Some evening after a thunder-shower, take a light and stroll along the garden path, or by the flower bed. Go slowly and step with caution, and you will see large numbers of angle worms—"night walkers" the fishermen call them—stretched out on the ground. Half of their length is hidden in the hole, ready at the slightest jar or noise to pull the remainder underground.
August Twenty-sixth
Woodchucks, or "groundhogs," are very busy at this season of the year. They work overtime even on moonlight nights, for they have a contract with Nature to blanket themselves with layers of fat half an inch thick. If the contract is not filled before winter sets in, death may be the forfeit. Eat, eat, eat; they spend every minute digging up the grass roots, and eating off the clover heads, and they often make excursions into the farmer's garden.
August Twenty-seventh
Butter-and-eggs prefers the unsheltered lands where the sun can beat upon it. It came from Europe and "like nearly all common weeds this plant has been utilized in various ways by the country people. It yields what was considered at one time a valuable skin lotion, while its juices mingled with milk constitutes a fly poison." (Dana.)
Notes
August Twenty-eighth
Be sure to kill any bee-like insect that you see hovering about your horse's fore legs, for it is a bot-fly. After the eggs have been attached to the horse's leg-hairs, they hatch and the horse licks the larvæ and swallows them. Attaching themselves to the walls of the stomach, they live there for some time, but finally pass through the horse and fall to the ground, where they transform into bot-flies.