THE EARTH WORM, 
233 
to us gardeners, and occasion the loss of more young 
plants than even the slug, by drawing in the leaf, which 
throws out the root; so that in the morning we find 
our nursling inverted. It is the same propensity, or or- 
dination, for removing decayed matters, that influences 
them in these actions ; as they are the faded leaves that 
are seized by them, such as newly removed plants pre- 
sent before the root draws nutriment from the earth. 
Even stones of some magnitude are at times drawn over 
their holes. The horticulturist perhaps encounters 
more mortification and disappointment than any other 
laborer upon the earth from insects, elementary severity, 
the slug, and the worm ; yet, if the depredations of 
this last creature do at times excite a little of our iras- 
cibility, we must still remember the nightly labors, and 
extensive services, that are performed for the agri- 
culturist by this scavenger of the earth, and manurer 
of the soil. 
Besides, worms are essentially useful in draining our 
lands from superfluous moisture, which in many cases, 
without their agency, would be detained upon or near 
the surface of the earth, chilling and deteriorating our 
pastures. A few inches of soil, resting upon a substra- 
tum of clay, would commonly, without some natural or 
artificial drainage, be soaked with water after heavy 
rains, and thus become a bog, or produce coarse water 
herbage rather than good grasses ; but these worms 
greatly facilitate the passage of the water by draining 
horizontally along the bed of clay, and aid the emission 
of the water by this means, as I have often observed in 
the trenches, which we cut in our retentive soils, nu- 
merous worm-casts on their sides a few days after they 
had been made, being the exits of the horizontal runs, 
and through these the water drains into the trenches, 
and runs off*. I do not assert the water would not in 
any case be discharged without the agency of worms ; 
but that the passages which they make expedite it, 
which, in situations where the operation would be sub- 
jected to delay from the position of the ground, or the 
under stratum, is of infinite advantage. Thus the soil 
is not only rendered firm, allowing the admission of 
