WALKS IN THE WHEAT-FIELDS. 149 
could be actually bought and carried home. Till quite 
lately so few books have circulated in country placcs 
that they may be said to have been like these old manu- 
scripts. The early printed books were simply the manu- 
scripts printed, and that is why they remain to this day 
the finest specimens of typography, quite incomparable 
and not to be approached by present-day printers. The 
art of the scribe, elaborated through centuries, had 
reached a marvellous perfection ; the first printer copied 
them—the magic Fust actually sold his first books as 
manuscripts. Since printers have only copied printers, 
books have steadily declined in excellence. I have been 
obliged to use the outside to suggest the inside—country 
readers want that which is genuine, honest, and, in a 
word, really good; you cannot please them with vamped- 
up book-making. Two books occur to me at this 
moment which would be greatly appreciated in every 
country home, from that of the peasant who has just 
begun to read to the houscs of well-educated and well- 
to-do people, if they only knew of their existence and 
their contents—of course provided they were cheap 
enough, for country people have to be careful of their 
money nowadays. I allude to Darwin’s ‘Climbing 
Plants’ and to his ‘ Earthworms ;’ these are astonishing 
works of singular patience and careful observation. The 
first gives most fascinating facts about such a common 
plant, for example, as the hedge bryony and the circular 
motion of its tendrils.) Any farmer, for instance, will 
tell you that the hop-bine will insist upon going round 
the pole in one direction, and you cannot persuade it to 
go the other. These circular movements seem almost to 
resemble those of the planets about their centre, all things 
down to the ether scem to have a rotatory motion ; and 
some foreign plants which he grew send their far-extended 
