s found in a garden, and Hensen
believes that worms are here twice as numerous as in corn-fields. The
above result, astonishing though it be, seems to me credible, judging
from the number of worms which I have sometimes seen, and from the
number daily destroyed by birds without the species being
exterminated. Some barrels of bad ale were left on Mr. Miller's land,
in the hope of making vinegar, but the vinegar proved bad, and the
barrels were upset. It should be premised that acetic acid is so
deadly a poison to worms that Perrier found that a glass rod dipped
into this acid and then into a considerable body of water in which
worms were immersed, invariably killed them quickly. On the morning
after the barrels had been upset, "the heaps of worms which lay dead
on the ground were so amazing, that if Mr. Miller had not seen them,
he could not have thought it possible for such numbers to have existed
in the space." As further evidence of the large number of worms which
live in the ground Hensen states that he found in a garden 64 open
burrows in a space of 141/2 square feet, that is, 9 in 2 square feet.
But the burrows are sometimes much more numerous, for when digging in
a grass-field near Maer Hall, I found a cake of dry earth, as large as
my two open hands, which was penetrated by seven burrows, as large as
goose-quills.

[Illustration]

TWO FOPS AMONG THE FISHES

(FROM GLEANINGS FROM NATURE.)[7]

BY W. S. BLATCHLEY.

[7] Copyright by W. S. Blatchley, 1899.

I.--THE RAINBOW DARTER.

"Little fishy in the brook."

[Illustration]

Not the one "daddy caught with a hook," but another, too small for the
hook, too small for the frying-pan, too small for aught else but
beauty, and gracefulness of form; and yet not the young of a larger
fish, but full grown of himself. In every brook in the State he may be
found, yea, even in the rill, no more than a foot in width, which
leads away from the old spring-house on the hillside. You will not
find him swimming about like the minnows in the still, deep water of
the stream, but where the clear, cold water is rushing rapidly over
the stones of a ripple he makes his home. There he rests quietly on
the bottom, waiting patiently for his food, the larvae or young of
gnats, mosquitoes, and other such insects, to float by.

If you attempt to catch him, or your shadow suddenly frightens him,
with a sweep of his broad pectoral or breast fins, he moves quicker
than a flash