STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
691 
EARTH-WORM. A FORKED EARTH-WORM. 
lighted lantern were placed in the garden during the night, none of these 
worms would come abroad near it. I have also noticed that if one of these 
worms is dropped upon a spot where the surface is sprinkled over with ashes 
or with salt, the worm writhes and twists apparently in misery, coiling and 
tying itself into knots as if endeavoring to wipe off the irritating substance 
from its skin. Around the vegetation, therefore, which I find to be molested 
by these worms, I am resorting to a top dressing of unleached ashes, with 
the hope of thus protecting it from them. 
A singular monstrosity occurs in one of these worms which was found 
in my garden the past season. It is a young worm about three inches 
long, having the hind end of its body forked or divided into two branches 
nearly a fourth of its length. The forks are cylindrical, of equal length 
and thickness, and about a third less in diameter than the body forward of 
them. When it was first taken in the hand both forks were noticed to dis¬ 
charge their earthy feces alike. The structure, where the forks commence, 
may be briefly described as follows: The fork which is on the left side 
continues the rings of the body regularly onward, three of the rings suc¬ 
cessively diminishing in diameter reducing the thickness from that of the 
body to that of the fork; and the suture by which the first of these three 
rings is united to that which precedes it, opens widely apart on the right 
side, forming the base upon which the right hand fork is inserted—this 
fork showing a very slight contraction or neck at its commencement, 
whilst the left hand fork has no corresponding contraction at its base. 
The specimen is preserved in a vial of spirits, in the Museum of the 
Society, the spirits having contracted it in length about one-third. 
