384 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
partly clouded. So that the character of the night does 
not seem to depend entirely upon the moon or stars. 
The shepherds on the hills say that now and then 
there comes an intense blackness at night which 
frightens the sheep and makes them leap the hurdles, 
When logs of timber are split for firewood they 
are commonly stacked ‘four square,’ and occasionally 
such a stack, four or five feet high, may be seen all 
aglow with phosphorescence. Each individual split 
piece of wood is distinctly visible—a pale faintly 
yellow light seems to be emitted from its surface. 
At the same time the ends of the faggot sticks pro- 
jecting from the adjacent stack of faggots also glow 
as if touched with fire. So vivid is the light that 
at the first glance it is quite startling--as if 
the whole collection of wood were just on the point 
of bursting into flame. In passing old hollow trees 
sometimes they appear illuminated from within: 
the light proceeds from the decaying ‘touchwood. 
Old willow trees are sometimes streaked with such 
light from the top to the foot of the trunk. As this 
phosphorescence is only occasional, it would seem to 
depend on the condition of the atmosphere. 
I once noticed what looked like a glowworm on a 
window-blind at night, but there was no glowworm 
there ; the light was of a pale greenish hue. In the 
morning an examination showed that the linen was 
decayed and almost rotten just in that particular spot, 
and it had slightly turned colour, Glowworms are 
