VACKARD.] 



THE EARTH-WORM. 



761 



berries it contents itself with a food less choice ; thus I have found it in 

 abundance in the decayed bulbs of Gladiohis communis. The lulus lon- 

 dinensis, so common in heaps of dead leaves and decaying vegeta- 

 bles, feeds on decaying vegetable tissues, and if it has to choose between 

 green and fresh vegetables and the debris of rotten vegetables, it selects 

 the latter : an individual placed in a box with green leaves of the pear, 

 lilac, grape-vine, and grass, gnawed exclusively an old, dry, and brown 

 pea-leaf. The lulus sabulosus lives under heaps of the dried leaves of 

 the elm, ash, oak, beach, and is nourished by them. M. Gervais has 

 found the lulus lucifugus in the tan of the greenhouses of the Museum 

 of Paris." From this statement it will be seen that as a rule these mille- 

 pedes are scavengers, and more beneficial than injurious, as they live 

 principally on decaying vegetable matter. 



Returning to Dr. Fitch's account of the Polydesmus canadensis, he 

 states that it eats the skin of cucumbers, and he thinks that stunted, 

 gnarly, deformed, and bitter cucumbers are the result of the wound 

 of these millepedes. Onions, when thickly growing together, having 

 attained but a third or half their growth, in many cases stop growing, 

 and the tops gradually wither and die. " On pulling up those which 

 are thus affected, it is found that most of the thread-like rootlets 

 underneath have been severed at the point of their junction with the 

 bulb as smoothly and evenly as though they had been cut off with a 

 knife, only a few of the central ones retaining their connection with the 

 bulb." He has no doubt but tbat the millepedes do this. He also 

 thinks that the disease in cabbages called anbury, or club-root, is caused 

 by the bite of these millepedes. 



TftE Earth-worm, Lumbriciis terrestris Liiuu. — Drawing youug cabbage, lettuce, and 

 beans into their holes ; the commou eartb-worni. 



It is a well-known fact that earth-worms, in the main beneficial from 

 their habits of boring into soil of gardens and plowed lands, and thus 

 allowing the air to get to the roots of 

 plants, occasionally injure young seed- 

 ling-plants of the cabbage, lettuce, beet, 

 etc., by drawing them into their holes 

 or uprooting them, working by night. 

 They are also sometimes known to eat 

 large holes in the tender leaves of 

 plants. Mr. E. P. Knight thus describes 

 the habits of the earth-worm (American 

 Naturalist, vol. 3, p. 388) : " Last spring 

 (and this) I was led to watch the common 

 earth-worms in my garden, and on the 

 plot of grass saw their manner of feed- 

 ing. I was within ten inches of their 

 bodies. I saw one prepare to feed on a 

 young clover-leaf from a clover-stock ; 

 be kept his tail secured to the hole (as 

 a base line) in the ground, by which he 

 retreated quicker than the eye could 

 follow him. Finding all quiet, he came 

 again. Within a few inches of my eye 

 the pointed head of the worm changed, and the end was as if cut off 

 square. I then saw it was a n)outh. He approached the leaf and by a 

 strong and rapid muscular action of the rings of the whole body drew 

 the leaf nnd one inch of the tender stock into his mouth, and then by a 



Fig. 31. — Earth-worms pairing. (After 

 Curtis.) «, Embryo soon after seg- 

 mentation of the yolk ; h, embryo 

 further advanced ; (o, month); o, em- 

 bryo still older; (A, primitive streak) ; 

 d, embryo still older ; (o, mouth, after 

 Kowalevsky). 



