62 
THE LADIES MAGAZINE OF GARDENING. 
The tuber sent is that of Arum campanulatum , figured in the Botanical 
Magazine, vol. 55, t. 2812, of which our fig. 26 is a reduced copy. This 
curious plant is a native of Ceylon, 
but it is cultivated in different parts 
of the East Indies as an article of 
food. The tuber is flat, and appears 
marked with circular lines, which 
look like the folded skin of a rhino¬ 
ceros. From the centre of this, a 
single large deeply-cut leaf is pro¬ 
duced, from a foot and a half to two 
feet high. The flower rises from a 
short green stem, from the base of 
which, above the tuber, proceed a few fibrous roots. The flower appears 
at a different season to the leaf, and it consists of a pale pinkish-purple 
spathe, of a thick leathery texture, inclosing a deep blackish-purple 
spadix, or head. It has flowered in England in the collection of the late 
Robert Barclay, Esq., at Bury Hill, near Dorking. Its name in Hin- 
dostanee is Muncha-kunda; and its tubers in India have been known to 
weigh eight or ten pounds each. 
EARTH-WORMS. 
Are worms injurious, and do they eat leaves ? I have often observed 
leaves left sticking partly in the ground at the openings of worm-holes, 
and I have never yet been able to ascertain of what use they were likely 
to be to the worm. 
Portsmouth, 
January 6, 1841. 
In a field, worms have a good effect, as they lighten the soil, and render 
it pervious to the air and rain ; but^ in a pot, every passage of the worm 
tears asunder the roots of the plant, which are pressed close together 
from the smallness of the space in which they are confined, and thus it 
does a serious injury. “ The common earth-worm moves by bristles, with 
which the rings of its body are furnished, and which enable it to move 
either backwards or forwards at pleasure ; and it emits a slimy substance 
which facilitates its passage through the earth; this slimy matter adheres 
to leaves and other substances, which the worm drags after it along the 
surface of the ground, but which, as it cannot take them through its 
passages, they being only large enough to admit its own body, it leaves at 
the mouth of the hole where it disappears .”—(Ladies Companion to the 
Flower Garden.') 
