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Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4659, 10 December 1883, Page 2

The Ovens and Murray (Victoria) Advertiser says that a Wangaratta ladf recently on a visit to Gippsland, in the neighborhood of the Lakes, brought back the information fchafc there were earthworms in that region which.attained the marvellous length of a yard.and more. Mr Norton politely challenged the state. ment, a3 a mistake of some kind; upou which the lady wrote to her friends in Gippsland to procure one of these monsters and send it up to Wangaratta alive, if possible. Sure enough a tin soldered, I down, with airholes perforated in the tap, arrived by rail, was opened at the Albion Hotel amidst doubt and cariosity. It contained a little wet clay end an undoubted earthworm, about as thick as a man's thumb, rather the worse for its passage, which on being held np by the head was very nearly four feet long. On being sluiced with water, to revive it, it was again held up, and immediately commenced stretching itself out towards the ground until it had gained several inches more; It wa3 then taken home, put in fresh earth, and the next morning showed a length of nearly five feet. It is said that the Jake fishermen employ them most successfully in their occupational bait-»of ooqrse, cutting them into pieoea.""' There is never any ijieed, of complaint that a lamp is heavy for it is an easy matter to twirl up a pice« of paper and wake a lamplighter, ' r *