NATURAL DIBBLES. 337 



It is really a pitiful thing to see human beings endowed with 

 reason and aspirations performing such a task as dibbling by 

 hand, one going backwards with a dibble in each hand, and the 

 other following and putting seed into the holes. Yet the field 

 labourers have the greatest objection to the machine dibble, as, 

 indeed, they have to any sort of labour-saving machine, thinking 

 that it will lessen the demand for labour, and prevent them 

 from earning a livelihood. 



I well remember how a country clergyman, pitying the hard 

 toil of the hand-dibblers, took occasion when he visited town to 

 purchase a machine dibble wherewith one man could set eight 

 rows of beans at once. It was a very simple affair, compre- 

 hensible even by the dull brain of a Wiltshire labourer. His 

 trouble was all in vain, for no one would use it, and there was 

 such a disturbance about it in the village, that for the sake of 

 peace its owner laid it up in a loft and abandoned its use. 

 There might be some semblance of reason in thinking that it 

 would deprive them of their field labour, but no cottager would 

 even use it in his own garden, though it was freely offered to 

 any one who wished to borrow it. 



THESE machines have their parallels in Nature, two of which 

 are represented in the illustration. 



The lower left-hand figure represents the female Grasshopper 

 depositing her eggs. She is furnished with a sharply pointed 

 ovipositor, composed of two blades. When she is about to lay 

 her eggs, she searches for a suitable piece of ground, where the 

 earth is tolerably soft, and with the closed ovipositor bores a 

 hole. She then separates the blades slightly, and an egg glides 

 between them into the ground, precisely as is done by the 

 machine dibble with its beans. When I first saw and used the 

 instrument, some twenty-five years ago, the parallel struck me 

 at once. 



THE female of the familiar Daddy Long-legs (Tipula) acts 

 in a similar manner. She is furnished with an ovipositor too 

 short to be used like that of the grasshopper, and so she attains 

 her object in a rather different manner. Making use of her 

 long stilt-like legs, she sets herself nearly upright, with the 

 point of the ovipositor in the ground. She then twists herself 



