I
Allude To Darwin's 'Climbing Plants' And To His 'Earthworms;' These Are
Astonishing Works Of Singular Patience And Careful Observation.
The first
gives most fascinating facts about such a common plant, for example, as
the hedge bryony and the circular motion of its tendrils.
Any farmer, for
instance, will tell you that the hop-bine will insist upon going round
the pole in one direction, and you cannot persuade it to go the other.
These circular movements seem almost to resemble those of the planets
about their centre, all things down to the ether seem to have a rotatory
motion; and some foreign plants which he grew send their far-extended
tendrils round and round with so patent a movement that you can see it
hour by hour like the hand of a clock. 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.
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