206 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



LETTER XXXV. 



Selborne, May 20th, 1777. 



Lands that are subject to frequent inundations are always 

 poor ; and probably the reason may be because the worms 

 are drowned. The most insignificant insects and reptiles 

 are of much more consequence, and have much more 

 influence in the economy of Nature, than the incurious are 

 aware of ; and are mighty in their effect, from their 

 minuteness, which renders them less an object of attention, 

 and from their numbers and fecundity. Earthworms, 

 though in appearance a small and despicable link in the 

 chain of Nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable 

 chasm. For to say nothing of half the birds, and some 

 quadrupeds, which are almost entirely supported by them, 

 worms seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, which 

 would proceed but lamely without them, by boring, perfora- 

 ting, and loosening the soil, and rendering it pervious to 

 rains and the fibres of plants, by drawing straws and stalks 

 of leaves and twigs into it ; and, most of all, by throwing 

 up such infinite numbers of lumps of earth called worm- 

 casts, which, being their 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 



