Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/638

622 of a new earth-worm. The species is very large, and, compared with our common angle-worm, it is very curious. It has multiplied in the hot-houses of the department so as to have become a real pest. It is believed to have been introduced from Japan in the earth with the plants imported in the expedition under Commodore Perry. Mr. Glover seems to think it is the same as the worm now doing much damage to pot-plants in the hot-house conservatories of England, and quotes Mr. Fish in the English Gardener's Chronicle, who speaks of "the eel-worm" as "probably a tropical relation of the common earth-worm, as it cannot live out-of-doors in the climate of England, and scarcely subsists in a greenhouse, but revels in the temperature of a plant-store or orchideous house. It differs from the common worm in its mode of locomotion, and in several of its habits. It comes out at night on walls, stone floors, etc., and is as quick as an adder in its movements when disturbed. It seems impossible to eradicate it; it appears to breed with extraordinary rapidity, and is endowed with great muscular power, so much so that it is somewhat difficult to hold a large specimen between the thumb and finger. Lime-water, which is a sovereign remedy against the common earth-worm, appears to have little influence on it, and the only effective mode of destruction is to turn out the soil from the pot and catch and kill the intruder, taking care, however, not to knock or jar the plant, as this worm, instead of coming to the surface on being disturbed, like the common worm, will instantly recede to the centre of the ball of earth and remain there undisturbed. Mr. W. Baird speaks of a worm under the name of Megascolex (Perichæta) diffringens, found in three different gardens in England, in hot-stove houses, which is probably the same as the eel-worm referred to by Mr. Fish."

If, in the blatant ethics of the pot-house politician, "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," in a sense certainly of equal importance it behooves that, even in disseminating these matters for the common good, science should dictate the method, and the economist practise the care that shall conserve the good while it separates the bad. But only of its best and noblest minds can the age exact the task of separating wisely and well its blessings and its bane.