THE BALANCE OF NATURE. 137 



we chose to pursue the matter to the very bot- 

 tom, that matrimony is injurious to the interests 

 of the ck)ver-crop. This may indeed, in the 

 Shakspearian phrase, be to inquire too curiously ; 

 and yet who does not know tlie converse and 

 equally singular fact that the number of marriaoes 

 in England every year varies regularly with the 

 price of corn? Whatever makes bread cheaj) en- 

 courages a certain number of hesitating youiinr 

 people to marry off-hand ; whatever makes it dear 

 decides a few more prudent couples to wait a 

 little longer till times are better again. 



Corn itself supplies us with another remarkable 

 example of the extraordinary cross-relations and 

 interactions which exist among all the factors in 

 the balance of nature. For many generations 

 farmers have had a singular and almost supersti- 

 tious aversion to that pretty and seemingly harm- 

 less shrub, the barberry. Wherever its bright red 

 clusters of pendent fruit were seen hanging 

 temptingly from the hedgerows the bucolic intelli- 

 gence was wont to assert that wheat would never 

 thrive or prosper. Occupiers of handsome grounds 

 laughed at this quaint and apparently meaningless 

 notion ; and since the barberry, with its crimson 

 fruit and pale green foliage, is a very ornamental 

 little bush, they planted it freely, in spite of the 

 farmers, among all their shrubberies. Of late 

 years, however, microscopical investigators have 



