On the number of worms which live within a given space.—­We will now show, first, what a vast number of worms live unseen by us beneath our feet, and, secondly, the actual weight of the earth which they bring up to the surface within a given space and within a given time.  Hensen, who has published so full and interesting an account of the habits of worms, calculates, from the number which he found in a measured space, that there must exist 133,000 living worms in a hectare of land, or 53,767 in an acre.  This latter number of worms would weigh 356 pounds, taking Hensen’s standard of the weight of a single worm, namely, one gram.  It should, however, be noted that this calculation is founded on the numbers found in a garden, and Hensen believes that worms are here twice as numerous as in corn-fields.  The above result, astonishing though it be, seems to me credible, judging from the number of worms which I have sometimes seen, and from the number daily destroyed by birds without the species being exterminated.  Some barrels of bad ale were left on Mr. Miller’s land, in the hope of making vinegar, but the vinegar proved bad, and the barrels were upset.  It should be premised that acetic acid is so deadly a poison to worms that Perrier found that a glass rod dipped into this acid and then into a considerable body of water in which worms were immersed, invariably killed them quickly.  On the morning after the barrels had been upset, “the heaps of worms which lay dead on the ground were so amazing, that if Mr. Miller had not seen them, he could not have thought it possible for such numbers to have existed in the space.”  As further evidence of the large number of worms which live in the ground Hensen states that he found in a garden 64 open burrows in a space of 141/2 square feet, that is, 9 in 2 square feet.  But the burrows are sometimes much more numerous, for when digging in a grass-field near Maer Hall, I found a cake of dry earth, as large as my two open hands, which was penetrated by seven burrows, as large as goose-quills.

[Illustration]

TWO FOPS AMONG THE FISHES

(FROM GLEANINGS FROM NATURE.)[7]

BY W. S. BLATCHLEY.

[7] Copyright by W. S. Blatchley, 1899.

I.—­THE RAINBOW DARTER.

“Little fishy in the brook.”

[Illustration]

Not the one “daddy caught with a hook,” but another, too small for the hook, too small for the frying-pan, too small for aught else but beauty, and gracefulness of form; and yet not the young of a larger fish, but full grown of himself.  In every brook in the State he may be found, yea, even in the rill, no more than a foot in width, which leads away from the old spring-house on the hillside.  You will not find him swimming about like the minnows in the still, deep water of the stream, but where the clear, cold water is rushing rapidly over the stones of a ripple he makes his home.  There he rests quietly on the bottom, waiting patiently for his food, the larvae or young of gnats, mosquitoes, and other such insects, to float by.