INFLUENCE OF WORMS ON SOIL.
Most every one living in the country lids observed openings, the size of a hen-quill, on the surface of the ground with little rough fragments of earth seated about them. How many know that these are the burrows of worms? How many would imagine .that every acre of good cultivated land contains29,ooo,ooo worms? Finally, who can help being surprised on learning that the rough fragments of earth mentioned as lying at the openings of the burrows are a kind of manure, voided by the worms, and that the amount of this manure deposited on each acre, where it has been measured, exceeds ten tons in one year 1 Worm manure cannot be called rich. A great portion of worm food is the soil itself, but in addition to this leaves and other accessible, vegetable substance are eaten by these animals in large quantities, But the groat service of worms to agriculture lies in the pulverising and'admixing operation performed upon the soil while passing through their bodies, an operation to which is almost wholly due, as now seems, that rich layer of fine uniform black earth near the surface, colled vegetable mould.
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Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1526, 6 December 1883, Page 2
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196INFLUENCE OF WORMS ON SOIL. Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1526, 6 December 1883, Page 2
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