OP SELBORNE. 309 



casts, which, being their excrement, is a fine manure 

 for grain and grass 1 . Worms probably provide new 

 soil for hills and slopes where the rain washes the earth 

 away ; and they affect slopes, probably, to avoid being 

 flooded. Gardeners and farmers express their detesta- 

 tion of worms ; the former because they render their 

 walks unsightly, and make them much work : and the 

 latter because, as they think, worms eat^ their green 

 corn. But these men would find that the earth without 

 worms would soon become cold, hard-bound, and void 

 of fermentation ; and consequently sterile : and besides, 

 in favour of worms, it should be hinted that green corn, 

 plants, and flowers, are not so much injured by them 

 as by many species of Coleoptera (scarabs) and Tipulce 

 (long-legs), in their larva, or grub state ; and by unno- 

 ticed myriads of small shell-less snails, called slugs, 

 which silently and imperceptibly make amazing havock 

 in the field and garden. Farmer Young, of Norton 

 Farm, says that this spring (1777) about four acres of 

 his wheat in one field was entirely destroyed by slugs, 

 which swarmed on the blades of corn, and devoured it 

 as fast as it sprang. 



These hints we think proper to throw out in order to 

 set the inquisitive and discerning to work. 



A good monography of worms would afford much 

 entertainment and information at the same time, and 

 would open a large and new field in natural history. 

 Worms work most in the spring ; but by no means lie 



1 If the earth of worm-casts be really useful as manure, it would be 

 difficult to account for its fertilizing effects unless by supposing them to 

 result from the friable condition and fine state of subdivision into which 

 the soil has been brought by the process it has undergone within the in- 

 testines of the animal. In its passage through the digestive canal it has 

 been deprived of those animal and vegetable substances, which, as derived 

 from organized nature, are adapted to support organic life ; and the worm, 

 having secured for itself all the nutritious particles mixed up with the 

 soil swallowed by it while making its perforations, rejects the inert mass 

 at the hole by which it commenced its boring, forming with it a kind of 

 outwork for the protection of its citadel of retreat. E. T. B. 



