344 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



destructiveness to the small birds of the homestead, 

 the blackbird and song-thrush, chaffinch, robin, 

 dunnock, and other species that are accustomed 

 to seek for small morsels on the gravelled walks 

 where these poisons are so much used by gardeners 

 to extirpate the small hardy weeds that root them- 

 selves in such places. 



I didn't pursue the matter further, and the 

 subject of lawns and earthworms was out of my 

 mind for two or three weeks when something 

 happened at the end of August to revive my interest 

 in it. There came a wet day followed by a gale of 

 wind which lasted a part of the night, and next 

 morning I found that the wind in its violence had 

 well-nigh stripped a row of young false acacia 

 trees growing on the south side of their still living 

 green leaves and sprinkled them abundantly all 

 over the lawn. As I sat out of doors that afternoon 

 I didn't quite like the disorderly appearance of the 

 long green leaves torn off before their time lying 

 all about me, and I took it into my head to sweep 

 them away, but when I set myself to do it with 

 the brushwood broom, not a leaf could I sweep 

 from its place ! I then discovered to my surprise 

 that the leaves were all made fast to the ground ; 

 every leaf had been seized and dragged by an 

 earthworm to its run, the terminal leaflet rolled 

 up and pulled into the hole, but no further could 

 the leaf go, since the next two opposite leaflets on 

 the stem were like a cross-bar and prevented further 

 progress. In every case the terminal leaflet was 



