15© FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



tendrils round and round with so patent a movement that 

 you can see it hour by hour like the hand of a clock. 

 Perhaps the little book on earthworms is a yet more 

 wonderful achievement of this great genius, who had 

 not only untiring patience to observe and verify, but 

 also possessed imagination, and could thereby see the 

 motive idea at work behind the facts. At first it has 

 a repellent sound, but we quickly learn how clumsy and 

 prejudiced have been our views of the despised worm 

 thrown up by every ploughshare. 



I have spoken of the veined elms and their thousand 

 thousand branches that divide like the nerves ; from 

 each of these nerves of living wood there has fallen its 

 breathing lungs of leaf. Where are these million leaves? 

 By night the worm has drawn them into his gallery 

 beneath the surface, and they have formed his food to 

 again become the richest guano, to help the succulent 

 growth of green grass and corn. Merely for profit alone, 

 the profit of this digested food for plants, the agriculturist 

 should preserve some trees that their leaves may thus 

 be applied. The despised worm, the lowly worm, is 

 actually so exquisitely organised that the whole of its 

 body is sensitive to light, and is as conscious of the ray 

 as the pupil of your own eye. Here is great and good 

 work like that of those classics, the manuscripts of 

 which were the first to be copied by the early printers, 

 and books like this would be well thumbed of the 

 country reader. 



In a degree the interior of the country bears a certain 

 resemblance to the state of Spain. Of that sunny land, 

 travellers tell us the strangest inconsistencies of the 

 people and natural products. It is an arid land, without 

 verdure, nothing but prickly aloes and scattered orange 

 groves, mere dots in a sunburnt expanse. Silver and 



