The Softer Under
Surface Representing The Floor Is Untouched.
The woodbine leaves are
often bored like this, and seem to have patterns traced upon them.
There
is no particle of matter so small but that it seems to have a living
thing working at it and resolving it into still more minute atoms;
nothing so insignificant but that upon examination it will be found to be
of the utmost value to something alive. Upon almost every fir branch near
the end there are little fragments like cotton, so thick in places as to
quite hang the boughs with threads; these gossamer-like fragments appear
to be left by some insect, perhaps an aphis; and it is curious to note
how very very busy the little willow-wrens are in the fir boughs. They
are constantly at work there; they sing in the firs in the earliest
spring, they stay there all the summer, and now that the edge of autumn
approaches their tiny beaks are still picking up insects the whole day
long. The insects they devour must be as numerous as the fir needles that
lie inches thick on the ground in the copse.
Across a broad, dry, sandy path, worn firm, some thousands of ants
passing to and fro their nest had left a slight trail. They were hurrying
on in full work, when I drew the top of my walking-stick across their
road, obliterating about an inch of it. In an instant the work of the
nest was stopped, and thousands upon thousands of factory hands were
thrown out of employment.
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