Part 21

A dry summer is bad for swedes--among other things. Many grow disfigured by wart-like excrescences about the size of a pea. Therein lurk grubs, as partridges and pheasants know. They chip off the warts, and one may see the rusty-looking hole in the centre of each one whence the grub has been taken. All round the swedes these detached warts may be seen, lying face uppermost, and proving the usefulness of game-birds, particularly partridges.

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Life of the Cornfield

All through the year the cornfield gives food and shelter to a host unnumbered--from seed-time to harvest, in the days of stubble and of fallow. To all manner of creatures in fur and feather, insects as the grain in number, grubs below ground, butterflies above, to rank weeds and flowers, the cornfield gives more freely than it yields bread to man. Seagulls come from the coast. Peewits make the field their home in the spring. There are congregations of sparrows and finches. Hosts of starlings that go to roost in the reeds. Wood-pigeons stuff their crops to bursting; turtle-doves come and go. Yellow-hammers sing in the hedges through the midsummer days. The corn-crake runs swiftly through the stems where the partridge has her young brood. Rooks follow the plough, with wagtails that run and dart over the furrows as if gliding on ice. Overhead are larks; and the corn-bunting flies heavily from field to field, his legs trailing as if broken. And birds of prey take their toll of the feeding multitudes. All through the year animal life finds sanctuary in the cornfield. Underground are the moles; the harvest mouse weaves its nest in the corn-stems; the rabbit makes a stop in the field near the hedge, and eats the green blades. To the ripening corn the fox brings her cubs to play. In the ditches are hedgehogs; everywhere are rats, mice, and shrew-mice. The hare follows secret paths, and there are stoats and weasels seeking prey, and finding it on every side. But nowadays there is little or no work for our mills, as wheat-field after wheat-field is turned into grass. The miller is only one among ten thousand sufferers.

The days spent in the cornfield must pass pleasantly for the little foxes in a fine summer. In cornfields, unlike hayfields, there is room between the stems for free movement, there is some chance to look about, there is air and light, cover and shade. Corn-stems are firm and dry, but grass-stems hold the soaking moisture of rain and dew, which saturates the skin even through fur and feather, and quite beyond the remedy of dog-like shakings. Wheat, as we have said, is the corn most favoured of all creatures--where not planted too thickly, and growing on ground not over clean, but dotted plentifully with bunches of knapweed, thistles, and bindweed, and intersected by furrows where the corn has grown poorly, and with open spaces bare to the wind and sun. Winged game, in case prompt flight is necessary, find it easier to start up into the air through the straight, stiff ears of wheat than through the ears of oats and barley. Barley that shares the ground with a rank plant of grass-seeds finds small favour among those many creatures that forsake the airless woods in summer.

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The Keeper's Hopes

Numbers of hares live all the summer in the cornfields. But while many rabbits are born in the corn, when there is a wood at hand most of them retire by day, returning to the corn to feed at night. No rabbit, in sleekness of fur, is comparable to the rabbit that has lived for a few fine weeks among the corn-stems, for the constant brushing of the stems grooms his coat to a state of wonderful fineness. At any moment rabbits in the corn may meet death from the teeth of stoats or weasels; which in turn run a risk, if a slight one, from the fox's teeth; there are plenty of mole-runs into which they may dive in times of danger. In dry weather, the hedgehogs leave the ditches for the corn; and the cornfield, in real summer weather, when there are no foxes about, is a paradise for pheasants and partridges. The gamekeeper, whatever the weather, clings to the faith that the corn hides most of his birds from his sight. There is comfort in the thought that if the birds live he will see them, but if they are killed, nothing will ever tell him the story of his losses.

Man ploughs and sows, but for every man who eats the bread of the fields a million other mouths have been fed. There is no such perfect sanctuary to wild life as a field of corn. What the corn hides nobody knows; though many would gladly know, and seek eagerly to find. The gamekeeper guesses shrewdly what the corn may hide; later he will find what has been hidden, and it is as well for his peace of mind that he can only speculate, at this season, on the game in the field, for he is powerless to interfere. The community of the cornfield is almost safe from man, while the corn stands. If any creature moves in the corn, the stems, bowing to the breeze, cover its progress.

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Finding the Fox

Many a fox family spends the entire summer in the cornfield, and no man is the wiser; but if any should discover the secret, it will be the gamekeeper. Only a giant could see, from the ground, the spot where, in a level cornfield, a family of cubs is taking shelter; the keeper's plan is to climb into a tree, so that his eyes may sweep over acre upon acre at a glance, and spy out the foxes. Even if the nearest tree be a mile or more distant from the playground and refectory of the cubs, his trusty "spy-glass" will reveal the secret--and while he keeps his place in the look-out tree he may signal to a companion, and point the way to the family's eviction. From the top of a tree on the edge of a wood we have found the secret place of a vixen in a field of rank rye; and when we came to the spot, where a large patch of the rye had been rolled flat, we could have filled a wheelbarrow with the remains of partridges, pheasants, rabbits, and hares.

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Harvest Sport

With the harvest comes the great sporting festival of the countryman, in whom alone survives the instinct to hunt for food--though the days have gone when every man killed his own game. This sport of the harvest-field is the countryman's by custom, courtesy, tolerance, favour, and not by law. It is sport for the sake of food, and not for the sake of sport. The quarry is rabbit. Only two people have a real right to rabbits, and that a concurrent right--the farmer in occupation of the land, and the holder for the time being of the sporting rights. But during the cutting of the corn few farmers or sportsmen deny their local workers the privilege and pleasure of catching rabbits. Where permission is withheld it is usually by a small farmer, who looks to the rabbits to help with the rent. The keeper is the last to make objection to the catching of the rabbits, provided that the hares and the winged game are not only spared, but given a chance to escape. He even finds it a profitable policy to help catch the rabbits, and hand over what he catches to be shared out to those who have failed in the scurry and scramble of the sport. If there is any rule or custom about possession of the spoil it is that he who kills a rabbit keeps it. This may be a good rule for those who are lucky--those whose work brings them into each field as it is cut, who excel with stick and stone, or are better runners than their fellows. But it is a bad rule for those who are unlucky; while a carter who sits on a binder from daylight to dark for a month has perhaps the best chance, another who must spend his time drilling turnips, or ploughing a distant field, will never so much as see a rabbit.

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The Luck of the Game

The self-binder has favoured the chance of escape for those rabbits that camp out in the corn. In these days of neatly tied sheaves the rabbit that makes a dash, with a little dodging and jumping, may find a fair course, and can see ahead; and it is almost impossible to run down a rabbit that sets its face from the corn to some other known shelter, unless the distance is very great. In olden days, when the corn was not tied as it was cut, but was thrown out loosely by the rakes of the reaper, then the chances of escape were all against the rabbit. He could not run through the corn, or jump over it, nor could he even see where he was going. All that the harvester had to do was to hurl himself on the corn where he suspected the rabbit to lurk, and pin it down. Sometimes, while he was feeling for the rabbit, it would bolt unseen through his legs, to fall an easy prey to another harvester, perhaps some fat old dame who had never been known to run. The sport is full of luck. A man may run until he and the rabbit are at the point of exhaustion; the man falls, but the rabbit struggles on for a yard or two farther, and another catches the prize. We have known a man, in falling exhausted, to actually fall on the rabbit he was chasing. Once let a rabbit get clear away from the standing corn, the speediest runner can do no more than keep an eye on its bobbing tail during the first hundred yards of its dash for freedom. But by ruthlessly following the tail, in a large field a man may walk it down; for a rabbit will soon run itself to a standstill, or in despair will creep to hide beneath the cut corn. The rabbit is faint-hearted; if he once loses his bearings, he loses his senses also; but it is surprising with what perseverance he will run when he can see a haven of safety ahead.

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Rabbit-Catchers' Craft

The man of experience, who knows his rabbits, does not unduly exert himself. Taking things calmly, he may catch more rabbits than others who are better runners but more excitable. He knows that the great thing is to stand still, rather waiting for the rabbits to come to him than going after them. As a binder works round a field, he moves quietly in the opposite way; then, catching sight of a rabbit crouching beneath a piece of knapweed, some tangled bindweed, or a thistle, his upraised stick falls with certain aim, and instantly he puts into force the rustic law of possession. Or, moving quietly along, he will hold in his right hand a heavy stone, while several others are held in the other hand behind his back; when he sees a rabbit far within the corn, his stones fly with crushing force, and the rabbit's day is done. Sometimes towards the finish of the cutting he will take up his position far from the frenzied throng around the binder, at some quiet spot at the edge of the haven wood; here, watching the rabbits that have escaped the sticks and stones of the main body, he tries to turn them as they run the last few yards of their course. If he succeeds, the rabbit, already worn by a long run, makes a last desperate spurt, but can go no more than a few score yards. Should the rabbit run past him, its course unchecked by his frantic yells and flourishes, he troubles himself no further, and saves his breath.

Among the Corn

It is when the binder is going on its last few rounds and only a small patch of corn is left standing in the middle of the field that excitement reaches its height. Hitherto no one has been allowed to enter the standing corn; but now all sense of decency and restriction is thrown to the winds, and the end is simply a mad scramble for the rabbits that lurk to the last moment. Sharp eyes have followed the movements of the rabbits by the slight swaying to and fro of the ears of the corn; but now the corn is alive with rabbits, and among them are hurled the frenzied bodies of men, women, and children, who hit wildly and blindly with their sticks. Sticks and stones rain on rabbits, corn, and men. And on the edge of the fray stands the quiet figure of the man who will not exert himself, who watches for the few rabbits who come alive from the corn. One other quiet and calm figure is in the heart of the turmoil--the gamekeeper, who bestirs himself only in the interests of game. With ever-watchful eye and warning voice he sternly represses those who, overcome by the lust of killing, would recklessly slaughter, besides rabbits, the young pheasants or the crouching leverets. Great is the relief of the keeper when the last corn is cut and the harvest festival of the countryman is over for the year.

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The Last to Leave

This free and easy sport which the cutting of the corn provides for a mixed and excited crowd makes a scene very familiar in any English countryside. The driver of the binder, as he is carried round and round the cornfield, in ever-narrowing circles, gains a good view of the rabbits and the game, stealing about in their fear; and now and again he may be observed to dismount to club a rabbit with his whip-handle. On farms where the rabbits are considered the natural rights of the harvesters, old hands grow very cunning at making the most of their chance when the last few yards of standing corn remain to be cut, and the rabbits, with which the little strip of cover is seething, at last bolt out, to be fallen upon by the men in waiting, and to be slain as fast as sticks can rain blows. Rabbits remain in their sanctuary of corn long after the fox has stolen away, and the pheasants, rats, stoats, and weasels have followed after.

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In the Woods