142 



THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



[August 



windless calm, and the mounting sun, except in the early mornings, 

 robs it of its subtle sting. On such days a slight haze will blurr the 

 landscape at more than half a mile's distance, but in the zenith the 

 air will be clear and blue as at midsummer. It is now that in remote 

 cottage allotments, one sees bent backs laboriously at work with seed 

 potatoes and early radishes, and even the man with a villa garden in 

 the suburbs begins to talk of hardy annuals, and will bring home 

 cinerarias or primulas in pots to cheer his stuccoed home. In brief, 

 spring has arrived, and the earth in every fibre responds to that 

 gracious influence. 



On such a day does the Coleopterist renovate his dusty equipment 

 and promise to himself if not sport at least a pleasant half-holiday, 

 more fortunate than his brother Piscator, for whom in such a time of 

 clear waters and narrowed streams the fly and worm are alike useless ; 

 or than his friend Venator who has just put away his double barrel to 

 remain idle, except perhaps where in July evenings the young rabbits 

 venture among the growing oats, until the flattened corn lands now 

 just tinged with green are rough and yellow with the September stub- 

 ble — more fortunate than these, all seasons furnish game to the ardent 

 entomologist, but to the especial devotee of Coleoptera none comes so 

 welcome, none is indeed so prolific as the first sunny days of the early 

 spring. 



Let it be premised them that without wearying rail or other journey 

 we set forth from a country house, and are at once in an arable land, 

 an extensive flat of the lower drift fills a depression in the Triassic 

 beds which underlie all the district, and affords a good but rather heavy 

 soil to the grass, roots, and cereals, which about equally share its 

 surface. 



For the farms all over this country side are mostly devoted to dairy 

 stock and grow for home consumption not for sale. However long 

 ago in the good old days of the corn laws the whole land grew wheat, 

 now a most unusual sight, wheat however is an exhausting crop and 

 before the time of phosphates or bones, the strength of the soil was 

 renovated by an application of the virgin subsoil to the exhausted sur- 

 face, for this purpose were dug these innumerable pits or ponds which 

 now occupy the corner of every field. There they dug deep down into 

 the clay and spread the marl so obtained over the surface of the land. 

 The practice ceased some 50 years ago and many of these pits are 

 doubtless over a century old. Now they remain gradually silting up 



