the cockchafer passes to some other plant.[131]
[131] Kerner, _l.c._, vol. 2, fig. 264, p. 242.
Such honey-glands found on the leaves and not connected in any way
with the flowers, are more common than one would think. Even the
common Bracken produces curious honey-secreting hairs when it is in a
young condition. These attract ants which drive away caterpillars and
other dangerous insect foes.
Many very dangerous insects are too small for birds, and can only be
dealt with effectually by insects or fungi. Of these perhaps the most
dangerous are the "scale" insects. The best-known one is very like a
minute mussel shell. It is about one-quarter to one-third of an inch
long, and can be sometimes found in quantities on apples; they are
generally collected round the stalk. The mother insect has this scaly
back, and lies down and dies on the top of her eggs, so that her
scaly corpse forms a roof and a shield for her young ones. Like all
pests of this sort, these creatures increase very rapidly.
A certain scale insect was doing an immense amount of harm in the
orange plantations of Fiji, but it was destroyed by the introduction
of lady-birds, and of a certain parasitic fly. It is said that these
insects destroyed the "scale" in six months!
Experiments have also been tried with fungi. There are certain fungi
which attack the bodies of living insects. So far, however, it cannot
be said that the results have been at all satisfactory, for the
propagation and infection of the living insects by fungus spores is
not at all easy. There is also a certain feeling of doubt as to what
may happen. Those fungi, and particularly bacteria, might set up
dangerous epidemics.
Decaying meal contains hundreds of certain very curious worms called
_Nematodes_. They are short, about one-twenty-fifth of an inch in
length, and are smooth and very like minute eels. These creatures
are very active, wriggling or swaying to and fro in a characteristic
manner. Now in decaying meal there is a peculiar fungus. Like most
fungi, it consists of very minute transparent threads which contain
living matter or protoplasm. This particular fungus has branches,
but also forms curious loops or belts. When one of these eel-worms
is swaying about in the meal, it may quite well happen that its tail
slips into one of these loops. If that happens, the fate of the worm
is sealed, for the loop is elastic, and the more it wriggles the
farther it slips in and the stronger it is held. The fungus then
begins to grow, and forms a tube which grows _into the worm_ and
kills it. All the material in the worm's body goes to nourish the
fungus. This extraordinary fungus has been described and figured by
Professor Zopf, but seems to be a very unusual and rare form.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE PERIL OF INSECTS
The Phylloxera--French sport--Life history of the
Phylloxera--Cockchafer grubs--Wireworm--The misunderstood
crows--Dangerous sucklings of greenflies--"Sweat of heaven"
and "Saliva of the stars"--A parasite of a parasite of a
parasite--Buds--The apple-blossom weevil--Apple-sucker--The
codlin moth and the ripening apple--The pear midge--A careless
naturalist and his present of rare eggs--Leaf-miners--Birds
without a stain upon their characters--Birds and
man--Moats--Dust and mites--The homes of the mites--Buds, insect
eggs, and parent birds flourishing together.
The difficulty in describing the Romance of Plant Life does not arise
from a want of romance, but the sieges, battles, and alarms are so
difficult to see, and the enemies are so tiny, that the terrific
contests continually going on escape our notice altogether.
When one does look carefully and closely at the life of a plant, one
sometimes wonders how it manages to exist at all in the midst of so
many and great dangers.
There are great swarms of insects which devour or burrow into it, or
suck its life-juices. These are infinitely more dangerous than the
relatively clumsy, heavy-footed, grazing animal.
Every part of a plant has its own special insect foe, and it is
really difficult to understand how it can possibly escape.
Perhaps the "Achilles' heel" is the root, for, underground, plants
get no help from the watchful and ever-present army of birds, who
are, as we shall see, the natural police of the world.
The Phylloxera, for instance, which ruined the old and valuable
vineyards in France, is a terrible little acarid, or mite, which
attacks the roots. Too small to see, and impossible to kill without
killing the plant, it laid waste the fertile hills and valleys of
all South and Central France, causing millions of pounds damage.
One reason for this destruction sprang from the universal sporting
instinct innate in every Frenchman. Everybody goes out with his gun
to destroy any lark, sparrow, or titmouse that is idiotic enough to
remain in the country. Only birds can deal efficiently with insect
pests. Take this horrible little Phylloxera, for instance; a single
female in her life of forty-five days will lay about two hundred
eggs. Each egg becomes a little grub, which after a few moments of
uncertainty and agitation settles itself, and begins to suck steadily
at any unoccupied part of the vine root. After ten to twelve days'
life it will be laying eggs as rapidly as its mother. Thus in an
ordinary summer the number of young ones produced from a single
female becomes quite incalculable.
These pests are natives of America. Imported on American roots about
1868, they had in thirteen years practically ruined the vineyards in
France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Germany.
All sorts of remedies were tried--saturation of the ground by
poisons, flooding the vineyards to drown them, artificial cultivation
of their insect and plant enemies, and many others.
The correct and satisfactory method has been at last discovered.
American vines of sorts which are able to resist these Yankee mites
have been imported, and the valuable French vines have been grafted
on to them.
Another very dangerous root-enemy, which is common in this country,
is the Cockchafer grub or Whitegrub. (But it is not nearly so bad as
in France, where in the summer of 1889, a single farmer collected
2000 lb. of Cockchafers.) The grub (each female lays seventy eggs)
burrows into the earth, and for no less than three summers remains
below ground devouring indiscriminately the roots of everything
he can discover. Underground, the mole is almost his only enemy,
but the rooks, starlings, and gulls, which follow the plough, are
watching for him. The Wireworm, Clickbeetle, or Skipjack, is also an
underground demon which lives for three years, and gnaws and worries
at plant roots for the whole of that time. It, however, shows itself
above the surface.
A gentleman who had passed his whole life in the country complained,
in my presence, of the damage done by rooks. He had had six thousand
of them shot that summer, and remarked that he had seen with his own
eyes one of them pulling out a young cabbage plant by the root. Of
course it was quite unnecessary to point out that the poor bird was
merely trying to get at the wireworms and devour them!
For some time I used to look out for great attacks of wireworm in
turnip-fields: when one was recorded, I never failed to find that the
crows had been ruthlessly shot down a season or two before.
All these, and many other insects, attack the roots, which would be,
one would suppose, quite well protected in the depths of the earth.
Therefore we find roots producing all sorts of poisonous substances,
tannins, and even strong-smelling bodies, which keep off these pests.
It is perhaps the sucking battalions of the insect army which do the
most harm. In themselves they are weak, stupid, and scarcely move
from their birthplace. They live out their life wherever their long,
lancet-like proboscis needles have pierced the plant's skin, but it
is their power of multiplication that makes them really formidable.
Huxley calculated that if all the offspring of one "green-fly" lived,
and if their broods also lived for ten generations, then the tenth
brood of that original green-fly would contain more animal matter
than the entire population of China. Green-fly would, as a matter of
fact, go on increasing at this rate, were it not for the enormous
number of enemies that prey upon them. A mathematical friend of Mr.
Buckton calculated that in 300 days the produce of a single green-fly
might be 210^15, that is 210 multiplied by 210, and then again by 210
up to 15 times!
In summer time one may often notice, especially on sycamores and lime
trees, a peculiar shining, sticky, honey-like substance which covers
the leaves. It is often so abundant as to drip like a rain of honey
from the upper branches.
This "honey-dew" was a puzzle which greatly intrigued learned minds
in the ancient world. Pliny speaks of it as the "sweat of heaven" or
"saliva of the stars."
In reality, however, it is nothing but the excretions of hundreds
of millions of these green-fly or aphides, which will be found
established on the under side of the leaves, where, moored by their
little anchoring talons and with their proboscis inserted in the
fresh green leaf, they are sucking hard and steadily at the sugary
juice. In twenty-four hours it was observed that a single individual
gave forth forty-eight minute drops of honey.
Bees are very often tempted to collect this honey so abundantly
produced, but this turns their own honey black, and may even make it
poisonous.
Plants try to protect themselves against these pests chiefly by means
of sticky or long hairs, by a thick skin, or by unpleasant tasting
or smelling substances. But it is to insects such as lady-birds
and others which devour the green-fly that they owe a deep debt of
gratitude. In particular, there are certain parasitic insects which
lay their eggs in their bodies. Not only so, but it is known that the
eggs of some other insects are laid _in the egg of the green-fly_,
and in one instance it has been found that yet another insect laid
its egg in the egg of the parasite!
Some of the most interesting objects in nature are the buds in
which, all neatly packed and stowed away, the young leaves and
flowers remain awaiting the warm breath of spring. They are most
interesting to examine: one finds series after series of overlapping
scales which cover one another in the most ingenious way. No two are
exactly alike, but each seems to have been moulded exactly to the
proper shape. There is no waste anywhere, no useless expenditure of
material. Very often turpentine or resin or a sticky gum seals up
the joining of the scales. Every possible precaution seems to have
been taken by nature. Neither rain nor snow can enter a winter bud.
Neither can the cold of winter penetrate to the inside where the
baby leaves and flower petals are cosily and tightly coiled up. But
observe in the very earliest warm days of spring an extraordinary
little insect, which has wakened up after its own winter sleep in the
moss or lichen covering the rough and crannied bark of an old apple
tree. This is the Apple-blossom Weevil, a beetle only about quarter
of an inch in length, but with a curious snout or proboscis half the
length of its body. This creature proceeds to the bud, and fixing
its legs firmly, proceeds to bore a hole through the scales into the
middle of the bud. She then places an egg inside, and goes on to
put an egg in each of fourteen to forty-nine other buds. This takes
a fortnight, and then she dies, probably satisfied that her duty is
fully performed. A little footless, cream-white maggot develops in
the apple-bud, which latter becomes rusty-coloured and dies away.
Another pest is the Apple-sucker, which lays her eggs in September on
the fine hairs which cover the shoots. As soon as the weather becomes
mild and warm, little grubs come out of these eggs; they are very
small, and their bodies are almost flat. These tiny flat grubs, as
soon as they are born, hurry off to the nearest buds and slip between
their scales. They remain sucking the rich juices of the apple
blossom until May or June, when they become perfect insects, and fly
away so fat and well-nourished that they can live until September
without feeding.
But those are by no means the only dangers. It is not till the apple
blossom, which has escaped all those perils, opens in the spring
time, after its petals have unfolded in the warm air and the young
apple is already half formed, that the Codlin Moth begins to attack
them. This tiny little moth is then extremely busy. She lays about
fifty eggs, but only one on each young apple. It is put in the one
weak spot of the apple, just at the top, in the base of the withered
flower. The grub tunnels down to the core and feeds upon the seeds,
which are entirely destroyed. When it has grown sufficiently, it
drives another tunnel straight outwards to the skin. If the apple is
still on the tree, the caterpillar lets itself down on a long silken
thread and hurries off to hide in any convenient crack or crevice of
the bark, or if the apple is already stored away, it conceals itself
in the walls or in the flooring of the loft. The moths come out at
the end of next May, just when the blossoms are getting ready for
them. These codlin-moth apples cannot fail to have been noticed by
the reader, as the tunnels in the ripe apple are most conspicuous.
The gradual fattening of the caterpillar can also be traced, for its
first tunnel down to the seeds is quite narrow, while the way out
gets wider and wider as the creature became stouter and fatter whilst
eating its way through the flesh.
The Pear Midge attacks at the same place, but the mother insect has
a long egg-laying tube, and puts from fifteen to thirty eggs into
the opening pear blossom. The pears go on growing, but of course
are quite spoilt by the maggots within. These latter have a curious
springing or jumping habit, and when they reach the soil bury
themselves an inch or two below the surface.
So that all the care and neatness with which the young flowers and
buds are packed up goes for nothing, and these insect pests get all
the benefits of the apple and pear!
Besides these, there are hundreds of sorts of caterpillars which
devour the leaves bodily. Cabbage-white butterflies, magpie-moths,
gipsy-moths, diamondback-moths, and others, lay their eggs in
hundreds. Many lay 300 eggs each.
In the United States, somebody had sent an entomologist a present of
some eggs of one of these moths. They were placed on a paper near
a window which happened to be open; the entomologist went out, and
the paper must have blown across the street into a garden on the
other side. At any rate, two or three years afterwards it was found
that some trees were badly attacked by this moth. Nobody thought
much about this, though of course it was interesting to find a new
moth. But the pest became a very serious one. In consequence of
the stimulating air of the United States the moth multiplied with
the most extraordinary rapidity, and it is said that about 300,000
dollars was spent in one year in the attempt to stamp it out.
All this happened because an entomologist forgot to lock up his eggs
when he went away for half an hour!
These caterpillars and the locusts devour the leaves bodily, but
there are others which live inside them. These so-called "leaf-miner"
caterpillars make white irregularly-winding tunnels between the
upper and the lower skin of the leaf. The tunnel increases or
widens because the caterpillar itself grows fatter as it eats its
tunnel. They can be seen on a great many leaves, and can be at once
recognized by this peculiarity.
Plants cannot run away from their enemies like animals, and it would
seem at first sight that their case was very hopeless. But it is not
so, for there is a vast, active, keen-eyed, and eager army of helpers
always ready for eggs and caterpillars.
It is birds that are of the greatest importance. A titmouse will
eat 200,000 insects in a season. A starling has been seen to fetch
food for its young ones from a grass paddock 100 yards away no less
than eighteen times in a quarter of an hour. All the following are
excellent birds, and without a stain upon their characters: the
plover, partridge, robin, wagtail, starling. Crows and wood-pigeons
are under suspicion, for though the latter do good in devouring the
seeds of weeds, and the former in destroying wireworms, both are fond
of corn and take large quantities of it.
Thrushes, mavises, and blackbirds are amongst the most persevering
and useful of our friends, but they are certainly fond of fruit. Yet
the good which they do is very much more than any possible harm
which an injudicious indulgence in the juicy fruits of summer might
bring about.
The sparrow cannot be given a character. Indeed, he is objectionable
in every way, for he not only does no good himself, but he devours
corn and drives away starlings and other valuable and interesting
helpers.
But it is very difficult to say what will happen if man interferes
with the regular working of Nature. The starling has been a pest in
Australia, though here it does nothing but good work. We are still
grossly ignorant of many simple but very important facts. Even
when we do know something, as for instance, that the peewit's or
plover's whole life is occupied in clearing the ground of wireworm,
daddy-long-legs grub, insects' eggs, and the like, that does not help
the bird in the least. Plovers' eggs are regularly sold in enormous
quantities. Every farm-labourer collects them, and the farmer never
dreams of interfering.
Man shoots down owls, kestrels, hawks, who prey upon mice, voles,
and sparrows. Then, when some farmers are half ruined, he has Royal
Commissions to find out why the voles have increased so much.
There are one or two peculiar contrivances found in plants which are
intended to keep off insects, and which may be noticed here.
Thus, the importance of a moat (which almost always formed part of
the defence of a medieval castle) had been already found out by one
or two plants.
In a particular kind of Teazle and in a large Sunflower-like
Composite (_Silphium laciniatum_) every pair of two opposite leaves
run together, so that a little cup-like hollow is formed surrounding
the stem, in which water collects. Insects climbing up the stem
and trying to get at the heads of flowers fall in and get drowned
in this water; their bodies may be seen floating about in it, and
probably when these decay, their decay-products are of some use to
the plant.
This curious contrivance is only a development of a very common
arrangement. In most leaves you will find that rainwater is intended
to run in a particular direction. There are little grooves and canals
down which it is supposed to go, and dry, thirsty hairs may be found
so arranged as to intercept part of it. Thus in summer the plants
are not confined entirely to the water from the ground, but are also
refreshed by the rain from above.
But if you look closely along these little channels, and especially
at the base of the leaf where they join the stem, you will find
that dust particles washed down by the rain collect and form little
streaks and patches. The air is full of all sorts of dust particles
which are made up of every conceivable substance. Many of these
minute grains of dust will be dissolved in the water, and help to
supply the plant with food. Nor is that all, for if you take a
hand-lens and examine these dust particles very closely, you will
very probably find small animalcula moving about. They are not
pretty; in fact they are quite horrible to look at. These are tiny
mites which live in these places. Their office is probably to eat up
everything eatable (including eggs of insects and spores of fungi),
and their excreta as well as their own bodies will probably be
dissolved in the water and go to help the plants.
The most certain place to find them is on the leaves of the lime and
other trees in August. On the under side of the leaf little bushes
of hairs can be found just where the veins fork. It is necessary to
take a pin and stir up these hairs to frighten them out, but when
this has been done, the lens will show the disgusting-looking little
creatures running hurriedly away. They are no doubt exceedingly
annoyed at being disturbed in the midst of their sleep, for they
come out and forage for anything eatable at night, retiring for the
day into these hairy grottos. The structure of these grottos is very
complicated. They are often like little caves with a narrow entrance,
and the sleeping chamber is quite within the leaf.
A great many trees have these curious mite homes. The insects are
generally the colour of the hairs, and are not easy to distinguish.
All those insects mentioned here have so arranged their life
histories that they come into existence exactly at the proper season.
The warmth of the sun, which opens the apple buds ever so slightly,
stirs also the egg of the mite, the egg of the beetle, or the
hibernating weevil, so that all these insect populations come into
full active life just when they can do the most damage.
But one must not stop there; the bird population is also ready, and
is building its nests and feeding its young, just so soon as the
insect swarms are at their thickest and most dangerous stage.
Man walks clumsily through this intricate tangle of living plants and
animals: he sets his big foot on a hedgehog (good for the insects),
or on a mole (so much the better for wireworm), collects plovers'
eggs (to the great help of every insect), shoots an owl (to the
delight of voles and mice) or a whole brood of partridges, and in
other ways makes a---- we had better say, shows that he is not so
clever as he supposes himself to be.
CHAPTER XXIV
RUBBER, HEMP, AND OPIUM
Effects of opium--The poppy-plant and its latex--Work of the
opium-gatherer--Where the opium poppy is grown--Haschisch
of the Count of Monte Cristo--Heckling, scotching, and
retting--Hempseed and bhang--Users of haschisch--Use of
india-rubber--Why plants produce rubber--With the Indians in
Nicaragua--The Congo Free State--Scarcity of rubber--Columbus
and Torquemada--Macintosh--Gutta-percha.
Supposing that in China or Japan you meet a native who shows the
following symptoms:--
(1) Eyes hollow and surrounded by a bluish margin; (2) pupils
much dilated; (3) with a stupid appearance; (4) with an emaciated
body; (5) of unsteady and staggering walk; (6) with a dreamy
disposition;--then, you may be sure that he is an opium-smoker. In
some of the Chinese provinces every man smokes ·03 to ·07 ounce of
opium daily, but those who indulge to excess consume ·3 or even ·6
ounce. It is an excellent medicine when employed in a lawful and
justifiable manner, for it calms the spirits and makes one sleep.
But its use is _always_ dangerous, even when employed in very small
quantity, as in laudanum and morphia.
In the Fen country in England there used to be a very large sale of
laudanum pills which keep off asthma and rheumatism, but even there
it is a dangerous remedy, for it is only too easy to fall under the
control of this drug either by injection of morphia, or by eating
or smoking laudanum or morphia. De Quincey's _Confessions of an
Opium-eater_ and Kipling's _Gate of the Hundred Sorrows_ give a lurid
picture of the ruin of body and soul brought about by opium.
It is produced from the heads of the Opium Poppy (_Papaver
somniferum_). Any poppy (or indeed any plant of the Poppy order) when
scratched or wounded exudes a thick white or orange milky fluid. This
is called "latex" (or milk); it is always more or less poisonous, and
generally contains some sort of resinous matter. Thus when the plant
is scratched or pierced, a drop of this milky latex comes out and at
once hardens over the wound. Of course the plant is much benefited
by this, for any destructive insect, unless it is a confirmed
opium-eater, will be poisoned or killed; then also, if wounds are
caused by wind, heavy rain, or animals passing, the scar is at once
healed over and covered by the hardened opium, so that no dangerous
fungus spores can get in to attack the plant. There is a mildew
fungus and also a smut fungus (_Entyloma_) which attack the poppy,
but both these enter by the stomata and live between the cells of the
plant.
The general appearance of the Opium Poppy is quite familiar; its
upright stems, large, clasping, bluish-green leaves and conspicuous
flowers may be seen in many gardens. It is rather interesting, and in
many ways; when young, the buds droop or hang down, and are entirely
enclosed in two large green, hairy sepals. These last are soon thrown
off, and then the flowers open out and display the petals with their
rich black spots, and the crowded mass of stamens which surround the
central greenish head. In bud these petals are "cramb'd up within the
empalement by hundreds of little wrinkles or puckers as if three
or four fine cambrick handkerchifs [_sic_] were thrust into one's
pocket," as an old writer describes it (Grew).
Bees, and especially bumbles, are extremely fond of it, and even seem
to be, in a way, opium-eaters, for they get quite exalted, almost
intoxicated, and above their ordinary laborious selves. They scurry
round and round the flower under the stamens or hover excitedly above
it.
It is at this stage that the opium-gatherer begins his work; he goes
round the beds and collects the petals of the poppy to use later on
(see p. 304). The poppy-heads are then half grown and bluish-green,
but they soon begin to turn yellow and ripen. When ripe they are
most interesting to examine. There is a large platform covered by a
radiating star-like ornament, which is the stigma. Underneath this is
a circle of little holes just below the crown, but above the head.
Each small hole has a flap. Now if you gather a ripe poppy-head on a
fine dry day all these holes are open, and if you hold it upright and
swing it vigorously from side to side the tiny seeds come flying out
of the holes and will be thrown to a considerable distance. The stalk
is supposed to swing in a high wind, and the seeds are really slung
or thrown out of the holes. But if, when you come home, you put your
poppy-head in water, or look at the plants in the garden on a very
wet day, you will find that every hole closes or is shut up, because
the small door mentioned above expands so as to close the opening.
The seeds are only sent out on a fine dry day; but they travel
well. It was observed in America that certain poppies had been
introduced as weeds at a certain place; in fifteen years they were
found twenty-five miles farther on, so that they were colonizing the
country at the rate of three-fifths of a mile per annum.[132] The
seeds themselves are very light and are of some value; they may be
eaten like caraway-seed, as comfits, or crushed to supply an oil for
lamps, or used as medicine. It is said that the value of the seed
raised in France was in one year £170,000. The heads themselves are
also valuable (they are worth 35s. per thousand), and even the dried
stalks and leaves, for they may be used as fodder.
[132] This is not quite certain.
But the real reason why the plant is cultivated in so many parts of
the earth is the great value of the opium obtained from it. This is
gathered in the following curious way. As soon as the dew has dried
off the plant, the cultivator goes round the beds and scratches every
poppy-head with a tool made up of three knives tied together. That is
the time recommended by Theophrastus, and it is apparently still the
usual time to choose. In the late afternoon, from four to seven, he
comes round again and scrapes off the congealed milk, which is then
worked up into cakes and taken to the factory.
It is prepared by being kneaded, dried, and rubbed until it is of a
pale golden colour.[133] Finally, it is enclosed in a mass of poppy
petals, sometimes mixed with the fruits of a kind of dock, and is
then ready for export.
[133] Rudyard Kipling has a most interesting account of the great
opium factory at Malwa.
It is cultivated in a great many parts of the world--Turkey, Syria,
Persia, France, China, the United States, Germany, Queensland, but
especially in British India, where the immense plains at Malwa used
to furnish opium worth about sixty million rupees annually (after
deducting all expenses). This was mostly exported to China, and
amounted to a tax of about threepence per head on every Chinaman;
it was also sufficient to defray about one-sixteenth part of the
expenses of our Indian Empire. The story of how Great Britain forced
China to take our opium is not a creditable one nor agreeable to
read. The plant was known in ancient Egypt, Persia, and Rome, and was
used in China for at least two hundred years before our times.
[Illustration:
_Stereo Copyright, Underwood & Underwood_
_London and New York_
GATHERING RUBBER IN TEHUANTEPEC
Incisions may be seen in the bark of the tree. The rubber milk
runs out from these into the vessel held in the man's hand.]
What is supposed to be the original wild plant from which the opium
poppy was derived seems to have been cultivated in the ancient Swiss
lake dwellings, for the seeds of _Papaver setigerum_ occur there in
abundance. The price of the crop may amount to £90 or £120 per acre.
Another very ancient plant is the Hemp, _Cannabis sativa_. It was
known to Herodotus, who says that "in the country of the Massagetæ
there is a tree bearing a strange produce which they casting into a
fire inhale its fumes on which they straightway become drunk." It is
a tall, rather handsome annual, with stems from three to fifteen feet
high. It is cultivated all over the world, from the Equator to 60°
north latitude, but for different purposes. In India it is chiefly
for the resin, "haschisch, churrus, bhang." (That was the drug used
by the Count of Monte Cristo.) In Russia it is for the seed and the
fibre that the plant is cultivated, and in France, Italy, and Austria
the fibre seems to be the most important product.
Some of the plants produce only stamens or male flowers. The fibre
given by these is stronger and more tenacious than that of the
female plant, which, however, is finer and more supple. The fibre
obtained from the cold northern districts of Russia is said to be the
strongest of all.
The preparation of the fibre is a long, tedious, and laborious
operation. It is also unhealthy, for the fibre has to be "retted"
(steeped in water so that the soft parts decay), "scotched" (that is
the hard wood must be broken and removed), and "heckled."
This last process is familiar to all who are interested in political
matters. It consists of being drawn on hard points difficult to
traverse and of a very fine and sharp character! Hemp is the
commonest fibre for string, rope, etc.; it used to be employed for
sailmaking by the Romans. Catherine de' Medici is said to have had
two chemises made of hemp.
Hempseed is much appreciated by poultry and birds of all kinds (which
makes both harvesting and sowing rather difficult); but the chief use
of the seed is to furnish a fatty oil used for soft soap, lighting,
and painting. The remains, after taking the oil, are employed as a
cattle food, but it does not form a satisfactory cake.
The chief interest of hemp is, however, the drug that is made from
the resinous juice. No doubt this has the effect of keeping off
dangerous insects, for it is said that plants of hemp even keep off
insects from other plants planted close beside them.
Sometimes the leaves and stalks are dried in order to make the drug
"bhang." Many allusions to this substance are found in Eastern
poetry, where it is called the "Leaf of Delusion," "Increaser of
Pleasure," and "Cementer of Friendship," but madness is the result of
addiction to its use.
The resin is collected by making the labourers put on leather aprons,
and then run up and down vigorously through the hempfields. The
resin is then scraped off the leather, or off their skins if they
prefer to do without leather. It is either eaten or smoked. Burton
describes how at every cottage door in East Africa the Arabs may be
seen smoking bhang with or without tobacco. "It produces a violent
cough ending in a kind of scream after a few long puffs." In small
doses haschisch (resin) has pleasant effects, for people experience
pleasant illusions, good appetite, excitement, and laughter,
followed, however, after an interval by stupor and sleep.
People addicted to the use of haschisch roll their eyes violently,
and have a wild, startled appearance.
Naturally so dangerous a drug cannot be recommended unless under
the most exceptional circumstances, but it is employed in cases of
asthma and insomnia. Haschisch and opium are the two great curses of
the Chinese, Malays, and the inhabitants of British India and the
East. They may be compared to "drink" in this country, but they are
important medicines.
Among the most curious and interesting facts in Nature is the
extraordinary variety of the ways in which at present gutta-percha
and india-rubber are employed. We should not be able to ride
bicycles, or in motor-cars; we could not use Atlantic cables and
many electrical apparatus; our railway carriages would be most
uncomfortable; golf would be impossible; we should have no waterproof
coats and no goloshes [sic], if it were not for these valuable
and extraordinary substances, india-rubber or caoutchouc, and
gutta-percha.
Their history is full of romance, but perhaps the most striking part
of it is just this fact. Because a few (only a very few) plants
found it necessary to protect their wood from burrowing beetles by a
specially poisonous and elastic substance, _therefore_ we can play
golf and enjoy free-wheel bicycles.
The rubber is derived from the resinous latex or milky juice, which
pours out from any wound in the bark of certain trees and creeping
plants. This milk must be poisonous enough to kill the rash and
intrusive mother beetle, who wishes to lay her eggs in the wood.
It must be elastic, because the branches and stems swaying to and
fro in the wind require a yielding, springy substance, but resin is
contained in it, so that it promptly hardens and closes up the scar.
The traveller Belt, in his _Naturalist in Nicaragua_, mentions that
those trees which had been entirely drained of their rubber by the
Indian gatherers were riddled by beetles, and in an unhealthy, dying
condition.
Almost all the important rubber plants are found in wet, unhealthy,
tropical forests; they are by far the most important jungle product
in West Africa, as well as on the Congo River and in the Amazon
valley.
It is quite impossible to describe the various rubber trees, and the
different methods of gathering rubber, but it may be interesting to
quote from an account of the method of its collection in Nicaragua,
by Mr. Rowland W. Cater.[134]
[134] _Chambers's Journal_, Oct. 24th, 1896.
The best season for tapping the trees of _Castilloa elastica_ is from
August to February. It is best also to perform the operation early in
the morning before the daily rain, "or in the evening after the rain
has fallen. The milk ... is white and of the consistency of cream.
The tree thrives best in moist but not marshy forests.
"It seeds in the tenth year, and ought not to be tapped before its
eighth year, or its growth may be much retarded.
"On reaching the group of trees, which numbered seventeen of various
sizes, my Carib friends first cut away the twining creepers that
almost hid the trunks, and then carefully removed a couple of
buruchas, natural ropes of rubber, formed in the following manner:
From incisions in the bark, possibly caused by woodpeckers or some
insect, the juice often exudes, trickling down the trunk, in and out
of the encircling creepers, and sometimes reaching the ground. The
milky stream coagulates and turns black as it runs, forming a long
strip or cord, with which the huléros often tie up their bales.
"The parasites removed, Pete and José strapped on their espuelas
(climbing spurs), fastened at the knee and ankle, and having dug a
small pit or basin at the foot of each of a couple of trees, passed a
ring of stout rope round the trunks and their own waists, and walked
up with their machetes between their teeth. By lifting the rope at
every step they were enabled to stand almost erect, and when lying
back in the ring both hands were at liberty.
"José, whom I watched closely, commenced operations immediately below
the first branch. With his broad-bladed sword he cut in the bark a
horizontal canal which almost encircled the trunk and terminated in
a V-shaped angle. From the point of the V downwards he next cut a
perpendicular canal about two feet in length, which joined another
horizontal channel ending in a V, and so on to the ground. In the
last cut he inserted a large green leaf to serve as a funnel and
guide the milk into the basin.
"The Brazilian rubber collectors always place a receptacle of tin
or earthenware in the hole at the foot of the tree to prevent the
admixture of grit or other foreign matters; they also strain the milk
through coarse muslin; hence the greater value of Pará rubber. But
Nicaraguan methods are primitive."
In the Congo Free State the taxes are paid by the collection of
rubber. It is alleged that "if the demands for rubber or other
produce were not satisfied, the people at fault were flogged often
most barbarously with a thong of twisted hippopotamus hide, called
the _chicotta_. Or else the natives were told to catch the women from
the offending villages, who were brought to the _Chef de Poste_ and
imprisoned by him as hostages for the industry of their husbands.
Or else the sentries shot some of the defaulters as examples to
the rest. Frequently there were armed expeditions into refractory
districts and widespread promiscuous slaughter. The cannibal soldiers
of the State or of the Company sometimes feasting on the bodies of
the slain."[135]
[135] _Contemporary Review_, Dec., 1905. Mr. Herbert Samuel, M.P.
The supply of rubber has of recent years shown signs of becoming
exhausted. As time goes on the Indians of the Amazon and Orinoco
must every year travel deeper into the inaccessible forests of the
Amazon, Orinoco, or in Nicaragua. Every year also makes it more
difficult for the Malagasy in Madagascar, or the Negroes in West
Africa and the Congo, to gather sufficient rubber for the world's
ever-growing needs. Liberia, the Negro Republic, is said still to
possess plenty of rubber; but it is probable that the true solution
of the difficulty will be found in the plantation of rubber trees.
The exports from Madagascar in 1903 were valued at 2,585,000 francs;
from Brazil, £9,700,000; from Nicaragua, 400,000 gold pesos (twelve
pesos to the £); from the Congo, 47,000,000 francs; but even then
about 85,000 rupees worth of rubber was exported from plantations in
Ceylon. Unfortunately the trees do not begin to yield until they are
eight years old, but the estimated profit per acre is very high, at
least according to some authorities, who give a yield of £88 per acre
(in Nicaragua).
One cannot help hoping that this will be the case. When one thinks,
e.g., of the Uachins in the forests at the head of Namkong, who spend
forty days in carrying their rubber on men's shoulders across the
mountains to Assam, or of the horrible stories of the Congo Free
State, plantation seems decidedly a more satisfactory method of
supplying us with golf balls and bicycle tyres.
The first account of india-rubber is found in Herrera (Columbus's
second voyage), who describes the way in which the natives play "with
great dexterity and nimbleness." "They struck balls with any part of
their bodies."
Juan de Torquemada in 1615 gives quite a good description of the
Castilloa rubber:--
"The tree is held in great estimation, and grows in a hot country.
It is not a very high tree: the leaves are round and of an ashy
colour: it yields a white milky substance, thick and gummy and in
great abundance. It is wounded with axe or cutlass, and from the
wound the liquid drops into calabashes: Indians who have got no
calabashes smear their bodies over with it (for nature is never
without a resource), and when it becomes dry remove the whole
incrustation."[136]
[136] Collins, _Gutta-percha and Indiarubber_.
The first patent for waterproofing seems to have been granted in
1791. A Charles Macintosh invented the garment named after him in
1823.
Very little of the commercial rubber is obtained from the common
india-rubber Fig (_Ficus elasticus_) which we commonly grow indoors.
This is one of those species of the Fig family which are generally
found growing on the branches or trunks of other trees, though their
own roots crawl down the trunk of the support to the ground. Once
these roots have reached the ground, they take firm hold and grow so
large and thick that they may be able to hold up the Fig tree even if
the original support decays and crumbles away.
The gutta-percha which we use comes chiefly from Singapore, which
is a sort of world's market for rubber. There are a great many
different varieties and substitutes of this substance, but the best
kinds come from Malaysia, Singapore, Sumatra, Java, and Borneo. The
uses of gutta-percha and of vulcanite, which is manufactured from
it, are very varied. Thus, it is employed for the soles of boots,
door-handles, pipes, ear-trumpets, buckets, submarine cables, etc. It
is indestructible in sea-water, and does not conduct electricity.
A very extraordinary exception to the general rule that latex is
highly poisonous, is found in the famous Cow Tree of Venezuela. This
tall tree (it is often 100 feet high) is found in large forests near
Cariaco, on the coast of that country. Its milk is said to closely
resemble ordinary milk in taste, and to be perfectly wholesome and
nutritious, but it is rather sticky. This tree was responsible for
all sorts of curious and extraordinary legends in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.
CHAPTER XXV
ON CLIMBING PLANTS
Robin-run-the-Hedge--Bramble bushes--Climbing roses--Spiny,
wiry stems of smilax--The weak young stem of a liane--The way
in which stems revolve--The hop and its little harpoons--A
climbing palm--Rapidity of turners--The effect of American
life on them--Living bridges--Rope bridges in India--The
common stitchwort--Tendrils--Their behaviour when stroked or
tickled--Their sensibility--Their grasping power--The quickness
with which they curve and their sense of weight--Charles
Darwin--Reasonableness of plants--Corkscrew spirals--The pads
of the Virginian Creeper--The ivy--Does it do harm?--Embracing
roots--Tree ivy.
There are many plants which depend upon and cling to other more
sturdy kinds, and which would be quite unable to live upon the earth
at all if they had not developed the most beautiful methods of doing
so.
In autumn, as soon as the leaves of the Hawthorn have fallen off,
one is sure to find upon the hedges the common Robin-run-the-Hedge
(Goosegrass, Cleavers, or Sticky Willie, for it is known by all these
nicknames as well as by its proper name, _Galium aparine_).
Its stem is exceedingly weak, but it will be found sometimes to be
six or seven feet long. It does not support itself, but is resting
amongst and entangled in the outer twigs of the hedge in such a
manner that it cannot be blown away by the wind or indeed picked
out without its being broken. The young stems grow upright and are
vigorous at first, but soon they cannot bear their own weight, and
fall back upon a branch of the hedge. There are small curved little
roughnesses along the stem and on the under side of the leaves of the
Galium; these hitch on to the twig. Up to this point then the stem
is supported, and the young part above grows until it also gets a
lodgment, and so it goes on until it sometimes reaches right over the
top of the hedge.
Its young flowering branches grow out towards the light away from
the main stem, and the yellow withered stem in autumn rests upon the
hedge just as a piece of string laid upon it might do.
The Bramble and Rose manage to get a support in very much the same
way, but in Great Britain the Bramble generally grows in open ground
and its branches take root.
The peculiar, curved-back prickles of the Bramble and its arching
sideways growth would of course hang it on to any horizontal branches
in the neighbourhood. Kerner measured the length of the stem of
a Bramble which had interwoven itself into the boughs of a tree,
and found that it was over twenty feet long, although it was only
one-third of an inch thick. In Chile one often finds hedges of
Brambles ten to fifteen feet in height, which have been formed by the
aid of other plants, and also by the way in which the branches become
entangled with one another.
Some Climbing Roses act in a very similar way, especially if grown on
trellis, but the flower shoots always turn to the light like those of
the Galium.
But it is the creepers and lianes of the tropical forests that are
the most remarkable of all climbing plants. They twine round the
stems and hang in great loops and grotesque folds from the branches.
Sometimes in the dense shade it may be difficult to see the main
stem, for it is quite thin, though as strong as a piece of steel
wire. It often happens, when hurrying through a rather open part of
the forest after game, that one's leg suddenly catches in a thin,
spiny, wiry stem of Smilax or some such creeper. The first that one
knows of the creeper is when a quarter of an inch of the spine is
buried in one's flesh.
Away up amongst the branches and foliage far above one's head, leaves
and flowers are developed on numerous branches which have vigorously
pushed out as soon as they got near the sunlight, this tough, spiny,
thread-like stem being their only connexion with the ground.
The development of these climbing plants is probably connected with
the dense shade of forests. In such places a young stem growing up
will become long and drawn out; its tip will droop over and hang
downwards. But there is a curious peculiarity in the growth of all
stems. The stem generally grows more rapidly at any one time on one
side, say on the north, and therefore bends over to the opposite
side. After a time it will be growing most rapidly on the eastern
side and then its head points westwards, and so on. The result is
that the tip of the stem swings in an irregular circle round the stem
itself. Its head turns to every point of the compass in succession.
Supposing a stone is tied to the end of a piece of string, and one
swings the stone horizontally in a circle, then, if an upright stick
is put in the ground and the string comes against it, the string
will coil itself round the stick because the stone goes on swinging
horizontally.
Our young climbing plant in the shade of the forest acts in exactly
the same way. If there is any trunk of a suitable size, it will
in the course of its revolving or sweeping round first touch and
then coil itself round and round the trunk.[137] Of these twining
stems, one of the most interesting and beautiful is the common Hop.
The young shoots or suckers which come from the ground may be seen
waving their stems helplessly round in the air. If they cannot find
something to cling to, then they form weak limp curves, but if one
such shoot touches a pole it very soon obtains a hold, wraps itself
round the support, and easily climbs up to a height of many feet. But
the Hop is worth examining closely. If one passes the fingers along
the stem, it feels rough and prickly. With the aid of a hand-lens, a
whole series of most exquisite little hooks will be discovered. They
are like small pimples with two or three very fine and minute, sharp
grappling-hooks on the top. These prevent the stem from slipping off.
It is also helped in climbing by its leaves, which curve outwards,
and are also provided with grappling prickles on the under side. At
the top of the stem the young leaves are close together, and folded
near the point, so as not to interfere with the tip finding its way
in and out of a trellis-work or amongst branches.
[137] Henslow, _Origin of Plant Structures_; Warming, _Rev. Gen.
de Bot._, tom. 5, p. 213.
These grappling-hooks on the Hop are as perfect in their way, though
by no means so beautiful and elegant as those which are found in the
climbing palm, Desmoncus, so well described by Kerner in his _Natural
History of Plants_. It is one of the rotang palms which reach lengths
of 600 feet, though their stem may be no more than 1-1/3 to 2 inches
thick. The leaflets towards the end of the leaf are transformed
into strong spiny barbs which are exquisitely adapted to hang on to
other plants. In many places, thickets in which these rotang palms
have developed are so matted and tangled together that it is
quite impossible even to cut into them, and they are practically
impenetrable.
[Illustration: IN A KENTISH HOP GARDEN.]
Some of our common British twiners climb very quickly. A complete
turn round the supporting pole was made in England, at Charles
Darwin's home, in the following times. The Hop took 2 hrs. 8 mins.,
Wistaria 2 hrs. 5 mins., Convolvulus 1 hr. 42 mins., and Phaseolus 1
hr. 54 mins. A Honeysuckle took 7 hrs. 30 mins. to make one complete
turn round the support.
Recently Miss Elizabeth A. Simons timed the rate of growth of the
same plants at the University of Pennsylvania. They seem to have been
stimulated by the exhilarating atmosphere of the United States, for
they were all growing faster. The Hop did its turn in 1 hr. 5 mins.,
Phaseolus took from 1 hr. to 1 hr. 20 mins., Convolvulus 57 mins.
only, Lonicera from 1 hr. 43 mins. to 2 hrs. 48 mins., and Wistaria 2
hrs.[138] But there are curious variations in the rate at which these
plants revolve.
[138] _Trans. and Proc. Bot. Soc. Pennsylvania_, Session 1897-8,
vol. 1, No. 1.
Thus when coming towards the light they go as fast as they can, but
revolve more slowly, and as it were reluctantly, away from it. It has
been found in one case that the shoot took thirty-five minutes to do
the semicircle towards the light, and an hour and fifteen to twenty
minutes going away from it, but this is not always the case, for
sometimes the reverse takes place[139] (Baranetzki).
[139] Pfeffer, _Pflanzen-Physiologie_, vol. 2, p. 412.
These twining plants are not very common in Great Britain, and indeed
in Europe. Some of them move or twine to the right (in the same
direction as the hands of a watch or of the sun), such as Convolvulus
(Bindweed), Phaseolus, Ipomoea, and Aristolochia. Others, like the
Hop, Polygonum, Convolvulus, Honeysuckle, and Elephant's Foot, move
in the opposite way from right to left, or "widder-shins." But there
is nothing very important in this distinction, for the Bittersweet
may be found twining in either direction, and in some plants part of
a stem may be twining one way and the other in the opposite direction.
It is in the tropics, and especially in the rank, dark,
moisture-laden atmosphere of the coast jungle forests, that these
twiners attain their greatest development.
They show the most extraordinary variety. Sometimes a twiner hangs
in elegant festoons from branch to branch, forming a convenient
suspension bridge for monkeys. Sometimes four or five are wound round
one another or twisted together, so that they look like some gigantic
cable. In other cases they are knotted, looped, tangled, and twisted
in the most inextricable manner.
Some creepers are flat, like green ribbons or broad bands. In others
the dense mass of old, thick creepers and twiners round some sturdy
trunk becomes so thick and so fused together that when the trunk dies
the lattice-like arrangement of these creepers may keep them upright
although the original supporting trunk is quite rotten and decayed
away.
More usually, a tree will become unhealthy because its branches are
overladen with the dense foliage and flowers of heavy lianes, and
because both trunk and branches are so strangled in the embrace of
great creepers that they cannot expand and develop in the proper way.
Then a storm will overthrow the dead giant of the forest, and these
creepers, entangled with all the surrounding trees, will produce ruin
and destruction all around.
A regular duty of the foresters in India is to cut the stems of
climbing plants. These twining, trailing, rope-like creepers are,
in fact, natural ropes, and are used as such in India, Burma, and
other places. Sometimes they form natural bridges of living plants
extending across a stream. The great suspension bridges in the
valleys of the Himalayas are sometimes made without a single nail
or plank. They are just three ropes (one for the feet and two to
hold on by) made of jungle creepers. Crossing one of these swinging,
swaying creeper-bridges is not an easy matter for those whose heads
are unaccustomed to depths of hundreds of feet below them, especially
if combined with a motion of the creeper-bridge sufficient in itself
to produce violent seasickness. Yet the natives run across them with
loads on their heads!
But it is not necessary to go to the tropics to find interesting and
ingenious climbing plants.
There is a very common little British plant, _Stellaria holostea_
(the Star of Bethlehem, Great Starwort, or Stitchwort), which is
common in shady places, light woods, and by hedges. In the spring
it grows very quickly, and the pairs of leaves are shut together
over the growing point, so that the end of the stem is narrow and
can insert itself between the leaves and twigs of the neighbouring
plants. As soon as such a growing end gets out of the foliage into
the light, each pair of leaves opens out and curves backwards, making
a pair of broad, curved hooks excellently suited to hang the stem on
to the leaves or twigs. Then another period of growth follows, and
again a new pair of hook-like leaves opens out. The stem may be five
or six feet long.
In a rather rare Speedwell (_Veronica scutellata_) a very similar
method is used, but the leaves have special little backward-pointing
teeth on their edges which assist in the attachment process.
But these leaves are not to be compared as regards perfection of
mechanism with the tendrils by means of which plants climb. These
tendrils are thin, flexible, twining threads, which may be formed
by the modification of whole leaves, in other cases of leaflets, or
sometimes of branches. Sweet Peas, Vetches, Passion-flowers, Vines,
and many other plants possess them.
They are like twining plants in the way in which they revolve or
twine so as to wrap themselves round anything which they touch. They
move much faster than twining plants. A Cobæa tendril only takes
twenty-five minutes to make a complete turn, Passion-flowers take
from half to three-quarters of an hour, and the Vine tendril takes a
little over an hour to make one complete turn.
But in one way they differ altogether, for they are sensitive to
contact. If tickled, they contract and embrace closely the object
which is touching them. They show a most extraordinary sensibility
and sensitiveness.
As a matter of fact, these tendrils have a finer sense of touch and
a much more delicate feeling of weight than any human being. They
detect the weight of twenty-seven inches of a spider's thread.
It is, however, best to explain what happens. A half-grown curved
tendril of the Passion-flower is perhaps the most interesting to
experiment with, but any sort of tendril does quite well. If one very
gently rubs the inner or concave side of its little hook, then in a
very few minutes, or even seconds, the tendril distinctly curves. If
this has happened naturally, as when for instance it has been rubbing
upon a pea-stick, this curve makes it curl round the stick, and the
more it touches the more it curls, until the whole tendril is wrapped
round the support.
It is, of course, quite impossible to explain it all exactly: the
sensitive part on the inside of the curve differs from the outside
or convex part of the tendril; the former has a layer of elongated,
thin-walled cells, full of the living matter, protoplasm, which are
absent on the outer side. Immediately the tendril touches the stick,
the outer convex surface begins to grow rapidly. It grows from forty
to 200 times as fast as the inner side which touches the stick! Very
soon after it has clasped the stick the tendril becomes woody and
forms a strong, woody, spiral coil.
These tendrils can be made to curve by a weight exceedingly small.
The most sensitive part of our own skins is quite unable to
distinguish so small a weight as is perceived by these tendrils. Even
the sensation of taste can only be produced by a weight eight times
as great as that shown by some of them. Tendrils curve very quickly
after they have been touched. In twenty seconds some tendrils curve
(_Cyclanthera_), others (_Passiflora_) take thirty seconds, and some
of them require four to five minutes or even longer before they make
up their minds to coil.
Even more remarkable, however, is the fact that they do not coil
when raindrops fall on them, giving a much harder blow than small
weights. If one tendril touches or rubs against another, it is said
not to curve. They are persevering little things also, for Darwin got
a passion-flower tendril to curve when struck or rubbed no less than
twenty-one times during fifty-four hours.
If one reflects on all these curious facts, it is difficult to
help feeling that these plants behave very much in the way that a
reasonable animal would do. There are many other cases in which some
vegetable does exactly what we should expect of reasonable beings
under the circumstances. The tip of the root (see p. 89), the
Sensitive Plant, the Monkey and Barberry flowers, are all well-known
cases.
So that it is difficult to find anything in science to contradict the
comfortable belief that wide-open flowers and stretched-out leaves
of plants as they drink in the warm rays of the sunlight are really
enjoying themselves, whilst they are doing their day's work.
All these interesting facts are so beautifully described and so
carefully summed up by Charles Darwin, that we shall only earnestly
recommend our readers to get first that fascinating book _The Power
of Movement in Plants_, and then read all the rest of his works.[140]
[140] For the above facts: Pfeffer, _Pflanzen-Physiologie_, vol.
2, pp. 423-8; Green, _Vegetable Physiology_, p. 389; Kerner,
_l.c._, p. 697; Bonnier, _l.c._, p. 305.
There are an extraordinary number of these plants and the tendrils
are formed exactly where they will be most useful. Every part of a
leaf may become a tendril. The whole leaf is changed into one in
some kinds of Lathyrus. In a very beautiful creeper which is not so
often grown in greenhouses as it might be (_Gloriosa superba_), the
tip of the leaf only acts as a tendril. Leaflets are often made into
tendrils. The Clematis is the most economical of them all, for the
leaf-stalk coils round and forms little woody rings which hold up the
plant.
Before leaving the subject of tendrils, it may be interesting to
notice the queer corkscrew spirals in which they roll themselves up.
These spirals are formed after the end of the tendril has tied itself
to the support and become woody. The free part between the end and
its own stem goes on revolving; now if you tie a piece of string at
both ends and make it revolve, you will see at once that it must coil
itself into a double spiral, one part in one direction and the other
in the opposite way, with a flat piece between them.
One might be disposed to think no more about these double coils; but
here comes in one of the curious, inexplicable coincidences which
happen so often in plant life. Such a coil is much stronger than a
straight bit of wire or string would be, because if pulled out it
yields and is springy. That of course makes it less probable that the
tendril will be broken. Attached by a series of wiry springs, the
plant yields and sways to the wind, and it is not likely that it will
be torn away. Besides this, the coiling of the tendril pulls the stem
closer to its support, which is also a great advantage.
Certain Virginian Creepers and Vines behave in quite a different
manner. The tendrils grow away from the light and so seek the shadow
of the leaves. They are also divided into little branches. At the
tip of each little branch is a small knob; if this should touch the
wall or the trunk of a tree, etc., it immediately secretes a drop
of cement and glues itself firmly to the wall. There is a curious
difference in different sorts of _Ampelopsis_ in this respect. There
is no adhesive pad in one of them (_Ampelopsis hederacea_) until
it touches, whilst _A. Veitchii_ has them more or less ready for
gluing before they touch (though they become much larger and better
developed as soon as they rub against the wall).[141]
[141] Henslow, _Origin of Plant Structures_, p. 223.
One of the most interesting of our common climbers, "that rare old
plant the Ivy green," has not yet been mentioned. It is exceedingly
decorative on walls, especially on ruins and on old tree-trunks in
winter time, where its dark, brilliant green is most effective.
A violent controversy rages as to whether it does good or harm.
Unhappily it does not do any good to trees. It does not suck their
sap, for its roots do not get through the bark, but it does choke,
with its clinging branches, young tree-stems, and prevents their
growing properly.
Also, in winter storms an ivy-covered tree is much more likely to be
blown down. But on walls the ivy certainly does good, for it sucks
up the moisture, and ivy-covered walls are much more dry inside than
those which are exposed to rain.
Its method of climbing is very curious. All along the stem quantities
of little roots are produced. They dislike light, like most roots,
and creep into crevices and cracks, where they wedge themselves
in by growing thicker. Thus the stem is anchored all along its
length. It is curious to find that these roots are formed before
a twig is actually touching the wall, so as to be ready for any
emergencies.[142]
[142] Henslow, _l.c._
One interesting little point in the growth of the ivy on a tree is
perhaps worth mentioning. The main stem runs nearly straight up the
trunk, and when young is pulled down into the crevices or cracks
in the bark. But its branches leave the main stem at an angle of
forty-five degrees or so to it; these latter may often grow in this
direction for a foot or eighteen inches, but then they gradually
begin to turn more and more distinctly up the tree. Still these
branches firmly clasp the trunk like arms spread out on either side
of it, and make it almost impossible to dislodge the main stem.
Old plants of ivy entirely surround the trunk. The flowering branches
grow straight out into the air, and have no tendency to cling to the
bark. Their leaves are also different.
The ivy may be considered as a root-climber, although the branches
assist by growing round the stem.
A curious instance has been given me of the longevity of ivy and its
power of clinging to life. A correspondent mentions the case of a
Scotch fir whose life was threatened by an ivy. The trunk of the ivy
was sawn through. That did not kill it, at any rate immediately!
Probably the rain soaked up by the leaves, and by the roots in the
crevices of the bark, kept it sufficiently fresh to cling to life. As
it refused to die, a ladder was brought, and it was dragged off the
tree. No doubt it would have died if the weather had been at all dry.
There are some very beautiful tropical plants which also climb by
means of their roots. These roots, the so-called girdle roots, grow
right round the stem and embrace it, so that the climber is perfectly
supported.
It is impossible not to be impressed with the extraordinary variety
of all these contrivances by which plants are able to escape the
trouble of supporting themselves. But such ways of life involve
certain disadvantages. Supposing there is nothing on which to climb,
the stems trail feebly on the ground, and are probably soon choked
by the surrounding grasses. Curiously enough, there are varieties of
the Ivy, Wistaria, and the French Bean which are upright, and do not
climb at all. The Tree Ivy has all its leaves like the leaves of the
flowering shoot in the common form. In America, _Wistaria sinensis_
is often grown as a standard tree, and does not send out the long
shoots, sometimes thirty feet in length, which are common when it
grows on walls. The dwarf French Bean has a thick stem and requires
no support, yet it often puts out a long slender shoot which tries to
twine round something.
In a tropical forest also, the creepers, though they damage the
trees, yet manage to find space for their leaves and flowers: more
vegetable matter is formed per square yard of ground than would be
the case if there were no climbing plants.
CHAPTER XXVI
PLANTS WHICH PREY ON PLANTS
The kinds of cannibals--Bacteria--Spring flowers--Pale,
ghostly Wood-flowers--Their alliance with fungi--Gooseberries
growing on trees--Orchid-hunting--The life of an orchid--The
mistletoe--Balder the Beautiful--Druids--Mistletoe as a
remedy--Its parasitic roots--The trees it prefers--The _Cactus
Loranthus_--Yellow Rattle and Eyebright, or Milk-thief, and
their root-suckers--Broomrape and toothwort--Their colour and
tastes--The scales of the toothwort which catch animalcula--Sir
Stamford Raffles--A flower a yard across--The Dodder--Its
twining stem and sucker-roots--Parasites rare, degenerate and
dangerously situated.
The word _cannibal_ is often used in a very loose and unscientific
way. Amongst some savage tribes it is the custom to eat old people
and young children; but this is only in seasons of famine and
scarcity, when there is no other food available, and not because
they are specially fond of them. But amongst other tribes wars are
made for the special purpose of capturing fat young people to cook.
Sometimes they have become so accustomed to such delicacies that they
are unable to get their food in any other way. Of course, when tribes
become "pure cannibals" of this last type they have to be destroyed
like wild beasts.
Among plants we find all sorts of transitions and degrees of
cannibalism. There are plants which sometimes, and, as it were,
accidentally, attack others. But there are also real cannibal plants
which live entirely on the life-juices and sap of other plants,
and cannot exist by their own labours at all. Moreover, we can find
almost every conceivable state of transition. These can be clearly
and definitely traced from those plants which depend on the labour of
their own roots and leaves to others which have no leaves, and which
consist merely of one large flower and a large adhesive sucker fixed
on some one else's root.
The difficulty is very often to know where to draw the line. Probably
no flowering plant is quite independent of the labour and work of
its neighbours. As we have tried to show in another chapter, a long
preliminary cultivation by bacteria, lichens, and mosses is required
before flowering plants can develop on bare rock. That is also
necessary in all cases where the soil is mineral or _inorganic_,
without any _organic_ dust or fragments of vegetable or animal
matter. Bacteria must always begin the work by preparing nitrates and
other salts.
So that only those bacteria which weather rocks can be called really
free and independent. But other bacteria, such as those which cause
typhoid, anthrax, hydrophobia, etc., are the best possible examples
of pure cannibals, or, as they are usually described, parasites.
This last word is derived from a peculiar class of people in ancient
classical times, who used to appear whenever a meal was going to
begin, and received food without giving anything in return. They are
represented by our tramps or by the "sundowners" in Australia, who
appear as soon as the evening meal is ready and when there is no
possibility of going any further on their journey.
The way in which plants became parasites or cannibals is a very
interesting part of plant life, and we shall try to trace some of the
various stages.
To begin with, if one looks out for them in spring one is sure
to find a whole series of beautiful spring flowers. There is the
Primrose, with its bright, hardy, yellow flowers; the Violet, whose
strong perfume much annoys the huntsman, for it spoils the "scent"
and shows him that the end of winter has come; the delicate little
Moschatel, the Lesser Celandine, the Bluebell or Hyacinth, Dog's
Mercury, the Male and the Lady Fern, and many others.
Most of these begin to grow and are in flower early in the season.
That is because they are living on the _dead leaves_ of the last
year, or rather of two or three years ago. Their roots are breaking
up and devouring, with the help of worms, beetles, and insects, the
leaf-mould of past seasons.
They are quite dependent on the trees; they cannot exist except where
such leaf-mould is formed.
But it is very difficult to tell whether these humble little herbs
which live on the scraps that fall from the tall trees are either
parasites or clients, which last do some good in return for their
share.
Probably they are distinctly useful and good for the forest if this
is considered as a whole _establishment_. They use light which would
otherwise be wasted, and their own dead leaves increase the annual
deposit of leaf-mould.
There are other plants, such as the Bird's-nest (_Neottia_) and
Coralroot[143] Orchids, as well as Monotropa and others, which
also live on the rich, decaying leaf-mould of forests, but these
are generally pale in colour, for they possess but little green
chlorophyll. They are more directly dependent on the mould and have
ceased to do much work for themselves. Most of them in fact have
entered into an alliance with fungi, and use these fungi to get their
food material from the dead leaves.
[143] In the first, the entangled underground stems and roots
resemble a bird's nest; in the second, the peculiar red rhizomes
are rather like coral.
Such fungi are always abundant in good, well-grown forests (see p.
86). These Orchids and Monotropa have their roots and underground
stems covered and wrapped round by the fungus threads, which extend
from them in every direction, breaking up and decomposing the dead
leaves.
The colour of Monotropa is a pale waxen yellow, that of the others
is usually a ghostly pale, opalescent, steel-blue or coral-like hue,
which makes them very distinct in the dim, mysterious shades of the
forest.
These plants are undoubtedly of use, for they break up and decompose
the leaf-mould.
Another very interesting group are not well represented in this
country. Sometimes one may see on an old tree a Gooseberry bush in
full foliage quite high up the trunk in the fork of the branches.
In sheltered woody ravines, Polypody ferns are often established on
old moss-clad branches, where their green fronds hang over to catch
as much as they can of the sunlight. But Orchids, Bromeliads, and
Ferns which grow upon the branches of great trees are one of the
most conspicuous and beautiful features of tropical woods. It is for
these tree-orchids that the orchid-hunter braves the head-hunters of
Borneo or traverses the precipices and rugged forests of Guatemala
and Brazil. It is often necessary to cut down a tall tree in order
to get the orchids in its higher branches. Often, however, this is
unsuccessful, for the tree is so held up by creepers and other giants
of the forest that it never reaches the ground!
[Illustration: _Photo_ _Skeen and Co._
CINNAMON PEELING IN CEYLON]
Then, after being stripped from the branches, in some
out-of-the-way forest-clad range of Burma, Celebes, South America,
or Madagascar, these orchids are dried, put up in crates and packed
off to London, where they are carefully cultivated in hot-houses and
persuaded to flower. They may be worth sixpence or they may be worth
£500 each, but no one can tell until they have flowered in London.
But the romance of the orchid-hunter is not exactly what we have to
describe here. It is rather the romance of the life of the orchid
itself.
It is perched high up on the branches of the tallest trees in the
forest, exposed to sun, exposed to wind, and quite unable to gather
either salts or rain from the soil. How, then, does it manage to live?
These orchids, it must be remembered, are only found in
out-of-the-way and feverish, unhealthy places, where the aboriginal
savages still lurk and endure a dreadful existence of hunger and
starvation in dense tropical forests.
Now the word "dense" explains the whole story. Those forests are so
thick, so full of giant trees and exuberant growth, that civilized
man even to-day in 1906 can make nothing of them, and leaves them to
the savage. The reason why vegetation is so luxuriant is simply that
there are both plentiful moisture and a hot, tropical sun. That makes
the life of the orchid possible, and also ensures malaria for the
hunter.
It hangs out into the moist air long pendulous roots which act as so
many sponges absorbing and soaking in moisture. The tremendous energy
of growth covers bark and branches with creeping plants innumerable,
with a profusion of moss, liverworts, and ferns such as we cannot
imagine from our own experiences in this country. So the roots of our
orchid find on the branches rich leaf-mould, and it lives happily
and contentedly on the salts and moisture accumulated by the mosses
and other plants. Its leaves are fleshy and succulent, rather like
those of a desert plant, so that it can store up water against a
season of drought.
These plants which grow in this way on other plants, do not, as a
rule, greatly injure them, but many have not stopped at this stage.
Take, for instance, the Gooseberry growing in the fork of an old
tree. Some bird has been eating gooseberries and dropped the seed
there. The roots of the gooseberry will grow down into the rotten
part of the trunk. Earth and leaf-mould will accumulate there, and it
is quite probable that the whole inside of the tree will decay away.
The roots of the gooseberry will, if only indirectly, help in this
decay.
But it is far otherwise with another set of plants--the Mistletoe and
its allies. There is plenty of romance connected with the mistletoe.
Dr. M. T. Masters says as follows: "The origin of the modern custom
connected with mistletoe is not very clear. Like many other customs,
its original significance is only guessed at. If known, perhaps, the
innocent merriment now associated with the plant would be exchanged
for a feeling of stern disapproval, and the mistletoe would be
banished from our homes. In such a case ignorance is bliss."
It will be remembered that all the gods of Iceland were once gathered
together so that a general oath might be exacted of every plant
"that grew upon the earth," that they would do no harm to Balder the
Beautiful. The Mistletoe did not take the oath, because it does not
grow upon the earth but upon a tree. Then the enemy fashioned an
arrow out of the mistletoe, and killed Balder. There is a modern
idea that the story is a myth representing the death of Spring, for a
great many similar stories occur in widely distant places.
However, it seems pretty certain that the plant was a sacred one to
the Druids in the time of the Romans.
Ovid speaks of this in the line, "Ad Viscum Druidæ cantare solebant."
At their solemn meetings, which were held in remote sacred groves,
a Druid clad in white robes cut the mistletoe with a golden sickle.
Then, apparently, human sacrifices were offered and a general
festival took place.
Some remnant of this custom seems to have persisted in Herefordshire
until recent times, for the tune "Hey derry down, down down derry"
(which means _in a circle move we round the oak_) is supposed to be a
relic of the hymn chanted by the Druids when they had found mistletoe
on the oak.
It was said in the Middle Ages to be a useful cure for apoplexy,
madness, and giddiness. That is not at present the general view.
Indeed, under present conditions it might conceivably promote the
last and even the second of these disorders, though in an agreeable
way!
The Mistletoe and its allies, Loranthus and Arceuthobium, grow upon
the branches of trees like the orchids and gooseberries already
mentioned, but they differ altogether in having a special kind of
absorbing root which sinks down into the bark until it reaches the
wood of the "host" tree. The sap running up the tree is then tapped
by this root, and goes to supply the mistletoe with water and salts
in solution. It has, however, its own green leaves. Thrushes eat the
berries of the mistletoe; they will be left upon a branch with the
_guano_; as the latter dries up, the seed is drawn to the underside
of the branch, and sticks in a crack or crevice; it then sends the
sinker-root mentioned above into the branch.
Every year afterwards new mistletoe "roots" are formed which grow
through the soft part of the bark and send down sinkers into the
wood. Cases of Mistletoes forty years old have been recorded. The
trees which they prefer are the Apple, and after that Black Poplar,
though mistletoe may be found on Silver Fir, various Pines, and
others. It is more difficult to get it to grow on the Oak than on any
other tree. Indeed, only seven cases of mistletoe growing on oak have
been recorded in this country.[144] It is quite a valuable crop in
some places, and is sent in tons to the London market.
[144] Dr. Bull, _Journal of Botany_, vol. 2, p. 273.
There are many species of Mistletoe, and at least one kind attacks,
and is parasitic upon, another species of Mistletoe.
Most Mistletoes and Loranthus have their own green leaves, and only
take from the plant to which they are attached sap and mineral salts.
But in Chile there is a beautiful Loranthus that has practically
no green leaves at all. Its blood-red flowers grow in dense masses
upon the giant Cactus, which is common on the drier hills, and
these are always mistaken for the Cactus's own flowers, which are
quite different. These almost leafless Loranthus, and the curious
Arceuthobium are more parasitic than ordinary mistletoes, for they
obviously take other food material (probably sugar and albuminoids)
from their "host."
Another series of parasites or cannibals are quite common in Great
Britain. One often sees in some meadow that the grasses are growing
in a scanty and unhealthy manner; one then notices amongst them
numbers of the Yellow Rattle or the Eyebright (which the Germans call
_Milk-thief_). These plants are not very remarkable in any way, but
if one examines them closely one sees that the leaves and stems are
more purplish-red than is at all usual with our ordinary flowering
plants. But if you dig up some specimens very carefully, then the
wickedness of the Yellow Rattle and Eyebright becomes apparent;
every here and there upon their roots are little whitish swellings
which are firmly attached to the roots of other plants (generally of
grasses). These two robber plants send from these swellings minute
sucker-roots which pierce into the grass-root and intercept the water
which the grass has been absorbing for itself.
They are therefore parasites, and indeed they may cause a
considerable loss of forage in a meadow.
A good many other British plants are root thieves. Besides these
two, there are the Cow-wheat, Red Rattles, Toadflax, Broomrapes, and
Toothwort.
A curious point about them is that they differ amongst themselves in
the degree in which they are dependent on the work of others. Some
are able to grow quite well without any such extraneous help, but the
Broomrape and Toothwort are entirely dependent on others' labours.
They have extremely little chlorophyll and very small leaves, and are
clearly parasites "pure and simple."
There are about 180 species of Broomrape (_Orobanche_). All of them
attack roots, and most confine their attentions to one particular
flowering plant. Their colours are generally very striking and
unusual. Our British species are reddish, flesh-coloured, or dirty
white, but some of the foreign kinds are blue or violet, yellow, or
yellowish to dark brown. Generally the seedling Broomrape worms its
way down into the earth till its root-tip touches the root of its
special favourite host, then the root of the Broomrape fixes itself
for life; its suckers grow into the host and absorb all the food
material which it requires. Those kinds which attack Tobacco and Hemp
are dangerous pests and do considerable damage.
The Toothwort (_Lathraea_) is so called because its scales have a
sort of resemblance to human teeth. With the curious superstition
which prevailed in medieval times, it was supposed that the
plant must be a remedy for toothache because it resembled teeth.
Unfortunately this is not the case.
It is, generally, quite like the Broomrape in its method of growth,
but it sends out long thread-like branching roots with suckers on the
ends, which become fastened on the Hazel roots. For several years
the plant remains underground and forms very odd-looking, white,
scaly branches. These scales are rolled back in such a way as to form
peculiar and irregular cavities which open to the outside near the
tip of the leaf. There is no doubt that animalcula of sorts get into
these cavities and probably die there. In that case, their remains
will form a useful supplement to the diet of the plant. The following
remarks, however, taken from Kerner have been disputed by other
botanists.
Certain of the cells lining these cavities "appear to send out
delicate filaments.
"When small animals penetrate into the labyrinthine chambers of a
Lathraea leaf and touch the organs just described, the protoplasmic
filaments are protruded and lay themselves upon the intruders.
They act as prehensile arms in holding the smaller prey, chiefly
Infusoria, and impede the motion of larger animals so as to cut off
their retreat. No special secretion has been observed to be exuded in
the foliar chambers of Lathraea. But seeing that some time after the
creatures have entered the chambers, the only remains of them that
one meets with are claws, legs, bristles, and little amorphous lumps,
their sarcode-flesh and blood having vanished and left no trace, we
must suppose that the absorption of nutriment from the dead prey here
ensues...."[145]
[145] Kerner and Oliver, _Natural History of Plants_, vol. 1, p.
136.
But strange as these Broomrapes and Toothworts may be, they are
quite inconspicuous as compared with the gigantic parasites found in
Sumatra and Java.
In 1818, when Sir Stamford Raffles was making a tour in the interior
of Sumatra, his party came across one of those extraordinary plants
which have been called after him.
Imagine a gigantic flower in shape resembling a very fleshy
forget-me-not, but more than a yard across! The colour is a livid,
fleshy tint, and the smell is like that of a charnel-house. This
extraordinary _Rafflesia Arnoldii_ is the biggest flower in the
world. It has no proper stems or leaves, but consists merely of this
huge flower-bud attached to the roots of Figs, etc., which traverse
the ground in these forests. It is said to be only found in places
frequented by elephants, which are supposed to carry its seeds on
their feet.
There are four other kinds known: all of them occur in Sumatra, Java,
and other neighbouring islands. _R. Padma_ for example, has a flower
about eighteen inches across. The central part is a dirty blood-red,
while the lobes have almost the colour of the human skin. This also
has a "cadaverous smell, anything but pleasant."
These weird Rafflesias seated on the roots "which wind about on the
dark forest ground" have impressed every observer.
Yet if one glances back, it is interesting to see how insensible
are the transitional steps which lead from independent life by the
plant's own exertions to these last "pure parasites," which are
entirely dependent on other plants for everything that they require.
The only other flowering plant which we shall mention in this chapter
is now fortunately very rare in Great Britain. This is the Dodder,
_Cuscuta_. It belongs to the Convolvulus or Bindweed order, but is
entirely different from the rest of the family. Some climbing plants
do throttle or choke the trunks of young trees if they twine round
them too closely, but the Dodder has an entirely special and peculiar
way of supporting itself to the detriment of others. It has no roots,
no leaves, and scarcely any green chlorophyll; the Dodder is just a
twining, thread-like, yellowish stem which carries here and there
small round clusters of little convolvulus-like flowers. Wherever the
Dodder thread twines round a hop or other plant, it puts out small
suckers which drive their way into the stem of the hop and take from
it all the food which the Dodder requires. When well developed it
forms dense yellowish tangles of intricately entwined threads, which
may cover whole bushes and entirely destroy the supporting plants.
The Flax, Clover, and Hop Dodders are perhaps the worst of them all.
There are some rather interesting points in the history of the tiny
dodder-seedling. It remains, quietly waiting, for about a month after
most other plants have germinated.
Then it begins to grow rapidly: its tip pierces the soil and becomes
fixed in it; then the rest of the little thread-like seedling begins
to curve round or revolve. If it touches a grass or even a nettle
stem, it twines itself or coils round it, drives in its suckers, and,
on the strength of the nourishment which it extracts, it goes on
revolving or turning until it forms the dense tangled masses referred
to.
Then an eruption of flowers appears, from which later on hundreds of
tiny seeds are let loose which will become Dodders in their turn.
The series of parasitic plants which have now been mentioned form a
very interesting set. It must be pointed out that those which live
merely on dead vegetable matter are "good" plants. They help on the
quick and thorough employment of worn-out material.
Nor can we say off-hand that other parasites are "bad." They do
kill other plants and do them harm, but then, are they not like a
cattle-breeder who sends his inferior cattle to the butcher, keeping
only those which are the very best of their kind? Perhaps these
plants, by destroying the weak and unhealthy kinds, are doing a great
deal of good.
Another interesting point about such parasites is that they are
generally _rare_. They must be less common than their "host." Yet
another is that they are all "degenerates." They show distinct traces
of decay and bad development in their flowers and seed. That is also
true in the case of parasitic animals.
Whether they do good or harm to the world of plants is doubtful, but
there is no doubt that they are doing harm to their own chances!
CHAPTER XXVII
PLANTS ATTACKING ANIMALS
Brittle Star _v._ algæ--Fungus _v._ meal-worm--Stag-headed
caterpillars--Liverwort _v._ small insects--Natural
flower-pots--Watercups of Bromeliads--Sarracenia and inquiring
insects--An unfortunate centipede--Pitcher-plants: their
crafty contrivances--Blowflies defy them and spiders rob
them--Bladderwort's traps which catch small fry--Hairs and their
uses--Plants used as fly-papers--Butterwort _v._ midges--Its
use as rennet--Sundew and its sensitive tentacles--Pinning down
an insect--Suffocating and chloroforming the sundew--Venus'
fly-trap which acts like a rat-trap--Have plants a nervous
system?
On the whole the animal world preys upon the vegetable world, and is
in a way parasitic upon it. Indeed, the connexion between the two is
very intimate--that of the diner and his dinner. One can scarcely
imagine a more intimate connexion than this!
There are, however, a great many cases in which plants have turned
the tables on their enemies and deliberately laid themselves out to
catch and to destroy, to feed upon and to devour insects and small
animals. One finds a few examples in almost every group of plants.
Thus there are certain green seaweeds or algæ which are said to
attack and prey upon those peculiar sea-urchins known as Brittle
Stars. The fungus which forms loops, acting exactly like a poacher's
rabbit-snare, in order to catch mealworms, has been already mentioned.
Sometimes in the summer one may notice a little red club about two
to three inches long sticking out of short grass. If one carefully
pulls this up it is found to be growing out of a dead chrysalis or
grub. It is a fungus whose spores have attacked the caterpillar; they
have developed inside its body, and eventually, having completely
eaten up the insect, form the red club, which is producing hundreds
of thousands of spores intended to attack other caterpillars.
[Illustration: The branches like stag's horns are the fruit of
a fungus, Cordyceps Taylori, which lived inside and killed the
caterpillar.]
An allied fungus forms a peculiar branched fruit rather like a minute
stag's horn, and the caterpillar may be seen for some time crawling
about with this extraordinary fungus sticking out of its head. Of
course the bacteria are, some of them, by far the most dangerous foes
of animals (see page 328).
Then there is a small Liverwort, a little red, moss-like plant
(_Frullania tamarisci_), which may be found growing on the bark of
trees, which is said to catch animalcula in the small sack-like
leaves which are underneath the ordinary ones.
But it is amongst the higher flowering plants that one discovers the
most extraordinary and purposeful arrangements for capturing and
digesting insects and other creatures.
In the case of many of these insectivorous plants, traps or pitfalls
are prepared for the insect to fall into.
There are many plants in which the rain is intended to run in
one particular direction, and it is not at all uncommon to find
hollows at the base of the leaf where dust, dirt, and dead insects
accumulate. One very curious plant of this sort is _Dischidia
Rafflesiana_, in which the leaves have become quite like a pitcher,
and have been compared to "natural flower-pots" intended to hold rain
and leaf-mould.[146]
[146] Groom, _Ann. Bot._, 1903, p. 223.
Then there is the Bromelia or Pineapple family, which consists for
the most part of plants which live on the branches of trees. In very
many of these a small cup is formed in the middle of the rosette or
tuft of leaves, and water collects in this central cup.
The water smells abominably, and contains the bodies of dead insects,
and rubbish of all kinds (see also p. 298). The remnants of these
drowned insects are probably of use, because any valuable nitrogenous
or other material may be absorbed with the water by the plant and
help to nourish it, but in such a rough contrivance as this there
is nothing comparable to the Side-saddle plant, Pitcher plant, and
others.
The former, Sarracenia (or Side-saddle plant), is a common and rather
widespread North American plant, which is especially abundant in
Florida. It is cultivated in most botanical gardens, but can only
be grown in greenhouses. The leaves are about six inches to a foot
long, and are hollow, funnel-shaped tubes with a short, flat wing
along one edge. They may be an inch or two in diameter at the top or
wider end, where there is also a sort of half-open lid which keeps
rain from getting into the inside of the leaf. The colour of these
tube-like or vase-like leaves varies. It is often variegated with
brown, red, and yellow, and is conspicuous enough even at a distance.
Thus insects fly to these vases and alight on the little cap or lid,
where they find honey and enjoy themselves. Other insects crawl up
along the rim or wing of the vase, finding honey here and there along
their road. Having got to the lid, the insect, being of an inquiring
or inquisitive disposition, will look inside the tube and endeavour
to find more honey therein.
It reaches the rim of the vase and finds that there is honey inside;
it can easily crawl down, and fails to notice that the inside of
the vase is lined with long stiff points which all point downwards.
These points or hairs do not at all interfere with its passage down,
and it proceeds to the honey which forms a smooth, slippery coating.
Then, after greedily absorbing the honey, it tries to get out again.
But that is quite a different matter. Each one of these points or
hairs is facing it, and the whole inside is smooth and slippery. It
struggles, slips, and falls into a pool of water which fills the
lower part of the vase. That is what the plant has developed these
pitchers for. The body of the insect after a time decays away, and
only its empty shell remains. An extraordinary number of insects are
caught by these Sarracenia vases. Sometimes in one which is only ten
inches long, three or four inches will be full of the corpses of
blackbeetles and other drowned insects, and it is said that birds
occasionally visit these vases in order to pick them out. There is
probably some sort of secretion in the water. "A centipede 1-2/3
inches long having fallen into a vase of _Sarracenia purpurea_ in the
night was found only half-immersed in the water. The upper half of
the creature projected above the liquid, and made violent attempts to
escape; but the lower part had not only become motionless, but had
turned white from the effect of the surrounding liquid; it appeared
to be macerated, and exhibited alterations which are not produced in
so short a time in centipedes immersed in ordinary rainwater."[147]
[147] Kerner, _Natural History of Plants_. Many details are taken
from this work in the present chapter.
In some Sarracenias the vase is brought up into a sort of hood or
dome with the entrance at one side and below. There are thin patches
on this dome or cupola, and small insects, attracted by the light
which comes through these bare places, remain dashing themselves
against them or crawling over them just as flies do on a window-pane,
until they become tired and fall down into the water below.
There is something horrible in the cold and careful way in which this
plant arranges its baits for "confiding insects. The latter are fed
with honey, even on the very border of the assassin's den, but after
this farewell revel they generally slip upon the smooth edge, and are
hurled, like lost souls, down into the abyss."[148]
[148] Dennett.
In another plant, the Pitcher Plant (_Nepenthes_, so called from
the drug which produces the sleep of death), we find an even more
beautifully arranged pitcher which acts in very much the same way.
It is, however, only the end of a rather long leaf, or rather of its
midrib, that is turned up to act as a pitcher. There are similar
stiff hairs pointing downwards, and honey is plentifully secreted.
But, in Nepenthes, there is also a distinct secretion which digests
the bodies of the drowning insects. The ferment resembles the active
principle of the gastric and pancreatic juices of the human body,
and, as acids are also present, the insect's body becomes changed
into nutritious juices which readily diffuse into the plant.[149]
Dr. Macfarlane found that when the pitchers were stimulated by being
given insects, the liquid inside them could digest fibrin to jelly in
from three-quarters to one hour's time.[150] But certain insects have
somehow managed to educate their larvæ to resist the gastric juices
of Nepenthes.
[149] Green, _Vegetable Physiology_, p. 203.
[150] _Annals Botany_, vol. 3, p. 253, and vol. 6, p. 401.
Near Fort Dauphin, in Madagascar, I found great quantities of
_Nepenthes madagascariensis_. Almost every pitcher was one-third to
two-thirds full of corpses, but in some of them large, fat, white
maggots, of a very unprepossessing appearance, were quite alive and
apparently thriving. These must have been the larvæ of a blowfly
similar to that which has been mentioned by others as inhabiting
Sarracenia. At the same place a white spider was very often to be
seen. Its web was spun across the mouth of a pitcher, and its body
was quite invisible against the bleached remains inside.
It had suited its colour to the corpses within, in order that it
might steal from the Nepenthes the due reward of all its ingenious
contrivances!
A totally different arrangement is found in an inconspicuous and ugly
little marsh and ditch plant called Utricularia or Bladderwort. It is
very difficult to see, for unless it happens to be in flower it is
entirely submerged in the water. The flowers, which are purple, are
conspicuous and easily seen even at a distance. On these submerged
leaves there are hundreds of small bladders. They are about the
size of a pea, and are most ingeniously contrived to catch small
water-animalcula. The general idea of the bladderwort is exactly that
of the eel-pots so common in some parts of the Thames. There is a
small flap which acts as a trapdoor. Small creatures probably take
refuge in the bladders when pursued by the larger water-fleas, etc.,
for it must seem to them to be a safe and secure retreat.
But once within the door, they are imprisoned and cannot find their
way out again. They perish inside and their bodies are digested by
the plant; on the inside of the bladder there are gland hairs which
also secrete a digestive fluid.
The bladderwort is dangerous to fish, for the little fry, when quite
small, run their heads and gills into the bladders and are suffocated.
There are a great many kinds of Utricularia, and they occur in most
of the great floral regions.
One of them has chosen a very extraordinary and curious situation.
It lives inside the little cups of water which, as we have already
mentioned, are formed by the leaves of some Bromeliads. The insects
in the water which ought to nourish the Bromeliad (_Tillandsia_)
are really used by the Utricularia. Other Utricularias live in damp
earth, moss, etc.
It is not only by traps and pitfalls that plants catch insects:
many have specially modified hairs which are quite efficient
insect-catchers.
Hairs are used by plants for many different purposes, and it is
rather interesting to see how quite a simple organ like a hair can be
altered. The stinging hair of the nettle has already been mentioned;
many grasses possess minute, rough, flinty hairs, which probably
prevent snails from eating them. That also is probably the reason
of the strong, rough, coarse hairs which cover the Borage and the
Comfrey.
Then on the Chickweed and the Bird's-eye Speedwell there are lines
of rather long, flexible hairs which at first sight appear to be of
no use at all. But if you take either of these plants, and, holding
it upright, place a large drop of water on the leaves, you will see
that these hairs are intended to carry the water down the stem.
The water runs along them. It is a very pretty little experiment,
especially if done in artificial light, so that these hairs are, like
the root hairs, intended to absorb or suck up water as it passes over
them. Then the Edelweiss and the Lammie's Lug (_Stachys lanata_) are
entirely covered with white cotton-woolly hairs: these are intended
to keep the water in the plant, and do so as effectually as a rough
woollen coat will keep out rain and mist. Silky hairs, downy hairs,
and others are found wrapping up the tiny baby leaves in the bud:
they probably keep them warm, and perplex and ward off objectionable
insects.
But, perhaps, the sticky or glutinous hairs are the most wonderful of
all. They are found on many plants, such as _Salvia glutinosa_,[151]
Plumbago, and Catchfly. One can see insects stuck on them and
vainly struggling to be free, and the hairs undoubtedly prevent
green-fly and other such pests from interfering with the honey of
the flower. In some of these cases it has been shown that the body
of the insect is actually used as food, but that is more obvious
with two interesting plants which specially devote themselves to
the capture of insect prey. One of these is very often kept in the
Boer farmhouses near Tulbagh, in South Africa, simply to attract
the flies, which are a perfect pest in those dry valleys. Another
Drosophyllum, the Fly-Catcher, grows on sandy and rocky ground in
Portugal and Morocco. This is also used by the peasants near Oporto
as a convenient fly-paper.
[151] Macchiati, _Botan. Centralblatt_, 41, 190.
In both of these plants large drops of a sticky, glistening liquid
are secreted by the hairs which cover the leaves. Any small insect
alighting on the latter is sure to get covered by the liquid, and
in trying to get away will become hopelessly involved in it. It is
probably soon suffocated, for the gummy matter will choke the small
air-holes by which it breathes. Both these plants are said to secrete
both an acid and a digestive secretion.
But we have two plants which are even more interesting in this
country.
Walking over the rough marshy pastures or moors of Scotland one is
sure to notice, generally on wet peaty and barren soil, a little
rosette of bright, yellow-green, glistening leaves. If it is the
right season there will be a handsome purple flower whose stalk
springs from them. This is the Butterwort (_Pinguicula_), and it is
not a bad name, for the leaves remind one of butter. The whole upper
surface of the leaves is covered with tiny glands secreting a sticky,
glistening matter. It is said that there will be as many as fifty
thousand of these glands on a square inch of the upper surface.
Now in such places every one knows that there are quantities of
midges, and also that these insects are always exceedingly thirsty.
They prefer blood, it is true, but when they see these bright
yellowish leaves they naturally go to them. When, however, the midge
touches the leaf, the sticky liquid clings to its wings and legs, and
it cannot escape.
So far this does not differ from the Fly Catchers mentioned above,
but another very curious action then begins. If the midge or fly is
near the margin of the leaf, the edge of the latter begins to curl
or roll inwards over it. It does so very slowly, and may not finish
rolling over the insect for some hours. Whilst this is going on acids
and "gastric juice," or ferments which act in the same way, are
being poured over the body of the midge, which is finally completely
digested. Next day, having finished the midge, the leaf majestically
unrolls itself again and waits for another.
The juice contains rennet, and is used by the Lapps in making a
horrible delicacy called Tätmiölk. It has also been used by the Swiss
shepherds for at least two hundred years, to cure sores on cows'
udders.
The other British plant is the Sundew (_Drosera_). Every one who
has been on peat-mosses and moors probably knows its little reddish
rosettes of small rounded or spoon-shaped leaves lying on bare peat
or wet mossy ground. Each leaf seems to be covered by hundreds of
glittering little dewdrops (whence the name).
The hairs or tentacles which cover the leaf secrete this glistening,
sticky fluid. There must be about two hundred of them on a single
leaf.
An insect flying about near the Sundew is sure to be attracted by the
conspicuous glittering, reddish leaves, and probably alights upon it.
Then it finds itself caught and begins to struggle, but this simply
brings it against more tentacles.
Now happens the most wonderful part of the whole performance. All the
neighbouring tentacles, although they have not been touched, bend
over towards the struggling insect and pin it down in the middle of
the leaf. They do not bend over very quickly. In two or three minutes
they will bend over towards it through an angle of forty-five
degrees, and it takes them ten minutes to bend over ninety degrees.
There is something rather horrible in the sight of a large insect
struggling with these slow, remorseless, well-aimed tentacles; most
people free the insect unless, at least, it happens to be a midge.
The point which is so difficult to understand is to know how those
untouched tentacles know that the insect is there and exactly where
it is. There is no doubt that they do know, for they behave exactly
as if they were the arms of a spider.
If you put two insects on either side of the middle of the leaf, half
the tentacles will pin down one and the other half will deal with the
other insect.
At the same time acids and ferments are poured out which digest the
insect. It takes about two days for a leaf to finish off an insect,
and then the tentacles again unclose.
Moreover it is difficult to deceive those tentacles. They will bend
in for the tiniest piece of useful substance; for instance, a length
of one-seventy-fifth of an inch of woman's hair will make them
secrete digestive fluid. One millionth part of a pound of ammonium
phosphate will also produce secretion. But a shower of heavy rain,
grains of sand, or other useless material, will not cause any
secretion, and even if they do bend in a little, they soon discover
their mistake and stand out again. If you try the same experiment
under a bell-glass from which the oxygen has been withdrawn by an
air-pump, nothing happens; or if you chloroform the Sundew it will
pay no attention to small pieces of meat until it recovers from the
effects of the chloroform.
When these Droseras are taken to a greenhouse and experiments are
made on them, they run into very great danger. They are almost
certain to die of overfeeding or indigestion. It is impossible to
keep people from giving them too much to eat.
This wonderful little plant shows quite distinctly that there must
be some way of sending messages in its leaves. Somehow the message
travels from the tentacle which the fly has touched, down the stalk
into the leaf, and up into the other tentacles, and tells them that
there is something worth stooping for.
No one has explained this, and probably no one will ever do so.
The last, and in some ways the most interesting, of all these
carnivorous plants is Venus' Fly-trap (_Dionæa muscipula_), which
grows in North America from Rhode Island to Florida.
It is a quite small herb with a small circle of leaves which lie flat
on the ground. Each leaf ends in a nearly circular piece which is
divided by a very marked midrib. The two semicircular halves have a
series of teeth along their edges; these margin teeth are stiff and a
little bent upwards. In the centre of each half there are three small
hairs. On looking closely at these hairs one finds that each has a
joint near the base; all over the centre of these leaf halves there
are scattered glands which secrete ferments intended to digest any
animal matter.
The really interesting point is connected with these central jointed
or trigger hairs; they are extremely sensitive. But when they are
touched it is not they themselves that are affected, but the entire
circular end of the leaf!
Suppose an insect wanders on to the leaf and reaches one of these
semicircular halves, nothing happens until it touches one of these
hairs, but then _both_ halves suddenly close together, exactly like
an ordinary rat-trap! The teeth on the edges of the halves interlock
like the teeth of a trap, and the insect is caught and imprisoned.
Its body is slowly digested away and goes to nourish the plant. The
use of the joint in the sensitive hairs can be easily perceived, for
when the two halves shut up together, the hairs fold down exactly
like the funnel of a river steamboat when it passes under a bridge.
The closing of the two halves, which has been well compared to
shutting up a half-open book, is very quick, as it does not take more
than ten to thirty seconds. There is an abundant flow of "gastric
juice," but the leaf takes a long time to digest its food. It may
require three weeks to finish one insect. Moreover, if overfed, it
may turn a bilious or dyspeptic yellow colour, and wither or even
die. It only shuts for a short time if a grain of sand touches the
sensitive hair, and, like Drosera, is not deceived in its food.
The Dionæa, Drosera, the Sensitive Plant, Mimulus, Barberry, and
others, all show us clearly that plants somehow or other act as if
they were conscious of what they ought to do. In fact, in all these
cases, it is scarcely possible to help believing in some sort of
rudimentary nervous system. At any rate Wordsworth comes near this
belief, for he has written:--
"It is my faith, that every flower that blows
Enjoys the air it breathes."
CHAPTER XXVIII
MOSSES AND MOORS
Peat-mosses and their birds--Moorlands--Cotton-grass--Scotch
whisky--Growth of peat-moss--A vegetable pump--Low-lying and
moorland mosses--Eruptions and floods of peat--Colonizing
by heather and Scotch fir--Peat-mosses as museums--Remains
of children and troopers--Irish elk--Story of the plants in
Denmark--Rhododendrons and peat--Uses of peat--Reclaiming the
mosses near Glasgow.
In Great Britain in this present year one finds exceedingly few
places where the influence of man cannot be traced. Over most of the
country, indeed, it is impossible to discover a single acre of land
where Nature has been allowed to go on working at her own sweet will
without interference or restraint.
But near Stirling, between the Lake of Monteith and the sea, there
is a wide, desolate valley which is probably in exactly the same
condition as it was when the Roman legions halted to reconnoitre
before Agricola passed onwards to Perth and Aberdeen.
Indeed, this great peat-moss has been probably in very much the same
condition for some 200,000 years, which is a nice round number to
represent the ages that have passed since the Great Ice Age.
Now, as then, it is inexpressibly dreary and desolate; everywhere
saturated with water, and only to be traversed in dry seasons and
with much agility. Even with the greatest care the pedestrian may
sink to the waist in a hole of black, slimy, peaty water. Moss,
Heather clumps, Sedges, Rushes, and occasionally Cotton-grass, almost
at one dead level, stretch right across from the one side of the huge
valley to the other.
Even grouse are not common. In summer great numbers of gulls lay
their eggs upon the moss. This also is one of the few places in
Britain where great flocks of wild geese can be heard and seen, but
only at a distance.
It is almost impossible to get near them, for the upright neck of
the sentinel cannot be seen by the stalker as he wriggles towards
the flock on his face, until long after the stalker himself has been
plainly visible to the bird.
Of all useless stretches of barren waste, such a moss as this seems
one of the worst. It would, of course, be possible to reclaim it;
probably, fertile fields and rich meadows _could_ be formed over the
whole valley, but it would not pay nowadays. There is so much good
land available in Canada, the United States, and Australia, that this
great stretch of our native country will probably remain as useless
as it was in Agricola's days.
In the Scottish Lowlands and Highlands the moorlands are almost as
desolate. At a height of 1500 to 1600 feet in Southern Scotland there
is nothing to be seen but the undulating lines of hills, all dark
purple with heather or with the peculiar scorched reddish green of
Deer's Hair and dried sedges.
Perhaps on the nearer hills small streams may have cut a whole
series of intersecting ravines in the black peat. They may be six to
ten feet deep, and here and there the bleached white stones which
underlie them are exposed. Now and then the "kuk-kuk-kuk" of an irate
cock grouse, and much too frequently the melancholy squawking
of the curlew, irritates the pedestrian as he stumbles over clumps
of heather, plunges in and out of the mossy holes, or circumvents
impossible peat-haggs.
[Illustration: AN ARCTIC ALPINE PLANT
This is Draba Alpina from Cape Tscheljuskin, and it is drawn the
natural size. The stunted, closely set leaves show the inclement
character of the climate.]
It is indeed a remarkable fact that though these islands support
44,000,000 of inhabitants, including at least 1,000,000 paupers and
unemployed, one-seventh of Ireland and many square miles in Scotland
are still useless peat-bogs!
The Bog of Allen alone covers 238,500 acres, and the peat is
twenty-five feet deep.
In some few places the peat is still used for fuel, and there is
a theory to the effect that peat reek is necessary for the best
kinds of Scotch whisky, but neither grouse nor black-faced sheep,
which live on the young shoots of the heather, employ in at all a
satisfactory way these great stretches of land.
Many attempts have been made to spin the silky threads of the
Cotton-grass which grows abundantly on the Scotch lowlands. It is
neither a grass, nor does it supply cotton, but is called Eriophorum.
It is perhaps the one really beautiful plant to be found on them, for
its waving heads of fine silky-white hairs are exceedingly pretty.
The heather itself gives a splendid red and purple shade, which in
summer and autumn is always changing colour, but it is monotonous.
Neither the little Bog Asphodel with its yellowish flowers, nor red
Drosera, or butter-coloured Butterwort, are particularly beautiful.
After seeing such a country one understands something of the
Cameronian Covenanters who held their conventicles and took refuge
therein.
The manner in which these mosses and moors have developed is most
interesting, and yet difficult to explain.
There are two kinds of peat-mosses, which, although there are many
intermediate types, may be kept apart.
The first, like the one near Stirling, Lochar and Solway Moss, near
Dumfries, and Linwood, near Glasgow, have been formed in low-lying
flat estuarine marshes.
If one refers back to page 210, it will be seen how reeds and rushes
and marsh plants may gradually fill up river backwaters. Eventually a
saturated, marshy meadow is produced.
Then comes the chance of that wonderful moss the peat-moss, or
Sphagnum. It is scarcely possible to appreciate its structure without
the help of a microscope and a good deal of trouble in the way of
imagination.
It is in a small way a sort of vegetable pump which raises water a
few inches or so. Stem and leaves and branches possess little cistern
cells, which act both as capillary tubes raising the water and also
retain it. The stems are upright and develop many branches, so that
they become a close-ranked or serried carpet of upright moss-stems
squeezed together, which floats on the surface of the water. Each
moss-stem is growing upwards and dying off below. In consequence, the
bottom gets filled up by dead mossy pieces, which accumulate there,
while the live moss-carpet remains floating on the surface of the
loathly, black, peaty water.
In many peat-mosses the water gets entirely filled up, but that
does not stop the formation of the peat-moss. It is now resting on
the water-saturated remains of its forefathers, and if water is
abundantly supplied it goes on developing.
Thus in these lowland or estuarine peat-mosses the moss eventually
occupies the water, and goes on growing. After this it develops like
the moorland mosses which cover most of the Lowlands and Highlands
of Scotland. They cover the hills, and it looks exactly as if some
giant had plastered all those hills with a layer of six to ten feet
of black peat from 1250 feet upwards.
The soil would at first be covered by a saturated moss-carpet of
_Sphagnum_ and other mosses. Rainwater falling upon it was all
retained, and very little could get away, for the Sphagnum carpet is
just like a huge sponge soaking up and retaining the water.
But it sometimes happens in these great upland mosses that there
are enormous falls of rain which continue for days. Then the water
collects _under_ the living moss-carpet and over the dead peat.
It may be gathered together in such quantities that the carpet of
living peat above it bursts, and a deluge of peaty water overflows
the surrounding country, destroying and spoiling everything that it
encounters.
The worst of these inundations of black mud that has happened in
recent years was in December, 1896, near Rathmore, where 200 acres of
bog burst and a horrible river of mud overflowed the country for ten
miles. Nine people perished, and enormous destruction was caused.
There have been many other cases. In 1824 Crowhill Bog, near
Keighley, burst; and in 1745, in Lancashire, a space a mile long and
half a mile broad was covered by peaty mud. There was also a case
in 1697, where forty acres of bog at Charleville burst in the same
way.[152]
[152] Miall, _Nature_, Aug., 1898, p. 377.
Attempts have often been made to calculate the rate of growth of such
peat-mosses. A great many of them began to develop on the mud left by
the ice-sheet when the glaciers retreated at the end of the Ice Age.
Those mosses are therefore probably 200,000 years old. Some of our
Scotch mosses are twenty to twenty-five feet in depth, which gives
a foot in 10,000 years. By calculation of the weight of the peat
formed, Aigner made out that a certain moss was 20,600 years old, and
was growing at the rate of two inches in a century.
But in Denmark ten feet has been formed in 250 to 300 years, and
in Switzerland three to four feet of peat-moss has been formed in
twenty-four years.
This shows quite distinctly that there is no regular rate of growth,
and indeed it is obvious that much must depend on the climate, on the
rainfall, on the drainage, and other circumstances.
Sooner or later, however, a limit comes to the growth of the moss.
The surface then becomes gently curved: it is highest in the centre,
and slopes very gently down in every direction to the edges.
What happens next? The first sign is that the surface begins to dry
up, and Heather, with grey Cladonia lichens, begins to grow on the
projecting tufts and tussocks.
Occasionally, if gulls build their nests on such drying-up mosses,
patches of bright green grass appear wherever the gulls are in the
habit of resting. That is due to the lime in their guano.
But under quite natural conditions a much more important and
interesting change begins.
Here and there scattered over the moss, miserable little seedling
Birches and Scotch Firs begin to struggle for life. Of course, if
there are hares and rabbits, or if sheep and cattle are allowed to
graze upon the moss, those firs have no chance whatever. They are
eaten down to the ground.
[Illustration: LAKE DWELLINGS IN EARLY BRITAIN
The Irish elk is the result of the day's sport of these
prehistoric Britons, who lived in houses built on piles actually
in the water, or in peat mosses. Their only boats were rough
dug-out canoes.]
But if allowed to go on growing they would no doubt cover the whole
moss with a wood of Birch and Scotch Fir. In time that wood would by
its roots and its formation of fine leaf-mould so radically alter
the ground that a forest of Oaks might be possible.
It is in fact quite likely that most of our Highland and Scotch hills
were at one time covered by fine forests of Scotch Fir, of which the
_Silva Caledonica_ spoken of by Tacitus was an example.
There is, moreover, evidence to show that this was the case. There
is one strange peculiarity of peat which renders it a most useful
substance to antiquarians.
Anything lost in a peat-moss does not decay away, but remains in a
blackened but still recognizable condition for hundreds of years.
Not long ago a basket containing the bones of a child was found in a
Scotch peat-moss. There is also a story that an English trooper of
the fourteenth or fifteenth century, and his horse, were discovered
in Lochar Moss, near Dumfries. The man's features were traceable at
first, but fell into powder when exposed to the air; but the weapons,
stirrups, etc., were all perfectly preserved. Bones of the extinct
Irish elk have often been found. Not merely so, but the piles of lake
dwellings and the rough dug-out canoes which were used by the early
inhabitants of Britain have been discovered in a great many places.
Coins of Roman, medieval, and modern times have been unearthed, and
indeed there is no doubt that if Britain is still inhabited two
thousand years hence, boots, sardine tins, brass cartridges, clay
pipes, and other characteristic products of our own days, will be
disentombed from the peat by enthusiastic antiquarians, and displayed
in museums to admiring crowds of our descendants.
The reason is quite simple: in peat neither those bacteria which
cause ordinary decomposition, nor worms of any kind, are able to
exist, so that the material does not decay but accumulates, though
it may be blackened by peat, water, and humic acid. It is for this
reason that a peat-moss is such a bad or rather an impossible soil.
Neither roots nor bacteria can thrive in saturated peat; therefore
the flora of a peat-moss is generally confined to the upper surface,
where air and bacteria can reach the roots. Peat-mosses are also the
home of insectivorous plants, which get their nitrogenous food from
the insects which they catch.
In consequence of this preserving effect of peat, it is possible to
trace the entire history of a peat-moss from the very beginning.
Remains of the Dwarf Willow or Polar Birch have been found in
England, showing that those now Arctic plants were then flourishing
in Norfolk. These are generally in the lowest layers of peat-mosses.
Next follow remains of the Birch and Aspen, which would be growing,
as they do in places to-day, on mossy soil where the peat was still
thin. Higher up in the peat one finds remains of Scotch Fir, showing
that at that time regular forests of Scotch Fir existed, e.g. in
Sutherlandshire and on Lochar Moss, where they do not grow at present.
Some hold that the goats, black cattle, and ponies which have been
kept since the Roman occupation at any rate, are responsible for the
destruction of these forests. Others hold that they were killed by a
change of climate. But they certainly existed.
Trunks of Scotch Fir have even been found in peat at 2400 feet in
Yorkshire, and at heights in Scotland which are above all the present
plantations. About this time it seems that the newer Stone Age men
must have been in Switzerland and Denmark, for their remains and
characteristic weapons occur in those countries at the same level in
the mosses as the Scotch Fir.
Still higher in the peat comes the Bog Oak. With it are in Denmark
remains of the Bronze, Iron, and Roman times.
In Denmark the uppermost layers of the peat contain remains of Beech
trees. As this last tree only entered the country in the historic
period, it is not found except in the highest layers of all.
Unfortunately we have not yet obtained in our own country the same
evidence from the peat-bogs as to the history of the flora of
Britain. It is at least probable that it was on very much the same
lines.
Would it be possible to again cover our peat-mosses and moorlands
with forests of Conifers, Pines, Larches, and Spruces? There can
scarcely be any doubt about it: it would be possible, and according
to the best authorities it would even pay to change all land which is
not yielding more than 7s. 6d. an acre into forests of Pines.
One of the curious facts about peat is that though a peat-moss is one
of the worst natural soils, yet broken-up and dried peat is excellent
for Rhododendrons, for Orchids in stoves and greenhouses, and a great
many other plants.
Peat consists of very much the same substances as those that go to
form leaf-mould. But the presence of humic and other acids, and
the saturation with water and consequently the absence of worms,
bacteria, and also of air, make it impossible for plants to grow in a
peat-moss.
Peat-moss due specially to the Cotton-grass rather than the Sphagnum
moss is imported in great quantity from Holland, for use as litter
for horses. We have in this country plenty of peat quite good for
this purpose, but labour is too expensive for our home-grown peat to
compete with the produce of Dutch moors.
But that is by no means all the uses to which peat can be put. It is
interesting to mention a few of them.
1. Peat is used as fuel.
2. Growing Orchids, etc.
3. Litter for poultry, cattle, and horses.
4. Food for cattle, etc., is made by rubbing the peat into small
pieces and saturating with molasses.
5. Paper and a kind of felt can be made of peat.
6. Rugs and carpets can be made of peat-fibre.
7. String and twine.
8. Rough sacks and mats can be made of peat-fibre.
Unfortunately, though all these things can be produced out of
peat-fibre, it has never paid to manufacture them, and there are very
few of the British peat-mosses nowadays where peat is even cut for
fuel.
It seems much more likely that the end of these peat-mosses will be
to become either agricultural land or forest.
Near Glasgow a large area of a useless peat-moss has been reclaimed
and made to yield excellent crops, by using the refuse of the city.
The disposal of such refuse used to be a most troublesome and
expensive process, but now it is turned to good effect.
It was suggested a few years ago that peat, which is not worth
conveyance, should be burnt on the spot, and the energy transmitted
by wires.
That would be quite impossible, in at least four years out of five,
over most of Scotland.
CHAPTER XXIX
NAMES AND SUPERSTITIONS
Giving names the first amusement--Curious and
odd names--A spiteful naturalist--The melancholy
Bartzia--Common names--British orchids--Dancing girls
and columbines--Susans--Biblical names--Almond, apple,
locust--Spikenard--Tares--Effects of darnel--Daffodil--Acanthus
leaf--Ghost-disturbing branches--Elder or bour tree--Its powers
and medicinal advantage--Danewort--Mandrake--How to pull it
up--The insane root--Its properties--Plants which make bones
pink--The betel nut--Henna--Egyptian and Persian uses--Castor
oil--Leeks, onions, and garlic--Ancient use of them.
Man has always taken a certain pleasure in giving names to both
plants and animals. It was, of course, a necessity to do this, but it
is probable that people enjoyed the process as they do now.
At the present moment there must be at least 200,000 plants named
and described by botanists. So that the number of ecstatic moments
enjoyed by humanity has been undoubtedly increased.
The Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Arabs named a great many
plants, but for the most part those names are quite lost. Most of the
knowledge of the Egyptians and Babylonians remained a close secret
confined to their priestly colleges or universities, and has entirely
perished.
For centuries those fragments of the knowledge of Greece and Egypt
which were preserved seem to have been translated and taught in
Latin. Long after the Roman Empire had passed away, all knowledge,
including that of medicine, of botany, and of law, was imparted in
Latin, which indeed was supposed to be learnt by every educated
person almost until the present century.
Even now descriptions of new plants have to be given in Latin, and
the name must have a classical appearance. Of course, nowadays, it
would be much more convenient and much more generally useful if every
person learnt English, German, French, and Japanese, but in this case
of naming plants, the Holy Roman Empire still exercises its sway over
the whole world.
Very often the names given to plants are of the most extraordinary
character. The Latin is curious and the Greek remarkable, yet
sometimes they are both pleasant to the ear and have a pretty and
poetical meaning.
_Poggeophyton_, on the other hand, for example, means the plant
discovered by Dr. Pogge, a German botanical explorer. _Wormskioldia_,
_Zahlbrucknera_, _Krascheninikowia_, _Acanthosicyos_, _Chickrassia_,
_Orychophragmus_, _Warczewiczia_, _Lychnophoriopsis_, _Krombholtzia_,
_Pseudorhachicallis_, _Sczegleewia_, _Zschokkia_, are all names that
sound harsh and look odd to us. Yet most of them are just called
after those who discovered them, or their friends. In many of the
smaller microscopic plants the names are really much longer than the
plants themselves. Thus _Pseudocerataulus Kinkeri_ is a diatom which
cannot possibly be seen without the use of a microscope.
Names are and were given in the most extraordinary way. Not merely
great botanists, but Themistocles, Aristides, Aristobulus, Virgil,
and even Gyas and Clianthes, have plants named after them.
Yet that is not inexcusable, if people had not sufficient inventive
power to do better. There was a naturalist who quarrelled with the
great French scientist Buffon. Therefore he baptized as _Buffonia_
a group of ugly, unimportant little plants which had an unpleasant
smell. In other cases people have named plants after their
sweethearts or friends.
A British plant called Bartzia has a rather melancholy, desolate
appearance. It was named when the author had just received the news
of the death of his friend Dr. Bartsch.
One of the most usual complaints which one hears from those who are
beginning to study flowers is that the Latin names are so difficult
and hard to remember. But they are not really more difficult than
the common popular names, and especially those of foreign plants.
Cheirostemon, for instance, which means stamens like a hand, is
much easier to speak and to remember than _Macpalxochitlquahuitl_,
which is its soft, meandering, Spanish-American name. Asperula
(little rough one) is quite as good as Squinancywort, which means
a herb good for quinsy (it is moreover of no good in quinsy).
Perhaps, however, Woodruff (which is really "wood rowel," from the
resemblance of the leaves to an old-fashioned spur), or Waldmeister
(master of the woods), are as good names as Asperula. Then Erigeron,
which means "soon growing old," is an excellent description of the
faded appearance of this little weed, for which the popular name is
Fleabane (it has no effect upon these creatures whatsoever).
How popular names came to be associated with particular flowers is
generally quite unknown. A fair number are called from the diseases
which they are supposed to cure. Lungwort, however, was so called
because the lichen Pulmonaria has a resemblance to lungs. Then in
course of time people began to suppose it was a cure for diseases of
the lungs, which it is not.
The British Orchids are called Bee, Spider, Fly, and Hanging-man
Orchids, because of a fancied resemblance to their namesakes.
Dancing-girls (_Mantisia_) was so called from a certain resemblance
of the flower to a columbine. The true Columbine (_Aquilegia_) was
so called because of a resemblance which some one saw to a circle of
little doves with wings seated on a circular well.
The greatest objection to popular names, however, lies in their being
so indefinite. Entirely different plants are known by the same name,
and also in different parts of the country totally different names
are given to the same plant. All such difficulties disappear if one
takes the trouble to learn the Latin names.
These also are often quite pretty. Luzula, Veronica (with its
pretty legend), Mimulus (the little monkey), Circæa (Enchanter's
Nightshade), Senecio (_the old man_, from its woolly head of fruits),
Nymphea, Naias, Carlina (_the old witch_), and so on, are quite as
pretty and as nice as Mugwort, Devil-in-a-bush, Hairy Rock Cress, and
the rest. One curious result of the use of popular names is seen in
the Biblical names of plants. The Rose of Sharon seems most probably
to have been _Narcissus Tarzetta_, and not a rose at all. As regards
the lilies of the Field, Mr. Ridley has the following remarks. The
Hebrew word _Shushan_ was a generic name given to a mixture of
flowers, exactly as we now talk of ferns, herbs, or grass. The Sermon
on the Mount was preached near the plain of Gennesaret, and there
flourish the Anemone (_Anemone coronaria_), _Ranunculus asiaticus_,
and _Adonis aestivalis_ and _flammea_, which are exactly of the same
colour and follow each other in close succession. This word _Shushan_
is the original of the Christian name Susannah or Susan. The Arabic
name for _Anemone coronaria_ is Susan.
The Almond of the Bible is the common almond which is wild in Syria
and Palestine. "Aaron's rod that budded was a branch of an almond
tree; the bowls of the Golden Candlestick were designed from the
almond blossom. Even at the present time English workmen call the
glass drops for ornamenting candlesticks almonds." The Apple of the
Bible was more probably an Apricot. The husks of the prodigal son
were probably the Locust-beans, sometimes called St. John's bread,
but it is quite probable that the "locusts" eaten by St. John were
the insects. At any rate, locusts are regularly eaten in the East.
The Locust Tree (_Ceratonia siliqua_), or Algaroba or Carob, has
large, dark-purple pods; there is a pulpy material between the seeds
which forms a valuable cattle food. The seeds are said to have been
the original "carat" weight of jewellers.
The Spikenard (_Nardostachys jatamansi_) belongs to the natural order
_Valerianaceæ_. It is a wild plant of Bhutan found near Rangasnati,
in India, and in ancient times it was transported on camels by the
regular caravan route to Syria, Greece, and Rome. It was then worth
about £3. 10s. per lb. The essence is obtained from the roots,
but one hundred pounds of roots will furnish only half a pound of
essence. Now it has but little value.[153]
[153] Heuzé, _Les Plantes Industrielles_.
The Tares sown amongst the wheat were probably the seed of the
Darnel. When growing, this grass is very like wheat, and it would be
quite possible to mistake one for the other until the flowers and
fruit are formed. Darnel is one of the very few poisonous grasses.
It is said that the poison is produced by a fungus which is found in
the grain. When darnel seed is ground up with wheat the bread becomes
dangerous, for the poison produces severe headache, vertigo, and
giddiness. Other authorities say that it causes in man and rabbits
eruptions, fits of trembling, and confusion of sight. It seems not to
affect horned cattle, swine, and ducks.
As regards those plants which were specially beloved and venerated
by the Greeks, there is not very much to say. Moly seems to
have been _Allium moly_, one of the onion or garlic family. It
is not very remarkable in any way. Amaranth was apparently the
garden Love-lies-bleeding, called in France Queue-de-Renard and
Discipline-de-Religieuse. The Asphodel which covered the Elysian
fields seems to be _Asphodelus ramosus_.[154] This grows in
quantities in Apulia, and is said to afford good nourishment for
sheep.
[154] Figured in Kerner's _Natural History of Plants_.
The Myrtle, with which the Athenian magistrates and victors in the
Olympic games were crowned, is not really a European plant, though
it has a wide range from Asia Minor to Afghanistan. It was sacred to
Venus, and had some importance as a medicinal plant and for perfumes.
It was even used in cookery and for making myrtle wine, which last is
said to be still prepared in some parts of Tuscany.
"Narcissus, son of the river Cephisus and of Liriope, daughter of
the Ocean, was a young man of great beauty who scorned all the
Nymphs of the country, and made to die of languor Echo, because he
would not respond to her passion. But one day returning from the
chase weary and fatigued, he stopped at the side of a fountain to
refresh himself. There having seen his own face in the water, he
was so smitten with it and so greatly loved himself that he died of
grief. The Gods, touched by his death, changed him into a Daffodil,
according to the fable."
Such is the account in M. l'Abbé Ladvocat's _Dictionnaire
Historique-Portatif_, Paris, 1760. Daffodil means appearing early
in the year. The number of races, varieties, and forms of Daffodil,
Jonquil, etc., has become innumerable; yet it is doubtful if any
are quite so graceful and absolutely charming as the _Narcissus
poeticus_, supposed to be the original of the above legend.
The Acanthus leaf which was so much used in sculpture seems to have
been that of _Acanthus spinosus_. It can still be traced in modern
carving, though, of course, it is very much altered and in a rather
degenerate form.
It is often very difficult to say why certain plants have received
so much attention and veneration in ancient times. In some cases it
is clearly because they are poisonous, and therefore become dreadful
and awe-inspiring. Why, however, should a twig of Rowan (_Pyrus
Aucuparia_) be so often placed above the door of a Highland cottage?
In some way it was supposed to keep off evil spirits, but there is no
special reason why it should have been chosen.
The "Bour Tree" or Elder (_Sambucus_) has been the centre of a
whole series of extraordinary and remarkable superstitions. Of the
Ellhorn (Low Saxon), or _Sambucus nigra_, Arnkiel gives the following
account: "Our forefathers also held the Ellhorn holy, wherefore
whosoever need to hew it down must first make his request, 'Lady
Ellhorn, give me some of thy wood, and I will give thee some of mine
when it grows in the forest'--the which, with bended knees, bare
head, and folded arms, was ordinarily done."
The flowers are an eye-wash and cosmetic, or they may be taken as tea
or used as a fomentation. The berries are used for "elderberry wine."
A certain cure for rheumatism is to carry about a small piece of
elder cut after the fashion of a rude cross.
Evelyn speaking of it says: "If the medicinal properties of the
leaves, bark, berries, etc., were thoroughly known, I cannot tell
what our countrymen could ail for which he might not fetch a remedy
from every hedge, either for sickness or wound."
The other species (_Sambucus ebulus_, or Danewort) has had its name
explained as follows by Sir J. E. Smith: "Our ancestors evinced
a just hatred of their brutal enemies the Danes in supposing the
nauseous, fetid, and noxious plant before us to have sprung from
their blood."
Of all these, however, the Mandrake (_Mandragora_) is connected with
the most extraordinary and remarkable superstitions. The plant is
distinctly poisonous, and has peculiar divided roots which sometimes
have a very rough resemblance to the human body. It was supposed to
be alive, and to utter the most piercing shrieks when it was pulled
out of the ground. In those accounts, which are based on that given
by Josephus, it is the _person_ who pulls out the root, and not the
plant, that shrieks, subsequently rolls on the ground, and finally
dies in torments. Therefore, if you wish to pull up a mandrake, the
correct course to pursue is as follows: Tie a dog to the plant by its
tail, and then whip the dog. It will pull up the mandrake, and then
die in frightful agony!
This is the "insane root" of Macbeth, but its various uses, real or
pretended, are too numerous to explain in detail.
Thus it was used for the following purposes: as a poison, an emetic,
a narcotic like chloroform, in love-philtres and love-charms, as well
as to dispel demons, who cannot bear its smell or its presence.
There are many of these relics of medieval times which are difficult
to explain or to find a reason for.
Why, for instance, should old women always carry a sprig of
Southernwood to the kirk in their Bibles? The leaves are, however,
said to be disagreeable to insects. The Lavender stalks usually
placed in linen both keep away insects and have a pleasant old-world
scent.
A great many of the properties possessed by plants are of the most
extraordinary and unsuspected nature. The roots of the Madder (_Rubia
tinctorum_), for instance, when they are eaten by swine or other
animals, change the colour of their bones, which become pink. This
curious property has actually been made useful, for physiologists
have employed madder in the study of the growth and development of
bone.
In India and other eastern countries one is often shocked and
surprised to find an apparently quite healthy native expectorating
blood in a most lavish manner.
But the native is only chewing Betel nuts, which have the power of
turning the saliva red. The fruit is that of _Areca Catechu_, a fine
palm which is cultivated, for this purpose only, in many parts of
India and the East. The nuts are cut in pieces and rolled up with a
little lime in leaves of the Betel pepper. It is said to turn the
teeth red and sometimes to produce intoxication; at any rate, people
become slaves to this disgusting habit, and they do not seem to be at
all injured by indulgence in it.
Another extraordinary plant is Henna (_Lawsonia inermis_). The
Egyptian mummies are found to have the soles of the feet, as well as
the palms and finger-and toe-nails, dyed a reddish-orange colour by
the use of henna. But the practice is continued to-day in most parts
of the East, and no odalisque's toilet would be considered complete
without the use of henna. It is even said that men dye their beards
with it.
The white horse used in processions by the Shah of Persia has its
legs, tail, and body dyed with henna.
The powdered leaves are used: they are made into a paste with hot
water, and then spread upon the place. It is grown in Syria, Egypt,
Algeria, China, Morocco, Nubia, Guinea, and the East Indies.
In China women dye their eyebrows with an extract of the petals of
_Hibiscus Rosa-sinensis_.
One of the first plants to be utilized by man was the Castor-oil
(_Ricinus communis_). It was used by the Indians from time
immemorial; it is mentioned by Herodotus (under the name Kiki); seeds
have been found in mummy-cases, showing the careful preparations
which were made for the dead when starting on their travels in the
other world!
It is one of the very commonest plants in the tropics and in
sub-tropical or warm, temperate countries. It is rather handsome,
and has large reddish-green leaves and handsome spikes of flowers.
It is said to be sometimes twelve feet high, but is usually only
six or seven feet. The seeds are mottled or marbled, and have a
distinct resemblance to a beetle when seen from above. It has been
suggested that this protects them from birds, or enables the latter
to recognize the seed, which is strongly medicinal. That, however,
is at least doubtful, and certainly pigeons are exceedingly fond of
the seeds and eat them in quantity. The oil is used for lighting, in
making soap, and also in painting.
Another characteristic Egyptian plant was the Leek, which with the
onion and garlic seems to have been one of the very first to be
brought into cultivation. Herodotus says that on the Great Pyramid
there was an inscription saying that 1600 talents had been paid for
onions, radishes, and garlic used by the workmen during its erection.
The Jewish priests were forbidden to eat garlic, which (with
cucumber) formed the dishes most regretted by the Israelites during
their wanderings in the wilderness. The Shallot comes from Ascalon,
where it will be remembered Richard the First defeated Saladin
the Sultan, and where also Sir Sidney Smith defeated the Emperor
Napoleon and made him miss his destiny. It was not brought to this
country till 1548. Probably, therefore, Tennyson's Lady of Shalott
lived somewhere else. Onions and leeks are of course popular in this
country, and especially in Wales, where the latter has been the badge
of the Welsh since they gained a victory over the Saxons in the sixth
century. They wore it as a badge on that occasion by an order of St.
David.
But in warmer countries onions and garlic are much more important,
where they have flavoured almost every dish since the days of
Nestor's banquet to Machaon in Asia, and of the Emperor Nero in
Italy, until our own days.
But the subject is so inexhaustible, depending as it does upon man's
powers of invention and his tendency to weird superstitions, that we
must close this chapter and also the book.
And we will end by asking the reader to think sometimes of all these
many and various ways in which plants help and interest man.
It is not merely because our life depends upon them. Everything that
we eat has been produced by plant life and plant work.
Tea, coffee, cocoa, and wine are pleasant because plants have
produced some essence which is found useful and agreeable by
mankind. Even water would be tasteless and unwholesome were it not
for the minute diatoms and other microscopic vegetables in it.
But those who take an interest in flowers and leaves _for
themselves_, find that they need never spend a dull hour in the
country. There is so much to see and to find out, even in the
commonest weed or the tiniest floweret.
But it is necessary to sympathize with them, to try to look at
things from their point of view, and not merely from an artistic or
collector's standpoint.
The romance of plant life then becomes a fascinating and engrossing
pursuit. But however long one studies it, the knowledge that the
wisest naturalist can ever attain to must remain a negligible
quantity compared with what he does not know.
Suppose a mouse happened to stray into the office of the editor of
the _Times_, he might boast to his fellow-mice of his knowledge of
the "higher journalism," but his opinions would not really be of very
great value on the subject.
However hard we study, and however much we observe and reflect upon
the working of this great world of Nature, we really cannot expect to
know more relatively than that little mouse.
In fact, the more we think, the more humble men of heart we become,
and the greater also should be our reverence for the Creator of this
wonderful universe.
INDEX
Acacia, 108, 110, 111, 140, 179, 286
Acanthus, 369
Aconite, 231
Acorn, 256
Adansonia, 48
Adaptations (desert), 134
Afterglow, 132
Age of trees, 48
Agriculture (primitive), 149
Akocanthera, 229
Alder, 71
Alfred, 150
Algæ, 200, 202
" and Brittle Stars, 340
Alluvial flats, 210
Almond, 367
Alpine flowers, 103
" garden, 106
Ancient forests, 53
Angraecum, 79
Animals and poisons, 237
Animals and fruits, 241
Ants, 284-6
" and Centaury, 288
Antiaris, 230
Ant rice, 284
Aphanizomenon, 201
Aphis, 293
Apple, 248
Apple-blossom weevil, 294
Apple-sucker, 295
Arctic plants, 102, 104, 360
Arctic times, 104
Aristolochia, 78
Arrow poisons, 227, 229
Araucaria, 56
Arum, 78
Asclepiads, 78
Ash, 66
Asphodel, 368
Asses, 179
Associations, 26
Autumn crocus, 94
Aztecs, 126
Baboons, 247
Babylonian botanists, 37
Bacteria, 21, 85, 86, 95, 282, 328, 358
Balm of Gilead, 114
Banana, 248, 249
Barberry, 78, 183
Barley, 90, 272
Bartsia, 365
Bats, 246
Bean, 277
Bears, 247
Becquerel rays, 21
Bees, 74, 77
Bees and poppy, 303
Beetroot, 278, 280
Berries and winter, 245
Betel nut, 371
Bhang, 306
Bible plants, 366
Big Bad Lands, 133
Big trees, 58, 67
Birch, 60
Birch bark, 51
Birds, 85, 281
" and fruits, 245, 246, 256, 257
" and insects, 297
Bird's nest orchid, 329
Bishopsweed, 91
Bladderwort, 345
Blooming of weeds, 100
Bluebeard salvia, 74
Boers, 223
Boulger, 59
Box, 60
Bracken, 288
Bramble, 93, 183, 184, 248, 314
Brazil, 309
Breadfruit, 249
Breaking of meres, 201
Bridges of creepers, 319
Brigalow scrub, 112
Brier, 184
Britain (prehistoric), 144
British agriculture, 16
Britons, 150
Bromelia, 342
Broom, 256
Broomrape, 335
Brown, Dr. Horace, 18
Buds, 294
Buffonia, 365
Bulbs, 138
Burning bush, 115
Bushmen, 226
Buttercups, 233, 296
Butterflies, 192
Butterwort, 348
Cabbage, 23, 277
Cacti, 134, 179
Calabar bean, 232
Caledonian forest, 66
Calthrops, 185
Camargue, 161
Canadian forests, 62
Cannibals, 327
Canoes, 51
Cañons, 176
Carbon atom, 22
Carbonic acid gas, 16, 21
Carboniferous period, 55, 56
Carline thistle, 184
Cassier, 118
Castor oil, 245, 372
Catapult fruits, 263
Catchfly, 347
Cattle, 52
Cattle poisoning, 238
Caustic creeper, 235
Cedar, 59
Charlock, 275
Cherry, 97
Chickweed, 100, 346
Chicory, 125
Chinese botanists, 37
Chocolate, 125
Cinnamon, 35
Clematis, 265
Climate (effect of), 108
Climbing plants, 313
Clover, 86
Cloves, 30
Club-mosses, 55
Coal period, 55-70
Coca, 125
Cocoa, 125
Cocoanut, 259
Cockchafer, 292
Cockspur thorn, 183
Codlin moth, 295
Coffee, 123
Coffee disease, 124
Colocynth, 137
Colonizing of lavas, 171
" of shale, 173
Colorado desert, 139
Colour of birds, 81
" butterflies, 81
" flowers, 72-4
" fruits, 240
Coltsfoot, 18, 86
Congo, 309
Cooke, Dr., 201
Coralroot orchid, 329
Cotton, 265
" grass, 355
" tree, 59
Country life, 155
Cow tree, 312
Cretaceous period, 70
Crocus, 19
Crows and acorns, 256
Cucumber, 86
Cultivated plants, 269, 273
Curare, 228
Currents and seeds, 255, 259
Cypress, 59
Daffodil, 368
Dahlia, 265
Daisy, 218
Dandelion, 19, 93, 264
Danewort, 370
Darling pea, 237
Darnel, 234, 367
Date palm, 141, 251
Datura, 232
Deer, 178
Deodar, 60
Depopulation of country, 154, 155
Depth of water (plants), 205
Desert, 132
Desmids, 206
Desmoncus, 316
Destruction of plants, 61-5
Diatoms, 206
Dioscorides, 37
Dischidia, 342
Distribution of seeds, 254
Dixon, Dr., 25
Doctors, 28
Dodder, 338
Dorynicum, 263
Dragon tree, 49
Dropwort, 234
Drosera, 349
Drosophyllum, 347
Dundonald, Earl of, 151
Dwarf plants, 102
Egyptian botany, 37
Elder, 369
Electrical phenomena, 197-9
Elephant grass, 178
Esparto grass, 136
Eucalyptus, 47
Euphorbia, 110
Evening flowers, 74
Exploded pollen, 71
Fairy rings, 86
Fermentation, 242
Ferns, 172
Fig, 79, 251
Fig wasp, 79
Fires, 50, 148
Fish, 165, 206
Fish poison, 227
Flag, 203
Flies, 74, 80
Floating islands, 204
Floral clock, 76
Florida hyacinth, 209
Flowers, 68
Fly catcher, 348
Fly mushroom, 31
Fog, 203
Forestry, 43, 55
Forests, 63, 64, 220, 358, 361
Foxglove, 19, 79
Frankincense, 113
Fruits, 240
Fuegians, 51
Fungi, 80, 330
" and caterpillar, 341
" and eel-worms, 289
Galbanum, 114
Garlic, 373
Giant sawfly, 44
Ginkgo, 57
Girdleroots, 325
Goats, 52, 109, 179, 181, 184
Gooseberry, 182, 247
Goosegrass, 259
Gorse, 100, 181, 182
Gory dew, 202
Grass, 177, 185, 215, 218
Grasslands, 213, 330, 332
Grazing animals, 111, 177
Green of plants, 72
Greenfly, 293
Guanaco, 222
Gums, 111
Gutta-percha, 311
Hairs of plants, 136, 346
Hair (remedies), 30, 235
Hatasu, 113
Hawthorn, 182, 183
Hedgehog, 135
Heer, 55
Height of trees, 47
Hellebore, 231
Hemp, 305
Henna, 371
Henry, Dr., 52, 53
Holly, 186, 189, 190
Honey-dew, 293
Hop, 316
Hornwort, 208
Hot springs, 200
Humming-birds, 75
Hyacinth, 278
Hybridizing, 249, 273
Hydrophobia cures, 29
Hygroscopic grasses, 266
Ibn Sena, 37
Ice and seeds, 257
Ice plant, 136
Ice sheet, 147
Imbauba, 287
Incense, 113
Indiarubber, 307, 311
Indigo, 35
Insects, 69, 73, 168
Ipecacuanha, 34
Iris, 203
Ironwood, 58
Ivy, 79, 323
Jarrah, 60
Johnson, Dr., 151
Kangaroo, 75
Karoo, 138
Kite, 265
Kola, 127
Laburnum, 235
Lake dwellings, 52
Landes, 45
Land-forming plants, 161, 162
Larch, 181
Latex, 307
Lathrea, 336
Lava, 171
Lavender, 371
Lawns, 218
Leaf-cutting ants, 286
Leaf-miners, 297
Leaf-mould plants, 329
Leaves and light, 20
Lecanora, 167
Lecidea, 167
Leek, 372
Lewis, 54
Lianes, 314, 318
Lichens, 133, 166-71, 261
Life of flowers, 76
Lilienfeldt, 89
Lily order, 234
Lions and fruits, 258
Liverworts and animalcula, 341
Locoweed, 235
Locust tree, 367
Logwood, 35
Loranthus, 334
Madder, 371
Maidenhair tree, 57
Mallee scrub, 112
Mammoth trees, 47
Man, 247, 281, 300
" and flowers, 81
" and forests, 67
Manchineel, 228
Mandrake, 370
Mangroves, 156
Manna, 115, 261
Marshes, 211
Meadows, 213
Medicines, 27, 28
Mimulus, 70
Mistletoe, 245, 332
Mites, 299
Moats, 298
Mohammed, 119
Moly, 368
Monkey-puzzles, 56
Monotropa, 329
Moors, 353
Mosquitoes, 159
Mosses, 170, 353
Movement in plants, 14
Mud and seeds, 258
Mud rivers, 357
Mustard, 30
Myrrh, 114
Myrtle, 116, 368
Names of plants, 363
Narcissus, 368
Nepenthes, 344
Nettle, 71, 191
Nicotine, 130
Nile desert, 139
Nipa, 260
Nitrates, 84
Nomadic agriculture, 57
Number of plants, 38
Oak, 24
Oak forest, 53
Oat, 270
Obi, 232
Oil shales, 207
Olive, 48, 116, 251
Onions, 373
Opening of flowers, 76
Opium, 301
Opopanax, 114
Orange, 116, 243
Orchards, 252
Orchids, 78, 81, 330
Oxalis, 196
Painters and poets (botanists), 39
Palms, 69, 180
Pampas, 221
Paper (wood), 61, 62
Papyrus, 211
Parasitic insects, 294
" plants, 338
Pear, 188
" midge, 296
Peat, 170, 353
Peat-mosses, 353, 361
Pepper, 36
Perfumes, 73, 115, 119, 241
Petals, 98
Pfeffer, 88
Phragmites, 209
Phylloxera, 291
Pine forests, 40, 71, 148
Pine seeds, 41
Pineapple, 251, 277
Pink snow, 72
Pistacio, 69
Pitcher plant, 344
Plantain, 219
Plantations, 154
Plover, 298
Poisons, 226
Polar regions, 197
Pollen, 70
Polluted rivers, 208
Pomades, 119
Pondweeds, 205
Poppy, 263, 302
Potato, 279
Prairie, 220
Pressure inside plants, 25
Prickly pear, 243
Primula, 193
Protoplasm, 195
Quinine, 33
Rabbits, 50, 178, 182, 239
Radium rays, 21
Rafflesia, 337
Railway plants, 174
Rain of blood, 252
Rainwater (absorbed), 298
Raspberry, 92
Rattan, 47
Rat's-tail plantain, 93
Reeds, 163, 204, 209
Resin, 44, 45
Restharrow, 189
Retama, 137
Rhubarb, 36
Rimbach, 92
Roadside plants, 214
Robin-run-the-hedge, 313
Rock plants, 166, 169, 175
Rooks, 292
Roots, 86, 88, 89, 90, 137, 157, 180
Rose, 127, 182, 314
Rowan, 369
Rubber, 301, 310
Rushes, 203
Rye, 46, 272
Safflower, 34
Sago palm, 58
Saltwort, 161
Salvia, 78
Sandbox tree, 266
Sap, 23, 24
Sarracenia, 342
Satchell, 64
Savages and plants, 27
Scale insect, 288
Scenery and plants, 166
Schimper, 99
Scotch fir, 54, 71, 86, 360
Screes, 172
Scrub, 107
Scythian lamb, 32
Scythians, 224
Sea-grass, 162
Sea meadows, 162
Seaweeds, 163, 164, 171, 172
Season of flowers, 77
Sedges, 260
Selaginella, 56
Selection (principle of), 248, 277
Semaphore plant, 196
Senecio, 174
Sensitive plant, 14, 194
Sequoia, 47, 58
Shale, 173
Sheep-killing grasses, 267
Shelley, 79
Sherwood Forest, 53
Silvia Caledonica, 53
Silver fir, 58
Silurian times, 70
Smell (of flowers), 80
Smith, Dr., 54
Snow, 103
Soil, 82, 84
Solanaceæ, 234
Soldanella, 103
Solomon's seal, 94
Southernwood, 371
Speedwell, 319
Sphagnum, 357
Spice trade, 34
Spikenard, 367
Spines, 179, 186, 188, 190
Sprengel, 69
Spring, 98, 101
Squiers, 198
Squirrel, 178, 257
Stapelia, 80
Starch, 18
Starwort, 319
Steppes, 223
Sticky fruits, 255, 258
Sticky hairs, 347
Stimulus (effect of a), 14
Stomata, 23
Stones, 166
Storms, 46, 164
Strength of roots, 96
" seeds, 244
" trees, 46
Strophanthus, 229
Strychnos, 228
Subsoil, 147
Succulents, 134
Sugar (fruits), 241
Sugar-cane, 279
Sunbirds, 75
Sundew, 349
Sunlight, 19, 20
Sunshine, 17
Tanghinia, 231
Tartars, 224
Taru Desert, 110
Tea, 120
Teak, 60
Telegraph plant, 196
Temperature (flowers), 73, 103
Tendrils, 320, 321
Tennyson, 153
Theophrastus, 37, 69, 161, 184
Thistles, 91
Thorns, 179, 190
Timber, 58, 66
Tobacco, 127
Toothwort, 335
Tragacanth, 185
Trap, 146
Traveller's tree, 24
Tumble weeds, 262
Turnip, 277
Twining stems, 317
United States (forests), 62
Underground life, 94
Upas tree, 230
Utricularia, 345
Vaucheria, 163
Vegetable demons, 177
Venus' fly-trap, 351
Vestal virgins, 51
Vetch, 19
Victoria regia, 205
Vine, 248, 272, 291, 323
Virginian creeper, 323
Wait-a-bit thorn, 180
Wall plants, 166
Warning colours, 238
Water-carried pollen, 162, 200
" circulation of, 16, 25, 84, 95
" level, 217
" lily, 204
Weeds, 215, 274
Wheat, 271
Whin, 100, 181
White flowers, 74
Wild garlic, 92
Wild tamarind, 235
Willows, 165, 208
Wind (effect), 71
" and seeds, 255, 260, 264
Winged fruits, 266
Wood, 58, 59, 62, 146
Wood pigeon, 246
Woodsorrel, 19
Work of sunshine, 18
Worms, 85, 359
Xanthium, 259
X-rays, 21
Yam, 180
Yeast fungus, 243
Yew, 66, 67, 239
Yucca, 79
Zostera, 162
PLYMOUTH
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS
Transcriber's note:
Minor spelling inconsistencies, mainly hyphenated words, have been
harmonized. Obvious typos have been corrected. Exponents are
introduced with the caret character, e.g. 210^15.
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