1882.J Vegetable Soil , 333 
much of the soil they produce is carried away and scattered 
by rain, runlets, and the wind. 
Ants and earthworms do not work together or in general 
in the same kind of ground ; and I strongly suspedfc that if 
surveys were made of the Irish, lands where the earth 
worms do work, and where the ants do work, that the area 
of the latter would come very nearly equal to that of the 
first, while the soil in the ant hills would considerably 
exceed that in the worm casts. After these general remarks 
we may proceed to give some more minute details. 
Worms and Grass Land * 
While giving fadts in this and the following divisions, a . 
plan somewhat similar to that of Dr. Darwin’s may be 
adopted, exadt time and place being recorded ; and first may 
be mentioned what has taken place under nearly daily obser- 
vations. I am now living in a low-lying damp valley, Vale 
of Ovoca, Co. Wicklow, and when I came here five years 
ago the croquet ground was covered with a five inch thick 
bed of moss, the place having been uninhabited for over 
three years. To get rid of this moss in March, 1877, whins 
were heaped on it and set on fire, which burned off all the 
vegetation. No worm work was observed on the croquet 
ground until the September of 1879, after the grass began 
to form a regular sod. In 1880 the autumn and winter was 
very frosty, and the worms did very little work, but last year 
the autumn and winter (1881 and 1882) were very damp, and 
the worms have been at work nearly continuously from the 
end of September till February 1882. In 1881 the croquet 
ground was mowed early in April, and from that time till 
the end of September, when the wet weather stopped the 
lawn tennis, I did not observe a worm casting. From Sep- 
tember, 1881, to March, 1882, the worms were very constantly 
at work in moist weather, especially on the worn places 
stopping off for days when there was no rain. On the sixth 
of March the croquet ground was rolled for the first time, 
and about once a fortnight afterwards, and after the first 
rolling few or no worms put up castings. The few that did 
were on the bare spots ; they seem to have thought that the 
dry weather was come, and that they ought all to go to 
bed as they usually do in the dry weather of May and June. 
In the first week of April and again on the 15th, there were 
severe frosts, and in the rain before each there were casts, 
as if the worms in the grass had anticipated the cold and 
had left the grass tufts and again returned into the ground. 
