40 ETON NATURE-STUDY 



Here, then, is an opportunity for anyone. Careful observation 

 after dusk, often repeated, may help to settle this point. Furthermore, 

 it would not be difficult to collect, from time to time, the worms seen 

 crawling above ground in the daytime, which, if this observer is correct, 

 ought to be either diseased, or the victims of the ichneumon fly. If 

 on keeping them in natural conditions, they live a reasonable time, 

 there can be no satisfactory cause for considering them to be other 

 than healthy, and the question would be settled. 



Some interesting observations may be made with regard to the 

 odds and ends of vegetable remains which worms drag into their 

 holes (see figure 168). In places where skeletons of the long leaf 

 stalks of horse-chestnut abound, the exertions of the worms may 

 cause the ground to bristle with them. 



It remains for some ingenious photographer to obtain flashlight 

 photographs of worms holding the sticks in their mouths and so 

 reinforce Darwin's conclusions in this respect. 



Again, something of the habits of worms, their senses, and in- 

 telligence, may best be studied by keeping them in pots, or better, 

 boxes of earth. The earth should not be garden soil, but the turf 

 from a field after the grass has been removed. If the nature student 

 has studied the structure of the worm, he will realise that the 

 phenomena of reproduction and the use of certain organs is still 

 obscure ; the only way to clear up the mystery is by keeping worms, 

 from infancy up, out of contact with one another. 



The interesting question of " aestivation " is another point to 

 which the student may turn his attention. . Just as many moisture- 

 living animals and plants have special contrivances for withstanding 

 the effects of drought, so the worm is able to go into a state of torpor 

 in its burrow. How it is enabled to do this the nature student can 

 easily find out for himself. 



