I70 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



soil looked black and fertile, and new-comers thought 

 they were going to have good crops, but when these 

 failed they found, upon examining the earth, that it was 

 little more than black sand, and the particles of silica 

 glittered if a handful were held in the sun. Such a 

 sand would give the impression of dryness, instead of 

 which it was extremely damp — damp all the year round. 

 For contrast, a place on the coast just opposite, as it 

 were, and almost within view, at the same time of year 

 seemed to have no bees. A great field of clover in 

 flower was silent ; there was no hum, nor glistening of 

 wings. Butterflies rarely came along. Swallows were 

 not common. In the rich loam it was curious to note 

 mussel-shells, quite recent, in good preservation, and a 

 geologist might wonder at the layers of them in such an \ 

 earth ; the farmer would smile, and say the mussels werei^ 

 carted there for manure. Another place, again, in the-i 

 same county is full of rooks, and the arum is green on i 



the banks. These items in a small area show howi^ 



'J 



different places are, and if you move from locality to|| 

 locality everything you have read about is by degrees ^ 

 seen in reality. In an old book, the History of North- •; 

 ampton, which I chanced to look at, among other,! 

 curiosities, the author a hundred years ago mentioned!' 

 a substance called star shot, which appeared in the! 

 meadows overnight, and seemed to have dropped from! 

 the sky. This I had not then seen, but many years' 

 afterwards came suddenly, by a copse, on a quantity of| 

 jelly-like substance with a most unpleasant aspect, but 

 which did not in any other way offend the senses. It 

 had shot up in the night, and was gone next day. It i.< 

 a fungus unnoticed till it suddenly swells ; I suppose thi^ 

 was the old chronicler's star shot. Nor do I think it toe 

 small a thing that the common snail makes a straight 



