232 THE EARTH-WORM. 



face, whence, dissolved by frosts, and scattered by rains, 

 they circulate again in the plants of the soil, 



" Death still producing life." 



Thus eminently serviceable as the worm is, it yet 

 becomes the prey of various orders of the animal crea- 

 tion, and perhaps is a solitary example of an individual 

 race being subjected to universal destruction. The 

 very emmet seizes it when disabled, and bears it away 

 as its prize : it constitutes throughout the year the food 

 of many birds ; fishes devour it greedily ; the hedge- 

 hog eats it ; the mole pursues it unceasingly in the pas- 

 tures, along the moist bottoms of ditches, and burrows 

 after it through the banks of hedges, to which it retires 

 in dry seasons : secured as the worm appears to be by 

 its residence in the earth from the capture of creatures 

 inhabiting a different element, yet many aquatic ani- 

 mals seem well acquainted with it, and prey on it as a 

 natural food, whenever it falls in their way ; frogs eat 

 it ; and even the great water-beetle (ditiscus marginalia) 

 I have known to seize it when the bait of the angler, 

 and it has been drawn up by the hook. Yet notwith- 

 standing this prodigious destruction of the animal, its 

 increase is fully commensurate to its consumption, as 

 if ordained the appointed food of all ; and Reaumur 

 computes, though from what data it is difficult to con- 

 jecture, that the number of worms lodged in the bosom 

 of the earth exceeds that of the grains of all kinds of 

 corn collected by man. 



Worms, generally speaking, are tender creatures, and 

 water remaining over their haunts for a few days drowns 

 them; they easily become frozen, when a mortification 

 commences at some. part, which gradually consumes the 

 whole substance, and we find them on the surface a mu- 

 cilaginous mass: and their retiring deeper in the soil 

 is no bad indication of approaching cold weather ; but 

 no sooner is the frost out of the earth, than they ap- 

 proach the surface to feed on decayed vegetable matter. 

 Greatly beneficial as these creatures are, by drawing 

 leaves and decayed matters into the earth, where their 

 dissolution is accomplished, yet they are sad tormentors 



