32 FRESH FIELDS 



the deep clayey soil, its fattening for ages by 

 human occupancy, the abundance of food, the milder 

 climate, etc., are all favorable to the life and activ- 

 ity of the earthworm. Indeed, according to Dar- 

 win, the gardener that has made England a garden 

 is none other than this little obscure creature. It 

 plows, drains, airs, pulverizes, fertilizes, and levels. 

 It cannot transport rocks and stone, but it can bury 

 them; it cannot remove the ancient walls and pave- 

 ments, but it can undermine them and deposit its 

 rich castings above them. On each acre of land, 

 he says, "in many parts of England, a weight of 

 more than ten tons of dry earth annually passes 

 through their bodies and is brought to the surface. '^ 

 "When we behold a wide, turf-covered expanse," 

 he further observes, "we should remember that its 

 smoothness, on which so much of its beauty de- 

 pends, is mainly due to all the inequalities having 

 been slowly leveled by worms." 



The small part which worms play in this direc- 

 tion in our landscape is, I am convinced, more than 

 neutralized by our violent or disrupting climate; 

 but England looks like the product of some such 

 gentle, tireless, and beneficent agent. I have re- 

 ferred to that effect in the face of the landscape as 

 if the soil had snowed down; it seems the snow 

 came from the other direction, namely, from below, 

 but was deposited with equal gentleness and uni- 

 formity. 



The repose and equipoise of nature of which I 

 have spoken appears in the fields of grain no less 



