The Naturalist on the Thames | Page 4

to the ivory star at the very bottom of the dial,
and then struck work and stuck there.
[Illustration: WILD DUCK. _From a photograph by Charles Reid._]
[Illustration: A FULL THAMES. _From a photograph by Taunt &
Co._]
That night the storm began. To connoisseurs in weather in the
meteorological sense it was a joy and an ensample, for it was a perfect
cyclonic storm, exactly the right shape, with all its little dotted lines of

"isobars" running in ovals one inside another. From another point of
view it was the storm of an hour spread over two days, so that there
was plenty of time to see and remember the normal ways of cyclones,
which may be briefly described as first a flush of heat whether in
summer or winter, then a furious wind, then hurrying clouds and much
rain, with changes of wind, then more clouds and more rain, then a
"clearing shower" with most rain, then a furling and brailing-up of the
rain clouds, splashes of blue in the sky, with nets of scud crossing them,
sudden gleams of sun, sudden cold, and perhaps a hail shower, and then
piercing cold and sunlight. All which things happened, but took a long
time about it. The storm began in the night, and howled through the
dark. The rain came with the morning; but it was the "clearing shower,"
which lasted ten hours, which caused the filling of the Thames. The
wind still blew in furious gusts, but the rain was almost too heavy to be
moved. The sky was one dark, sombre cloud, and from this the rain
poured in slanting lines like pencils of water. But across this blanket of
cloud came darker, lower, and wetter clouds, even more surcharged
with water, from which the deluge poured till the earth was white like
glass with the spraying drops. Out in the fields it was impossible to see
through the rain; but as the end of the column of cloud began to break
and widen the water could be seen in the act of passing from the land to
the river. On the fallows and under the fences all the surface earth was
beaten down or swept away. All seeds which had sunk naturally below
the surface were laid bare. Hundreds of sprouting horse chestnuts, of
sprouting acorns beneath the trees, thousands of grains of fallen wheat
and barley, of beans, and other seeds of the farm were uncovered as if
by a spade.
Down every furrow, drain, watercourse, ditch, runnel, and watercut, the
turbid waters were hurrying, all with one common flow, all with
increasing speed, to the Thames. The sound of waters filled the air,
dropping, poppling, splashing, trickling, dripping from leaves to earth,
falling from bank to rills below, gurgling under gate-paths, lapping
against the tree-trunks and little ridge piles in the brooks, and at last
sweeping with a hushed content into the bosom of Thames. And the
river himself was good for something more than a "stree-um." He was
bank-full and sweeping on, taking to himself on this side and on that
the tributes of his children, from which the waters poured so fast that

they came in almost clear, and the mingled waters in the river were
scarcely clouded in their flow. The lock-men rose by night and looked
at the climbing flood, and wakened their wives and children, and raised
in haste hatch after hatch of the weirs, and threw open locks and gates.
Windsor Weir broke, but the wires flashed the news on, and the river's
course was open, and after the greatest rain-storm and the lowest
barometer known for thirty years, the Thames was not in flood, but
only brimful; and once more a "river of waters."

THE SHELLS OF THE THAMES
Of the thousands who boat on the Thames during the summer few
know or notice the beauty of the river shells. They are among the most
delicate objects of natural ornament and design in this country.
Exquisite pattern, graceful shapes, and in some cases lovely tints of
colour adorn them. Nature has for once relaxed in their favour her rigid
rules, by which she turns out things of this kind not only alike in shape,
but with identical colour and ornament. Among humming-birds, for
instance, each bird is like the other, literally to a feather. The lustre on
each ruby throat or amethyst wing shines in the same light with the
same prismatic divisions. But even in the London river, if you go and
seek among the pebbles above Hammersmith Bridge when the river is
low, you may find a score of neretina shells not one of which is
coloured like the rest or ornamented with exactly the same pattern, yet
each is fit to bejewel the coronet of