354 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



worst enemies of lawns they made such a mess! 

 His greatest trouble was to keep them down. He 

 was always going round with a bucket of brine, 

 particularly about the lower borders, where they 

 were always trying to come in, and poured the 

 brine down their holes. Brine was the best worm- 

 killer he knew; and the result of his care and use 

 of it was that you wouldn't be able to find a worm 

 on all that immense lawn. 



I asked him if he could not understand that it 

 was no pleasure to walk or sit or lie on a lawn 

 where the ground was always dry and hard in spite 

 of all the watering he gave it. To walk on his 

 lawn tired and depressed me, whereas on the 

 chalk-hill behind the house I could walk miles with 

 pure delight, simply because it was a close-matted 

 turf and was felt beneath the feet like a pile-carpet 

 drawn over a thick rubber floor. It lifted me when 

 I walked on it, and was better than the most 

 luxurious couch to lie on, to say nothing of the 

 pleasure one received from the sight of its small 

 gem-like flowers and from its aromatic scent. As 

 to the castings, they were unpleasant only when 

 the lawn was wet in the morning, and only then 

 when the grass was too thin. You do not see the 

 castings on the thick turf on the downs, although 

 if you take up a sod you find earthworms at the 

 roots in abundance. 



Well, he answered, a lawn could not have a turf 

 like a chalk-hill fed by sheep, because such a turf 

 wasn't the right one for a lawn to have. Then, as 



