240 WORMS. 



excrement, is a fine manure for grain and grass. 

 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 

 detestation 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 be- 

 sides, 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 tipula (long-legs), in their larva 

 or grub state ; and by unnoticed myriads of small 

 shell-less snails, called slugs, which silently and 

 imperceptibly make amazing havoc in the field 

 and garden 1 . 



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 torpid in the dead months ; 

 are out every mild night in the winter, as any 

 person may be convinced that will take the pains 

 to examine his grass-plots with a candle ; are her- 

 maphrodites, and much addicted to venery, and 

 consequently very prolific. 



1 Farmer Young, of Norton-farm, says that this spring 

 (1777) about four acres of his wheat in one field were 

 entirely destroyed hy slugs, which swarmed on the blades of 

 corn, and devoured it as fast as it sprang. 



