1 68 HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY 



carry a spite, because a serpent is said to have tempted 

 Eve ? Was it not a fair match ? Poisonous snakes 

 are nearly as rare as those that talk. 



One of Darwin's most interesting essays concerns 

 the value of the angleworm. It serves to plow up 

 the farmer's soil, reaching a depth that his best sub- 

 soilers cannot touch. It is one of Nature's prettiest 

 methods of laughing at our inventions. The worms 

 aerate the soil and make room for both water and 

 roots. In Florida the gopher, which is a ground 

 squirrel and a pest in most ways, does a vast amount 

 of this subsoiling. I inquire at his mound concern- 

 ing what lies underneath that which is reached by my 

 plowshare. Getting the air into the soil is, after all, 

 our most important agricultural work. 



Overhead and everywhere about the Southern 

 States, you see a bird of the condor sort, a distress- 

 fully unfinished creature, that the laws forbid you 

 to kill. He is a most important public scavenger and 

 invaluable where range cattle are tolerated and not 

 a few cows die in their wild pasturage. Only for 

 this turkey buzzard the air would be tainted all the 

 year through. 



Do not kill the lady beetles, for the whole class 

 of them do nothing else but work for your advantage. 

 Boys call them carriage bugs and seldom know their 

 importance in the orchard. Daddy longlegs is an- 

 other of our friends, which we should leave to his 

 beneficent work of destroying scale and other in- 

 sects. 



