580 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



vation there made is correct as to the absence of earthworms 

 in the region mentioned.' 



"For years I have been accustomed to go to Muskoka, 

 in the Canadian dominion, for shooting and fishing. This 

 section is a wooded wilderness with numerous lakes and 

 streams. It is still Governmental wild land, and in part 

 unsurveyed for settlement. The frontier settlers there tell 

 me that, until a place has been inhabited for five years, it is 

 useless to search for the earthworm." 



Following my article a year later. Professor Robert Bell, of 

 the Canadian Geological Survey, read, before the Royal Society 

 of Canada, on May 23, 1883, a paper called'' "The Causes of 

 the Fertility of the Land in the Canadian North-west Terri- 

 tories," in which are these paragraphs: 



"As far as I am aware, earthworms are not found in the 

 North-west. If they exist at all it will be in the woods, or in 

 the older cultivated lands into which they have been introduced 

 from abroad, as I have never seen them or heard of them in the 

 unbroken prairie." 



"The formation of the vegetable mould in these regions 

 must, therefore, be due to some other agency than that of 

 worms, and this I believe to be principally the Moles, which 

 live in vast numbers throughout the region in question, and 

 although apparently insignificant animals, accomplish more 

 in the way of soil-making than the earthworms of England." 



" If the fertility of tens of millions of acres of land in the 

 North-west, and consequently their value, has been mainly 

 due to the work of Moles, these apparently insignificant little 

 creatures may be regarded as the most important of the native 

 animals of the country." 



* Rep. Dep. Agr., Man., for 1883, pub. 1884, p. 346 and p. 348. 



