OF SELBOENE 173 



and consequently steril : and besides, in favour of worms, it should 

 be hinted that green corn, plants, and flowers, are not so much 

 injured by them as by many species of coleoptera (scarabs), and 

 tipulcB (long-legs) in their larva, or grub-state ; and by unnoticed 

 myriads of small shell-less snails, called slugs, which silently and 

 imperceptibly make amazing havock in the field and garden.^ 



These hints we think proper to throw out in order to set the 

 inquisitive and discerning to work.^ 



A good monography of worms would afford much entertain- 

 ment and information at the same time, and would open a large 

 and new field in natural history. Worms work most in the 

 spring ; but by no means lie torpid in the dead months ; are out 

 every mild night in the winter, as any person may be convinced 

 that will take the pains to examine his grass-plots with a candle ; 

 are hermaphrodites, and much addicted to venery, and conse- 



quently very prolific. 



I am, &c. 



LETTER XXXVI.3 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Nov. 22, 1777. 

 Dear Sir, 



You cannot but remember that the twenty-sixth and twenty- 

 seventh of last March were very hot days ; so sultry that every- 

 body complained and were restless under those sensations to 

 which they had not been reconciled by gradual approaches. 



This sudden summer-like heat was attended by many summer 

 coincidences ; for on those two days the thermometer rose to 

 sixty-six in the shade ; many species of insects revived and came 

 forth ; some bees swarmed in this neighbourhood ; the old tor- 

 toise, near Lewes, in Sussex, awakened and came forth out of it's 



1 Farmer Young, of Norton-farm, says that this spring (1777) about four acres 

 of his wheat in one field was entirely destroyed by slugs, which swarmed on the 

 blades of corn, and devoured it as fast as it sprang. 



2 [It is now only necessary to refer the reader to Darwin's paper "On the 

 Formation of Mould" (Geol. Trans., 2nd series, vol. v., p. 505), and his book on 

 The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of Worms (1881). Darwin 

 only quotes this anticipatory letter in a cursory way, and seems hardly aware of its 

 importance.] 



3 [This letter is printed in Harrington's Miscellanies, p. 225.] 



