182 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
LETTER XXXI. 
SELBORNE, May 2oth, 177. 
Lands that are subject to frequent inundations are always 
poor ; and probably the reason may be because the worms are 
drowned. ‘The most insignificant insects and reptiles are of 
much more consequence, and have much more influence in the 
economy of Nature, than the incurious are aware.of ; and are 
mighty in their effect, from their minuteness, which renders 
them less an object of attention; and from their numbers and 
fecundity. Earth-worms, though in appearance a small and 
despicable link in the chain of Nature, yet, if lost, would make 
a lamentable chasm. For to say nothing of half the birds, and 
some quadrupeds, which are almost entirely supported by them, 
worms seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, which 
would proceed but lamely without them, by boring, perforating, 
and loosening the soil, and rendering it pervious to rains and 
the fibres of plants, by drawing straws and stalks of leaves and 
twigs into it; and, most of all, by throwing up such infinite 
numbers of lumps of earth called worm-casts, which, being 
their excrement, is a fine manure for grain and grass. Worms 
probably provide new soil for hills and slopes where the rain 
washes the earth away; and they affect slopes, probably to 
avoid being flooded. Gardeners and farmers express their 
detestation of worms; the former because they render their 
walks unsightly, and make them much work; and the latter 
because, as they think, worms eat their green corn. But these 
men would find that the earth without worms would soon 
become cold, hard-bound, and void of fermentation, and con- 
sequently sterile; and besides, in favor of worms, it should be 
hinted that green corn, plants, and flowers are not so much 
injured by them as by many species of Coleoptera (scarabs), 
and 7Zipule (long-legs) in their larva, or grub state; and by 
unnoticed myriads of small shell-less snails, called slugs, which 
