THE USEFUL EARTH WORM

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 377, 30 April 1910, Page 10

THE USEFUL EARTH WORM

In an interesting case now before the courts in Great Britain, a Sheppey farmer in his evidence stated that "in 1897 the sea water came over and killed some of his stock. The salt water killed worms, which provided nitrogen for the nourishment of the grass; thus a coarse grass was produced. After the flood of 1897 experts said it would take six years for the worms to return. He thought it would take twenty." There is no doubt that worms perform a very important ameliorating work in the soil. They sift the finer from the coarser particles and minsde the mould with vegetable debris. Darwin made a special study of the action of earthworms. He calculated that the amount of earth brought to the surface by them was about sixteen tons to the acre, equal to a layer of .1429 of an inch in thickness. Calculating 26,886 worms to exist in an acre of pasture land, which is. only half as many as the like space in garden mould is estimated to contain, raising fifteen tons of soil per acre in a year, it worked out as 20oz for every worm. The earth without worms would rapidly deteriorate and become sterile. As the naturalist Gilbert White wrote—"Worms seem to be great promoters of vegetation, which would .proceed but slowly without them, by boring, perforating and loosening the soil, and rendering it pervious to rain and the fibres of plants, by drawing stalks and straws of all kinds into it, and, most of all, by throwing up such infinite numbers of lumps of earth." As regards food, the earthworm is omniverous. It swallows an enormous quantity of earth, from which it extracts any digestible matter the earth may contain. It consumes all kinds of halfdecayed leaves and flowers, which are dragged into the mouths of buvows to a depth of from one to three inches, and are prepared by moistening with a tf.uM secretion which quickly fresh leaves.

Worms often lie close beneath the mouths of their 'burrows, especially in the morning, presumably for warmth—a habit accounting, for their wholesale destruction by the thrushes and blackbirds, which during certain seasons may be seen busy throughout the country on lawns.

When the ground is dry, owing to winter cold or summer heat, earthworm burrows to a considerable depth and cease to work. The depth to which the worm burrows varies in accordance with dryness or cold, and the thickness of the upper soil. It has been known to reach a depth of over six feet. Ordinarily, however, they inhabit only the •uperficial mould, which is usually from four or five to ten or twelve inches thick.