174 IN NATURE'S WAYS 



Every particle of soil in your garden, the soil which 

 yields you flowers and fruits, and a smooth, grassy 

 lawn, has passed through the bodies of worms ; 

 otherwise there would be no fruit or flowers, and no 

 green lawns. When you look at some great expanse of 

 velvet-soft turf, the smooth greensward of a park, or 

 a plain on the hills, it is marvellous to think of what 

 Darwin tells us, that its beauty is due to the work of 

 the despised worms who have razed away the ine- 

 qualities. The whole of the superficial mould you see 

 has passed, and will pass again, every few years, through 

 the bodies of worms. 



Eating their way about the underworld, worms 

 break up the soil, to let in the rain, to let in the sun- 

 shine, so that it may sweeten the earth and destroy 

 the harmful germs, and to allow the tender plants to 

 make an easy passage out to the light.- They work it 

 as with a plough, by turning the soil over. How they 

 must enrich the soil by the leaves they bury you may 

 judge, in the autumn, when you commonly see little 

 collections of leaves sticking out from the ground, 

 these having been partly pulled down by the unseen 

 and silent workers. 



In one acre of good ground there are thousands 

 upon thousands of worms fifty thousand, perhaps 

 and each one is working to make the ground rich and 

 fertile. It is calculated that these worms of one acre 

 often pass ten tons of soil through their bodies in a 

 year, covering the surface with soil at the rate of 

 three inches in fifteen years. 



So we must learn to respect the lowly, ugly earth- 

 worm the plough that ploughed the earth before 

 man had been called into the world, and has been 

 ploughing ever since. 



