CONCLUSION SUMMARY 177 



all producing earthworm food, all becoming, in turn, earthworm 

 food. The unseen vegetable life of the soil algae, fun-gi, 

 moulds form an additional great tonnage of material that eventu- 

 ally becomes earthworm food. The living network of fine roots, 

 so important in holding the soil in place, constitutes about one- 

 tenth by weight of the total organic matter in the upper six 

 inches of soil all are eventual earthworm food. In the good 

 black soils the organic matter earthworm food is represented 

 by from 140 to as high as 600 tons of humus per acre. The 

 earthworm will not go hungry . . ." 



About the first question people ask is, "What do you feed 

 earthworms! 57 ' The above quotation from former pages indicates 

 the answer to this question. In a few comprehensive words, 

 the answer is : "Whatever has lived and died both vegetable and 

 animal is what we feed earthworms." In this discussion of 

 earthworm food we have the key to soil-building. 



In the superficial layers of earth's surface, down to the bed- 

 rock, is deposited the parent mineral material of topsoil. In the 

 world of vegetation and animal life we have the second great 

 parent source-material of topsoil. Stated another way, we might 

 say that the two parent sources of topsoil are: (1) the mineral 

 surface layers of the earth; and (2) sunlight, acting upon leaf- 

 green (chlorophyll) to synthesize the gaseous elements from the 

 air. Then, through life-processes bacterial action, earthworm 

 action, fermentation, growth, decay, etc. the parent materials 

 are mixed, combined and compounded into what we know as top- 

 soil ; or what Charles Darwin called "vegetable mould." 



Nature works slowly in the production of topsoil, over pe- 

 riods of years, centuries, or ages. In biological soil-building, as 

 we have termed it, we take the materials which nature has pro- 

 vided, with the tools and forces which we have learned to use, 

 and speed up the processes of nature. Thus we can build topsoil 

 when we want it, where we want it, and in whatever quantity 

 desired. The reason we can do this is because, for all practical 

 purposes, we have inexhaustible materials and inexhaustible 



