Field-Laborers 59 



oughly impregnated with vegetable and animal matter. 

 Moreover, bones, twigs, leaves, shells, are constantly 

 being covered with castings, and these further help to 

 enrich the soil by their decay; whereas, left upon the 

 surface, they would benefit it but little. 



Besides grinding up the soil in the process of digestion 

 to a state of extreme fineness, besides adding to it vege- 

 table matter and darkening its color, worms are most use- 

 ful in another way: they prepare channels through which 

 the roots of plants are able to spread with ease. Plants 

 evidently prefer, when they can, to take advantage of 

 ready-made passages, and worm burrows which have been 

 in existence some little time are usually found lined, to the 

 very end with fine roots and rootlets, the latter covered 

 with fine hairs, through all of which the plant absorbs 

 food. But that the worm's way of top-dressing lawns 

 and paths does not improve the appearance of either, we 

 must admit; top-dressing may be all very well in a 

 meadow, or in the rice-fields of Bengal, which are very 

 soon studded with worm-heaps after they have been 

 flooded, but in a garden we are inclined to think it out of 

 place. And it is true that, in the Botanic Gardens of 

 Calcutta, the lawns are covered in a single night or two, 

 if they are left unrolled, with tower-like castings, which 

 weigh some ounce and a quarter each, and are anything 

 but sightly. 



Sometimes, too, the earthworm may disturb seedhngs 

 by burrowing, but it does not eat them. Neither does it 

 touch living roots, as it has been suspected of doing, at 

 least when these are growing in the open ground; though 

 what it may do when confined in a pot, and pressed by 

 hunger, is perhaps another matter. 



