266 
On Draining. 
occur in the greatest number, I have found drainage to be effected 
the most speedily, and I practically use the perception of their 
presence as some guide to the distance at which I determine to 
place the drains from each other. 
But the most active and potent of the drainer's auxiliaries is the 
common mining earth or dew worm. The earliest written notice 
which I have seen of the utility of the earth-worm in drainage is to 
be found in Mr. Beart's article on draining (Journal, vol. iv. p. 212), 
in every word of whose remarks I concur. Earth-worms love moist 
but not wet soils ; they will bore down to, but not into water ; they 
multiply rapidly in land after drainage, and prefer a deeply dried 
soil. 
On examining with Mr. Thomas Hammond, of Penshurst, Kent, 
part of a field which he had deeply drained, after long previous 
shallow drainage, we found that the worms had greatly increased 
in number, and that their bores descended quite to the level of the 
pipes. Many worm bores are large enough to receive the little 
finger, and it is possible that one worm has several bores for his 
family, and refuge holes from rain. I have very recently found 
worms twisted up into knots, and berthed in a nidus formed by the 
side of the vertical bore, and in communication with it by a lateral 
hole about an inch long, forming in appearance a comfortable re- 
treat. 
My valued and much lamented friend, Mr. Henry Handley, 
informed me of a piece of land near the sea in Lincolnshire, over 
which the sea had broken, and killed all the worms — the field re- 
mained sterile until the worms again inhabited it. He also showed 
me a piece of pasture land near to his house in which worms were 
in such numbers that he thought their casts interfered too much 
with its produce, which induced him to have the field rolled at 
night in order to destroy the worms. The result was that the fer- 
tility of the field greatly declined, nor was it restored until they 
had recruited their numbers, which was aided by collecting and 
transporting multitudes of worms from other fields. 
The great depths into which worms will bore, and from which 
they push up fine fertile soil, and cast it on the surface, has been 
admirably traced by Mr. C. Darwin, of Down, Kent, who has 
shown that, in a few years, they have actually elevated the surface 
of fields by a layer of fine mould several inches thick, thus adding 
to the pabulum of the grasses. His experiments were made at Mr. 
Wedgwood's, of Etruria, and are recorded in the ' Gardener's 
Chronicle,' of April 6, 1844. Mr. Darwin's researches are entitled 
to the strictest credibility. Here are some specimens of warp soil 
now undergoing drainage by me on an estate of Mr. VVilliam Mar- 
shall's, M.P., near Patringlon, fourteen miles east of Hull, and 
opposite the well-known tract of land, reclaimed likewise from the 
