UTILITY AND DESTRUCTION OF REPTILES. 13 
the like amount of similar animal products derived from 
higher organisms, and when we consider the prodigious num- 
bers of these worms found on a single square yard of some 
soils, we may easily see that they furnish no insignificant con- 
tribution to the nutritive material required for the growth of 
plants.* 
The carnivorous and often herbivorous insects render another 
important service to man by consuming dead and decaying 
animal and vegetable matter, the decomposition of which 
would otherwise fill the air with effluvia noxious to health. 
Some of them, the grave-digger beetle, for instance, bury the 
small animals in which they lay their eggs, and thereby pre- 
vent the escape of the gases disengaged by putrefaction. 
The prodigious rapidity of development in insect life, the 
great numbers of the individuals in many species, and the 
voracity of most of them while in the larva state, justify 
the appellation of nature’s scavengers which has been be- 
stowed upon them, and there is very little doubt that, in 
warm countries, they consume a larger quantity of putrescent 
organic matter than the quadrupeds and birds which feed upon 
such aliment. 
* T believe there is no foundation for the supposition that earthworms attack 
the tuber of the potato. Some of them, especially one or two species em- 
ployed by anglers as bait, if natives of the woods, are at least rare in shaded 
grounds, but multiply very rapidly after the soil is brought under cultivation. 
Forty or fifty years ago they were so scarce in the newer parts of New Eng- 
land, that the rustic fishermen of every village kept secret the few places 
where they were to be found in their neighborhood, as a professional mystery, 
but at present one can hardly turn over a shovelful of rich moist soil any- 
where, without unearthing several of them. A very intelligent lady, born in 
the woods of Northern New England, told me that, in her childhood, these 
worms were almost unknown in that region, though anxiously sought for by 
the anglers, but that they increased as the country was cleared, and at last 
became so numerous in some places, that the water of springs, and even of 
shallow wells, which had formerly been excellent, was rendered undrinkable 
by the quantity of dead worms that fell into them. The increase of the robin 
and other small birds which follow the settler when he has prepared a suit- 
able home for them, at last checked the excessive multiplication of the 
worms, and abated the nuisance. 
