Urqunart.—On the Habits of Earth- Worms in New Zealand, 269 
parts of Britain. This is to be attributed to there being—the conditions 
being equal—a far greater number of worms in an acre of ground in this 
country. 
Darwin says that the number of worms in old pastures is unknown, but 
assumes that there may be 26,886 per acre. According to Henson there 
are 53,767 worms in an acre of garden ground, and about half that number 
in cornfields ; possibly this estimate may be found too low for many parts of 
Britain. My own estimate of the number of earth-worms (348,480) living 
in an acre of pasture land, in the vicinity of Auckland—which appeared in 
an early number of the ** N.Z. Journal of Science ”—although a low average 
was given, was so high compared with Henson’s, that I went through the 
work of counting the worms over again this winter; the plan adopted was 
to take a straight course across several parts of a field, taking out a square 
foot of soil every twenty paces. The worms have evidently increased | 
since my former observations, so that the results were still more striking. 
My accurate friend Mr. T. F. Cheeseman, F.L.S., thinking it possible that 
I might be unconsciously influenced in selecting a spot for examination, 
suggested the work should be systematically done with the aid of a tape. 
Accordingly fresh lines were run between some of the former ones, in a 
portion of a field 17 years in grass. A piece of fair average ground was laid 
out in squares of 120 feet, a square foot of soil was then taken out at each 
corner. As the accuracy of my former observations was being put to the 
test, and at the time (September) most of the worms were in the turf, 
instead of carrying out my research merely with the aid of a spade, I picked 
every particle of turf with my fingers; over three hours work gave the 
following results :— 
Number of Earth-worms in each square foot of soil. 
8,8. 10. 21. 60, 19. 5.10. 0. 19. 12. 90... 35.17, 9. 11. 96, 17. 
12. 8. 20. 14. 48. 22. 24. 27. 40, 14, 12. 10. 15. 18. 18. 26. 18. 19. 
Worms hanging to the side-walls were not counted, and the blank hole— 
only the second in that field—was surrounded with worms. 
These figures give an average of 18 worms per square foot, or 784,080 
peracre. Although this average is rather striking compared with Henson's, 
the difference in the actual weight of the worms is not so marked. Von 
Henson's standard weight of a single worm is 8 grams, accordingly the 
58,767 worms would weigh 856 pounds. The greater proportion of the 
worms met with in our fields are the common L. campestris ; the larger 
forms of this species weigh 12 grains—50 averaged 63 grains; allowing for 
the few intermixed lighter species, the average of the entire number of 
worms may be taken at 6 grains, this would give a weight of 612 Ibs. 9 ozs. 
As my former tests in other parts of the farm, where the conditions were 
