. 134 PLANTS AND ANIMALS. [CHAP. 
short before thickets where the stout young oaks are as bare 
as in January, or show only the skeletons of leaves, where 
caterpillars are still searching for some remnant of moist 
sreen food. If we meet the country doctor in his rounds, 
he says that he cannot ride in shaded roads without his hat 
in the hot noon, because he finds hat and coat-collar thickly 
strewn with caterpillars, which have dropped upon him as 
he passed. In the parson’s garden the gooseberry-bushes 
show some withering fruit, but no foliage; and instead, a 
show of caterpillars actually covering every twig. In the 
squire’s pleasure-garden the ladies are mourning over their 
roses, almost every petal of which is pierced, or the very 
heart eaten out by some grub or fly. On any grassy bank 
where the wayfarer would like to rest there is such a coating 
of white grubs that he turns away in disgust. If we go out 
in the moonlight, a dozen cockchafers knock against our faces 
in five minutes; and we foresee the profusion of fat white 
worms which will in consequence be turned up by the plough 
next year. The wall fruit has already received the wound 
which will turn to decay before the autumn, and the canker 
is planted in the apples and pears, which will be deformed 
and seamed, and hard, and without flavour at crop-time. 
There never was a finer agricultural prospect but for this ; 
but the farmer dreads seeing the mangel leaves blown and 
corrupted by the vast families of grubs hidden in their sub- 
stance, and the collars of the roots infested by big cater- 
pillars, fattening on the sweet juices which he intended for 
his cows. It is well if he knows that the rooks can help 
him in this last case, and that they do not want to eat the 
root, as he once believed, but the destroyers of the root. 
These melancholy sights are not, however, all that is to be 
seen. They present themselves in districts where there are 
sparrow-clubs, and men and boys who shoot a little bird 
wherever they have a chance. They are seen where a 
zealous and patriotic rural constable, or any lounger who 
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