IN A GARDEN 
171 
blood, or its equivalent. The earwig's lustre is 
that of antiquity. He existed on earth before 
colour came in ; and colour is old, although not so 
old as Nature's unconscious sestheticism, which, in 
the organic world, is first expressed in beauty 
of form. It is long since the great May flies, 
large as swifts, had their aerial cloudy dances over 
the vast everglades and ancient forests of ferns : 
and when, on some dark night, a brilliant Will-o'- 
the-wisp rose and floated above the feathery 
foliage, drawn in myriads to its light, they 
revolved about it in an immense mystic wheel, 
misty- white, glistening, and touched with prismatic 
colours. Floating fire and wheal were visible only 
to the stars, and the wakeful eyes of giant scaly 
monsters lying quiescent in the black waters 
below ; but they were very beautiful nevertheless. 
The modest earwig was old on the earth even then ; 
he dates back to the time, immeasurably remote, 
when scorpions possessed the earth, and taught him 
to fripfhten his enemies with a stinojless tail — that 
curious antique little tail which has not yet forgot 
its cunning. 
Greater than all these inhabitants of the garden, 
ancient or modern, by reason of their numbers, 
which is the sign of predominance, are the small 
wingless people that have colonies on every green 
stem and under every green leaf. These are the 
