232 
THE EARTH-WORM. 
face, whence, dissolved by frosts, and scattered by rains, 
they circulate again in the plants of the soil, 
“ Death still producing life.” 
Thus eminently serviceable as the worm is, it yet 
becomes the prey of various orders of the animal crea- 
tion, and perhaps is a solitary example of an individual 
race being subjected to universal destruction. The 
very emmet seizes it when disabled, and bears it away 
as its prize : it constitutes throughout the year the food 
of many birds ; fishes devour it greedily ; the hedge- 
hog eats it ; the mole pursues it unceasingly in the pas- 
tures, along the moist bottoms of ditches, and burrows 
after it through the banks of hedges, to which it retires 
in dry seasons : secured as the worm appears to be by 
its residence in the earth from the capture of creatures 
inhabiting a different element, yet many aquatic ani- 
mals seem well acquainted with it, and prey on it as a 
natural food, whenever it falls in their way ; frogs eat 
it; and even the great water-beetle (ditiscus marginalis) 
I have known to seize it when the bait of the angler, 
and it has been drawn up by the hook. Yet notwith- 
standing this prodigious destruction of the animal, its 
increase is fully commensurate to its consumption, as 
if ordained the appointed food of all; and Reaumur 
computes, though from what data it is difficult to con- 
jecture, that the number of worms lodged in the bosom 
of the earth exceeds that of the grains of alb kinds of 
corn collected by man. 
Worms, generally speaking, are tender creatures, and 
water remaining over their haunts for a few days drowns 
them; they easily become frozen, when a mortification 
commences at some part, which gradually consumes the 
whole substance, and we find them on the surface a mu- 
cilaginous mass: and their retiring deeper in the soil 
is no bad indication of approaching cold w T eather ; but 
no sooner is the frost out of the earth, than they ap- 
proach the surface to feed on decayed vegetable matter. 
Greatly beneficial as these creatures are, by drawing 
leaves and decayed matters into the earth, where their 
dissolution is accomplished, yet they are sad tormentors 
