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 
