AN INLAND STORM.
THE storm of this week came in two relays, either of which would have made more than ample disturbance in the normal changes of weather inland, where, except for the alternations of wet and dry, sunshine and cloud, wind or rain seldom interferes with the business life of the fields. The first half of the gale, which lasted for thirty hours, was a dry gale, reaching a velocity of sixty-five miles an hour in places, but neither attended nor followed by the usual storms of rain. Cold scuds drifted before it momentarily, but did not endure. At sea the sailors fighting the waves were not overwhelmed with the numbing blasts of sleet which often disable the crews of sailing ships ever before their vessel is in peril; and on land, while the wind howled nand the houses and barns, and through the oak boughs, the earth was dry and the dead leaves flying. The ashes, elms, and oaks were undamaged, as they nearly always are by wind when ones the leaf is at. Buildings nfiered little, showing time splendid solidity and wide margin of safety which a thousand years of tradition have given to the structure of churches, manor houses, cottages, and barns. The village churches are always weather-proof, and are the most solid class of rural buildings in the world, except perhaps the temples of ancient Egypt, and the cathedrals of Europe, which the Spaniard endeavoured to reproduce in the New World of such solidity as to resist even the shocks of earth- quake. But the structural strength of the English cottages, often two or three centuries old, and made of wattle, cut green in the hedges. woven between frames of timber, and then plastered with rough-cast, is not a little curious. The horses went to plough in the teeth of the wind, and ploughed all day, nor were the cattle greatly disturbed. The wild birds, on the other hand, were thoroughly worn out and uncomfortable. During the morning after the rough night the roads were full of blackbirds, thrushes, redwings, fieldfares, and missel- thrushes, which found the hedges and trees too uncom- fortable to sit in. Probably their feet and legs were too tired of grasping the boughs and keeping them in position to stand the strain any longer. By 3 o'clock on the second day the gale moderated, and the sky showed long rents of greenish light. But all the birds except the partridges were far too tired to feed, and taking advantage of the lull, went at once to bed, an hour before their time. The writer, standing in the one large wood of a high, flat plain, among miles of arable fields, watched the flights come in. The pigeons had all left before the storm ; but at 3 o'clock flights of linnets, greenfinches, and goldfinches came in from the open land, and at once made themselves comfortable in the fir trees. Ten minutes later the field- fares arrived, chattering and squeaking in a much more sub- dued manner than usual The missel-thrushes and redwings followed, and in the whole wood only one blackbird had the energy to make the usual fussy proclamation that all black- birds make at bedtime,—that they are wide awake, and have their eye on cats, owls, and other criminals of the woods. Even the cock-pheasants went up to roost with- out crowing. Only the squirrels maintained their usual cheerful energy, and after pretending to be bits of dead branch for the time, which self-respecting squirrels deem proper, chased each other from oak-top to oak-top, like little ghosts against the darkening sky. The birds were not only resting after the fatigues of the gale, they were also preparing to meet a further trial of their strength. The writer has never seen the evidence of animal weather- prophecy so clearly expressed as before and after this first instalment of the gale. For two nights before it began a herd of red cattle in the fields near bellowed incessantly, though before they were quite silent, and in the lull wild birds and animals showed restlessness. Rabbits bolted from the hedges before the dogs came near, and the tame pigeons would not leave the pigeon-cote. The weather forecast of the Meteorological Office predicted " temporarily quiet weather, becoming stormy and rainy again with the approach of fresh disturbances from the Atlantic," and a 1,bel • " The present barometric conditions over Western E :r.e•e are particularly favourable to the successive pas- sag -• of serious disturbances with strong winds and attendant rains over the whole area of Western Europe." As strong wind, with attendant rains are the most fatal conditions for animal life, there is no doubt that the cattle, which could feel with all the sensitiveness of suffering the approach of the great rains, were clamouring to be taken indoors ; such, indeed. was the disturbance they made that persons sleeping in the houses near, wakened by the continuous noise, thought that the animals must have been left out in the meadows by herdsmen who had been keeping Christmas too heartily. A fresh gale, with twenty-two consecutive hours of rain, explained the apprehensions of the cattle, and showed the Powers of resistance of our rural engineering to another enemy in the shape of a plague of rain and waters. Few people realise that in a corn country, such as the heavy lands, or
boulder clay of Suffolk, every rood over hundreds of thousands of acres is drained anifieially by a network of pipes or " bush drains." Ail of these are laid, often on fields in which the differences ol level are almost isnpereepkible, by the eye and judgment of the labouring men, and empty themselves into ditahes, whin' sommiusinee with essall watercourses, the hoods of riven, though often only a few feet wide. These again pass by culverts under the roads, until they join the larger streams, reaching the fifteen feet of width from bank to bank which entitles them to be shown with a double line on the six-inch Ordnance map. Such a great rain as that which fell from Sunday at 1 o'clock till Monday at noon sets the whole of this elaborate machinery to work at high pressure, a system carried out independently on all the different farms, roads, and manors, yet with a good neighbourly understand- ing, the growth of a century or more of local experience. It all worked perfectly, better than in the immensely costly system of the London suburbs, where the culverts often blow up in heavy rain-storms. Every bush drain under the ploughed fields was emptying into the ditches, the ditches flowing into the tiny heads of the rivers, and these, swelled from almost dry channels fringed with dead grasses to yellow, brimful streams five or six feet deep, were hurrying on to swell the rivers. Near the head-waters they remained clear for many hours, though full and rippling with unwonted sound, and where they passed through the meadows in channels hitherto dry the cattle showed their nice taste in the flavour of water. They came up each morning and evening to drink, not from their accustomed pond full of mud and dead leaves, but from the new little running river, standing in a long line and drinking it. One, more than usually, particular, drank from a little waterfall, where the overflow from an artificial pool poured into the channeL Such storms are instructive object-lessons in the unwritten precautions of an old country. Without books or formulas rural England knows how to build, drain, and bridge to meet all probable stress of rain, flood, and tempest. But domestic cattle are most inadequately protected in the fields. Humanity and good sense demand that in all large pasture unprotected by high hedges or plantation, rough shelters should be put up for horses and cattle. Swine die in cold and wet weather even in their styes ; and it is sheer cruelty to expose young colts and heifers day and night to the perishing cold of storm- driven winter rain.
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