TILLERS OR THE SOLI. 
whence they came and convert them into soil again that 
the earth may be green. 
And I have advanced upon Darwin (modestly I say it), 
for I have discovered that they have overseers set over 
them. These are the crows which we see patrolling 
meadows and fields after rain. We say familiarly that 
they are “ looking for worms,” and we are right. For the 
worms would grow lazy and live on the surface of the 
ground, eating the leaves where they found them ; but 
their taskmasters are ever on the watch, and if they are 
caught the penalty is death ; therefore they are forced to 
live in the bowels of the earth (pregnant phrase !), and to 
come up at night and draw the leaves down. 
But in this country there is a workman in whose 
presence even the earthworms must “ hide their diminished 
heads.” Darwin never had the chance of intimacy with 
the white ant, but Professor Drummond fell in with it in 
“ Equatorial Africa,” and his eyes were opened. Our eyes 
too have long been open upon the white ant, but with a 
kind of squint in them, or a moral myopia ; for we are 
mostly like the burrowing beetle, intent upon our personal 
aims, but as “ impercipient ” as Baboo Onocool Chunder 
with respect to the great world spinning for ever down 
