Crops—Potato Slug—Fern Slug—Brackens: How thoroughly to
extirpate them—The Merlin—Falcon and Tringa.
We have
had a full fortnight of magnificent summer weather [August 1875], a
bright sun over-head from morning till night, with brisk breezes, a
hanachd na greine,
following the sun; that is, beginning in the morning at east, and
gradually wearing round pari
passu with
the solar march, till at sunset it is north-west, and so on round and
round the compass day after day, a phenomenon usually attendant upon the
very finest weather in our northern latitudes. Under these circumstances
it will not surprise those who care for such matters to hear that our
hay crop, about which we were in such anxiety, has been secured in
splendid condition, in such condition, indeed, as we can rarely boast of
in the West Highlands. Our meadow hay crop, too, is this year unusually
heavy, and already, in obedience to the adage which teaches that it is
well and wise to make one's hay while the sun shines, we are all busy
getting it cut down and secured, although the old, orthodox season is
not yet for a fortnight to come—about old Lammastide. Oats with us here
are generally a light crop, but it will as such be easier to secure in
good condition than a heavier crop would be, and,;» upon the whole, may
thus turn out quite as profitable. Potatoes are not so heavy haulmed as
usual, but in other respects they promise well, and there is no
appearance of our old enemy the " blight." We hear, however, a good deal
of complaint in some districts on account of the prevalence this year of
yellow shaw, or bar-buidhe as
our Highlanders term it, the work of a small grey slug that attacks the
main-stem shaw just at its point of junction with the soil, and eating
and tunnelling it through and through until the leaves first assume a
yellow and withered appearance, and the whole shaw finally falls down
paralysed, and practically useless and inoperative as to its proper
functions, though not actually rotten or dead, as in the case of the "hlight."
Many such shaws in a field give it an unsightly appearance, but beyond
this there is no great harm done after all, for as the slug seldom
begins its work until the plant is large and well forward, the tubers
underground, though they may he of smaller size than their neighbours
that have escaped the slug's attentions, are yet sound and wholesome
food enough either for man or beast. "We have observed that this
particular slug, or a closely allied species, is also much given to
feeding on the stem of the common fern or bracken, dealing with it just
as it does with the potato shaw, though, to be sure, it finds the fern a
rather harder nut to crack; for the brave bracken, with its firmer
contexture of stem, refuses to bend its head to the ground, no matter
the number or direction of the slug's insidious tunnellings and
perforations. If you glance at a fern clump as you ride along the road
or climb the mountain steep, the yellow, withered fronds of an
occasional plant, here and there painfully conspicuous amid the rich,
dark, emerald green of its healthy companions, tell you where the grey
slug—and a nasty, slimy little wretch it is—is busy at its evil work,
drinking up, like consumption among the human race, the very heart's
blood, so to speak, of the fairest and finest plants it can find. "We
have found in our own experience that the best protection of the potato
from its ravages is to give the ground a sprinkling of lime just as the
plants are appearing above ground, about the end of April or beginning
of May. For the early varieties usually planted in our gardens, a
sprinkling of soot is less unsightly and equally efficacious with lime.
And speaking of the bracken, let us observe that, while
it is a magnificent and beautiful plant, it is, like everything else of
beauty, most beautiful in its proper place. Meet it on mountain slope,
in copsewood covert, or greenwood glade, and you cannot admire it
sufficiently. In the end of autumn, particularly when its graceful
fronds have assumed a certain indescribable tinge of mingled brown and
ruby and gold, a bracken covert is beyond measure lovely. At such a
stage, and in the warm and mellow light of the setting September sun, it
is to ourselves all that an ocean of broom in flower was to the great
Linnaeus. If, however, you live in the near neighbourhood of brackens,
you will find that it is apt to creep down from its proper wild and
upland habitat, and to encroach unduly upon your old grass lands,
wherever it can get an undisturbed footing. If you consult books on the
subject,- they will tell you that if you cut them down for a season or
two running before they ripen, they will die away and disappear. "With
our large, soft-stemmed herbaceous plants, this method of eradication is
sometimes effectual enough; with the bracken, as we know to our cost, it
avails nothing. The roots are so curiously ramified and intertwined that
they will live on and put forth a new growth year after year, no matter
how constantly and closely you cut' and crop them. We gave up trying a
plan so futile, and only hit upon the right way of dealing with them by
the merest accident. Walking along the edge of one of our old grass
parks about mid-June some few years ago, we wished to get hold of a
switch or something similar, wherewith to drive a fractious pony on
before us to the park gate. There was no switch just then at hand, and,
without thinking of it, we bent down, and with both hands pulled
steadily and straight upwards at one of the largest of a luxuriant
bracken patch that skirted the path beside us. To our surprise the plant
came up easily and from the very root, or we should rather say with the
very root attached, long, dark-brown, and something cigarlike in shape
and size. That particular plant, a slight examination satisfied us, was
fairly or literally and for ever eradicated,
extirpated. When
you get hold of plant and root, you get all; no other plant can grow in
its stead; no plant, at all events, can honestly call it progenitor.
The thing now was clear; we knew what we had to do, and how simple it
was ! One afternoon soon afterwards we called all our people into that
field along with us. In all such cases hest lead yourself, if you would
have the thing done right. We pulled a bracken or two straight up and
steadily in their presence, and showed them how it was extracted, even
as a practised dentist, "deacon of his craft," deals with an offending
tooth—root and all complete. They then set to work along with us, and in
an hour or so we had the whole field cleared of ferns—quite a large
cart-load of them—each plant with its black root attached, all of which
were afterwards found useful as bedding for the pony, and the largest
and least broken for thatch. In that field no brackens have since shown
themselves. So, if you are troubled with ferns, the proper way is not to
cut them down, for they will grow again, but to deal with them as we
did, and they will trouble you no more. There is some trouble about it,
no doubt, though far less than you would suppose, and then, you see, we
really know nothing at this moment worth the having to be had without trouble;
so take the trouble and the good together, and be wise.
In your sea-shore wanderings, good reader, you must many
a time and oft have witnessed the graceful flight of the tern or
sea-swallow, the handsomest bird, perhaps, that ever saw its own image
reflected in the glassy surface of a waveless sea; and you must have
noticed its sudden dart and dip, now and again, after its prey into the
bosom of the green, unbroken waves. This, of course, you have seen and
admired a thousand times. But have you ever seen the merlin or merlin
falcon (Falco
cesalon), perform
the same feat? No! Well, we did a few evenings ago; albeit the momentary
immersion in the briny blue was probably, nay certainly, what the merlin
would have avoided if it could. It happened in this wise: "We were
engaged on the beach painting our boat—there are few things but we can
put our hand to with more or less success, always barring shooting, of
our deficiency in which we recently made full and honest confession—when
we suddenly heard that curious and indescribable half-scream,
half-cheep, so well-known to the ornithologist, and which tells him so
plainly that the utterer is a bird—usually a small bird—in dire
distress, in constant fear and danger of its life. Looking round, we saw
a merlin in hot chase of a sandpiper (Tringa
hypoleueus), pursuer
and pursued circling and wheeling in their arrow-like flight over the
bent some hundred yards from the margin of the sea. Were it not for the
manifest distress of the poor sandpiper, evidenced by its frequent
scream, as if invoking all the kindly powers of heaven and earth to its
aid, we should have considered it a most beautiful and interesting
sight. The merlin was evidently hungry and in earnest, and we made no
doubt at all, for there was no possible way that we could aid it, that
the sandpiper was distined to be the fiery little falcon's evening meal.
But Dus
aliter visum—the
gods had otherwise ordered it. All of a sudden it seemed to occur to the Tringa that
if there was the slightest chance of escape for it, it must be in closer
relationship with its favourite and familiar element, the sea; and to
the sea accordingly in one rapid dart the poor bird betook itself. The
merlin, as if aware that there was now at least a possibility that its
prey might after all escape its clutches, made a magnificent dash after,
and just as the sandpiper was over the sea, reached it, and pounced to
strike, but missed; by the smallest fraction of a single second, a sharp
zig-zag in the Tonga's flight
kept it clear of the stroke, and the merlin, by the force and impetus of
its flight, plunged head over ears into the sea, whence, with draggled
plumage and brine-blinded eyes, it arose with difficulty, and betook
itself to a rock ledge at hand to preen and dry itself, with no other
consolation in its disappointment, probably, than a sotto
voce merlin-wise
muttering of the adage, " Better luck next time." The sandpiper, it is
needless to say, was soon a mile away, winging its terrified flight to
the opposite Appin shore. "We were glad that the sandpiper had escaped,
that the merlin was disappointed. It is always pleasant to see an
evil-doer baulked in the accomplishment of his evil intentions. And yet
we don't know either. We have called the merlin an evil-doer: are we
entitled so to call him. Was he not as much entitled, could he have
secured it, to have that Tringa for his evening
meal, as we the delicious red rock cod that in an hour or two afterwards
we enjoyed so heartily to our own supper? Let the reader think it over,
and answer the question to himself at his leisure. |