CONCERNING LAWNS 345 



buried and the rest of the leaf lying out on the 

 grass. 



We know that earthworms live on the vegetable 

 mould in which they move and have their being, 

 and nourish themselves by passing the earth they 

 remove in excavating their tunnels through their 

 bodies. It is assumed by naturalists that they 

 extract certain " salts " on which they live from 

 the soil they swallow. But as the worm is not a 

 vegetable I prefer to believe that they exist on the 

 microscopic organisms in the mould. Be this as 

 it may, the worm does not live by mould alone; 

 he is also a vegetable eater and feeds on decayed 

 leaves of trees when they fall in his way, dragging 

 them into his hole by night. But the leaf he 

 prefers is the decayed one, and it struck me that 

 these lawn worms were in an extraordinary state 

 of leaf-hunger to seize upon and drag these fresh 

 living leaves into their holes as soon as the wind 

 had torn them off. 



The conclusion I formed was that the lawn 

 earthworm is a starved worm, and I began to 

 examine and compare the lawn worms with those 

 living in the soil away from the lawn. I found 

 that when I dug for worms in the moist earth in 

 likely spots away from the lawn, the mere act of 

 striking the spade or fork deep into the soil brought 

 the worms with a rush to the surface, and in many 

 instances the rush was so rapid that at the moment 

 when the spade was being driven deep down by 

 the foot, a big vigorous worm would appear on the 



