lO 
NATURE NOTES 
and speculation went hand in hand with simple observation.'*' 
For instance, he one day traced two tiny earthworks with the 
point of his walking stick across an ant trail. “ The work of the 
nest was stopped and thousands upon thousands of factory hands 
were thrown out of employment.” They searched right and left 
for the lost trail, but not a single ant went straight forward over 
the earthworks. Yet the barrier was only about three times the 
height of their bodies. This caused Jefferies to conclude that 
“ unless in a well-worn groove, a single ant appears incapable of 
running in a straight line.” Then at once he proceeds to specu- 
late why and wherefore. “ These ants that acted so foolishly to 
appearance may have been influenced by some former experience 
of which we know nothing ; there may be something in the past 
history of the ants w'hich may lead them to profoundly suspect 
interference with their path as indicative of extreme danger. 
Once perhaps, many ant generations ago, there was some crea- 
ture which acted thus in order to destroy them.” Compare the 
facts which interested White when he watched ants — the hurry 
and confusion round ant-hills in August, previous to emigration 
— the myriad swarms in the air— the wealth of food for swallows. 
All this interested him for its own sake, apart from any theory. 
Similarly he made careful notes of the dates when flowers first 
blossom without troubling himself why some come so early as to 
be invariably nipped. Jefferies, on the contrary, suggests that 
the apricot “ probably opens at the time nearest to that which, 
in its own country, brings forth the insects that frequent it ; ” 
while, as regards the woodbine leaf, “ always the first to come ” 
in January, “ and never learning that it is too soon ” he thinks it 
must originally have been of foreign introduction, and that it 
“ still imagines itself ten degrees further south, so some time 
seems necessary to teach a plant the almanack.” Thus habit in 
the plant is accounted for on the same lines as instinct in the 
animal. 
Thoreau also noted dates. Emerson tells how “ it was a 
pleasure and privilege to walk with him. He knew the country 
like a fox or a bird, and passed through it freely by paths of his 
own . . . On this day he looked for the Menyanthes and 
detected it across the wide pool ; and, on examination of the 
floret, declared it had been in flower five days. He drew out of 
his breast pocket a diary, and read the names of all the plants 
* It must not be inferred that White never ventured on a theorj- — as, for 
instance, in relation to the migration of birds. But as a rule the moral of his 
writing is utilitarian, not speculative. “ The study of grasses would be of great 
consequence to a northerly and grazing kingdom. The botanist who would 
improve the sward of the district where he lived would be an useful member 
of society : to raise a thick turf on a naked soil would be worth volumes of 
sr’stematic knowledge, and he would be the best commonwealth’s man that could 
occasion the growth of two blades of grass where one had been before.” And the 
thirty-fifth letter anticipates the whole of Darwin’s fat volume on earthworms, by 
pointing out the benefits worms confer to soil. 
