A NEW CONCEPT 63 



day of the year. Such will be our composite animal, mentally 

 integrated from one million earthworms. Now let us check with 

 the facts, as they have been established by careful experiment. 



We have weighed many of the earthworms which we propa- 

 gated during our research. On the average, they run about 500 

 to the pound, or about 31 worms per ounce. The fully mature 

 worm, in good condition, averages four inches in length. Thus 

 we find that one million of them would weigh 2000 pounds. If 

 placed end to end, they would make a continuous line over 6% 

 miles long. An individual worm, eating its way through the 

 soil, will swallow its own weight of earth daily, in order to ab- 

 sorb from the soil the infinitesimal amount of nutrition required 

 to keep a worm in good condition. When we analyze and care- 

 fully study these figures, we begin to gain a concept of the tre- 

 mendous soil-building force which is at work in the earth when 

 it is populated by one million earthworms per acre. The earth- 

 worm is just as truly an air-breathing, manure-producing animal 

 as a horse, cow, or other domestic animal. The difference is 

 that earthworms work unseen and their manure is so thoroughly 

 combined with the soil that it cannot be separated. In fact, as 

 has been pointed out, the manure of the earthworm is finely con- 

 ditioned soil. 



At first thought, when it is stated than an earthworm will 

 ingest its own weight in soil each twenty-four hours, this amount 

 seems almost unbelievable. However, when the eating and ex- 

 cretory activities of the chicken are compared with those of the 

 earthworm, a ration of topsoil equal to the weight of the earth- 

 worm each day seems a very reasonable amount. On the average, 

 a mature hen will drop seventy-five pounds of manure each year. 

 Chickens utilize only about ten per cent of the nutritional value 

 of the food they eat, the balance going out in their droppings. 

 Thus they have to gorge many hours each day in order to pro- 

 duce eggs in commercially profitable numbers. Suppose that a 

 laying hen had to swallow enough earth daily to secure the 

 amount of organic food necessary to keep her in good laying con- 



