These Items In A Small Area Show How
Different Places Are, And If You Move From Locality To Locality
Everything You Have Read About Is By Degrees Seen In Reality.
In an old
book, the History of Northampton, which I chanced to look at, among other
curiosities, the author a hundred years ago mentioned a substance called
star shot, which appeared in the meadows overnight, and seemed to have
dropped from the sky.
This I had not then seen, but many years afterwards
came suddenly, by a copse, on a quantity of jelly-like substance with a
most unpleasant aspect, but which did not in any other way offend the
senses. It had shot up in the night, and was gone next day. It is a
fungus unnoticed till it suddenly swells; I suppose this was the old
chronicler's star shot. Nor do I think it too small a thing that the
common snail makes a straight track over everything; if he comes to the
wall of a house he goes straight up without the smallest hesitation, and
explores a good height before he comes down again; if he finds a loaf of
bread in the cellar he never thinks of going round it, but travels in a
Roman road up and over. So do the armies of ants in warmer climates, and
this proceeding in an invariable line irrespective of obstacles seems to
be peculiar to many creatures, and is the reason why such 'plagues' were
and are so dreaded. Nothing could divert the straight march of the
locusts; nothing could divert the course of the millions of butterflies
that sometimes cross the Channel and arrive here from the Continent.
The tenacity of insects in anything they have once begun is shown in many
ways; you cannot drive away a fly or a gnat, and if a colony of ants take
up their home in the garden they will hardly move till all are destroyed.
Aristotle mentions the diseases of swine, so it will not be amiss to
record that in the country swine are supposed to suffer from water-brash,
and to relieve themselves by eating dry earth, for which purpose those
that run loose are continually tearing up the ground. Human beings so
affected show a similar tendency for dry food, as oatmeal. Sometimes the
liver of calves and bullocks is small and dry, of very little use for
food; this is found to be due to the neglect of providing them with dry
standing-ground when fattening. To ensure their fattening properly they
should stand on dry and high ground, and they should be plentifully
supplied with dry litter. This fact may be of value to some suffering
person; it points to the necessity of dry warm feet, dry subsoil, and
drainage if the liver is to be in good order. Popular suspicion, if not
science, attaches many other diseases besides those that actually consume
that organ to the abnormal action of the liver, possibly lung disease.
Such trifling circumstances are not so trifling as they appear.
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