THREAD-WORMS. 309 



fact of importance, in addition to what he has 

 mentioned, is that of their having been found in 

 this instance upon the trees in the garden, as well 

 as upon the ground and low vegetables. Dujardin 

 mentions their occasional appearance in large num- 

 bers in gardens after rain, both on the soil and 

 on the box edging so common by the side of bor- 

 ders, and the theory by which he accounts for it 

 is stated below. But to explain the circumstance 

 of their being met with at Fairford on the tops 

 of the trees, consistently with this theory, we 

 must either suppose that the worms, after their 

 exit from the soil, and when searching for a spot 

 to deposit their eggs, actually ascended to the height 

 at which they were found, working their way up 

 the stems of the trees by a continued writhing, and, 

 as it would seem, in a marvellously short space of 

 time ; or that some of them had not quitted the 

 bodies of the grubs in which they were originally 

 imprisoned till after these last were transformed 

 into beetles, and had conveyed themselves to the 

 trees.* At the same time, it is possible that some 

 of the worms, which had climbed to so considerable 

 a height, might have first left the ground on a 

 former occasion, only not have been noticed till 

 after the hard rain on the 15th which caused them 

 to revive ; in like manner as those which were 

 found on the box edging reappeared two days after 

 on the return of wet, having in the mean time 



* I did not hear, however, that any cockchaffers had been 

 observed in the garden previously. 



