What Earth Worms Do

Southland Times, Issue 11362, 21 January 1890, Page 4

What Earth Worms Do

Mr Thomas Meeban, the well known nurseryman and pomoloztit, gives in the Country Gentleman the following bit <f natural history :— Th« family had been away for a week and no one had been around to interfere with the silent work of nature. There was a briok pavement under a grape arbonr b«for*> ns — tbe lady of the hous-i and I— and we were talking of the garden and how soon wild nature took possession of everything the moment the powerful hand of man took a rest. The bricks in tbe pavement were get. ting green; and in the crevroea of the bricks the petiples— leaf stalks— of the dead grapeleaves were sticking up in every direction. These are naturally about three locoes long. They had about one third their leDgth in the ground. Bo that there were numbers — many hundreds — of stalks just about two inches in height, sticking up everywhere My lady friend called my attention to them, and remarked ;— " dee how bu»y tbe neighbours children have been while we have been away, they have been under the arbour and stuck little sticks between the bricks in every direction. This had evidently been her passing thought ard her only though'-:, and had the not expressed it to me, she and her friends would have been no wiser to-day. Said I :— " Don't you see that tbo»e sticks are all abont two inches in length and ail exactly' npriphtT Would children cut sticks all of one exact length and then puth tbf m in so that they should be ro nearly upright ?" Having excited curiosity by this remark I continued : — " Tbe sticks are grapevine leaf stalks and they have beep drawn in by earth worms " and I drew one and showed her. 'f The»e fa-tb worms perform an extremely valuable work for man. They make poor ground rich. Here are the earthcast^ — poor grpjmd that they, have thrown up, which gets the benefit or fertilizing material at tbe Surface — and they pull down vegetable matter into the holes they make, and this enriches the poor soil below. Tboneta a farmer never put a plough to the earth there would be} in a few yearn a good layer of fertile earth on the upper strata of tbe soil, and all by the work of Uaese humble crratmes '