Perhaps The Little Book On
Earthworms Is A Yet More Wonderful Achievement Of This Great Genius, Who
Had Not Only Untiring Patience To Observe And Verify, But Also Possessed
Imagination, And Could Thereby See The Motive Idea At Work Behind The
Facts.
At first it has a repellent sound, but we quickly learn how clumsy
and prejudiced have been our views of the despised worm thrown up by
every ploughshare.
I have spoken of the veined elms and their thousand thousand branches
that divide like the nerves; from each of these nerves of living wood
there has fallen its breathing lungs of leaf. Where are these million
leaves? By night the worm has drawn them into his gallery beneath the
surface, and they have formed his food to again become the richest guano,
to help the succulent growth of green grass and corn. Merely for profit
alone, the profit of this digested food for plants, the agriculturist
should preserve some trees that their leaves may thus be applied. The
despised worm, the lowly worm, is actually so exquisitely organised that
the whole of its body is sensitive to light, and is as conscious of the
ray as the pupil of your own eye. Here is great and good work like that
of those classics, the manuscripts of which were the first to be copied
by the early printers, and books like this would be well thumbed of the
country reader.
In a degree the interior of the country bears a certain resemblance to
the state of Spain. Of that sunny land, travellers tell us the strangest
inconsistencies of the people and natural products. It is an arid land,
without verdure, nothing but prickly aloes and scattered orange groves,
mere dots in a sunburnt expanse. Silver and gold abound, and every other
metal, yet none of the mines pay except the quicksilver. A rich soil is
uncultivated, and every natural advantage thrown away. There are
railways, and engines, and telegraphs, and books, but the populace are
still Spaniards, conservative in traditions, and wedded to old customs;
often nominally Republican, but in fact of the ancient creeds and ways.
Like this in lesser degree, everything among our green leaves and golden
wheat is in a confused mixture, at once backwards and forwards,
progressive and retrograde. Here is some of the best soil in the world,
numerous natural advantages, close proximity to immense markets, such as
London. There seem mines of gold and silver in every acre, yet there is a
crushing poverty among the farmers, and exacting poverty among their
dependants the labourers. Every farm may be said to be within reach of
railway communication, yet the producers know nothing of their customers.
The country wishes new land laws to abolish the last vestiges of
feudalism, and is beginning to unite against tithes, and in the same
breath votes Conservative and places a Conservative Government in office.
It would break down the monopoly of the railways, and at the same time
would like a monopoly of protection for itself. It has learned to read
and does not buy books. Science has been shouted over the length and
breadth of the land, and chemistry, and I know not what, called to the
assistance of the farmer, and every day we are drifting more and more
backwards into the rule-of-thumb methods of our forefathers. No anarchy,
happily - omitting that there is a strong resemblance to Spain. For an
instance, in the daily papers it has become as common as possible to see
an advertisement of farm-house apartments to let. Numbers of farm people
look forward to their letting season in the same way as at the sea-side
and in London. This is an immense breach in the ancient isolated manners
of country life. The old farmers, and only a very little time ago, would
as soon have thought of flying as of opening their doors to strangers,
and indeed their rooms were scarcely furnished in a way to receive them.
On the other hand, many farmhouses are empty altogether, and the land is
un-tilled, because it cannot be let at any price, and lapsing backwards
into barbarism. Everything used to be so fixed: there was a sort of caste
of farmers. A man born in a farmhouse never thought of anything else but
farming, and waited and waited, perhaps till he was grey, to get a farm;
now there are few who have such fixed ideas, they are ready to take a
chance at home or abroad. Yet it is the same old country, and with the
new ways and science, and learning, and civilisation, it is as with the
machinery, they are all sunk and lost in the firm old lines. It is all
changed and just the same. What a clamour there used to be about the
damage done by the hares and rabbits to the crops! By-and-by Parliament
said, 'Shoot the hares and rabbits.' To work they went and demolished
them, and now, lo! there is a feeling getting about that we don't want to
be rid of all the hares and rabbits. Hares are almost formed on purpose
to be good sport, and make a jolly good dish, a pleasant addition to the
ceaseless round of mutton and beef to which the dead level of
civilisation reduces us. Coursing is capital, the harriers first-rate.
Now every man who walks about the fields is more or less at heart a
sportsman, and the farmer having got the right of the gun he is not
unlikely to become to some extent a game preserver. When they could not
get it they wanted to destroy it, now they have got it they want to keep
it. The old feeling coming up again - the land reasserting itself, Spain
you see - down with feudalism, but let us have the game. Look down the
long list of hounds kept in England, not one of which could get a run
were it not for the good-will of the farmers, and indeed of the
labourers.
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