60 HABITS OF WORMS. Chap. II. 



digestive fluid. They cannot attack such 

 strong leaves as those of sea-kale or large 

 and thick leaves of ivy ; though one of the 

 latter after it had become rotten was reduced 

 in parts to the state of a skeleton. 



Worms seize leaves and other objects, not 

 only to serve as food, but for plugging up 

 the mouths of their burrows ; and this is 

 one of their strongest instincts. They some- 

 times work so energetically that Mr. D. F. 

 Simpson, who has a small walled garden 

 where worms abound in Bayswater, informs 

 me that on a calm damp evening he there 

 heard so extraordinary a rustling noise from 

 under a tree from which many leaves had 

 fallen, that he went out with a light and dis- 

 covered that the noise was caused by many 

 worms dragging the dry leaves and squeezing 

 them into the burrows. Not only leaves, but 

 petioles of many kinds, some flower-pedun- 

 cles, often decayed twigs of trees, bits of 

 paper, feathers, tufts of wool and horse-hairs 

 are dragged into their burrows for this pur- 

 pose. I have seen as many as seventeen 

 petioles of a Clematis projecting from the 

 mouth of one burrow, and ten from the 



