All the dwellers5 on our moor6, in like manner, are poor relations, so to speak, as the donkey is to the horse. They are losers in the struggle for life, yet not quite hopeless losers; creatures that have adapted themselves to the worst positions, which more favoured and successful races could not endure for a moment. The naked Fuegian picks up a living somehow among snow and ice on barren rocks, where a well-clad European would starve and freeze, finding nothing to subsist7 upon. Just so on the moor; heather, furze, and bracken eke8 out a precarious9 livelihood10 on the sandy soil, where grasses and garden flowers die out at once, unless we artificially enrich the earth for them with leaf-mould from the bottoms and good manure11 from the farmyards.
More than that, you may take it as a general rule that where grass will grow there is no chance for heather. Not that the heather doesn’t like rich soil, and flourish in it amazingly—when it can get it. If you sow it in garden borders, and keep it well weeded, it will thrive apace, as it never throve in its poor native loam12, among the stones and rubble13. But the weeding is the secret of its success under such conditions. It isn’t that the heather won’t grow in rich soil, any more than that beggars can’t live on pheasant; but grasses and dandelions, daisies and clovers, can easily give it points in such spots, and beat it. In a very few weeks you will find the lowland plants have grown tall and lush, while the poor distanced heather has been overtopped and crowded out by its sturdier competitors. That is the reason why waterside irises14, or Alpine15 gentians, will grow in garden beds under quite different circumstances from those under which we find them in the state of nature; the whole secret lies in the fact that we restrict competition. Cultivation16 means merely digging out the native herbs, and keeping them out, once ousted17, in favour of other plants which we choose to protect against all their rivals. In rich lowland soils the grasses and other soft succulent herbs outgrow18 such tough shrubs19 as ling and Scotch20 heather. But in the poverty-stricken loam of the uplands, the grasses and garden weeds find no food to batten upon; and there the heather, to the manner born, gets at last a fair field and no favour. It is adapted to the moors21, as the camel is to the desert; both have been driven to accommodate themselves to a wretched and thirsty environment; but both have made a virtue22 of necessity, and risen to the occasion with commendable23 ingenuity24.
Everything about the heather shows long-continued adaptation to arid25 conditions. Its stems are wiry; its leaves are small, very dry, uninviting as foodstuffs26, curled under at the edge, and so arranged in every way as to defy evaporation27. Rain sinks so rapidly through the sandy soil the plant inhabits that it does its best to economize28 every drop, just as we human inhabitants of the moorland economize it by constructing big tanks for the storage of the rain-water that falls on our roof-trees. Warping29 winds sweep ever across the wold with parching30 effect; so the heather makes its foliage31 small, square, and thickly covered by a hard epidermis32, as a protection against undue33 or excessive dryness. It aims at being drought-proof. Its purple bells, in like manner, instead of being soft and fleshy, as is the case with the corollas of meadow-blossoms like the corn-poppy, or woodland flowers like the wild hyacinth, are hard and dry, so as to waste no water; dainty waxen petals34, like those of the dog-rose or the cherry-blossom, would wilt35 and wither36 at once before the harsh, dry blasts that career unchecked over the open moorland. Yet the heather-bells, though quite dead and papery to the touch, are brilliantly coloured to attract the upland bees, and form such wide patches of purple and pink as you can nowhere match among the largely wind-fertilized herbage of the too grass-green water-meadows. Upland conditions, indeed, always produce rich flowers. The most beautiful flora37 in Europe is that of the Alps, just below the snow-line; it has been developed by the stray Alpine moths38 and butterflies. Larger masses of colour are needed to attract these free-flying insects than serve to catch the eyes of the more business-like and regular bees who go their rounds in lowland districts.
Is not the donkey himself a product of somewhat similar conditions? Oriental in his origin, he seems to be merely the modern representative of those ancestral horses which did not succeed in the struggle for existence. Every intermediate stage has now been discovered between the true horses, with their flowing tails and silky coats, and the true donkeys, with their tufted tails and shaggy hair, the middle terms being chiefly found in the northern plains of Asia. Now, our horses, I take it, are the descendants of those original horse-and-donkey-like creatures which took to the grassy39 meadows, and so waxed fat, and kicked, and developed exceedingly; while our donkeys, I imagine, are the poor, patient offspring of those less lucky brothers or cousins which were pushed by degrees into the deserts and arid hills, and there grew accustomed to a very sparse40 diet of the essentially41 prickly and thorny42 shrubs which always inhabit such spots, just as gorse and heather inhabit our British uplands. That is why the donkey thrives so excellently to this day on thistles and nettle-tops: they represent the ancestral food of his kind for many generations. Certainly, at the present time, wherever we find horses wild it is in broad, grass-clad plains, or steppes, or pampas; wherever we find donkeys, or donkey-like animals, wild, it is among desert or half-desert rocks, and on arid hillsides. It would seem as though the horse was in the last resort a donkey grown big and strong by dint43 of good living and free space to roam over; while the donkey, on the other hand, is in the last resort a horse grown small and ill-proportioned through want of good food and insufficient44 elbow-room. It is noteworthy that in small islands, like the Shetlands, small breeds of horses are developed in adaptation to the environment; though, the food being still good pasture in a well-watered country, they retain in most respects their horse-like aspect. But a vengeance45 o’ Jenny’s case! I have wandered far afield from Peter Rashleigh’s donkey, to have got so soon into evolutionary46 biology!
点击收听单词发音
1 ridge | |
n.山脊;鼻梁;分水岭 | |
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2 plantation | |
n.种植园,大农场 | |
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3 footpath | |
n.小路,人行道 | |
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4 repletion | |
n.充满,吃饱 | |
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5 dwellers | |
n.居民,居住者( dweller的名词复数 ) | |
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6 moor | |
n.荒野,沼泽;vt.(使)停泊;vi.停泊 | |
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7 subsist | |
vi.生存,存在,供养 | |
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8 eke | |
v.勉强度日,节约使用 | |
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9 precarious | |
adj.不安定的,靠不住的;根据不足的 | |
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10 livelihood | |
n.生计,谋生之道 | |
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11 manure | |
n.粪,肥,肥粒;vt.施肥 | |
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12 loam | |
n.沃土 | |
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13 rubble | |
n.(一堆)碎石,瓦砾 | |
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14 irises | |
n.虹( iris的名词复数 );虹膜;虹彩;鸢尾(花) | |
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15 alpine | |
adj.高山的;n.高山植物 | |
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16 cultivation | |
n.耕作,培养,栽培(法),养成 | |
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17 ousted | |
驱逐( oust的过去式和过去分词 ); 革职; 罢黜; 剥夺 | |
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18 outgrow | |
vt.长大得使…不再适用;成长得不再要 | |
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19 shrubs | |
灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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20 scotch | |
n.伤口,刻痕;苏格兰威士忌酒;v.粉碎,消灭,阻止;adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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21 moors | |
v.停泊,系泊(船只)( moor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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22 virtue | |
n.德行,美德;贞操;优点;功效,效力 | |
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23 commendable | |
adj.值得称赞的 | |
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24 ingenuity | |
n.别出心裁;善于发明创造 | |
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25 arid | |
adj.干旱的;(土地)贫瘠的 | |
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26 foodstuffs | |
食物,食品( foodstuff的名词复数 ) | |
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27 evaporation | |
n.蒸发,消失 | |
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28 economize | |
v.节约,节省 | |
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29 warping | |
n.翘面,扭曲,变形v.弄弯,变歪( warp的现在分词 );使(行为等)不合情理,使乖戾, | |
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30 parching | |
adj.烘烤似的,焦干似的v.(使)焦干, (使)干透( parch的现在分词 );使(某人)极口渴 | |
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31 foliage | |
n.叶子,树叶,簇叶 | |
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32 epidermis | |
n.表皮 | |
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33 undue | |
adj.过分的;不适当的;未到期的 | |
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34 petals | |
n.花瓣( petal的名词复数 ) | |
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35 wilt | |
v.(使)植物凋谢或枯萎;(指人)疲倦,衰弱 | |
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36 wither | |
vt.使凋谢,使衰退,(用眼神气势等)使畏缩;vi.枯萎,衰退,消亡 | |
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37 flora | |
n.(某一地区的)植物群 | |
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38 moths | |
n.蛾( moth的名词复数 ) | |
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39 grassy | |
adj.盖满草的;长满草的 | |
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40 sparse | |
adj.稀疏的,稀稀落落的,薄的 | |
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41 essentially | |
adv.本质上,实质上,基本上 | |
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42 thorny | |
adj.多刺的,棘手的 | |
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43 dint | |
n.由于,靠;凹坑 | |
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44 insufficient | |
adj.(for,of)不足的,不够的 | |
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45 vengeance | |
n.报复,报仇,复仇 | |
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46 evolutionary | |
adj.进化的;演化的,演变的;[生]进化论的 | |
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