The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, with Observations on Their Habits
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Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin (1809–19 April 1882) is considered the most important English naturalist of all time. He established the theories of natural selection and evolution. His theory of evolution was published as On the Origin of Species in 1859, and by the 1870s is was widely accepted as fact.
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Reviews for The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, with Observations on Their Habits
17 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This little book is much shorter and more easily readable than most of Darwin's works. One of his final works, it is not as bound up in the wordy Victorian style, but still he manages to have the unmistakable Darwin style, packing the small volume with myriad examples, drawings, and tons of evidence. One of the first major works on earthworms, Darwin helped establish this humble creature in its proper place as an ecologically important species.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This little book is much shorter and more easily readable than most of Darwin's works. One of his final works, it is not as bound up in the wordy Victorian style, but still he manages to have the unmistakable Darwin style, packing the small volume with myriad examples, drawings, and tons of evidence. One of the first major works on earthworms, Darwin helped establish this humble creature in its proper place as an ecologically important species.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Most amazing...Darwin's theories in a nutshell, but also this is perhaps the one work in his oeuvre where the reader can most easily discover a sense of the man and his astute powers of observation and reason -- his mind at work, his humanity, and his love for nature.His last book, it outsold "Origin of the Species" during his lifetime.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Darwin’s little book on earthworms was the last of his scientific works, published in the year before his death in 1882 and more than 20 years after the great work, On the Origin of Species. The Formation of Vegetable Mould has an autumnal feeling; much of it is based on observations and experiments by Darwin and his sons William and Horace in the gardens and fields surrounding their home, Down House in Kent. Darwin’s interest in worms and their contribution to the geology of landforms long preceded the formulation of his evolutionary theory. He first published on worms in 1837 and concluded that the entirety of the vegetable humus that constitutes the surface soil of England has passed many times and continued to pass through their intestinal canals. Millions upon millions of tons each year, in his estimate. In this last work Darwin links evolutionary theory and geology in his response to Mr DT Fish who disputed his account of the magnitude of the effects of bioturbation of the English land surface by worms. Fish thought worms too small and weak to be capable of the ‘stupendous’ work attributed to them. Darwin responded:‘Here we have an instance of that inability to sum up the effects of a continually recurrent cause, which has so often retarded the progress of science, as formerly in the case of geology, and more recently in that of the principle of evolution’.Though Darwin was mainly concerned with effects of bioturbation of the soil by worms his observation of their habits led him wonder ‘how far they acted consciously, and how much mental power they displayed.” In his second chapter he discusses the question of their intelligence at some length, concluding that their behaviour in manoeuvring leaves to shield the mouths of their burrows showed a degree of adaptability in their behaviour suggestive of a capacity to learn by experience. He tested them by restricting their choice of leaves to unfamiliar varieties and small triangles of paper and observing the attempts to draw the unfamiliar leaves and paper into their burrows. He concluded that, deaf and blind as they were, the worms acquired a tactile notion of the shape of these objects and learned by experience the ways in which they might be manipulated. His observations led him to surmise that they might ‘deserve to be called intelligent, for they then act in nearly the same manner as would a man in similar circumstances’. There is much else besides, in praise of worms. Darwin devotes another chapter to the ways in which the remnants of Roman buildings, in particular their tessellated floors, have been preserved under the steady accumulation of vegetable mould from worm casts. Darwin must have enjoyed writing this last little book about worms. There is a sense of quiet exuberance in his prose. And moments of delight for the reader, as in the sinuous Latinity of his discussion of their gizzards: ‘In the same manner as gallinaceous and struthious birds swallow stones to aid in the trituration of their foods, so it appears to be with terricolous worms. The gizzards of thirty eight of our common worms were opened…’My edition of The Formation of Vegetable Mould, which I rescued from the discard pile of a charity bookshop, is a curiosity in its own right. It was published in California in 1976 by the Bookworm Publishing Company, an imprint apparently now defunct with a catalogue that included such titles as ‘Harnessing the Earthworm’, ‘Let an Earthworm be your Garbageman’ and ’Raising the African Night Crawler’.
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The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, with Observations on Their Habits - Charles Darwin
THE FORMATION OF VEGETABLE MOULD THROUGH THE ACTION OF WORMS WITH OBSERVATIONS ON THEIR HABITS.
by
Charles Darwin
Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied in any way without
the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
The Formation Of Vegetable Mould Through The Action Of Worms With Observations On Their Habits.
Charles Darwin
Introduction.
CHAPTER I—Habits Of Worms.
CHAPTER II—Habits Of Worms—Continued.
CHAPTER III—The Amount Of Fine Earth Brought Up By Worms To The Surface.
Weight Of The Castings Accumulated At The Mouth Of A Single Burrow.
Summary Of The Four Foregoing Cases.
Summary Of The Thickness Of The Mould Accumulated Over Objects Left Strewed On The Surface, In The Course Of Ten Years.
CHAPTER IV—The Part Which Worms Have Played In The Burial Of Ancient Buildings.
Measurements By Dr. H. Johnson Of The Thickness Of The Vegetable Mould Over The Roman Ruins At Wroxeter.
CHAPTER V—The Action Of Worms In The Denudation Of The Land.
CHAPTER VI—The Denudation Of The Land—Continued.
CHAPTER VII—Conclusion.
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin was born on 12 February 1809, in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, UK. He is best known for his pioneering work in evolutionary theory; establishing that all species of life have descended from common ancestors through a process of ‘natural selection’. This theory of evolution was published in the 1859 book, On the Origin of Species, a text which has become a seminal work of modern science.
Darwin was the fifth of six children of the wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin, and his wife Susannah Darwin (née Wedgwood). He was the grandson of two prominent abolitionists: Erasmus Darwin on his father’s side, and Josiah Wedgwood on his mother’s side. Darwin spent his early education in the local Shrewsbury School as a boarder, before moving to Edinburgh in 1825 to study medicine at the University. Darwin’s early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical studies however. He found the medical lectures dull, and the surgery distressing. Instead, he helped investigate marine invertebrates in the Firth of Forth with Robert Edmond Grant. This neglect of medical studies annoyed his father, who sent Darwin to Christ’s College, Cambridge, in order to undertake a Bachelor of Arts degree - as the first step towards becoming an Anglican parson. As Darwin was unqualified for the Tripos, he joined the ordinary degree course in January 1828. He successfully graduated in 1831, but continued his investigations into the natural world, particularly partaking in the popular craze for beetle collecting. On his graduation, Darwin was invited to join the voyage of the HMS Beagle, with Captain Robert FitzRoy - a journey which lasted almost five years and traversed the globe. The journal of this voyage on the HMS Beagle (published in 1839) established Darwin as a popular author; he detailed his time spent investigating geology and making natural history collections whilst on land. He kept careful notes of his observations and theoretical speculations, and at intervals during the voyage his specimens were sent to Cambridge University. When the Beagle reached Falmouth, Cornwall, on 2 October 1836, Darwin was already a celebrity in scientific circles. Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin began detailed investigations in 1838 – leading to the conception of his theory of natural selection. Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, Darwin needed time for extensive research and his geological work had priority. He was in the process of writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russell Wallace sent him an essay which described the same idea, prompting the immediate joint publication of both of their papers.
Despite repeated bouts of illness during the last twenty-two years of his life, Darwin’s work continued. Having published On the Origin of Species as an abstract of his theory in 1859, he pressed on with experiments, research, and the writing of what he saw as his magnum opus. The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication of 1868 was the first part of Darwin’s planned ‘big book’, and included his unsuccessful hypothesis of pangenesis; an attempt to explain heredity. It was a moderate commercial success and was translated into many languages. This was followed by a second part, on natural selection, but it remained unpublished in his lifetime.
Darwin also examined human evolution in specific, and wrote on sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871). This text was shortly followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, and a series of books on botany, including Insectivorous Plants, The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom, and The Power of Movement in Plants. In his last book he returned to The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (1881). By this time, Darwin’s health was failing however, and in 1882, he was diagnosed with ‘angina pectoris’; a disease of the heart. Darwin died shortly after this diagnosis, at Down House, Kent, on 19 April 1882, and was honoured with a major ceremonial funeral. He is buried at Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton. As a result of his scientific work, Darwin has been described as one of the most influential thinkers in history.
INTRODUCTION.
The share which worms have taken in the formation of the layer of vegetable mould, which covers the whole surface of the land in every moderately humid country, is the subject of the present volume. This mould is generally of a blackish colour and a few inches in thickness. In different districts it differs but little in appearance, although it may rest on various subsoils. The uniform fineness of the particles of which it is composed is one of its chief characteristic features; and this may be well observed in any gravelly country, where a recently-ploughed field immediately adjoins one which has long remained undisturbed for pasture, and where the vegetable mould is exposed on the sides of a ditch or hole. The subject may appear an insignificant one, but we shall see that it possesses some interest; and the maxim de minimis non curat lex,
does not apply to science. Even Elie de Beaumont, who generally undervalues small agencies and their accumulated effects, remarks: La couche tres-mince de la terre vegetale est un monument d’une haute antiquite, et, par le fait de sa permanence, un objet digne d’occuper le geologue, et capable de lui fournir des remarques interessantes.
Although the superficial layer of vegetable mould as a whole no doubt is of the highest antiquity, yet in regard to its permanence, we shall hereafter see reason to believe that its component particles are in most cases removed at not a very slow rate, and are replaced by others due to the disintegration of the underlying materials.
As I was led to keep in my study during many months worms in pots filled with earth, I became interested in them, and wished to learn how far they acted consciously, and how much mental power they displayed. I was the more desirous to learn something on this head, as few observations of this kind have been made, as far as I know, on animals so low in the scale of organization and so poorly provided with sense-organs, as are earth-worms.
In the year 1837, a short paper was read by me before the Geological Society of London, On the Formation of Mould,
in which it was shown that small fragments of burnt marl, cinders, &c., which had been thickly strewed over the surface of several meadows, were found after a few years lying at the depth of some inches beneath the turf, but still forming a layer. This apparent sinking of superficial bodies is due, as was first suggested to me by Mr. Wedgwood of Maer Hall in Staffordshire, to the large quantity of fine earth continually brought up to the surface by worms in the form of castings. These castings are sooner or later spread out and cover up any object left on the surface. I was thus led to conclude that all the vegetable mould over the whole country has passed many times through, and will again pass many times through, the intestinal canals of worms. Hence the term animal mould
would be in some respects more appropriate than that commonly used of vegetable mould.
Ten years after the publication of my paper, M. D’Archiac, evidently influenced by the doctrines of Elie de Beaumont, wrote about my singuliere theorie,
and objected that it could apply only to les prairies basses et humides;
and that les terres labourees, les bois, les prairies elevees, n’apportent aucune preuve a l’appui de cette maniere de voir.
But M. D’Archiac must have thus argued from inner consciousness and not from observation, for worms abound to an extraordinary degree in kitchen gardens where the soil is continually worked, though in such loose soil they generally deposit their castings in any open cavities or within their old burrows instead of on the surface. Hensen estimates that there are about twice as many worms in gardens as in corn-fields. With respect to prairies elevees,
I do not know how it may be in France, but nowhere in England have I seen the ground so thickly covered with castings as on commons, at a height of several hundred feet above the sea. In woods again, if the loose leaves in autumn are removed, the whole surface will be found strewed with castings. Dr. King, the superintendent of the Botanic Garden in Calcutta, to whose kindness I am indebted for many observations on earth-worms, informs me that he found, near Nancy in France, the bottom of the State forests covered over many acres with a spongy layer, composed of dead leaves and innumerable worm- castings. He there heard the Professor of Amenagement des Forets
lecturing to his pupils, and pointing out this case as a beautiful example of the natural cultivation of the soil; for year after year the thrown-up castings cover the dead leaves; the result being a rich humus of great thickness.
In the year 1869, Mr. Fish rejected my conclusions with respect to the part which worms have played in the formation of vegetable mould, merely on account of their assumed incapacity to do so much work. He remarks that considering their weakness and their size, the work they are represented to have accomplished is stupendous.
Here we have an instance of that inability to sum up the effects of a continually recurrent cause, which has often retarded the progress of science, as formerly in the case of geology, and more recently in that of the principle of evolution.
Although these several objections seemed to me to have no weight, yet I resolved to make more observations of the same kind as those published, and to attack the problem on another side; namely, to weigh all the castings thrown up within a given time in a measured space, instead of ascertaining the rate at which objects left on the surface were buried by worms. But some of my observations have been rendered almost superfluous by an admirable paper by Hensen, already alluded to, which appeared in 1877. Before entering on details with respect to the castings, it will be advisable to give some account of the habits of worms from my own observations and from those of other naturalists.
CHAPTER I—HABITS OF WORMS.
Nature of the sites inhabited—Can live long under water— Nocturnal—Wander about at night—Often lie close to the mouths of their burrows, and are thus destroyed in large numbers by birds— Structure—Do not possess eyes, but can distinguish between light and darkness—Retreat rapidly when brightly illuminated, not by a reflex action—Power of attention—Sensitive to heat and cold— Completely deaf—Sensitive to vibrations and to touch—Feeble power of smell—Taste—Mental qualities—Nature of food—Omnivorous— Digestion—Leaves before being swallowed, moistened with a fluid of the nature of the pancreatic secretion—Extra-stomachal digestion— Calciferous glands, structure of—Calcareous concretions formed in the anterior pair of glands—The calcareous matter primarily an excretion, but secondarily serves to neutralise the acids generated during the digestive process.
Earth-worms are distributed throughout the world under the form of a few genera, which externally are closely similar to one another. The British species of Lumbricus have never been carefully monographed; but we may judge of their probable number from those inhabiting neighbouring countries. In Scandinavia there are eight species, according to Eisen; but two of these rarely burrow in the ground, and one inhabits very wet places or even lives under the water. We are here concerned only with the kinds which bring up earth to the surface in the form of castings. Hoffmeister says that the species in Germany are not well known, but gives the same number as Eisen, together with some strongly marked varieties.
Earth-worms abound in England in many different stations. Their castings may be seen in extraordinary numbers on commons and chalk- downs, so as almost to cover the whole surface, where the soil is poor and the grass short and thin. But they are almost or quite as numerous in some of the London parks, where the grass grows well and the soil appears rich. Even on the same field worms are much more frequent in some places than in others, without any visible difference in the nature of the soil. They abound in paved court- yards close to houses; and an instance will be given in which they had burrowed through the floor of a very damp cellar. I have seen worms in black peat in a boggy field; but they are extremely rare, or quite absent in the drier, brown, fibrous peat, which is so much valued by gardeners. On dry, sandy or gravelly tracks, where heath with some gorse, ferns, coarse grass, moss and lichens alone grow, hardly any worms can be found. But in many parts of England, wherever a path crosses a heath, its surface becomes covered with a fine short sward. Whether this change of vegetation is due to the taller plants being killed by the occasional trampling of man and animals, or to the soil being occasionally manured by the droppings from animals, I do not know. On such grassy paths worm- castings may often be seen. On a heath in Surrey, which was carefully examined, there were only a few castings on these paths, where they were much inclined; but on the more level parts, where a bed of fine earth had been washed down from the steeper parts and had accumulated to a thickness of a few inches, worm-castings abounded. These spots seemed to be overstocked with worms, so that they had been compelled to spread to a distance of a few feet from the grassy paths, and here their castings had been thrown up among the heath; but beyond this limit, not a single casting could be found. A layer, though a thin one, of fine earth, which probably long retains some moisture, is in all cases, as I believe, necessary for their existence; and the mere compression of the soil appears to be in some degree favourable to them, for they often abound in old gravel walks, and in foot-paths across fields.
Beneath large trees few castings can be found during certain seasons of the year, and this is apparently due to the moisture having been sucked out of the ground by the innumerable roots of the trees; for such places may be seen covered with castings after the heavy autumnal rains. Although most coppices and woods support many worms, yet in a forest of tall and ancient beech-trees in Knole Park, where the ground beneath was bare of all vegetation, not a single casting could be found over wide spaces, even during the autumn. Nevertheless, castings were abundant on some grass- covered glades and indentations which penetrated this forest. On the mountains of North Wales and on the Alps, worms, as I have been informed, are in most places rare; and this may perhaps be due to the close proximity of the subjacent rocks, into which worms cannot burrow during the winter so as to escape being frozen. Dr. McIntosh, however, found worm-castings at a height of 1500 feet on Schiehallion in Scotland. They are numerous on some hills near Turin at from 2000 to 3000 feet above the sea, and at a great altitude on the Nilgiri Mountains in South India and on the Himalaya.
Earth-worms must be considered as terrestrial animals, though they are still in one sense semi-aquatic, like the other members of the great class of annelids to which they belong. M. Perrier found that their exposure to the dry air of a room for only a single night was fatal to them. On the other hand he kept several large worms alive for nearly four months, completely submerged in water. During the summer when the ground is dry, they penetrate to a considerable depth and cease to work, as they do during the winter when the ground is frozen. Worms are nocturnal in their habits, and at night may be seen crawling about in large numbers, but usually with their tails still inserted in their burrows. By the expansion of this part of their bodies, and with the help of the short, slightly reflexed bristles, with which their bodies are armed, they hold so fast that they can seldom be dragged out of the ground without