United States or Democratic Republic of the Congo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


When sleep had laid silence upon it all, the stillness of night unveiled yet another world: then the death-watches audibly bored their way beneath the old wall-papers, while rats and mice and the larvae of wood-beetles vied with one another in their efforts. The darkness was full of the aromatic fragrance of the falling worm-dust.

There were seventeen, of large size, and a great number of smaller ones. Max discovered a deep pool at the lower end of the islet, in which were a number of fish, marked like yellow perch: and as he had a fishing-line of Eiulo's manufacture, in his pocket he amused himself by angling, using wood-beetles for bait. Morton and Browne hunted up four flat stones, and commenced pitching quoits.

Two roots covered with exquisite moss ran out from each side, like the arms of a chair, and between them there accumulated year after year a rich, though tiny store of dark leaf-mould. We always used to say that fairies lived within, though I never saw anything go in myself but wood-beetles. There was one going in at that moment. "How little the wood was changed!

Still we do not know what its capacities of physical action and passion may be. We shall find them out by observing it in relation to different 'natures'. It turns out to be combustible by fire, resistant to water, tractable to the carpenter's tools, intractable to his digestive organs, harmless to ostriches, nourishing to wood-beetles.

When sleep had laid silence upon it all, the stillness of night unveiled yet another world: then the death-watches audibly bored their way beneath the old wall-papers, while rats and mice and the larvae of wood-beetles vied with one another in their efforts. The darkness was full of the aromatic fragrance of the falling worm-dust.