CONCERNING LAWNS 345 
buried and the rest of the leaf lying out on the 
grass. 
We know that earthworms live on the vegetable 
mould in which they move and have their being, 
and nourish themselves by passing the earth they 
remove in excavating their tunnels through their 
bodies. It is assumed by naturalists that they 
extract certain “salts” on which they live from 
the soil they swallow. But as the worm is not a 
vegetable I prefer to believe that they exist on the 
microscopic organisms in the mould. Be this as 
it may, the worm does not live by mould alone; 
he is also a vegetable eater and feeds on decayed 
leaves of trees when they fall in his way, dragging 
them into his hole by night. But the leaf he 
prefers is the decayed one, and it struck me that 
these lawn worms were in an extraordinary state 
of leaf-hunger to seize upon and drag these fresh 
living leaves into their holes as soon as the wind 
had torn them off. 
The conclusion I formed was that the lawn 
earthworm is a starved worm, and I began to 
examine and compare the lawn worms with those 
living in the soil away from the lawn. I found 
that when I dug for worms in the moist earth in 
likely spots away from the lawn, the mere act of 
striking the spade or fork deep into the soil brought 
the worms with a rush to the surface, and in many 
instances the rush was so rapid that at the moment 
when the spade was being driven deep down by 
the foot, a big vigorous worm would appear on the 
