EARTH-WORMS. 
727 
hardier race of cattle does not exist, and the same may be 
said of some other quite light coloured cattle in Europe. Is 
the white Polar bear a delicate animal? Naturalists assert 
that several other hardy kinds of animals in the Arctic regions 
are white, and although some may change to other colours in 
the summer, as winter approaches they resume the white. 
Would nature allow this if it made them more delicate in the 
season that requires the utmost hardness to pass through it 
in good health and safety ?— Live Stock Journal . 
EARTH-WORMS. 
To the Editor of The c Live Stock Journal? 
Sir, —The new and startling fact revealed by the recent 
researches of M. Pasteur—noticed recently in the Live Stock 
Journal —is calculated at first sight to entirely upset the 
farmer’s preconceived notions as to the utility of the 
common earth-worm. But discoveries of the nature alluded 
to are often mere myths; and the agency of the earth-worm 
in spreading disease, even admitting it is a fact, may not be 
so very dreadful after all. At any rate, if a farmer chooses 
to take the most ordinary precautions in the matter, he may 
rest assured that his flocks, his herds, and even himself and 
his family, have nothing to fear from contagion-bearing anne- 
lides. It is suggested that animals which have died of 
anthrax, and allied diseases, should not be buried in fields 
devoted to crops or pasturage, and only in poor dry sandy or 
calcareous soils, where worms do not congregate. But there 
would be little possibility of effectually guarding against the 
danger in that way. The only safe plan would be to burn 
the bodies of all animals that had died from such diseases. 
Fortifying myself with the belief that the latter preven¬ 
tive would be effectual against the danger which M. Pasteur 
warns of, I, for one, shall continue to look upon the earth¬ 
worm as one of the best friends to the farmer which he could 
possibly have. In the one matter of forming soils, the 
earth-worm does far more for the farmer than counterbal¬ 
ances its mischief-working powers, even if the latter were 
ten times greater than they really are. The amount of fresh 
soil which earth-worms annually bring to the surface has 
been estimated by Darwin at 161 tons of dry earth over an 
area of ten acres. Stones have been observed to sink into 
the soil three inches in fifteen years, and fifteen inches in 
eighty years; but in reality the stones were not sinking—the 
earth was being raised at that rate by the action of earth- 
