University of Virginia Library

What exact species of rose this is I do not know; it appears not to be approved of in modern gardens,—at least if it be, it is so much altered by cultivation as to have lost much of its primitive character. I saw it in three different situations in Nottinghamshire. In the small remains of gardens and old labyrinthine shrubbery at Awthorpe Hall,—which, when we were there, had just been taken down,—the residence of the good Colonel John Hutchinson and his sweet wife Lucy;—in the very gardens which, as she relates in his life, he laid out and took so much pleasure in. It was growing also, with tall shoots and abundance of flowers, in the most forlorn of gardens, at an old place

called Burton Grange, a house so desolate and deserted as to have gained from a poetical friend of ours the appropriate name of The Dead House. It was a dreary and most lonesome place; the very bricks of which it was built were bleached by long exposure to wind and weather; there seemed no life within or about it. Every trace of furniture and wainscot was gone from its interior, and its principal rooms were the depositories of old ploughs and disused ladders; yet still its roof, floors, and windows were in decent repair. It had once upon a time been a well-conditioned house; had been moated, and its garden-wall had been terminated by stately stone pillars surmounted by well-cut urns, one of which, at the time we were there, lay overgrown with grass in the ground beneath; the other, after a similar fall, had been replaced, but with the wrong end uppermost. To add still more to its lonesomeness, thick, wild woods encompassed it on three sides, whence of an evening, and often too in the course of the day, came the voices of owls and other gloomy wood-creatures.

“There's not a flower in the garden,” said

a woman who, with her husband and child, we found, to our astonishment, inhabiting what had once been the scullery,—“not a flower but feverfew and the rose of May, and you'll not think it worth getting.” She was mistaken; I was delighted to find this sweet and favourite rose in so ruinous a situation.

Again, we found it in the gardens of Annesley Hall, that most poetical of old mansions; and the ancient housekeeper, at that time its sole inhabitant, pointed out this flower with a particular emphasis. “And here's the rose of May,” said she, drawing out a slender spray from a tangle of jessamine that hung about the stonework of the terrace; “a main pretty thing, though there's little store set by it now-a-days!”

This singular bird which is found in every part of the old world, as well in the cold regions of Siberia, as in the hot jungles of India, and the lion-haunted forests of Africa, has, as we have said, a large class of relations also in America: the Whip-poor-Will, the Willy-come-go, the Work-away, and the Who-are-you? being all of the same family. In Africa and among the American Indians these birds are looked upon with reverence or fear; for, by some they are supposed to be haunted by the dead, and by

others to be obedient to gloomy or evil spirits. The Dor-Hawk of our own country has been subject to slander, as his name of the goat-sucker shews. This name originated of course in districts where goats were used for milking, and furnished, no doubt an excuse for the false herd, who stole the milk and blamed the bird.

The Dor-Hawk, like the owl, is not seen in the day; and like it also, is an inhabitant of wild and gloomy scenes; heathy tracks abounding in fern; moors, and old woods. It is so regular in the time of beginning its nightly cry, that good old Gilbert White declares, it appeared to him to strike up exactly when the report of the Portsmouth evening gun was heard. He says, also, that its voice, which resembles the loud purring of a cat, occasions a singular vibration even in solid buildings; for that, as he and some of his neighbours sate in a hermitage on a steep hill-side, where they had been taking tea, a Dor-hawk alighted on the little cross at the top, and uttered his cry, making the walls of the building sensibly vibrate, to the wonder of all the company.

I can give no anecdotes of the bird from my

own experience. I know him best by his voice, heard mostly from scenes of a wild and picturesque character, in the gloom and shadow of evening, or in the deep calm of summer moonlight. I heard him first in a black, solemn-looking wood, between Houghton Tower, and Pleasington Priory in Lancashire. Since then I have become familiar with his voice in the pleasant woods of Winter-down, and Claremont, in Surrey.

The Parrot, of which we have been reading, may be supposed to have been the one of which so interesting an account is given by Wilson in his American Ornithology. It was taken at the Big-bone lick, where he witnessed the extreme affection and strong sympathy which the parrots have for each other, and of which we have imagined our bird to speak. Its merriment, too, respecting the nests of the tribe, may pass as natural, considering the little light Wilson could obtain on the subject, and the vivacious mockery of the bird's disposition, even if it had had the power of giving him the requisite information.

The parrot has been made to speak of her travels with “the Captain” through the morasses and cedar-swamps, and of the trouble she gave him, “when many a time,” says he (Wilson) “I was tempted to abandon it.” “And in this manner,” he goes on to say, “I carried it upwards of a thousand miles in my pocket, where it was exposed all day to the jolting of the horse, but regularly liberated at meal-times and in the evening, at which it always expressed great satisfaction.” The Chickasaw and the Chactaw

Indians, among whom he was travelling, collected about him whenever he stopped, men, women, and children, laughing greatly at his novel companion. Kelinky was the name the Chickasaws called the parrot; but hearing the name of Poll, they immediately adopted it, and through Poll's medium, he and the Indians always became very sociable. “On arriving,” says Wilson, “at Mr. Dunbar's, below Natchez, I procured a cage, and placed it under the piazza, where, by its call, it soon attracted the passing flocks, such is the attachment they have for each other. Numerous parties frequently alighted on the trees immediately above, keeping up a continual conversation with the prisoner. One of these I wounded slightly in the wing, and the pleasure Poll expressed on meeting with this new companion, was really amusing. She crept close up to it, as it hung on the side of the cage; chattered to it in a loud tone of voice, as if sympathising in its misfortunes; scratched about its head and neck with her bill; and both, at night, nestled as close as possible to each other, sometimes Poll's head being thrust among the plumage of the other. On the death of this companion, she appeared restless and inconsolable for several days. On reaching New Orleans, I placed a looking-glass inside the place where she usually sat, and the instant she perceived her image, all her former fondness seemed to return, so that she could scarcely absent herself from it for a moment. It was evident that she was completely deceived, Always when evening drew on, and often during the day, she laid her head close to that of the image in the glass, and began to doze with great composure and satisfaction. In a short time she had learned to know her name; to answer and come when called on; to climb up my clothes, sit on my shoulder, and eat from my mouth. I took her with me to sea, determined to persevere in her education.” And, to give an ending rather different to Mr. Wilson's, here we have presented her to our readers in the possession of an English lady, and with her education, for a Parrot, very complete.

The Gull, notwithstanding the gormandizing, and rather disgusting character given of it by Bewick, figures beautifully in his inimitable wood-cuts; giving the very spirit of wildness and freshness to his sea-side sketches.

The Gull may occasionally be found far inland, domesticated in old-fashioned gardens, where it is an indulged and amusing habitant, feeding on slugs and worms, and becoming thus a useful assistant to the gardener. In this state it seems entirely to throw off its wild native character, and assumes a sort of mock-heroic style, which is often quite ludicrous. We have seen one

strutting about the straight alleys of such a garden, with the most formal, yet conscious air imaginable, glancing first to one side then to the other, evidently aware of your notice, yet pretending to be busied about his own concerns. It was impossible to conceive that this bird, walking “in his dignified way,” upon his two stiff little legs, and so full of self-importance, had ever been a free, wild, winged creature, wheeling about and screaming in the storm, or riding gracefully upon the sunshiny waters. His nature had undergone a land-change; he was transformed into the patron of poodles, and the condescending companion of an old black cat. With these creatures, belonging to the same place, he was on very friendly terms, maintaining, nevertheless, an air of superiority over them, which they permitted, either out of pure good-nature, or because their simplicity was imposed upon. They were all frequently fed from the same plate, but the quadrupeds never presumed to put in their noses till the Gull was satisfied, and to his credit it may be told, that he was not insatiable, although a reasonably voracious bird on ordinary occasions.

We saw last summer, also, a Gull well known to northern tourists, which for twenty years has inhabited one of the inner green-courts at Alnwick Castle, and has outlived two or three companions. It is an interesting bird, of a venerable appearance; but, as it has been described in books, more need not be said of it.

In one of the towers of this same Castle, also, we were shown a pair of perfect bird-skeletons, under a glass shade, the history of which is mysterious. They are the skeletons of a pair of jackdaws, which had built in one of the upper towers of the Castle, and had been found in their present state, apparently nestled together. From the account given us by the porter, an intelligent old man, they appeared not to have been discovered in any confined place, where they might have died from starvation, but by their own tower, on the open roof, as if they had been death-stricken side by side.

The reverence attached to the mandrake may be classed among the very oldest of superstitions, for the Hebrews of the patriarchial ages regarded it as a plant of potent influence. The Greeks, who held it in the same estimation, called it after Circe, their celebrated witch, and also after Atropos, the eldest of the three Fates. The Romans adopted the same opinions respecting it, and Pliny relates the ceremonies which were used in obtaining the root.

In the middle ages, when the traditional superstitions of the antients were grafted upon the popular ignorance, the mandrake was a powerful engine in the hands of the crafty.

It was believed that when the mandrake was taken from the earth, it uttered a dreadful shriek; and that any human being who was presumptuous enough to remove it, was suddenly struck dead. Dogs, therefore, were used for this purpose. The earth was carefully lightened, and the plant fastened to the animal's tail; he was then made to draw it forth, and pay whatever penalty the demon of the plant thought fit to impose upon the disturber of his rest. The pretenders to medical skill in those days made great profit by the little hideous images which they fashioned out of the mandrake root, and sold as charms against every kind of sickness and misfortune. They were brought over from Germany in the reign of Henry the VIII., under the name of Abrunes, and by the help of certain pretended magical words, the knowledge of which the credulous obtained at a great price, were said to increase whatever money was placed near them. It was believed, also, at that time, that the mandrake was produced from the decaying flesh of malefactors hung upon the gibbet, and was to be found only in such situations. Dr. Turner, who

lived in the time of Queen Elizabeth, declares, that he had divers times taken up the roots of the mandrake, but had never found them under the gallows; nor of the form which the pedlars, who sold them in boxes, pretended them to have been. This form was that of an ugly little man, with a long beard hanging down to his feet. Gerard, the herbalist, also, who wrote thirty years later, used many endeavours to convince the world of the impositions practised upon them, and states, that he and his servant frequently dug up the roots without receiving harm, or hearing any shrieks whatever.

The mandrake grows naturally in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the Levant, and it is also indigenous to China. It was introduced into this country about 1564. It is a handsome plant, and would, in particular situations, be ornamental to our gardens, independent of the strange, old associations connected with it, which would always make it an interesting object. I have seen it, however, only in one garden, that of the King of the Belgians at Claremont.

“It is,” says Mr. Phillips, in his pleasant garden

companion, the Flora Historica, from which work the above historical notices of the mandrake have been principally taken, “a species of deadly nightshade, which grows with a long taper root like the parsnip, running three or four feet deep; these roots are frequently forked, which assisted to enable the old quacks to give it the shape of a monster. This plant does not send up a stalk, but, immediately from the crown of the root arises a circle of leaves, which at first stand erect, but when grown to their full size, which is about a foot in length and five inches broad, of an ovate-lanceolate shape, waved at the edges, these spread open and lie on the ground; they are of a dark-green, and give out a fetid smell. About the month of April the flowers come out among the leaves, each on a scape about three inches long; they are of a bell shape with a long tube, and spread out into a five-cleft corolla. The colour of the flower is of an herbaceous white, but frequently has a tinge of purple. The flower is succeeded by a globular soft berry, when full grown, as large as a common cherry, but of a yellowish-green colour, when ripe and full of pulp, intermixed with numerous reniform seeds.”

If any of my readers should wish to cultivate this plant of “old renown,” they should do it by sowing the seed in autumn, soon after it is ripe; as the seed kept till spring seldom produces plants. It should be set in a light, dry soil, and of a good depth, so that the root may not be chilled or obstructed; and care should be taken not to disturb it when it has once obtained a considerable size.

It is so rare a thing now-a-days to see flax grown in any quantity, that my English readers will not feel the full force of the above little poem. The English cottager has not often ground which he can use for this purpose; and, besides, he can purchase calico for the wear of his family at a much cheaper cost than he could grow flax. Nor is the English woman “handy” at such matters. She would think it a great hardship to till, perhaps, the very ground upon which it was grown; to pull it with the help of her children only, and, to her other household cares and occupations, to add those of preparing, spinning, and, it might be, to help even to weave it into good homespun cloth. Seventy or eighty years ago, however, this was not uncommon in England; and it is still common, and in some districts even general in Scotland. Burns alludes to the growth of flax in many of his poems; and, in the “Cottar's Saturday Night,” the mother reckons the age of the cheese from the time of the flax flowering.

The household interest which is taken in the flax-field presented itself strongly to us in many a wild glen, and in many a desolate mountain-side in the Highlands of Scotland, in the summer of

1836. You came, in the midst of those stony and heathy wildernesses, upon a few turf-erections, without windows and without chimneys; the wild grasses of the moor and the heath itself grew often upon the roof, for all had originally been cut from the mountain-side; and, but for the smoke which issued from the door, or the children that played about it, you might have doubted of its being a human dwelling. Miserable, however, as such homes may appear at first sight, they are, as it were, the natural growth of the mountain-moorland, and the eye soon finds in them much that is picturesque and characteristic.

About such places as these are frequently, too, patches of cultivated ground; the one of potatoes, and perhaps oats or barley, the other of flax. Thus grow, at the very door of this humble human tenement, the food and clothing of the family. How essential this growth is to them, may be seen from the nature of the ground. It is frequently the most difficult that can be conceived to bring into cultivation; one mass, as it seems, of stones, with the scantiest intermixture of soil. These stones, many of which are of immense size,

are with infinite toil and patience gathered from the earth, and piled into walls round the little fields, otherwise the mountain sheep, and perhaps the wild roes, would soon lay the whole waste. Here the mother, as well as the father, labours, and indeed the flax seems especially to belong to her, for she must spin it before she can convert it into family use.

In the same way is the household provided with woollen garments; they are all home-spun and home-made, even to many a goodly tartan. The “tarry woo” of Scotland, like the “lint-flower,” is a national thing; the affections, as well as the fire-side-interests of that country are connected with them.

It may be thought that I have here dealt hard measure to the Sparrow, but the character I have given of him will be recognised by those who know him, as true. Cowper calls them, a thievish race, that scared as often as you please,

and that every farmer knows them to be. What multitudes do you see dropping down upon, or rising from the wheat as it is ripening in the fields. Formerly a price was set upon their heads, and eggs by country parishes. In many places a penny was given for a Sparrow's head, and the same for three or four eggs; but this is now done away with, and the farmer must destroy them himself, or pay dearly for it in his corn.

Nothing can exceed the self-complacence of

this bird. You see him build his nest amongst the richest tracery of a church roof or window; within the very coronet or escutcheon set up over the gate of hall or palace. We saw this summer, the hay and litter of his nest hanging out from the richly-cut initial-letters of William and Mary over one of the principal windows of Hampton Court. Nay he would build in a span-new V. R. set up only yesterday, or in the queen's very crown itself though it were worth a kingdom, if it were only conveniently placed for his purpose. He thinks nothing too good for him.

But the most provoking part of his character is, the pleasure which he takes in teasing, molesting and hectoring over birds of the most quiet and inoffensive nature. He builds about your houses, and thinks no other bird has any business to do the same, The martin, which loves to build under the eaves of our dwellings, after crossing the seas from some far country,—has especially to bear his insolence and aggressions. There is a pretty story in the “Evenings at Home,” of two of these interesting birds, who had their nest usurped by a Sparrow, getting

together their fellows, and building him up in the nest, where he was left a prisoner amid his plunder. But the gentleness of the martin is so great, that such an instance of poetical justice is more curious, than likely to occur a second time. But every summer the Sparrow lords it over the martin, and frequently drives it away by its impertinence. We watched his behaviour this year with a good deal of attention. Two pairs of martins came and built their nests beneath the eaves of the stable, near each other. Scarcely were the nests half finished, when several sparrows were seen watching on the tiles close to them, chirping loudly, and conceitedly, and every now and then flying at the martins. The nests, however, were completed; but no sooner was this done, than the sparrows took possession of them, and lined them with coarse hay, which is an abomination to the martin, which lines its nest with the softest feathers, Having witnessed this, we waited for about ten days, by which time we supposed the sparrows would have laid their full number of eggs; and a ladder was set up, in order to inflict just retribution on them, by taking the whole. But to our surprise there were none. The hay was therefore carefully removed, that the martins, if they pleased, might retake possession; but the very next day, the nests were again filled with hay, and long bents of it hung dangling from the entrance-hole. The sparrows had, with wonderful assiduity, and, as it were, with a feeling of vindictive spite, relined the nests with as much hay as they ordinarily carry to their own nests in several days. Now it was supposed they would really lay in these nests, but no such thing,—they never did. Their only object had been to dislodge the martins, for it was found that these very sparrows had nests of their own in the water-spouts of the house, with young ones in them, at the very time, and their purpose of ousting the martins from their own nests being accomplished, the hay remained in the nests quietly all summer.

But this was not all. The poor martins, driven from the stable, came now to the house; and, as if for special protection, began to build their nests under the roof, nearly over the front door. No sooner was this intention discovered by the sparrows, than they were all in arms again. They

were seen watching for hours on the tiles just above, chirping, strutting to and fro, flying down upon the martins when they came to their nests with materials, and loudly calling upon their fellow sparrows to help them to be as offensive as possible. The martins, however, rendered now more determined, persisted in their building, and so far succeeded as to prevent the sparrows getting more than a few bents of hay into their nests when complete. The martins laid their eggs; but for several times successively, the sparrows entered in their absence, and hoisted out all the eggs, which of course fell to the ground and were dashed to pieces. Provoked at this mischievous propensity of the sparrows, we had them now shot at, which had the desired effect. One or two of them were killed, and the rest took the hint, and permitted the martins to hatch and rear their young in peace.