Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

tions of the membrane, including a mass of germ-cells; and as a consequence of this imperfect discrimination, subsequent writers and anatomists have described the convoluted bands as the ovaries. Mr Teale does so, if I understand the account given by Dr Johnston.

It is needless here to enter into the disputes on this point. The statement of Wagner that he had discovered spermatozoa in the convoluted bands has made several writers dubious respecting the ovarian function of those bands; but by a subsequent discovery I am able to explain, I think, the origin of Wagner's error, as well as to revolutionise the current theories of reproduction in the anemones, bringing that process under much simpler categories. That Wagner did see the spermatozoa, may readily be admitted; but although he thought they were in the convoluted band, I venture to say that they were in the ovary, a portion of which he had removed unconsciously with the convoluted band; for let any one snip off a portion of the band as it lolls out of the mouth, and he will find nothing like ova or spermatozoa there. On the discovery of the location of the spermatozoa, which I made at Tenby in July last, I must speak with less confidence than on that of the ovaries: the difficulty of the observation, and the consciousness that I was guided by an a priori conviction that the spermatozoa would be where I sought them, together with the fact that since then I have had few opportunities of repeating the observation, make me hesitate before announcing as absolute, what is at present only a very strong conviction in my mind. Let me say then that I believe the spermatozoa lie imbedded in the same membranous sac which encloses the ova; the two lie intermingled, probably isolated by a delicate investing membrane, but at any rate enclosed in the same organ. I believe that it is here the fertilisation takes place, and that the fertilised ovum passes by dehiscence of the membrane into the general cavity, where its subsequent development takes place. On my next visit to the coast I hope to clear up this point; meanwhile it may be

added that the strongest confirmation is to be read in the admirable Memoir on the Cerianthus-an animal allied to the Actinia by M. Jules Haime, in the Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 1854 (41eme série, tome i.), which, on my return home, I found to contain accurate and detailed descriptions of the same disposition of ova and spermatozoa I detected in the Actiniæ. This paper may rob me indeed of some claim to priority, should the fact be substantiated, but I can very tranquilly waive that, and rejoice in the discovery. The excellent plates which illustrate the Memoir by M. Jules Haime, make it very important for the reader to consult, if he desires an accurate idea of the structure in question.

We thus return to the point from whence we started, and find in the anemone a very simple structure, and a consequent simplicity in its reproductive process. Instead of separate sexes, and elaborate apparatus of organs, we find an accumulation of germcells and sperm-cells taking place in certain indeterminate parts of the lining membrane of the envelope, and the union of these cells in these parts, much in the same way as in the simpler plants.

Charles Lamb, in one of his exquisitely humorous letters, refers to the probable feelings of Adam, purchasing a pennyworth of apples from an applewoman's stall, "in Mesopotamia," and thinking of his former plenty in Paradise; and Dr Johnson said, that never but once in his life had he found himself possessor of as much wall-fruit as he could eat. These two lingering retrospects of former abundance appeal to us forcibly; for although in the particular case of apples, a matured taste, fortified by philosophy, and modified by dyspepsia, may pardonably be indifferent and although also in the particular case of wall-fruit, the unphysiological mind, terrified by absurd rumours as to choleraic influences supposed inevitably to issue from plums, peaches, nectarines, and apricots, may think limitation rather a benefit than an injury; yet every mind must recognise the general

significance there lies in a noble, prodigal, unstinted abundance. Books, for example-can we have too many of them, provided always they are well selected? Dogs can they be too populous in our court-yards? or horses in our stables? or friends-at convenient distances? or children in the nursery? or creditors ?-no, not creditors, except in a general catastrophe or cataclysm. In a word, is not abundance in and for itself a grand advantage? Painfully this obtrudes itself upon me as I sit eyeing the solitary anemone which mopes in a single vase upon my table, the last rose of

summer, all its blooming companions having been dissected long ago; and my thoughts take wing to Ilfracombe and Tenby, where footpans, piedishes, soup-plates and vases were crowded with specimens of every variety of form and colour. I think of that paradisaic abundance, and sigh over this one unhappy animal, the mere pennyworth in Mesopotamia, not simply because I love a liberal prodigality in all things, and fret against niggardly limitations, but also because only with abundance can one hope to get at more "New Facts about Sea Anemones."

A CHRISTMAS TALE.

How to account for this strange adventure, or what explanation to put upon it, I cannot tell, but it began after a very prosaic fashionrather more commonplace even than the circumstances under which the Laureate meditated his Legend of Godiva. After a long drive to a little country station, I found, to my dismay, that I had missed the train.

Missed the train! There was not another till twelve o'clock at noon of the next day, and it was then the afternoon between two and three o'clock; for the place in which I was so fortunate as to find myself, was one of the smallest of country stations on a "branch line." It seems extremely odd, looking back upon it, that there should have been such an unreasonable time to wait; but it did not puzzle, it only discomfited me at the time.

And there was not even a single house, save the half-built little railway house itself, where dwelt the station-master, at this inhospitable station; so I had to be directed by that functionary, and by his solitary porter, how to get to Witcherley village, which lay a mile and a half off across the fields. It was summer, but there had been a great deal of rain, and the roads, as I knew by my morning's experience, were "hewy "- yet I set off with singu lar equanimity on my journey across the fields. Altogether I took the business very coolly, and made up my mind to it. It is astonishing how

easily one can manage this in a certain frame of mind.

It was rather a pretty country— especially when the sun came glancing down over it, finding out all the rain upon the leaves-when it was only I that found them out instead of the sun. When pushing down a deep lane, my hat caught the great overhanging bough of a hawthorn, and shook over me a sparkling shower of water-drops, big and cool like so many diamonds. I cannot say that I entirely enjoyed the impromptu baptism, and the wet matted brambles underfoot were full of treacherous surprises, and the damp path under that magnificent seam of red-brown earth, which had caught my eye half a mile off, caught my foot now with unexampled tenacity. Notwithstanding, the road was pretty; a busy little husbandman of a breeze began to rustle out the young corn, and raise the feeble stalks which had been "laid" by the rain; and everything grew lustily in the refreshed and sweetened atmosphere, through which the birds raised their universal twitter. There appeared white gable-ends, bits of orchard closely planted, a churchspire rising through the trees, and over the next stile I leaped into the extreme end of the little village street of Witcherley-a very rural little village indeed, lying, though within a mile and a half of a railway station, secure and quiet among the old Arcadian ficlis

Fa

was a great iron gate

extremely ornamental, as things were made a hundred years ago, with a minute porter's-lodge shut up, plainly intimating that few carriages rolled up that twilight avenue, to which entrance was given by a little posterndoor at the side. The avenue was narrow, but the trees were great and old, and hid all appearance of the house to which they led. Then came three thatched cottages flanking at a little distance the moss-grown wall which extended down the road from the manor-house gates; and then the path made a sharp turn round the abrupt corner of a gable which projected into it, the grey wall of which was lightened by one homely bowwindow in the upper story, but nothing more. This being the Witcherley Arms, I went no further, though some distant cottages, grey, silent, and rude, caught my eye a little way on. The Witcherley Arms, indeed, was the hamlet of Witcherley-it was something between an inn and a farmhouse, with long low rooms, small windows, and an irregular and rambling extent of building, which it was hard to assign any use for, and which seemed principally filled up with long passages leading to closets and cupboards and laundries in a prodigal and strange profusion. A few rude steps led to the door, within which, on one side, was a little bar, and on the other the common room of the inn. Just in front of the house, surrounded by a little plot of grass, stood a large old elm-tree, with the sign swung high among its branches; opposite was the gate of a farmyard, and the dull walls of a half square of barns and offices; behind, the country seemed to swell into a bit of rising-ground, covered with the woods of the manor-house; but the prospect before was of a rude district broken up by solitary roads, crossing the moorland, and apparently leading nowhere. One leisurely countrycart stood near the door, the horse standing still with dull patience, and that indescribable quiet consciousness that it matters nothing to any one how long the bumpkin stays inside, or the peaceable brute without, which is only to be found in the extreme and undisturbed seclusion

of very rural districts. I confess I entered the Witcherley Arms with a little dismay, and no great expectations of its comfort or good cheer. The public room was large enough, lighted with two casement windows, with a low unequal ceiling and a sanded floor. Two sinall tables in the windows, and one long one placed across the room behind, with a bristling supply of hard highbacked wooden chairs, were all the furniture. A slow country fellow in a smock frock, the driver of the cart, drank his beer sullenly at one of the smaller tables. The landlord loitered about between the open outer door and the "coffee-room," and I took my seat at the head of the big table, and suggested dinner to the openeyed country maid.

She was more startled than I expected by the idea. Dinner! there was boiled bacon in the house, she knew, and ham and eggs were practicable. I was not disposed to be fastidious under present circumstances, so the cloth was spread, and the boiled bacon set before me, preparatory to the production of the more savoury dish. To have a better look at me, the landlord came in and established himself beside the bumpkin in the window. These worthies were not at all of the ruffian kind, but, on the contrary, perfectly honest-looking, obtuse, and leisurely: their dialect was strange to my ear, and their voices confused; but I could make out that what they did talk about was the "Squire."

Of course, the most natural topic in the world in a place so primitive; and I, examining my bacon, which was not inviting, paid little attention to them. By-and-by, however, the landlord loitered out again to the door; and there my attention was attracted at once by a voice without, as different as possible from their mumbling rural voices. This was followed immediately by a quick alert footstep, and then entered the room an old gentleman, little, carefully dressed, precise and particular, in a blue coat with gilt buttons, a spotless white cravat, Hessian boots, and hair of which I could not say with certainty whether it was grey or powdered. He came in as

а

monarch comes into a humble corner of his dominions. There could be no doubt about his identity-this was the Squire.

Hodge at the window pulled his forelock reverentially; the old gentleman nodded to him, but turned his quick eye upon me strangers were somewhat unusual at the Witcherley Arms and then my boiled bacon, which I still only looked at The Squire drew near with suave and compassionating courtesy: I told him my story-I had missed the train. The train was entirely a new institution in this primitive corner of the country. The old gentleman evidently did not half approve of it, and treated my detention something in the light of a piece of retributive justice. 'Ah, haste, haste! nothing else will please us nowadays," he said, shaking his head with dignity: "the good old coach, now, would have carried you comfortably, without the risk of a day's waiting or a broken limb; but novelty carries the day."

[ocr errors]

I did not say that the railway was, after all, not so extreme a novelty in other parts of the world as in Witcherley, and I was rewarded for my forbearance. "If you do not mind waiting half an hour, and walking half a mile," added the Squire immediately, "I think I can promise you a better dinner than anything you have here a plain country table, sir, nothing more, and a house of the old style; but better than honest Giles's bacon, to which I see you don't take very kindly. He will give you a good bed, though a clean comfortable bed. I have se myself, sir, on occasion, at the herley Arms."

hem he said this, some recollec1. 1. consciousness came for an cross the old gentleman's

and the landlord, who him, and who was also attered what seemed to sepressed groan. The

and turned round

is not other said the old

do not say -put this

The landlord groaned again a singular affirmative, which roused my curiosity at once. Was it haunted? or what could there be of tragical or mysterious connected with the gableroom?

However, I had only to make my acknowledgments, and accept with thanks the Squire's proposal, and we set out immediately for the manorhouse. My companion looked hale, active, and light of foot-scarcely sixty-a comely well-preserved old gentleman, with a clear frosty complexion, blue eyes without a cloud, features somewhat high and delicate, and altogether, in his refined and particular way, looked like the head of a long-lived patriarchal race, who might live a hundred years. He paused, however, when we got to the corner, to look to the north over the broken country on which the sunshine slanted as the day began to wane. It was a wild solitary prospect, as different as possible from the softer scene through which I had come to Witcherley. Those broken bits of road, rough cart-tracks over the moor, with heaps of stones piled here and there, the intention of which one could not decide upon; fir-trees, all alone and by themselves, growing singly at the angles of the roadsometimes the long horizontal gleam of water in a deep cutting-sometimes a green bit of moss, prophetic of pitfall and quagmire and no visible moving thing upon the whole scene. The picture to me was somewhat desolate. My new friend, however, gazed upon it with a lingering eye, sighed, did not say anything— but, turning round with a little vehemence, took some highly-flavoured snuff from a small gold box, and seemed, under cover of this innocent stimulant, to shake off some emotion. As he did so, looking back I saw the inmates of the Witcherley Arms at the door, in a little crowd, gazing at him. The landscape must have been as familiar to him as he was to these

good people. I began to grow very curious. Was anything going to happen to the old Squire ?

The old Squire, however, was of the class of men who enjoy conversation, and relish a good listener. led me down through the noiseless

He

road, past the three cottages, to the manorial gates, with a pleasant little stream of remark and explanation, a little jaunty wit, a little caustic observation, great natural shrewdness, and some little knowledge of the world. Entering in by that little side-door to the avenue, was like coming out of daylight into sudden night. The road was narrow-the trees tall, old, and of luxuriant growth. I did not wonder that his worship was proud of them, but, for myself, should have preferred something less gloomy. The line was long, too, and wound upwards by an irregular ascent; and the thick dark foliage concealed, till we had almost reached it, the manor-house, which turned its turreted gable-end towards us, by no means unlike the Witcherley Arms.

It was a house of no particular date or character-old, irregular, and somewhat picturesque-built of the grey limestone of the district, spotted over with lichens, and covering here and there the angle of a wall with an old growth of exuberant ivy-ivy so old, thick, and luxuriant, that there was no longer any shapeliness or distinctive character in the big, blunt, glossy leaves. A small lawn before the door, graced with one clipped yewtree, was the only glimpse of air or daylight, so far as I could see, about the house; for the trees closed in on every side, as if to shut it out entirely from all chance of seeing or being seen. The big hall-door opened from without, and I followed the Squire with no small curiosity into the noiseless house, in which I could not hear a single domestic sound. Perhaps drawing-rooms were not in common use at Witcherley-at all events we went at once to the dining-room, a large long apartment, with an ample fireplace at the upper endthree long windows in one side, and a curious embayed alcove in the corner, projecting from the room like an afterthought of the builder. To this pretty recess you descended by a single step from the level of the diningroom, and it was lighted by a broad, Elizabethan oriel window, with a cushioned seat all round, fastened to the wall. We went here, naturally passing by the long dining-table,

which occupied almost the entire mid-space of the apartment. These three long dining-room windows looked out upon the lawn and the clipped yew-tree-the oriel looked upon nothing, but was closely overshadowed by a group of lime-trees casting down a tender, cold, green light through their delicate wavering leaves. There were old panel portraits on the walls, old crimson hangings, a carpet, of which all the colours were blended and indistinguishable with old age. The chairs

in the recess were covered with embroidery as faded as the carpet; everything bore the same tone of antiquity. At the same time, everything appeared in the most exemplary order, well-preserved and graceful-without a trace of wealth, and with many traces of frugality, yet undebased by any touch of shabbiness. And as the Squire placed himself in the stiff elbow-chair in this pleasant little alcove, and cast his eye with becoming dignity down the long line of the room, I could not but recognise a pleasant and suitable congeniality between my host and his house.

Presently a grave middle-aged man-servant entered the room, and busied himself very quietly spreading the table--the Squire in the mean time entering upon a polite and good-humoured catechetical examination of myself; but pausing now and then to address a word to Joseph, which Joseph answered with extreme brevity and great respectfulness. There was nothing inquisitive or disagreeable in the Squire's inquiries; on the contrary, they were pleasant indications of the kindly interest which an old man often shows in a young one unexpectedly thrown into his path. I was by no means uninterested, meanwhile, in the slowly-completed arrangements of the dinner-table, all accomplished so quietly. When Joseph had nearly finished his operations, a tall young fellow in a shooting-coat, sullen, loutish, and down-looking, lounged into the room, and threw himself into an easy-chair. He did not bear a single feature of resemblance to the courtly old beau beside me, yet was his son notwithstand

« PoprzedniaDalej »