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ground worm, With the view of determining his place in 

 agriculture. I was led to this in part from a desire to learn 

 something about a little animal about whom there were but 

 very few facts on record ; and in part to ascertain whether the 

 general sentiment of the comnninity, and one to which even 

 so eminent an observer as the late Prof. Agassiz seemed to 

 give sanction, namely, that it was not a friend to agriculture, 

 was correct. 



I selected for special observation portions of my father's 

 garden, located in Marblehead, Massachusetts, on the sea- 

 coast. Much of it had been under cultivation off and on for 

 a long series of years, and for the twenty years prev^ious in a 

 high state of cultivation. The soil was a strong loam, under- 

 laid at about three feet in depth with hard pan. Selecting an 

 area containing about a square rod, on which for several 

 years the vegetable refuse of a large family had been thrown, 

 and into which, as it accumulated, it was at times dug, I aim- 

 ed to determine the weiijht of worms the soil could be made 

 to produce under very favorable circumstances. With this 

 end in view I turned over the soil with a six-tined fork sev- 

 eral times during the season, each time carefully collecting all 

 except the very smallest of the worms. The sum of the dif- 

 ferent collections, when weighed, showed that this rod of 

 ground had yielded a crop of worms at the rate of somewhat 

 over 12,000 pounds, or six tons to the acre. The entire 

 grounds, of about half an acre, were very rich in the worm 

 crop, but not in the same proportion as the piece experiment- 

 ed on. A part of the worms so collected were fed to fowls, 

 whose appetites appeared almost insatiable ; and a part, after 

 they were dead, were used as manure for hills of corn, in rich 

 old garden soil. When used as manure, they had turned to a 

 watery jelly, saturating the earth in which they had been 

 kept while collecting, into a pasty, soggy mass. I could not 

 see any beneficial efiects on the corn crop ; still it seems prob- 

 able that there must be some mauurial value even in 

 such low organizations ; for the conditions of even the lowest 



