THE ECHOES OF KILLARNEY 99 



echoes, of Killarney, during his visit to the Irish lakes in 1848. 

 It opens the fourth part of The Princess, into which it was 

 introduced in the second edition (1850) of that long poem. 

 By ' the horns of Elfland ' the poet means the echoes of the 

 bugle heard in the distance like Bounds from another world. 

 A ' scar ' (scaur or skerry) means a steep bank or isolated rock.] 



EARTHWORMS: THEIR VALUE TO 

 VEGETATION 



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. Earthworms, though in appearance a small 



10 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 quadrupeds, which are 

 almost entirely supported by them, worms seem to be 

 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 



20 called worm-casts, which (being passed through them) 

 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 



G2 



