282 THE BIOLOGY OF THE SEASONS 



. . . These hints we think proper to throw out, in order to 

 set the inquisitive and discerning at work. A good mono- 

 graph of worms would afford much entertainment and 

 information at the same time, and would open a large and 

 new field in natural history." 



Long afterwards one who was beyond most men " in- 

 quisitive and discerning " did set to work, and the mono- 

 graph that Gilbert White had wished for in 1777 was pub- 

 lished by Charles Darwin in 1881, the year before he died 

 " the completion," he said, " of a short paper read before 

 the Geological Society more than forty years ago." With 

 his characteristic thoroughness and patience he collected 

 data year after year until he had worked out irrefutably 

 the part that earthworms have played in the history of 

 the earth, and proved that they deserve to be called the 

 most useful of animals. Here we have one of the finest of 

 object-lessons on the cumulative importance of little things. 



By their burrowing the earthworms loosen the soil, 

 making way for the plant-roots and the raindrops. By 

 bruising the soil in their gizzards perhaps the most 

 important mills in the world they reduce the particles 

 to more useful powdery form. By burying the surface 

 with castings brought up from beneath, they have been 

 for untold ages turning the soil upside down ploughers 

 long before there was any plough. By burying leaves 

 they have made a great part of the vegetable mould over 

 the whole earth. For, apart from very wet places and very 

 dry places, and salt soil near the sea, there are earthworms 

 of some sort everywhere. We recently found thirteen 

 midribs of the rowan or mountain-ash, radiating round the 

 mouth of one burrow like the spokes of a wheel ; the 

 withered leaflets had been carried down, two were still 

 sticking out at the entrance ; that meant ninety-one leaflets 

 to one hole, and this has been going on for countless years. 



