Another place, again, in the same county is full of rooks,
and the arum is green on the banks. 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.
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