THE EARTHWORM. 341 



vegetable matters, and conveys into the soil the 

 more woody 'fibres, where they moulder, and be- 

 come reduced to a simple nutriment, fitting for liv- 

 ing vegetation. The parts consumed by them are 

 soon returned to the surface, 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 

 creation, and perhaps is a solitary example of an 

 individual race being subjected to universal destruc- 

 tion. 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 hedgehog eats it ; the mole pursues 

 it unceasingly in the pastures, along the moist bot- 

 toms 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 animals 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 marginalis) 

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

 and it has been drawn up by the hook. Yet not- 

 withstanding this prodigious destruction of the ani- 



