THE EARTHWORM. 343 



holes. The horticulturist perhaps encounters more 

 mortification and disappointment than any other 

 labourer upon the earth from insects, elementary 

 severity, the slug, and the worm ; yet, if the de- 

 predations of this last creature do at times excite 

 a little of our irascibility, we must still remember 

 the nightly labours, and extensive services, that are 

 performed for the agriculturist 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 substratum of clay, would common- 

 ly, without some natural or artificial drainage, be 

 soaked with water after heavy rains, and thus be- 

 come 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, 

 numerous 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 

 that water would not in any case be discharged 



