permitted to play its part for their nutrition, so that the body may be endowed with its full maturity; that, surely, is a practice of letting nature have her free course,-in other words, of letting well alone, which all can follow much more easily than most practices that now prevail. Lastly, that the growing mind should be permitted its free and natural course to grow and grow throughout the whole term of its earthly life, and not be killed in its early career by the insane pressure of labours it is utterly unable to bear, or to apply if it could bear them; that, surely, is a practice simplest of all, most natural of all, and most certain for the promotion of intellectual and social advancement.

The fourth series of perils incident to the seed-time of healththose which I have designated the induced, are, like the last, entirely under human command. For them to be removed, however, a reform beginning with those who have passed the seed-time is the absolute necessity. These perils must cease, and can only cease, by the process of the younger learning what is right from the examples of the older and the wiser creations of humanity. While middle-aged and old men and women indulge in low and injurious luxuries and pleasures, which inevitably shorten and embitter existence; while these revel in intemperance, and break every sanitary law in the Decalogue and out of it, it cannot be expected that imitative youth will do less than follow in their staggering and bewildering footsteps. What now is wanted is the ideal of a new nobility. In the wild-boar days of human existence, in days when men, hardly emancipated from lower forms of life, crept out of their caves, their huts, their walled prisons, to see their nobler species go forth to exercise those rude arts of fighting, hunting, revelling, which formed the whole art of civilisation, there was a nobility which deserved the name, the representative of necessity. But now, when these arts have degenerated into mere childish imitations, mere apedoms of the great past, they are but injurious pretensions for nobility of soul and body. Once noble according to the spirit of their day, they are in this day ignoble. 'Gamblings and struggles for money, false fame, false hopes, false health, they kill the older, cripple the younger, pervert all. I say nothing but what is good of physical exercise; I would that every school were a gymnasium; I would that every man and woman could ride well, walk well, and skilfully exercise every sense and every limb. I urge only that this example be set, that all exercises, whether of body or mind, be carried out in purest habitude and in accordance with the enlightening progress of the age.

Approaching now the close of my discourse, I find two applications of thought with which briefly to trouble you; one general, the other local and connected with this passing hour. I have tried to bring before you the seed-time of health, the time when this humanity of ours, in body, mind, and spirit, is learning either to live

the seed-time. I have shown how bad is the seed-time, how pressing the shame of it and how shameless nevertheless. I have tried to show what are the elements of reform which in that seed-time are required. In general expression of thought I would, respectfully as earnestly, ask those who rule and govern us to look at this period of life as it is; to make it their test object of good or bad government; to assure themselves that when the death-roll of this period of life reports itself filling, filled, the government is bad, happiness out of the question; peace, order, national greatness all impossible; that when the death-roll of this period is emptying, is emptied, all is well; that life then promises to run its completed course, and peace, concord, and prosperity to accompany the health that is ensured.

But to you, Brightonians, I address myself specially. It may easily be your fate, if you will it so to be, to have less cause for shame than even those shrinking mourners of whom I drew a picture in my opening lines. You, planted by the silver sea, have now, in spite of yourselves, a health you do not of yourselves deserve. You, whose coats the breeze of the sea brushes, whose homes it of its own wild will cleanses, you are made for the work of tending those who are living in the seed-time of health. That specifically, in so far as your resources permit, is your great mission. You have called us sanitarians here to speak the truth that is in us. Let our meeting be useful, and the date from whence you move until the shame of mortal events the sun should never witness be felt whenever they occur. You have before you opportunities almost without parallel. You have Nature with you in all her freshness, expanse, and beauty. Learn her ways from herself. Embarrassed by no traditions of antiquarian treasures, you can pull down and rebuild as freely as you can build anew. You are already a school-ground of schools: let that be your abiding tradition, and make your town, in which the ideal of a model city was announced, be the model Hygeiopolis itself, the Commonhealth of the Commonwealth. Then your sons, proud of their ancestry, shall realise even here, that as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly;' and approaching the Infinite Spirit, from whom all proceed and to whom all return, shall declare, not in words merely but in very deeds, that perfected consummation of sanitary principle:-Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.'

MR. DARWIN ON EARTH-WORMS.1

T is rather surprising that the combined operations of worms in

to so little noticed. For anyone who walks over a grass-plot, and observes the number of worm-casts, each consisting of from a quarter to half an ounce of fine black earth, or even more, must perceive that a very considerable disturbance of the under soil is constantly going on. If, moreover, he finds that worm-casts, which have been swept away or removed, are replaced in a single night, he will be aware that if, say, even an ounce of subsoil is thus daily brought up from the depth of many inches over a square yard, the quantity so raised to the surface in a year, and spread by rain, wind, and the tread of cattle, over an acre of ground, must amount to many tons. This earthy matter is dispersed among the roots and root-leaves of grasses and other low-growing plants, which in turn are always making an effort to grow through and out of them; so that in the course of years the whole surface of the ground may be said to consist entirely of a layer of worm-earth. The somewhat sticky or viscous consistency of worm-casts causes them at once to adhere to plants, and to be less easily dissolved by rain and dew. The air finds its way through worm-holes to the deeper roots, and this alone undoubtedly gives a great stimulus to growth.

Mr. Darwin (p. 165) estimates the outspread of fresh earth at eighteen tons in a year for every acre of land in which worms are tolerably numerous. This, of course, is a much larger amount than is usually spread over the fields by the farmer in the shape of manure; and worm-casts are really manure, not only as being composed of finely mixed and triturated mould, but as containing some acids derived from digested vegetable matter in the passage through the animal's intestines. For worms eat earth, besides consuming prodigious quantities of decaying vegetable matter. They are extremely greedy creatures, and leaves pulled into their holes are soon drawn down and devoured. It is certain that the greater part of the leaves which fall in autumn, and which seem so soon and so mysteriously to disappear, are disposed of in this way. Any observer may notice fields and lawns bristling with leaves, mostly grouped in little bunches with the stalk upwards; and that in a very short time nothing is left but the fibrous skeletons of midribs and stalks that have been drawn by worms into the mouths of their holes. Newly fallen leaves may indeed be blown away into hedge-bottoms and

The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms. With Obser

ditches; but in a short time leaves on a meadow become so saturated by rain and dew, and retained by the growth of grass, that the wind does not stir them at all.

To make this point quite clear, I selected a spot on a meadow thickly studded with worm-casts, but quite clear of leaves, being far from any trees. Over it I scattered a few handfuls of damp and sodden fallen leaves of different kinds, treading them down so that they could not be blown away. I visited the spot daily for a week, and watched the gradual decrease till not a single leaf was left. think worms come out at night and feed on leaves not drawn into their holes. The latter expedient is adopted to supply food in the daytime. Leaves may often be found gnawed into rags, which have evidently never been twisted into a plug for a worm-hole. I do not think slugs or snails ever feed on dead leaves.

If the worm-casts are dissolved in water, a quantity of sand or chalk, according to the subsoil in which they burrow, may often be observed, together with small pellets of half-digested fibre, and minute particles of lime, cinder, or stone. Now the rich black mould may afford some nourishment, but pure sand cannot. The inference is, that the greater part of the earth bored out of the hole is actually swallowed, and ejected on the surface. The mole, whose larger operations are very similar, simply clears out its tunnel by raking the earth in a hillock through a hole in the grass. The turf-clad anthills, with which fields and commons are sometimes covered, are formed in the same way, by vegetation ever rising above the level of the crumbled earth, scooped out of the nests of Formica flava. The worm eats its way in; fresh undersoil is constantly brought up from a depth of two or three feet, and supplied to the roots of grass; and thus the surface is ever being renewed for the nourishment of new vegetation, as the old dies and is eaten up. In loose soil, the worm effects an entrance by pushing aside the earth; for it is a strong, muscular creature in proportion to its size. But as this is impossible in compact earth, another process is adopted-that of boring like a gimlet, in which case all the earth removed passes through the body. I have dissolved black worm-casts in water, and found that in some of them nearly half the sediment was pure sand. Place a large lob-worm in a pot of loose earth, and it will push its way down so as to be out of sight in a few minutes. Small as its mouth is, and quite toothless, it can suck down an immense quantity of matter in a short time.

An enormous quantity of earth is taken into the stomachs of animals in grazing. Whether they like earth or not, they cannot help eating it; for the worm-casts stand up erect like so many little towers, and some must be taken in with almost every mouthful of This earth then undergoes another modification, by being grass. spread in the form of dung from the larger animals. That cattle actually enjoy eating earth is certain; a horse fed on hay will lick

often he will stir up the water of a pond with his foot in order to make it muddy before drinking.

It is conceivable that, as there seems a use and a fitness in everything in Nature, the peculiar tower-shaped form of the wormcast is anything but 'accidental.' It may be that a quantity of earth is essential to the digestion of the graminivorous animals, and that it is supplied to them in this way, as well as by roots pulled up in grazing. If so, both the grass that grows and the means of assimilating it are largely due to the unseen workers which swarm in every garden and every meadow. In the space of a single measured square yard of grass I have counted as many as sixty worm-casts, and collected from them earth, roughly speaking, enough to fill a halfpint pot.

Another function of worms is the germination of seeds. Nothing is more common than to see the seed of the ash or the sycamore drawn into a worm-hole and rooting there. Experiments made with worms kept in a flower-pot of moist earth show that they will drag down seeds of almost any kind, that these seeds generally grow, and that the worm feeds on the rootlets. Mr. Darwin is of opinion (p. 115) that small seeds and stones are carried down for the lining the bottom of the holes.

purpose of

A curious proof that worms do nibble roots is the languishing state of a plant in a flower-pot which happens to contain a worm. The worm will grow, is never seen on the surface (for worms seldom come out except at night), and, having no dead leaves to feed on, it will gnaw the rootlets of the plant, which in turn will languish. Generally, a few pellets of black earth will be found under the aperture at the bottom-an indication of the nature of the malady. Turn your pot upside down, and you will find your enemy in the form of a lob-worm, coiling itself among the roots. I sprinkled some canaryseed round three worm-holes in my garden, and the very next morning considerably more than half had been dragged down each hole. The next morning every seed was gone, and not by birds, for I watched the seeds in the day-time. Moreover, I found seeds sticking in the holes.

About three years ago, I made many careful experiments on the food and habits of the earth-worm, the results of which were published in Nos. 162 and 163 of Science Gossip,' and reprinted in Natural History Rambles' by J. E. Taylor. They agree in nearly every respect with Mr. Darwin's observations. But they differ in one important particular. Mr. Darwin says (p. 30) that worms are very fond of fresh raw meat. Many attempts to get them to eat any kind of meat, while kept in a flower-pot, were failures, though bits of stick, string, leaves, feathers, straw, &c., were readily drawn into their holes, and seeds scattered on the surface were always removed.

The intelligence shown by worms in drawing in leaves nearly