1882.] 
Vegetable Soil. 
387 
of Wicklow, Carlow, and Wexford, they burrowing down 
into the yellow clay subsoil, and bringing up little heaps 
about 3 or 4 inches in height and diameter : very interesting 
work of theirs occurs in connection with cow-dropping, as 
when three or four burrow under one they bring up enough 
clay to cover it up, which in a very short time forms a turf 
of sweet grass. To them therefore, in part, is due patches 
of good grass in mountain wastes, especially in any sort of 
sheltered place, as here the cattle at times will herd, while 
subsequently their ejeCta will be covered up by these beetles, 
thus fertilising the patch : without the beetle-work the ejeCta 
would probably be dried up by the sun, and carried away by 
the wind, rain, or runlets. 
Note to page 340. — Some worms are not so careless. 
On May 23rd, 1882, during the first day of rain after a long 
drought, I was watching, out of a house in a shrubbery, 
worms travelling. They were taking their time, elongated 
to their full extent and scarcely contracting themselves at 
all, so that they got along very slowly. One came into the 
house, and when he got on the dry boards he did not seem to 
like it at all, and raised about an inch in length of his body, 
with which he felt about for some time ; he then went on 
slowly, but straight : after the first board there was a hole, 
into which he did not tumble, as he kept half his body up 
above, while the other half he bent down at a right angle 
and elongated it to an extraordinary extent, by which means 
he was able to touch a dead leaf at the bottom, to which he 
clung, and then gently drew down the rest of his body. 
I have also observed that worms coming out of a hole in 
the side of a perpendicular trench will try to crawl up or 
down it ; sometimes they succeed in getting up, especially if 
they can so elongate their body that the end of the tail re- 
mains in the hole while the point of the head is on the 
surface of the ground ; generally, however, they tumble down 
to the bottom of the trench. 
Note to page 385. — During the drought in May the heap 
got too dry for the brambles, and some of them migrated, — 
a portion to a large heap of rotten dung in a lane south 
of the original place, and others to a much dunged border 
of rhubarb east of the first locality. It is extraordinary 
how fast they increased in each of these places. 
