FIELD

field, william ventris field, baron (1813-1907), english judge, second son of thomas flint field, of fielden, bedfordshire, was born on the 21st of august 1813. he was educated at king's school, bruton, somersetshire, and entered the legal profession as a solicitor. in 1843, however, he ceased to practise as such, and entered at the inner temple, being called to the bar in 1850, after having practised for some time as a special pleader. he joined the western circuit, but soon exchanged it for the midland. he obtained a large business as a junior, and became a queen's counsel and bencher of his inn in 1864. as a q.c. he had a very extensive common law practice, and had for some time been the leader of the midland circuit, when in february 1875, on the retirement of mr justice keating, he was raised to the bench as a justice of the queen's bench. mr justice field was an excellent puisne judge of the type that attracts but little public attention. he was a first-rate lawyer, had a good knowledge of commercial matters, great shrewdness and a quick intellect, while he was also painstaking and scrupulously fair. when the rules of the supreme court 1883 came into force in the autumn of that year, mr justice field was so well recognized an authority upon all questions of practice that the lord chancellor selected him to sit continuously at judges' chambers, in order that a consistent practice under the new rules might as far as possible be established. this he did for nearly a year, and his name will always, to a large extent, be associated with the settling of the details of the new procedure, which finally did away with the former elaborate system of "special pleading." in 1890 he retired from the bench and was raised to the peerage as baron field of bakeham, becoming at the same time a member of the privy council. in the house of lords he at first took part, not infrequently, in the hearing of appeals, and notably delivered a carefully-reasoned judgment in the case of the _bank of england_ v. _vagliano brothers_ (5th of march 1891), in which, with lord bramwell, he differed from the majority of his brother peers. before long, however, deafness and advancing years rendered his attendances less frequent. lord field died at bognor on the 23rd of january 1907, and as he left no issue the peerage became extinct. field (a word common to many west german languages, cf. ger. _feld_, dutch _veld_, possibly cognate with o.e. _folde_, the earth, and ultimately with root of the gr. [greek: platos], broad), open country as opposed to woodland or to the town, and particularly land for cultivation divided up into separate portions by hedges, banks, stone walls, &c.; also used in combination with words denoting the crop grown on such a portion of land, such as corn-field, turnip-field, &c. the word is similarly applied to a region with particular reference to its products, as oil-field, gold-field, &c. for the "open" or "common field" system of agriculture in village communities see commons. generally with a reference to their "wild" as opposed to their "domestic" nature "field" is applied to many animals, such as the "field-mouse." there are many applications of the word; thus from the use of the term for the place where a battle is fought, and widely of the whole theatre of war, come such phrases as to "take the field" for the opening of a campaign, "in the field" of troops that are engaged in the operations of a campaign. it is frequently used figuratively in this sense, of the subject matter of a controversy, and also appears in military usage, in field-fortification, field-day and the like. a "field-officer" is one who ranks above a captain and below a general (see officers); a field marshal is the highest rank of general officer in the british and many european armies (see marshal). "field" is used in many games, partly with the idea of an enclosed space, partly with the idea of the ground of military operations, for the ground in which such games as cricket, football, baseball and the like are played. hence it is applied to those players in cricket and baseball who are not "in," and "to field" is to perform the functions of such a player--to stop or catch the ball played by the "in" side. "the field" is used in hunting, &c., for those taking part in the sport, and in racing for all the horses entered for a race, and, in such expressions as "to back the field," is confined to all the horses with the exception of the "favourite." a common application of the word is to a surface, more or less wide, as of the sky or sea, or of such physical phenomena as ice or snow, and particularly of the ground, of a special "tincture," on which armorial bearings are displayed (see heraldry); it is thus used also of the "ground" of a flag, thus the white ensign of the british navy has a red st george's cross on a white "field." in scientific usage the word is also used of the sphere of observation or of operations, and has come to be almost equivalent to a department of knowledge. in physics, a particular application is that to the area which is influenced by some agent, as in the magnetic or electric field. the field of observation or view is the area within which objects can be seen through any optical instrument at any one position. a "field-glass" is the name given to a binocular glass used in the field (see binocular instrument); the older form of field-glass was a small achromatic telescope with joints. this terms is also applied, in an astronomical telescope or compound microscope, to that one of the two lenses of the "eye-piece" which is next to the object-glass; the other is called the "eye-glass." fieldfare (o.e. _fealo-for_ = fallow-farer), a large species of thrush, the _turdus pilaris_ of linnaeus--well known as a regular and common autumnal visitor throughout the british islands and a great part of europe, besides western asia, and even reaching northern africa. it is the _veldjakker_ and _veld-lyster_ of the dutch, the _wachholderdrossel_ and _kramtsvogel_ of germans, the _litorne_ of the french, and the _cesena_ of italians. this bird is of all thrushes the most gregarious in. habit, not only migrating in large bands and keeping in flocks during the winter, but even commonly breeding in society--200 nests or more having been seen within a very small space. the birch-forests of norway, sweden and russia are its chief resorts in summer, but it is known also to breed sparingly in some districts of germany. though its nest has been many times reported to have been found in scotland, there is perhaps no record of such an incident that is not open to doubt; and unquestionably the missel-thrush (_t. viscivorus_) has been often mistaken for the fieldfare by indifferent observers. the head, neck, upper part of the back and the rump are grey; the wings, wing-coverts and middle of the back are rich hazel-brown; the throat is ochraceous; and the breast reddish-brown--both being streaked or spotted with black, while the belly and lower wing-coverts are white, and the legs and toes very dark-brown. the nest and eggs resemble those of the blackbird (_t. merula_), but the former is usually built high up in a tree. the fieldfare's call-note is harsh and loud, sounding like _t'chatt'chat_: its song is low, twittering and poor. it usually arrives in britain about the middle or end of october, but sometimes earlier, and often remains till the middle of may before departing for its northern breeding-places. in hard weather it throngs to the berry-bearing bushes which then afford it sustenance, but in open winters the flocks spread over the fields in search of animal food--worms, slugs and the larvae of insects. in very severe seasons it will altogether leave the country, and then return for a shorter or longer time as spring approaches. from _william of palerne_ (translated from the french c. 1350) to the writers of our own day the fieldfare has occasionally been noticed by british poets with varying propriety. thus chaucer's association of its name with frost is as happy as true, while scott was more than unlucky in his well-known reference to its "lowly nest" in the highlands. structurally very like the fieldfare, but differing greatly in many other respects, is the bird known in north america as the "robin"--its ruddy breast and familiar habits reminding the early british settlers in the new world of the household favourite of their former homes. this bird, the _turdus migratorius_ of linnaeus, has a wide geographical range, extending from the atlantic to the pacific, and from greenland to guatemala, and, except at its extreme limits, is almost everywhere a very abundant species. as its scientific name imports, it is essentially a migrant, and gathers in flocks to pass the winter in the south, though a few remain in new england throughout the year. yet its social instincts point rather in the direction of man than of its own kind, and it is not known to breed in companies, while it affects the homesteads, villages and even the parks and gardens of the large cities, where its fine song, its attractive plumage, and its great services as a destroyer of noxious insects, combine to make it justly popular. (a. n.)