Two hours go by, but their wanderings continue.
What do they want?
Food?
I offer them some tiny bulbs with bundles of sprouting roots, a few fragments of leaves and some fresh blades of grass.

Nothing tempts them; nothing brings them to a standstill.
Apparently they are seeking for a favourable point before descending into the earth.

But there is no need for this hesitating exploration on the soil I have prepared for them; the whole area, or so it seems to me, lends itself excellently to the operations which I am expecting to see them commence.

Yet apparently it will not answer the purpose.
Under natural conditions a little wandering might well be indispensable.
Spots as soft as my bed of earth from the roots of the briar-heather, purged of all hard bodies and finely sifted, are rare in nature.

Coarse soils are more usual, on which the tiny creatures could make no impression.