The Romance of Plant Life

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 carried76 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.77 By this time of course the sand has accumulated farther out to sea and the same process is going on there.

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.