THE EARTH-WORM. 233 



to us gardeners, and occasion the loss of more young 

 plants than even the slug, by drawing in the leaf, which 

 throws out the root; so that in the morning we find 

 our nursling inverted. It is the same propensity, or or- 

 dination, for removing decayed matters, that influences 

 them in these actions ; as they are the faded leaves that 

 are seized by them, such as newly removed plants pre- 

 sent before the root draws nutriment from the earth. 

 Even stones of some magnitude are at times drawn over 

 their holes. The horticulturist perhaps encounters 

 more mortification and disappointment than any other 

 laborer upon the earth from insects, elementary severity, 

 the slug, and the worm ; yet, if the depredations of 

 this last creature do at times excite a little of our iras- 

 cibility, we must still remember the nightly labors, and 

 extensive services, that are performed for the agri- 

 culturist by this scavenger of the earth, and manurer 

 of the soil. 



Besides, worms are essentially useful in draining our 

 lands from superfluous moisture, which in many cases, 

 without their agency, would be detained upon or near 

 the surface of the earth, chilling and deteriorating our 

 pastures. A few inches of soil, resting upon a substra- 

 tum of clay, would commonly, without some natural or 

 artificial drainage, be soaked with water after heavy 

 rains, and thus become a bog, or produce coarse water 

 herbage rather than good grasses ; but these worms 

 greatly facilitate the passage of the water by draining 

 horizontally along the bed of clay, and aid the emission 

 of the water by this means, as I have often observed in 

 the trenches, which we cut in our retentive soils, nu- 

 merous worm-casts on their sides a few days after they 

 had been made, being the exits of the horizontal runs, 

 and through these the water drains into the trenches, 

 and runs off. I do not assert the water would not in 

 any case be discharged without the agency of worms ; 

 but that the passages which they make expedite it, 

 which, in situations where the operation would be sub- 

 jected to delay from the position of the ground, or the 

 under stratum, is of infinite advantage. Thus the soil 

 is not only rendered firm, allowing the admission of 

 U2 



