Decaying meal contains hundreds of certain very curious worms called _Nematodes_. They are short, about one-twenty-fifth of an inch in length, and are smooth and very like minute eels. These creatures are very active, wriggling or swaying to and fro in a characteristic manner. Now in decaying meal there is a peculiar fungus. Like most fungi, it consists of very minute transparent threads which contain living matter or protoplasm. This particular fungus has branches, but also forms curious loops or belts. When one of these eel-worms is swaying about in the meal, it may quite well happen that its tail slips into one of these loops. If that happens, the fate of the worm is sealed, for the loop is elastic, and the more it wriggles the farther it slips in and the stronger it is held. The fungus then begins to grow, and forms a tube which grows _into the worm_ and kills it. All the material in the worm's body goes to nourish the fungus. This extraordinary fungus has been described and figured by Professor Zopf, but seems to be a very unusual and rare form. CHAPTER XXIII THE PERIL OF INSECTS The Phylloxera--French sport--Life history of the Phylloxera--Cockchafer grubs--Wireworm--The misunderstood crows--Dangerous sucklings of greenflies--"Sweat of heaven" and "Saliva of the stars"--A parasite of a parasite of a parasite--Buds--The apple-blossom weevil--Apple-sucker--The codlin moth and the ripening apple--The pear midge--A careless naturalist and his present of rare eggs--Leaf-miners--Birds without a stain upon their characters--Birds and man--Moats--Dust and mites--The homes of the mites--Buds, insect eggs, and parent birds flourishing together. The difficulty in describing the Romance of Plant Life does not arise from a want of romance, but the sieges, battles, and alarms are so difficult to see, and the enemies are so tiny, that the terrific contests continually going on escape our notice altogether. When one does look carefully and closely at the life of a plant, one sometimes wonders how it manages to exist at all in the midst of so many and great dangers. There are great swarms of insects which devour or burrow into it, or suck its life-juices. These are infinitely more dangerous than the relatively clumsy, heavy-footed, grazing animal. Every part of a plant has its own special insect foe, and it is really difficult to understand how it can possibly escape. Perhaps the "Achilles' heel" is the root, for, underground, plants get no help from the watchful and ever-present army of birds, who are, as we shall see, the natural police of the world.