66 Professor J. Arthur T/iomsofi on 



Another way of realising the web of life is to consider the 

 far-reaching influences of the activities of particular kinds of 

 animals. Thus what Gilbert While clearly recognised in i777> 

 Charles Darwin proved up to the hilt in 1881, that earthworms 

 have played an exceedingly important part in the history 

 of the earth. By their burrowing they loosen the soil, making 

 way for the plant rootlets and the raindrops ; by bruising 

 the earth in their gizzards, they reduce the particles to more 

 powdery form ; by burying the surface with castings brought up 

 from beneath, they have been for untold ages ploughers before the 

 plough, and by burying leaves they have made a great part of the 

 vegetable mould over the whole world. Their work is a striking 

 illustration of the cumulative importance of little things. More- 

 over, in pursuance of our theme, we may note what a variety of 

 interests is cut by the circle of their life and work : — centipedes, 

 birds, moles, seedlings, man, and more besides. 



As another instance take the white ants or termites of warm 

 countries. They prune the trees of their decaying branches ; they 

 destroy rotting things of many kinds ; they build earthen tunnels 

 as they work and thus aid in the circulation of the soil ; they are 

 in many ways hindrances to the spread of civilization. Some 

 of them grow nutritious moulds in specially constructed beds ; 

 some of them keep beetle-guests with a palatable secretion. 

 With a centre in termites, what a variety of interests we have 

 to include within the radius of their life and work — fungi and 

 trees, beetles and birds, lizards and ant-eaters, and man himself. 



When we consider the direct and indirect influence of the 

 hand of life upon the earth — sometimes protecting, sometimes 

 weathering, sometimes adding, sometimes subtracting — our image 

 of the web of life extends. No plant, from bacterium to oak- 

 tree, lives or dies wholly to itself, or is without its influence upon 

 the earth. And the same is true of animals, from Foraminifera 

 to coral polypes, from earthworms to squirrels. 



The practical importance of recognizing the web of life can 

 hardly be exaggerated. Many have been the disastrous results of 

 ignoring it — well known instances being the rabbit pest in Australia, 



