THE LUG WORM 101 



PLATE XXXIII 



THE LUG WORM (2) 



On any muddy stretch of beach, when the tide 

 is out, you may see numbers and numbers of 

 little twisted casts, just like those which you 

 may find on the lawn in the garden on any warm 

 damp morning. These are made by Lug Worms, 

 or "logs," as the fishermen generally call them, 

 and they really consist of sand which the worm 

 has swallowed during the last three or four hours. 

 For lug worms burrow by swallowing mouthful 

 after mouthful of sand, until they can swallow 

 no more. They eat their way down into the sand, 

 in fact, just as earth-worms eat their way down 

 into the ground. And when their bodies are quite 

 filled with sand, they come up to the entrances 

 of their burrows and pour it out in the little twisty 

 coils which everybody who has walked on the 

 shore knows so well by sight. 



If you take a spade and dig down into the 

 muddy sand you can find these worms in great 

 numbers. They are just about as big as earth- 

 worms, and are of all sorts of colours, some being 

 brown, and some dark green, and some purple, 

 and some crimson. But on each side of the body 

 they always have thirteen pairs of bright scarlet 

 tufts. These are the little gills by means of which 



