The Worm Forgives the Plough

by John Stewart Collis

  All the plants already mentioned use exterior means for locomotion. But there is one plant which is a pedestrian – the Loranthus. It actually uses its radicle, not as a root, or not wholly so, but as a prop, a leg, a pedestal by which it levers itself to another place. And there are plants which, anticipating the gun and the bomb, explode when ripe. The Squirting Cucumber goes off with a bang if you touch it, throwing out its seeds as far as seven yards – while some of these plant-catapults can fire their shot about twenty yards. But let us not forget our well-known, well-loved, common trees. The twiddling sheath of the Ash rotates sideways to the ground at a reasonable distance from the parent. And no sight in the world is more compelling than a Sycamore seed horsed on the gale, a pair of wings without a bird, a propeller without an aeroplane.

  Finally, one last important means by which our island would be fed with seeds – namely by Man himself. When he comes to it he will carry all sorts of seeds attached precariously to the objects of his commercial activity, while he will also bring others deliberately in the pursuit of agriculture.

  And so – looking at our island now, with its rich vegetation and smiling fields, what a change is there since we first saw it! Washed by the waves, conducted by the wind, piloted by the birds, seeds have been delivered from all points of the compass. And, having come, they have again charged the wind and the birds to carry on the work of dispersal. They have used the ice and the rivers and the floods. They have enlisted in their service the beasts and the insects and the fishes. They have enrolled mankind to speed their empire and spread their story.3

  10 The Turning of the Wheel

  The painter has a start on the writer in dealing with landscape and fieldscape. He can frame his picture, isolate it, and hang it in front of our eyes so that we have to look at it. But the painter can only show us the static picture, he cannot present the seasonal unfolding, the turning of the Wheel. This is where the pen comes in. Painting exists only in space, music only in time: literature commands both time and space.

  The harvest is nearly gathered in. I have been passing in review the developing spectacle since March. Beginning with wheat in March, what do we see? The refreshing sight of a brown cultivated field. In April a gleaming green comes on it. There is little to be seen from close quarters; but from a distance, in the morning and the evening sun slanting as it comes and as it goes, that green gleam is like a light, giving rather than receiving rays. This is our second vision, perhaps the best. In May where are we? That illuminated carpet has gone, and a forest of stalks, small pillars of a darker green, have arisen, each culminating in a ribbon – a sort of plume, a pennant, a flag. In June the portion of the pillar immediately below the pennant, looking like a lovely green pencil or fountain pen, begins to swell. It becomes fat. It is not hollow as below that point. It is filled with something which is trying to burst out. And soon a rigging of seeds, no longer enveloped, now develops and rises above the plume, above the pennant which ceases to point upwards and bends over, so that as June turns to July we no longer watch the dark green ribbons on the surface of the corn waving in the wind, for every pennant has been lowered, all those plumes have been cast down, and in their place we see the military, speared, and massed formation of the upright ears. From then onwards until they fall before the knife, the parade is constant, and there is no change save colour: the surface passes from green to grey, from grey to light brown, then to a brown as dark as Hovis crust, even a touch of black at last; the stalks directly beneath the ears being sometimes enlightened by an unacknowledged blue, while farther down the colours become rainbowed in their richness, the charactery in the columns making an evening contrast to the spring-tide shoots at birth, for in a few months they have taken on the weather-beaten beauty of stone besieged and yellowed by the stains of Time.

  In the same way the equally disciplined rye stands up presenting the unbending blades in their phalanx on the fields. There is rectitude: there is uprightness. And here is grace; here in the field of oats are seeds as delicately displayed as ear-rings, and when the movement is completed we find imaginary miniature fir trees as alluring as the grassy forests of Yorkshire fog. The wheat, the rye, the oats – these, when they have lowered their pennants, thrown down their flags, stand upright, till the end. Not so the barley. From the tip of each barley seed a hair grows out and up looking extraordinarily like the antenna of an insect. Wheat and rye sometimes have ‘beards’ also, but you have to look close. The barley beards are numerous and long. They give the impression of being intensely alive, positive feelers, real antennae, reaching up with the utmost determination to scrape the sky. Thus for May and June. But as the pointed caskets of seed become ripe then the necks of the stalks upon which they are displayed begin to bend, and the antennae cease to pierce upwards. It is at this time that a field of barley shines with that silky sheen that captures and holds our attention beyond all the other exhibitors. The necks give way still more, with swan-like grace bending right round now until at last the antennae point downwards to the earth as if to find the darkness of the grave as surely as before they sought the light of heaven. This is the sign that the hour of the binder is at hand.

  I do not understand it. Why does the barley alone need these whiskers? What is their search, and what their prize? If they pick from the air minute portions of life-giving gas, how comes it that the others do without that gas, or do not have to employ such suckers? And why, if the stalks of wheat are strong enough to bear the burden of the ripened ears without bending at all, does the stalk of barley fail to do so, or for what reason does it bow the head? Altogether lost in an ocean of ignorance, I abandon the quest. I am content, though, to stand before these buildings, cap in hand. I could gaze for some time at those wheat stalks alone. Think of the weight of the ears. Nearly half a hundred-weight in an armful. How are the tons in the field thus held aloft by those slender columns of green stalk? Because, we are told, not only is the stem rounded and hollow as with the bones of animals and the pinions of birds, not only is it strongly notched at intervals, but it is impregnated with silicon which is the material that an ordinary pebble is made of. Thus the tons of corn are held as safely on their columns as Nelson on his – for those stalks are made of stone.

  Which sight in this unfolding is the best? The first sign of the shoots above ground – at least from the labourer’s point of view. As the season advances we become accustomed to the bounty of Nature, we are inured to miracles, and get anxious about the harvest. But the first green uprising on the brown field makes itself felt with the same force as the first warm rays of the sunshine. We have ploughed, manured, cultivated, harrowed, rolled and sown the field. We have done everything possible. We can do no more. Unless we are mistaken we have now set a vast machinery in motion. For several months we need do nothing to the field except roll it; it will do everything for itself until the last moment.

  In April those green shoots appear. I do not know whether there are many men, or any at all, who can observe that arrival without surprise. I am not amazed when I see it; but I might well be, and my furthest fathers were. Sometimes when regarding some out-and-out city man who seems capable of taking such a sight for granted, I tell myself that he is not really capable of this, that he also is part of the human race with forefathers who knew nothing of cities. If the sight of the green appearance gives him no stimulus, it must, if dimly, call up some comfort. In the voyages of discovery and invention there can have been no greater moment than when the first man sowed the first seed as an experiment in the earthly laboratory. What can we know of wonder beside that Wonder which was the companion of Fear? We may not know that wonder as we cannot know that fear – nor that hunger, nor that relief. We can imagine; we can recall; we can still stand beside Hiawatha, in a true sense partakers of his wrestling and sharers in his triumph.

  11 The Plough

  The field lies before me. What is a field? I take a piece of it up in my hand. It is not a substance made of one thing like a lump of cheese
. It is a mass of small pieces. These are the ruins of rocks: by the play of the atmosphere, by the heat of the sun, by earthquakes and volcanic outbursts, by the motion of the wind, by the rush of rivers, by the action of rain, by the melting of snow, by the scraping of glaciers, by changes of temperature the rocky places of the earth have been laid low and crushed so small that we can hardly see the fragments. Here I tread upon the ancient mountains of the world; beneath my feet lie the solemn peaks that once only to the stars were known, and the cold lunar beams.

  In this guise they are remarkably active; for, being informed with chemical properties they throw off gases and acids and liquids – the first foods. From them grew the first plants. As century pursued century the plants let fall their residuum, spread deep their ashes still holding and multiplying the chemical energies from which the Phoenix of Life rises up renewed and increased in glory and power. This field is a laboratory; it is a storehouse of food; it is a reservoir; it is the nursery of battalions of bacteria in ceaseless chase; it is the habitation of countless worms who swallow it. It is a vast potential.

  Yet this field will not realize its potentialities without the help of man – who adds so immeasurably to the beauty of the world. It will lie there, barren and dull. Like many a human being it will remain sterile, ugly, and sad, all its powers stuck and cramped and closed, unless it is released by some liberator. Open it up, let the sun beam down its blows, the water penetrate, the chemicals stir, the molecules move; fertilize it further; impregnate it with seed – and in due season that bare stretch of earth will wave and glitter with so much beauty and intention that the scene will be utterly transformed. So we come to the instrument of liberation, the spade, the moving spade – the Plough.

  For the first thing that we must do is to turn over the top of the soil. Then it can be broken up by the harrow. This is the first thing which must be done, which has been done ever since man ceased from simply hunting for food like the animals, and, stepping outside the fatal flow, channelled the force of life to serve his own ends. Thus the Plough holds up the clearest symbol known to man, and is woven into the memory of the race. For this reason the Emperors of China held the plough once a year. The respect paid to it is based on the firmest of all foundations – need; at bottom we respect only what we need. Here is a thing we shall always need. It outlasts the marble monuments of princes and even the loftiest rhyme; palaces, temples, towers; factories and foundries; creeds and philosophies; systems of government; great Mars himself in his triumphant car – these hold their day of ascendancy in greater glory, but they fail and fall at last, and are ploughed in.

  I was eager to get the plough into my hands – especially the horse-plough. And at length the time came when I stood on the field with a plough and two horses. It lay on its side, for it was extremely like a ship out of water – a ship with a great fish’s fin for keel. And awkward hulk to handle until it was launched into its proper element, the earth. The launching and guiding with two horses is of course not easy for the beginner. Yet I got into this extraordinarily quickly and surprised approval was registered on the faces of those who had shaken their heads in scepticism. My striking-out lines were even a success. My main difficulty at first was at the turnings. I began by losing the share, and failing to observe that I had done so – the most reprehensible and amateurish of all mistakes. And it was some time before I could get the horses to turn without stepping over the traces, and prevent the plough from falling on its side. I still felt the need of four hands in order to deal with reins and handles at the same moment.

  It was worth any difficulty involved in turning at the ends, if only to see the blade of the turn-furrow come up from the soil flashing in the light, clean as a sword. If we did not ‘know’ that this happens we might scarcely expect it – that a rusty blade dipped into the darkness of the earth should rise up glittering and burnished! It is always a great moment when the wave of earth falls away from the prow. In a second everything has come into place; the big wheel and the little wheel in front are holding a level; the coulter cuts; the share digs; the turn-furrow tosses over the slice. Given level ground and not too many large buried stones, there is no occupation more pleasant and less boring than this. All the body is engaged, and all the mind, while eye keeps watch on the horses and the plough, fascinated by the way the solid soil leaps up into a seeming fluid wave to fall immediately into stillness again in your wake – a green wave rising when on ley, light-brown on stubble, grey on stony ground. It falls and falls away, this little earthy breaker, until quite soon you see that a section of your field has turned colour completely, and you say to yourself – ‘I’ve ploughed that much.’ The eye is severely engaged indeed, and yet there is time, and a great inclination, to glance round at the scene as a whole – at the seagulls snow-flakingly following, at the cloud figures, at the sunset as the day closes. I could look down from a certain high field in Dorset into a deep vale which was often filled with sparkling light while we were in shadow. One late afternoon the clouds so gathered that one field below alone received the sun: one lanterned ray enlightened it, filled it completely, not going over the hedges but just down upon that green field only – as if the finger of God were pointing to one page which I must con for truth. I could not con it, being otherwise engaged, but was glad to see the print was there; and glad also, many a time, to glance up as the cold winter day closed down, and see the sunset blooming like a rose, and the tree-top tracery write its hieroglyphics on the lofty scroll.

  * * *

  1 See Agricultural Bacteriology by John Percival. Johnstone’s Elements of Agricultural Chemistry. The Soil, by F H King. The Spirit of the Soil by G D Knox.

  2 See The World in the Past, by B Webster Smith.

  3 See H N Ridley’s monumental work, The Dispersal of Plants Throughout the World.

  PART TWO

  THE WOOD

  1 The Wood and the Work

  MY TASK WAS to clear and thin an Ash wood. It was situated between Iwerne Minster and Tarrant Gunville in Dorset, and belonged to Rolf Gardiner of Springhead, amongst other things a Forester of no mean knowledge and activity. My debt of gratitude to him for commissioning me to do this work and to reap its reward, is outside calculation: I can but dedicate these pages to him.

  The last time this wood had been touched was eighteen years previously. It was chiefly composed of ash, though it also contained a considerable amount of hazel, and also some spruce, larch, and oak. In addition there was the eighteen years’ worth of undergrowth in the shape of privet and bramble and a great deal of the clinging, climbing, throttling ropes of that hangman’s noose called honeysuckle. I could not see into the thickness for more than a short distance, nor advance a single yard unimpeded. As for the ash itself, the trees were of all sizes. There were some very fine single ones, now nearly full grown; but often a clump of five or six rose from one stool, interfering with each other.

  My job was to introduce the idea of freedom into this tangle – freedom for the ash. Not for all the ash; only for the best, the straightest, never allowing more than one to remain out of any single clump and cutting down even good ones if they were too close to others. Darwin said that in Nature the fittest survive. In fact, he only showed that those survive who do survive. It is only when Nature is acted upon by Man that the best, the fittest survive. When Man acts upon Man the same principle is not applied. The Spartans alone seem to have pruned our species on principle. We do not do so now, for no one can foretell how great a mind or skilful a hand may belong to a fragile body.

  Thus I started clearing and thinning the wood, which covered some fourteen acres. I advanced upon the tangle with an axe, a bill-hook, an ordinary hook, a slasher, a saw, and a pole-saw. Though my chief tools were axe and bill-hook, I used each of the other instruments at intervals, rather like a golfer selecting a suitable club for each new occasion. I put my head down (quite literally) and slashed my way through the undergrowth, brushing up the clinging thorn, the entangling and infuria
ting privet, and hacking down the honeysuckle’s parasitic climbers until I had free play to deal with the trees themselves. Some of them were in very poor shape and it was a relief to get rid of them. But there were many good ones which I had to take down only because they were too close to one another. This sort of thing goes against the grain even when singling mangolds, and in the case of trees it is hard to realize how much room a single tree eventually demands if it is to be a fine specimen. Yet it is a fact that in the first stage of a plantation as many as fifty to a hundred plants may occupy the space taken up in the end by a single mature tree.

  The beauty of this job lay from the beginning in the fact that there was so much to show for it. In quite a short time I had made a distinct impression, a definite clearing – the jumble of brambles and shrubs and misshapen trees had vanished from the space I had worked upon, and now just a few straight ash trees stood up clear and free. People speak of ‘not being able to see the wood for the trees’. This phrase actually does mean something – (though it might quite easily mean nothing and yet be repeated twice daily by our publicists). It means that a too careful dwelling upon many particulars blinds us from a vision of the whole: you cannot catch sight of the wood as a totality if entangled in the trees. Many botanists are in this unfortunate position. But often the opposite of this is meant. The man who mechanically trots out the phrase that he cannot see the wood for the trees, often means that the confused bulk and muddle of facts confronting him make it impossible to see where his own particular problem stands. He cannot see the trees for the wood. Now that I had already made a beginning, a neat clearing in the wood, I could for the first time see the individual trees.