688 The American Naturalist. [August, 
other side is a narrow strip of soil. The worms were counted as 
I walked slowly along, and it is most probable that all were not 
observed. 
A third place was in Franklin Park, between Thirteenth and 
Fourteenth and K and L streets. Crossing this diagonally about 
half way, and noting the worms, not on the asphalt walk but on 
the little strips of gravel alongside, seldom more than twelve or 
eighteen inches wide, I counted 325 worms. Very few of these 
were alive. It was sprinkling slightly at the time and the ground 
was wet. Many lay in puddles of water where they had been 
drowned. During a rain of the following week I noticed the 
w.orms in the .same place again, this time not so numerous. But 
the strip of gravel was marked all over by the trails left b)- tiie 
crawling creatures. 
A fourth locality, and one seemingly very favorable to the ex- 
istence or appearance of the worms, was on Fifteenth street, just 
north of Rhode Island avenue. The sidewalk was brick, and at 
one side was an open lot used as a tennis court. In a distance 
estimated at 200 feet I counted no less than 340 worms. They 
lay in the cracks between the bricks, on the bricks thcmschcs, 
and in little pools of water. I doubt if there were a dozen ali\c 
out of the 340. 
These four places were by no means the only ones v\ here the 
worms were seen. On the roads and paths in the neighborhood 
of the Smithsonian and National Museum, on Fourteenth street, 
on Thirteenth street, on Massachusetts avenue, where there was a 
brick pavement, they were equally numerous. As before stated 
I had previously seen them in the Capitol grounds and other 
places in the Northeast. 
There are two points of interest connected with this subject. 
One is the extraordinary abundance of the worms, and the other 
is their excessive mortality. We have, of course, no way of 
knowing positively the number of these creatures to each square 
yard or square foot of surface. Darwin, quoting Henson, says 
(Formation of Mould, pp. 158, 159), that there are in England 
about 53,767 to an acre : that he has .seen 64 burrows in 14^ 
square feet, or,9 in 2 square feet. Further, that in a cake of 
