THE CLEANSING OF THE LITTOEAL BY THE 

 LUGWORM (ARENICOLA MARINA). 



BY JAMES HORNELL. 



WE are accustomed to admire the vast vivifying, or rather 

 oxygenating, influence of the breakers. We watch them 

 dashing and surging, frothed with the commingling of air globules, 

 and then in full confidence of the purifying power thus imparted 

 to the sea, we expel the noisome sewage of our cities by thousand 

 mouths into the littoral. I do not dispute that results appear to 

 justify this confidence, but I contend that the waves must not receive 

 the entire credit. Granted that sewage and decaying matter can 

 be brought to float and toss hither and thither with the waves, the 

 transformation is wonderfully rapid. But in fact, much sewage 

 laden heavily with organic matter soaks downwards into the sand 

 and clay and gravel, after ejection from the sewer mouth. And not 

 sewage alone. The sand of the shore has a natural tendency to 

 keep on the surface. Throw upon it decaying matter and if not 

 carried away, a day or two will find it buried well out of sight. 

 Like too many of the conventional masks that we fit on as filmy 

 covers to our social horrors, so the sand is apt to hide as a clean 

 but thin crust, great deposits of noisome foetid clay, black and 

 malodorous with the concentration of ever present putrefaction. 

 The purifying power of the waves fails to influence beyond the 

 surface layer of sand and the accumulation would go on uninter- 

 ruptedly, ever extending further down, if other cleansing power did 

 not come into operation. Putrifying matter in solution we know 

 tends like other watery fluids to percolate downwards. Hence a 

 long period of quiet should show the clay at a considerable distance 

 from the surface, more saturated with filth than the upper and newer 

 layers. In reality, we find that the most evil smelling and blackest 

 region is but a few inches from the top, and thence downwards the 

 contamination decreases until a certain minimum is reached, which 

 in all lower depths is fairly constant. 



As I have pointed out, this is not what we would naturally be 

 led to expect. The key to this apparent contradiction I owe to my 



