BY J. J. FLETCHER, M.A., B.SC. 535 



and in the gullies. Nothing could be more striking than the 

 difference between Burrawang and Mt. Wilson in this respect. 



The castings form rugged, convoluted masses plainly indicating 

 their origin, often several inches above the ground, but too 

 irregular and not standing sufficiently erect to deserve the 

 epithet of " tower-like," and they give one the idea of having 

 been ejected in so soft a condition as to have sunk down instead 

 of forming " towers ;" otherwise they are very similar to the 

 castings represented in Figs. 2 and 3 in [Darwin's book. The 

 night of my arrival it began to rain heavily ; after the rain the 

 worms were casting freel} T , the fresh castings being of a semi-fluid 

 consistency, so that from the absence of tower-like castings it may 

 be that they usually cast only during and just after wet weather 

 As noted by Mr. Darwin in the case of other worms, the castings 

 cohere with considerable tenacity on drying, and after heavy rain 

 the old ones were only partially disintegrated thereby. In several 

 places where logs had been burnt, the castings beneath and at the 

 sides of them had been baked, but beyond a change of colour they 

 were still perfectly recognisable as old castings. The worms 

 must materially aid in the work of denudation, because there is 

 not much level ground, and many of the slopes, on which castings 

 may be found, are tolerably steep, so that eventually much of the 

 soil brought to the surface by the worms must be washed clown 

 into the gullies. 



Since earthworms are so abundant at Alt. Wilson it is not 

 improbable that they are equally so in the soil of Mts. Tom ah 

 and Hay, which are not many miles distant, and which, as I 

 understand, are similarly capped with basaltic rocks. If so, the 

 comparison of the worms from these three spots may be of great 

 interest, because practically these mountains have been completely 

 isolated for ages, since the innumerable ravines and gullies which 

 surround them may not unreasonably be supposed to form 

 insuperable barriers to the passage of worms from one to the 

 other, and the surrounding country is of such a barren and rocky 

 character as to support few, if any, worms. On the other hand it 



