354 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
worst enemies of lawns—they made such a mess! 
His greatest trouble was to keep them down. He 
was always going round with a bucket of brine, 
particularly about the lower borders, where they 
were always trying to come in, and poured the 
brine down their holes. Brine was the best worm- 
killer he knew; and the result of his care and use 
of it was that you wouldn’t be able to find a worm 
on all that immense lawn. 
I asked him if he could not understand that it 
was no pleasure to walk or sit or lie on a lawn 
where the ground was always dry and hard in spite 
of all the watering he gave it. To walk on his 
lawn tired and depressed me, whereas on the 
chalk-hill behind the house I could walk miles with 
pure delight, simply because it was a close-matted 
turf and was felt beneath the feet like a pile-carpet 
drawn over a thick rubber floor. It lifted me when 
I walked on it, and was better than the most 
luxurious couch to lie on, to say nothing of the 
pleasure one received from the sight of its small 
gem-like flowers and from its aromatic scent. As 
to the castings, they were unpleasant only when 
the lawn was wet in the morning, and only then 
when the grass was too thin. You do not see the 
castings on the thick turf on the downs, although 
if you take up a sod you find earthworms at the 
roots in abundance. 
Well, he answered, a lawn could not have a turf 
like a chalk-hill fed by sheep, because—such a turf 
wasn’t the right one for a lawn to have. Then, as 
