CONVOCATION OF WORMS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 738, 4 September 1953, Page 9

CONVOCATION OF WORMS

by

SUNDOWNER

AUGUST 11

ECAUSE half my sheep will not come down for hay, and the other half, now that they have learnt to like it, will not leave it, I have separated the hayeaters from the grass-feeders. So far the result has been good. The halt and the maimed and the indifferent and the stubborn have less competition for the green leaves and the bold and

brazen none for the lucerne and wmangolds. These oereedy

ones have learnt that chained dogs don’t even bark, and they will lie down within ten yards of the kennels. But I have had to surrender the paddock I was saving for the mothers of young lambs, Meanwhile I don’t know whether to feed out faster, on the ground that spring is almost here, or conserve the extras for the winter that has not yet come, but so easily still could. I have, of course, discovered that Romneys eat at least 20 per cent more than _halfbreds, and go back faster and look worse if their big bellies are not filled. Fill their bellies, however, give them enough to eat within reasonable travelling range, and you will understand what Sir James Scott Watson meant last year when he called Romneys "one of the most remarkable creations of the stock-breeder." It is certainly strange that a marsh sheep does as well in most parts of New Zealand as sheep brought from mountains and hills. The sheep I saw on the Romney Marsh itself were not noticeably different from those I can see outside my window, yet none of these until I bought them had ever lived on soft country, I am not sure that thev had ever eaten roots or hay or English grasses, and if they had it would be for brief periods only. They are hill sheep, born, bred and fed on tussock, fern. and scrub-clad hills with a rainfall

of 40 to 50 inches, and a carrying

capacity of one sheep to the acre. Yet I have frequently read, and always at least tried to believe, that on the best parts of the Romney Marsh sheep are fattened at the rate of 12 to the acre year in and year out without cultivation or topdressing. Moving such sheep to the rougher parts of New Zealand is like taking a herd of Jerseys from the Waikato and turning them out with «a bull on Molesworth. They would not all die. There would still be some cattle there after ten years and some after 20 years. But they would show as much resemblance to their Waikato ancestors as an Ayrshire does to a Yak.

AUGUST 14

WAS greatly impressed once when a fellow student in Dunedin caught my arm and solemnly assured me that a little man who had just passed us knew more about worms than anyone else in the world. The little man was Professor (afterwards Sir William) Benham, and although I was to learn later that the statement was slightly exagger-

ated it gave the professor a halo that he never quite lost. So

'my first thought this morning, when I climbed the hill after the rain, and saw the grass covered with tens of thousands of moving earthworms, was that the spectacle would have interested Professor Benham. Everybody has seen roads and footpaths littered with worms after rain. most of them dead, and there was probably nothing unusual in what I saw today. But there were three unusual features to me: the immense number of worms, their activity, and their uniform appearance and size (six to nine inches). I was never a student of Benham’s cr I would know why these worms were all out at nine in the morning, why they were all moving uphill, why

they had all disappeared an hour or two later, and why they all seemed to be about the same stage in life. I imagine, of course, that they had been flooded out by the tain, which had come on ground already wet and penetrated deeply, and that what I saw in . broad daylight is a frequent, and perhaps normal, occurrence during the hours of darkness. If I am right in supposing that worms come to the surface for food, partly because the chief source of supply is there, and partly because it is safer to be above ground in. the dark than below the surface and exposed to subterranean enemies, they must swarm on the grass every night, If they do I have never been aware

of them, Half as many as I saw this morning would cause everything that walks on the earth by night to crush so many worms that it would be difficult not to see them when the sun rises. I made a rough count on an area of about five peces by three, and the tally was 87. I chose that spot because the grass had been nibbled short on it and counting was easy; but when I examined other areas where the grass was longer there seemed to be quite as many worms. Oddly enough, I did not once see a bird busy among them, though I followed a row of trees for 20 chains. Perhaps they had ‘been busy, and were gorged and resting when I arrived; perhaps they were busy somewhere else; perhaps they are not at present interested. I don’t know what the facts are. I do know that it is greatly underStating the case to say that in circling a paddock of 20 acres I must have passed through half a million worms. Darwin’s estimate was, I think, that 50,000 worms would bring ten tons of soil to the surface of an acre in a year, and cover the surface three inches deep every 15 years. It is the kind of estimate I am usually tempted to question or ridicule, but today I can almost accept it. *x *

AUGUST 15

T looks as if authority is not going to allow me to enjoy my giant kelp triumph in peace. I am holding on as stubbornly as I can, but all I have left to cling to is the fact that no one can be sure that the ocean has surrendered all its secrets. If we can’t be sure yet

that there is not an abominable snowman on Everest, we can

be less sure that the oldest, longest and biggest plant of kelp in the ocean has been cast up and found on some lonely beach. It took more than a year or two

to identify, measure, and finally describe the monster of Loch Ness, and who guessed, before the facts were known, what family the creature belonged to? The ocean may no longer ba as unfathomable and dark as it was to Byron, but it could still have secrets in its caverns deep that no one yet has uncovered. I will give up when every plant of Macrocystis pyrifera has been discovered, charted and taped, Meanwhile, I. will confess, since TI must, that the known facts are strongly against me. Professor V. J. Chapman, who occupies the Botany Cheir in Auckland University College, is "pretty sure the facts are not correct." 1 looked into the matter some years ago when writing my book on seaweeds and their uses, The earliest explorers gave lengths of 700-1500 feet long, but these are now discounted. It is extremely doubtful if plants ever exceed 200 feet in length, which is well short of the height of the giant redwoods. Is am sorry to debunk the story and to deprive New Zealand of the privilege of having the largest plant in the world. The day before that reached me I had been. warned that another authority (Miss Lucy B. Moore, of the Botany Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research) was against me, too-if I could be for or against anything about which I know nothing. It was Hcoker, she said; who started

these inflated theories. The pictures some of us may have seen in childhood of a plant rooted in the abysmal deeps and sending up vast stems. (about half a chain through) for perhaps 1500 feet were, she insists, fantastic nonsense. My only hope now is that a deep-sea scientific expedition will foul-hook a kelp plant a thousand feet down and bring up 2000 feet of stem and frond before it cuts itself free. If there is a blackberry bush in Westland 75° miles long, with a single root system, the Pacific Ocean should be equal to a freak kelp plant of half a mile or so. (To be continued) 2 .