A Shepherds Life | Page 4

in the Nadder valley, and
westward to White Sheet Hill above Mere. You can picture this high
chalk country as an open hand, the left hand, with Salisbury in the
hollow of the palm, placed nearest the wrist, and the five valleys which
cut through it as the five spread fingers, from the Bourne (the little
finger) succeeded by Avon, Wylye, and Nadder, to the Ebble, which
comes in lower down as the thumb and has its junction with the main
stream below Salisbury.
A very large portion of this high country is now in a transitional state,
that was once a sheep-walk and is now a training ground for the army.
Where the sheep are taken away the turf loses the smooth, elastic
character which makes it better to walk on than the most perfect lawn.
The sheep fed closely, and everything that grew on the down--grasses,
clovers, and numerous small creeping herbs--had acquired the habit of
growing and flowering close to the ground, every species and each
individual plant striving, with the unconscious intelligence that is in all
growing things, to hide its leaves and pushing sprays under the others,
to escape the nibbling teeth by keeping closer to the surface. There are
grasses and some herbs, the plantain among them, which keep down
very close but must throw up a tall stem to flower and seed. Look at the
plantain when its flowering time comes; each particular plant growing
with its leaves so close down on the surface as to be safe from the busy,
searching mouths, then all at once throwing up tall, straight stems to
flower and ripen its seeds quickly. Watch a flock at this time, and you
will see a sheep walking about, rapidly plucking the flowering spikes,
cutting them from the stalk with a sharp snap, taking them off at the
rate of a dozen or so in twenty seconds. But the sheep cannot be all

over the downs at the same time, and the time is short, myriads of
plants throwing up their stems at once, so that many escape, and it has
besides a deep perennial root so that the plant keeps its own life though
it may be unable to sow any seeds for many seasons. So with other
species which must send up a tall flower stem; and by and by, the
flowering over and the seeds ripened or lost, the dead, scattered stems
remain like long hairs growing out of a close fur. The turf remains
unchanged; but take the sheep away and it is like the removal of a
pressure, or a danger: the plant recovers liberty and confidence and
casts off the old habit; it springs and presses up to get the better of its
fellows--to get all the dew and rain and sunshine that it can--and the
result is a rough surface.
Another effect of the military occupation is the destruction of the wild
life of the Plain, but that is a matter I have written about in my last
book, "Afoot in England," in a chapter on Stonehenge, and need not
dwell on here. To the lover of Salisbury Plain as it was, the sight of
military camps, with white tents or zinc houses, and of bodies of men
in khaki marching and drilling, and the sound of guns, now informs
him that he is in a district which has lost its attraction, where nature has
been dispossessed.
Meanwhile, there is a corresponding change going on in the human life
of the district. Let anyone describe it as he thinks best, as an
improvement or a deterioration, it is a great change nevertheless, which
in my case and probably that of many others is as disagreeable to
contemplate as that which we are beginning to see in the down, which
was once a sheep-walk and is so no longer. On this account I have
ceased to frequent that portion of the Plain where the War Office is in
possession of the land, and to keep to the southern side in my rambles,
out of sight and hearing of the "white-tented camps" and mimic warfare.
Here is Salisbury Plain as it has been these thousand years past, or ever
since sheep were pastured here more than in any other district in
England, and that may well date even more than ten centuries back.
Undoubtedly changes have taken place even here, some very great,
chiefly during the last, or from the late eighteenth century. Changes

both in the land and the animal life, wild and domestic. Of the losses in
wild bird life there will be something to say in another chapter; they
relate chiefly to the extermination of the finest species, the big bird,
especially the soaring bird, which is now gone out of all this