MANAGEMENT OP MEADOWS AND PASTURES. JQ3 



meadow, the mould having been spread over the top. "A field 

 which fifteen years since was waste land, was plowed and drained 

 and then well covered with marl and cinders ; it has not since been 

 disturbed, and now supports a tolerably good pasture. Cutting 

 down with the spade into this soil, the section presented the follow- 

 ing appearance: Turf one-half inch, — mould two inches and one- 

 half — a layer one and one-half inches thick of fragments of burned 

 marl, (conspicuous by their bright red color,) of cinders and a few 

 quartz pebbles mingled with earth ; lastly, about four and one-half 

 inches beneath the surface was the original black peaty soil." 

 This state of things shows conclusively that this mould must have 

 been, in some way, laid upon the surface of the soil over the first 

 dressing of cinders and burned marl. The explanation of this 

 covering of mould is simple. You have often seen a smoothly 

 raked garden bed covered over in the morning with little hillocks 

 of earth. These are caused by the common earth worms, which 

 swallow the earth through which it moves, and after extracting 

 whatever of nutriment is contained in it, throw out the remainder 

 mixed with the mucus of its digestive organs on the surface of 

 the ground. This is the origin of the little mounds upon the 

 garden beds, and the annual accumulation of these mounds in the 

 meadows forms the mould whose origin we are seeking for. This 

 agency is more powerful than might be at first supposed. Mr. 

 Johnson gives us the following -illustration of the extent of this 

 activity of the worms in grass lands: "A bowling green forty- 

 five yards long by thirty-two yards wide, was watered by a 

 solution of corrosive sublimate, after which 434 lbs. of dead worms 

 were taken from it, which is at the rate 1,466 lbs. per acre." 

 With this illustration of the immense number of worms at work, 

 and remembering tjiat they are casting up these mounds in the 

 meadows every night during the summer, you will see that we are 

 furnished with an adequate cause for the production of all the 

 mould we find in them. Worms are not only useful in forming 

 mould, but the subterranean galleries which they form in their 

 ceaseless journeys through the. soil and subsoil, admit the air, and 

 thus set on foot that train of chemical transformations which are 

 essential to the growth of the grass, and without their assistance 

 could never be effected. From all this it is plain, that if we would 

 succeed in our sowing, we must artificially prepare a seed bed as 

 nearly resembling this worm-mould as possible, and we must 

 encourage the continued travelling of worms through the soil. 



