60 Life and Immortality. 
COMMON EARTH-WORMS 
Out on a Foraging Excursion, 
the mouths of their burrows. Flower-peduncles, decayed 
twigs of trees, bits of paper, feathers, tufts of wool and 
horse-hair are some of the many things other than leaves 
that are dragged into their burrows for this purpose. Many 
hundred leaves of the pine-tree have been found drawn by 
their bases into burrows. Where fallen leaves are abundant, 
especially ordinary dicotyledonous leaves, many more than 
can be used are collected over the mouth of a burrow, so 
that a small pile of unused leaves is left like a roof over 
those which have been partly dragged in. A leaf in being 
dragged a little way into a cylindrical burrow necessarily 
becomes much folded or crumpled, and when another is 
drawn in, this is done exteriorly to the first, and so on with 
succeeding leaves, till finally they all become closely folded 
and pressed together. Sometimes the mouth of a burrow 
