2i6 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



LETTER XXXV. 



SELBORNE, May 2o/^, 1777. 



DEAR SIR, Lands that are subject to frequent inundations are 

 always poor ; and probably the reason may be because the worms 

 are drowned. The most insignificant insects and reptiles are of 

 much more consequence, and have much more influence in the 

 economy of Nature, than the incurious are aware of; and are 

 mighty in their effect, from their minuteness, which renders them 

 less an object of attention and from their numbers and fecundity. 

 Earth-worms, though in appearance a small and despicable link 

 in the chain of Nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable 

 chasm. For to say nothing of half the birds, and some quad- 

 rupeds, which are almost entirely supported by them, worms seem 

 to be the great promoters of vegetation, which would proceed but 

 lamely without them, by boring, perforating, and loosening the 

 soil, and rendering it pervious to rains and the fibres of plants, by 

 drawing straws and stalks of leaves and twigs into it ; and, most 

 of all, by throwing up such infinite numbers of lumps of earth 

 called worm-casts, which, being their excrement, is a fine manure 

 for grain and grass. Worms probably provide new soil for hills 

 and slopes where the rain washes the earth away ; and they affect 

 slopes, probably to avoid being flooded. Gardeners and farmers 

 express their detestation of worms ; the former because they 

 render their walks unsightly, and make them much work ; and 

 the latter because, as they think, worms eat their green corn. 

 But these men would find that the earth without worms would 

 soon become cold, hard-bound, and void of fermentation, and 

 consequently sterile ; and besides, in favour of worms, it should be 

 hinted that green corn, plants, and flowers, are not so much 

 injured by them as by many species of coleoptera (scarabs), and 

 tipulce (long-legs) in their larva, or grub -state ; and by unnoticed 

 myriads of small shell-less snails, called slugs, which silently and 

 imperceptibly make amazing havoc in the field and garden.* 



* Farmer Young, of Norton Farm, says, that this spring (1777) about four 

 acres of his wheat in one field were entirely destroyed by slugs, which swarmed 

 on the blades of corn, and devoured it as fast as it sprang. 



