170 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 were 

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

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

 the banks. These items in a small area show how 

 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 is 

 a fungus unnoticed till it suddenly swells ; I suppose this 

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

 small a thing that the common snail makes a straight 



