33 § 
Vegetable Soil. [June, 
July. While these crops are growing no worm casts are 
visible, but if kind rain comes on at any time, innumerable 
small worms appear that come up out of the ground without 
making casts and congregate in the young cabbage. These 
worms are very destructive, for although you cannot detect 
any eating awaj^ of the plant, yet the cabbages affeCted by 
the worm gradually dwindle away. This season (1881-2), 
on account of the heat and moisture, this class of worms 
were in excessive numbers, and so injured my October plant- 
ing that the bed had to be nearly replanted in February. 
Not a cast will be seen on such ground, but when it is dug up 
after the dry weather in May and June, numerous worms 
will be found in the roots of the cabbage stalks, or coiled up 
in roundish holes from eight to fifteen inches below the 
surface ;The latter are quite attenuated, as if they had been 
hybernating for some time. This occurs if you dig the 
cabbage beds during the dry weather usual at that time, but 
if you wait till the July rains come, none of the worms coiled 
up in the cells will be found. It is, however, quite possible, 
on account of the surface of such ground being friable, that 
worm casts are hard to deteCt on it, they also being friable 
and easily dissipated by very slight moisture ; nevertheless, 
I suspeCt from what I have seen of worms that it is only 
through necessity that they make casts, that is, when the 
ground is so compact that they have to excavate tunnels 
through it. 
The Travelling Worms. 
Earth worms appear to be great travellers. After rain 
examine ground on which the tracks will remain, such as a 
road, and see the number of them and the excessive length 
of some of them. The tracks on a road are of two distinct 
kinds, one making a straight furrow and the other, although 
going straight, having a wriggled aspeCt. Examine the tracks 
on a road any morning after rain and the worms appear to 
have started from the grass at one side to get to the grass at 
the other ; but as they rarely leave the grass exactly per- 
pendicular to the road, their track tends more or less 
obliquely across it. They, however, go on straight until they 
meet an obstacle, from which they go straight till they meet 
another, so that by these different changes from their 
original course they often have gone 300 yards or more 
before they got across a road 10 yards wide. Rarely does a 
track run across in the shortest line, because, in addition to 
meeting obstacles, if there is a fall in the road they tend to 
go down it more or less, sometimes going straight down the 
