344 THE EARTHWORM. 



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 marginalia) 

 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 

 animal, its increase is fully commensurate to its con- 

 sumption^ as if ordained the appointed food of all ; 

 and Reaumur computes (though from what data it 

 is difficult to conjecture), 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 



