336 
Vegetable Soil, 
[June, 
hat “ it could not have been placed here, as there are no 
worms in it.” Before he spoke, as I was carefully watching 
every bit turned up for relics, I had myself observed the 
total absence of worms, which even now surprises me, as 
apparently the soil was very suitable for their work. 
In grass during the summer, but especially in meadow 
land, worms seem to throw few or no casts. In the winter 
they have to burrow, because there is no vegetation to 
protebt them from the cold ; but this is not the case at other 
times, as they find sufficient shelter in the crowns of the 
grass and other growing plants. Go into a growing 
meadow with the ducks of an early morning or after rain, 
and you will find innumerable worms creeping about, which, 
as the ground gets dry from the sun, retreat, not, however, 
into the ground, but into the crowns of the plants ; even in 
the summer pasture land, except when it is eaten very bare, 
worms in general are able to find shelter without burrowing. 
I may be allowed to point out that, in making a calcula- 
tion of the quantity of earth thrown up by worms, it is not 
corredt to be always removing it, because the oftener it is 
removed the more vigorously they work. Leave a worm 
cast and a worm may not add to it for weeks, but clean 
away his cast day after day, thus letting the rain or other 
moisture into the burrow, and night after night he will cast 
up new earth works. 
Many or most of the fields on the Wicklow hill slopes, if 
the rocks are slate or the like, tend to run into moss ; this 
tendency to run into moss being very common in such areas 
and a great nuisance to the farmer, as it necessitates his 
breaking up the land. In none of these mossy fields will 
worm casting be found except on the tracks made by cart- 
ing across them in the autumn. Where do these worms 
come from ? Often one of these tracks will be a mile or 
more in length and all along it there will be numerous 
castings, while not one worm can be detected in the adjoin- 
ing mossy fields. They may be in the moss but I could not 
detect them, which I ought to have been able to do, as it is 
not an uncommon practice to mow off “ the fog,” as this 
moss covering is locally called, and use it for the bedding of 
cattle, yet search the newly mown “fog” and no worms 
appear to be in it. It is, however, quite possible that they 
may have come out of the moss, because even if they were 
few and far between, if all of them were to migrate out of it 
to the sweet herbage on the beaten track, the number from 
the large area of moss land would appear excessive when 
congregated on the very limited space occupied by the track. 
