Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/The rural vermin question
THE RURAL VERMIN QUESTION.
The perturbation of the public mind this autumn about vermin is as great as reasonable men and experienced farmers and gardeners anticipated. For some years past, and above all in the last year or two, farmers and gardeners, rural parsons and squires and their ladies, have been exerting themselves to avenge their own cause on a detested enemy, and to right the wrongs that they conceive themselves to be sustaining at the hand of Nature. These gentry and farmers do not approve of the system they were born into, by which the various orders of organised beings become food for each other, in so curious a proportion that, if not interfered with, the balance of those orders is preserved, and the earth is allowed to yield her increase with a general regularity which is not likely to be improved by human meddling. Like the country gentry and farmers of France, some of our village potentates have been trying to get rid of a good many of the birds of the air, because birds eat grains and fruits, as well as animal food: and if the experiment should be allowed to go on as long as it has done in France, we shall see the same consequences. We shall see wide tracts of once-fertile land lying waste, and certain crops actually driven out of cultivation by the ravages of the insects which the birds would have kept in check, if they had been allowed to live.
I am glad to see so much stir as there has been this autumn, because it is well that unreasonableness, as well as sense and experience, should be brought to the light. By means of a complete collection of complaints we may learn what is being supposed to be going wrong, and what is demanded as a right and proper state of things. Thus far, the argument seems to be something of this sort:—
There has been a prodigious advance in the cultivation of the soil, in fields and gardens; and there has been a no less striking improvement in rural economy. All field crops are more plentiful than they were in our fathers’ days; and most of them are of a finer quality. Fruits are more rich and various; flowers are rarer and more precious. All are more costly in their production; and it is of far greater consequence than formerly how much of each yield is sacrificed to accidents. When these improvements began to be interesting and important, it was natural for the improvers to quarrel with any intruders on their property, and to wage war with any creatures which seemed to be destroying what was of so much value. Between the speculators in tillage and the preservers of game several orders of “vermin,” winged or quadruped, were hunted almost out of existence: and we see the inevitable consequence in the discontents of this autumn. Where birds have been persecuted, on account of their depredations on fruit and seeds, the plague of grubs, slugs, and caterpillars is spreading as it has spread in France; and yet the cry is growing fiercer for the destruction of more birds, because grubs and slugs prevail even where they are, while they not the less demolish the fruit. If this last allegation were generally true, it would be evident that the balance of orders in the country generally was really destroyed, and that we might expect national misfortune from insect pests, as Sultans and Pashas in the East do when the clatter of locusts is heard in the breeze. We need not yet, however, make up our minds to the worst. If we can see what it is reasonable to think and to do, we may cheer up as the Eastern ruler never does or can when the locusts are darkening the air,—a veritable cloud of doom.
How was it in our fathers’ days? To the best of my recollection there was, in my youth, as much worry from vermin as now, though perhaps there was not such extensive ravage. Kites and owls and rooks were nailed up on barn-doors: foxes spoiled young broods, and caused many tears among children who wept sore for their pet chicks. Farmers called rooks “black rascals,” and hired bird-boys to scare them from the fields. The squires’ keepers were always provoking village wives, and maid-servants, and school-girls by shooting cats; and the whole neighbourhood complained of the consequent plague of mice. In the kitchen garden, “the worm” was a sad pest in the carrot bed. I used to see gooseberry bushes as bare as any I see now, both as to leaves and fruit; and there was plenty of swearing at the birds in the cherry trees, and the wasps among the apricots. Yet there was no such complaint, as far as I remember, as we hear this autumn of total devastation in the fruit garden. However freely the birds might help themselves, they always left enough for us. I remember no raspberry avenue which yielded, in a favourable season, only two quarts to the household; nor any well-established pear orchard which did not yield bushels, however spitefully the blackbirds might be spoken of which had attacked the sunny side of the very finest pears of the crop. It seems to me that the rude plenty of rural life in former days made the evil less conspicuous than it is now. Three times as much as was wanted was grown of everything; and fruit and flowers were of simpler kinds, and had less cost and care bestowed on them than now. The mice ate the crocus roots as they do now; but there were whole beds of crocuses. Rosebuds were cankered; but they were cut off, and ten times the number crowded into their place. There was an anxious look-out for the rat-catcher when his time was coming round; for not only were the vermin a great vexation in the barn, but the gamekeeper looked vicious at the farmer’s terrier, and he would be shooting the dog and taking charge of the rats, if the clearance was not made presently. It used to be said that the rat-catcher came back in the night, to return two or three rats to the stack or the barn: but this would not have mattered much if the hawks and owls had been allowed to deal with the remnant. As yet, however, one seldom mounted the hills without seeing hawks swooping down, or went through an old wood at night without hearing the owl in some ivied tree, or seeing it flying slowly over the dusky meadows. Now there are whole districts where the hawk, or the owl, is rarely seen or heard: and I can answer for it that in some such places one now hears endless complaints of rats in the drains and poultry-yards, and of mice among the garden beds and in the dairies and cheese-rooms.
The other day our rural policeman came up to my house, with a friendly offer to make a clearance of all the small birds. He would net the ivy, on all sides of the house in turn, and let no little bird escape. He had done this for many gentlemen round about: and he would be very happy to do it for me. He was a good deal surprised when I told him that I could not afford any such proceeding, even if I disliked the birds in the ivy. We have quite trouble enough as it is with the slugs among the cabbages, and the caterpillars among the broccoli and on the gooseberry bushes; and with the wireworm among the seedlings: and we might give up gardening altogether if we took away the only check on insects that we have. Our civil constable may have seen the sparrows regaling themselves at the fowls’ breakfast and supper pans, or swarming out from among the pea-sticks: but it answers better to let them have a handful of Indian meal now and then, and half my early peas, than to turn my garden into such an insect preserve as some that could be shown in the kind policeman’s neighbourhood.
It is no argument for destroying the birds that they do not rid us of the worse enemy. We know, by abundant evidence, that the small birds which most frequent our gardens and dwellings do dispose of an infinite number of caterpillars, grubs, flies, and worms in feeding their young as well as themselves. That there are still more than they can dispose of is no wonder, considering the destruction of birds which has been going on now, faster and faster, more and more spitefully, for years past. It should be remembered that the insect increase goes on at an accelerated rate after the natural check is once impaired. The escaped prey of one pair of finches or sparrows or robins will not only grow up to spoil half-a-dozen vegetables, but will bring forth a progeny which will ruin scores of plants, and leave enough heirs to run through the property of hundreds more. While, therefore, I have wireworms, slugs, larvæ of mischievous moths, &c., in my garden, I shall let the birds try what they can do with the mischief which I certainly cannot manage in any clumsy human method. The thrush which is constant to a corner near my south bedroom window shall not be turned out. The swallows may go on fluttering in and out, under the eaves; the chaffinches shall flit from tree to terrace wall and back again, and come to parade a wisp of dry grass or a fragment of moss at my window, on the way to the nest; and even the prosaic sparrow shall have his green peas and meal pudding (because I cannot prevent it) for the sake of the animal diet which was his first course in life.
The case of the farmer and his fields is a far more serious one than that of any gardeners but nurserymen and market-gardeners. We grow grave when we approach this part of the subject; for there have been fields this season, rich and full of promise at one time, and then as bare and stony as any bit of chalk-down after paring and burning. There is something really fearful in what most of us have read, and some of us have seen, of the way in which a certain order of farmers go to work to make their crops grow.
When barley is to be sown, it is probably just at the time when there should be young broods in the rookeries, and in trees and hedges and old walls all round about. The old rooks follow the sowers, and are busy in the fresh-moved soil; the farmer concludes they are gobbling up his grain, and he calls them names, and sets a boy to scare them off, or a man to blaze away at them in most vindictive style. The effect of this is to amuse the man, or put wages into the boy’s pocket, in the first place; and in the next to afford a halcyon existence to a million or more of unpleasant creatures who are hiding an inch below the soil. The farmer is favouring everybody but himself and his best friends, the rooks. He prevents the parents of the wire-worm from being disturbed, and is sowing the future subsistence of their children. His neighbour, who is sowing turnips or rape, behaves in the same way to the rooks, and gives subsistence in the same generous method to countless hosts of caterpillars. By the time the turnips are four or five inches high, and the rape four or five times as tall, the myriads which he has made happy will come forth in their might, under the stars, and feast at such a rate that the sound thereof will be as a shower of steady rain. If anything in the form of a census should be proposed, these beneficiaries of the farmer will be found inhabiting his field to the amount of fifty per square foot, at the depth of two inches. The favour of the farmer to these children of the Dart-moth is, however, short-lived. When he sees his turnip-field as bare as the public road, and his rape crop disappearing row by row from night to night, he perceives that something must be done. It is too late now to recall the rooks—besides that he is fully persuaded that they were after the seed and not the grubs. He must send for the boy who scared away the rooks, and this boy must bring others, and they must be paid so much per pint for the caterpillars which the rooks would have disposed of if the boy had not been paid so much per hour for driving them away from that excellent work.
This is no fancy picture. These very caterpillars have utterly destroyed acres upon acres of mangels and of carrots this very season: and one year they nearly starved the Germans. The Germans know how to lament aloud; and it is wonderful that their wail over their plague of caterpillars did not put us so far on our guard as to prevent our driving our rooks away from such a prey. There is another resource,—in some places. Where the peewit has been allowed to live it can stay this plague. It has stopped it in Dorsetshire, where the case would soon have been desperate. But we have so few peewits left! And that is the way in which we are met by discouragement when trying to deal with difficulties in which the birds might have helped us if we would have let them.
The farmer who still believes the rook to be his worst enemy, remarks that whatever else the caterpillar or wireworm or slug may do, they cannot root up, or throw over on its side a single root of mangel; whereas he sees with his own eyes that rooks have done it in a score of cases in a single row.—The fact is undeniable: but what makes the rooks take that trouble about a plant which they are not going to eat? The farmer thinks this is no business of his: but there he is wrong; for the rooks’ reason is the very point of the case. The reason is always the same:—viz., one or more grubs nestled in the root of the plant. The plants so infested are doomed; and the birds which root them up to get at the grubs are doing the work which no other creature could do, and saving the rest of the crop.
It is a piteous sight when the reward these grubbers meet with is being fed with poisoned grain. It is piteous to see them unable to fly, tumbling from the tree, or quivering in agony on the grass. The same thing can no longer be done by the same means; for the Act of last session, prohibiting the administration of poisoned grain, is already in force. But there are few signs that the real preservers of our country from the most vexatious and mortifying kind of dearth are likely at present to be either respected or made use of as they ought to be. The rooks are among the best friends of all who live by bread; yet we may meet with farmers in every agricultural county who curse the “black rascals,” and look sour on everybody who is unwilling to part with the village rookery, while they have not a word to say against the pheasants which half live on their grain; nor even against the hares which eat lanes through their young wheat, or make whole roods of the soil as bare as the caterpillars make the turnip-field.
“What, then, is to be done?” despondent gardeners, and even farmers, will ask. “Are we to go on letting our produce be devoured before our eyes by creatures which cannot appreciate it? Must wasps feed on the sunny side of a peach when sugar and water would suit them as well? Must mice eat out the heart of rare bulbs, brought over the sea at great cost, when an onion or a bit of cheese would answer all the purpose? Must birds nip off fruit buds in our orchards? and the insects bite off the stalks of the grain in our fields? and the rodents make holes for decay in twenty times as many turnips or mangels as they can eat? If so, we may as well yield up the battle, and surrender to the wild animals of all sorts and sizes the dominion over us.”
Why, no! I should not advise that: and I do not propose to make any such surrender myself. To me the case looks like this:—
Here we are entering upon, or we have fairly entered upon, a new system of agricultural and horticultural economy. We grow better produce, and more of it on a certain area, at a much greater primary cost. The condition of profit under the new methods is that waste should be prevented,—waste of time, labour, land and money alike. Waste by vermin must be guarded against, with other kinds of waste: and the more valuable our produce the more it is worth our while to take pains to guard our plants and fruits from their natural enemies. If we do not choose, like our fathers, to leave a large margin for accidents,—meaning vermin,—we must take some pains to protect what we do not intend to give away. If the salvage is not worth the cost and trouble of the protection, we should either not attempt the production, or not grumble when it does not answer. The silliest thing of all to do is to exterminate birds which rid us of many hundreds of insects per nest per day, in the breeding season, because the birds pay themselves afterwards a small commission on their services.
It is well to make sure in the first place how any particular mischief gets done. We have seen how farmers have been apt to charge the rooks with the offences of the grubs. In the same way we gardeners are apt to blame the birds for what the ants have done. The case made clear, we must execute judgment ourselves. The army of caterpillars was disposed of by a trench being cut across their mighty path, in which they were destroyed by sulphuric acid and water when trapped. It is not difficult to destroy ants’ nests and runs by boiling water. Rat runs and mouse holes can be got at, and strychnine, on bread and butter, may be safely laid in underground runs, though it is too dangerous to be used aboveground without the strictest personal care. There are many resources against insect pests, soot, lime, tobacco-water, and smoke, and various compounds sold for the purpose; and we may well devote some time and pains to these methods, though satisfied that the shortest way to the end is to protect the birds. The plague of caterpillars on gooseberry bushes is one that we hear most of now. Why not take the small trouble of sprinkling the branches thickly with dust from the road? Why not pare off the soil under the bushes in January, to the depth of two or three inches, and burn it, and if the pest reappears, be ready with your dust? We must be contented to help the birds for a time in a task which we have made too heavy for them. In the neighbourhood of all sparrow-clubs there will long be more pests than the remnant of the bird race can deal with. We must give our ducks their share of the business. Mine keep the garden comparatively clear of slugs, when the neighbours cannot raise a lettuce or a cauliflower. It is true that ducks cannot be trusted near a strawberry bed; and it is wonderful how high they can make their bills reach at bob-cherry, or to pluck currants and gooseberries. They twitch at young cabbage plants too in a mischievous way, and make their mark in a track of torn leaves; but they may do a great deal of good work before the fruit is ripe, and the young cabbages are pricked out.
Are not the strawberry-beds, so mourned over by newspaper correspondents, worth netting over? They do not, in ordinary gardens, occupy much space: and if a stout netting, or one of galvanised wire, which will last a lifetime, is put up at some height above the fruit,—the sides being closed in,—the fruit cannot be reached by the birds. There is no difficulty in removing any portion when the fruit is to be gathered. It is for the owner to consider whether the yearly crop is worth the original cost of the guard. If it is not, it looks rather like trifling to abuse the birds so vehemently. For currants or gooseberries, the choice is between netting the bushes and having an extra number of them, as our fathers had. We can at the same time try if any effect ensues from hanging up floating white threads, or dangling red rags. Wall fruit, from cherries, pears, and apples, down to the choicest of the stone fruits, and grapes, are surely worth netting,—a netting in such a way as to keep the birds at a sufficient distance,—by projection at the top or a slope to the bottom.
There is a resource of indulgence, it must be remembered, as well as of prohibition. Are there not fruits that we may give the birds to eat, without sacrificing our own dessert? How many hollies have the grumblers in their gardens? Do they know the pleasure of having a fine holly or two near the windows, not only to shine and glow in the winter sun, but to serve as the gayest of aviaries. Does not this winter feast suggest the device of berries for almost the year round? A plentiful provision of laurel, and Portugal laurel berries will save just so much of what we call fruit.
The farmers’ case is infinitely worse than the gardeners’, because they had so much more extensive an interest in the life of the birds which have been destroyed. The best course for the farmers now seems to be, first to look across to the Antipodes, and see what sums English colonists are paying there for pairs and dozens of those very birds which are got rid of here by bribing people to kill them. The appearance of caterpillars there has raised a cry for birds, to be carefully and expensively conveyed over sea, and liberally paid for. While I write, an Australian newspaper arrives, bringing an account of eager purchases of small birds imported from England. A couple of blackbirds sold for 3l. 8s.; and a single sparrow—the survivor of a lot of a hundred—actually fetched eleven shillings. If the members of our sparrow-clubs stare and laugh at the news, it does not follow that they have the best of the argument. The colonial farmers have, in fact, a keener faculty for recognising their best friends than those they have left behind. Next, the farmers will be wise to refuse any slaughter of small birds on their premises; and if they will moreover use all their influence to get the sparrow-clubs in their districts broken up, they will deserve good crops within their own fences, and a good name in their parishes. Those of them are the best citizens, and the best farmers, who, cœteris paribus, work most effectually towards the restoration of every depressed or exiled family of birds which used to have its natural home in the district. Whatever creatures are or are not to be called vermin, birds certainly are not.
A printed sheet has been lately put forth which calls attention to the truth that even vermin may as well be treated mercifully in the last dealings of man with them. In the Gardeners’ Chronicle the familiar and honoured signature, “C. D.,” is affixed to the “appeal” on behalf of an easy death for wild creatures who must be caught by trapping. The sheet before me, containing this communication, has another support to its appeal,—a woodcut of the common steel trap used for catching “vermin.” The grip of the teeth is made close enough to detain a stoat, or a magpie, or other small animal; and what it must inflict on a rabbit or a cat it is painful to consider. While the keeper is enjoying his final sleep in the winter morning, the cat or the rabbit is quivering and crying with agony, from its limb being utterly crushed in the trap; and we are assured that the victims are left there sometimes for a day or two, when the keeper happens to be inconsiderate. “J.B.” confirms, in the Gardeners’ Chronicle, the statements of “C.D.,” and adds that in the Southern counties, where rabbits superabound, trappers are busy from November to February, each man being reckoned to have work enough in the charge of three dozen traps. Thus there are every morning, during those months, thousands of tortured animals writhing in traps, which seem to be made for the infliction of the greatest amount of pain. Whatever the gamekeepers may say, it is not conceivable that country gentlemen and farmers should suppose that such agony is a necessary condition of the preservation of either game or field crops. It must lie far within the mechanical ability of the day to devise a snare which shall detain animals, of one size and kind or of several, without crushing limbs. To encage on the one hand, or kill on the other, must be practicable; and we must beg and pray of both the patrons and the enemies of vermin that the means may be devised at once.