Radio - active Creatures
A few moments later, strolling down the hill, I saw at my feet on the tarmac a tiny trail of phosphorescence. "Late in the year for glow- worms," I thought, though my coleopterist son had found two specimens of the yellow spotted variety some days earlier. I examined the.trail and found it to come from a little millipede-like creature, whose whole body was radio-active; so much so that it dropped gouts of fire behind it as it knotted itself up and then sprang out, an inch at a time, in a serpentine progress. By stepping aside and removing my shadow, I could see that it was of a warm brown colour, which shone even in the bleaching moonlight. The coleopterist was in bed and fast asleep, so I had to wait until next morning before he went off to school. He rather scoffed at my find, and doubted the existence of any luminous creature in England, other than the glow-worm. I am not satisfied. I am going over shortly to a neighbour five miles away, who has translated, by some horticultural magic of her own, a Persian garden into a Kentish garden. She will surely know something about this oddity which has delighted a country- dwelling townsman. There I stood between these contrasting fires, and felt that they symbolised the whole problem of the contemplative man in wartime.
Previous page
