Page:The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (1881).djvu/126

 unusual thickness. In this case the worms, judging from the castings, had pushed the cinders away on all sides and had not swallowed any of them. In another place, burrows similarly lined, passed through a layer of coarse coal-cinders, 3½ inches in thickness. We thus see that the burrows are not mere excavations, but may rather be compared with tunnels lined with cement.

The mouths of the burrow are in addition often lined with leaves; and this is an instinct distinct from that of plugging them up, and does not appear to have been hitherto noticed. Many leaves of the Scotch-fir or pine (Pinus sylvestris) were given to worms kept in confinement in two pots; and when after several weeks the earth was carefully broken up, the upper parts of three oblique burrows were found surrounded for lengths of 7, 4, and 3½ inches with pine-leaves, together with fragments of other leaves which had been given the worms as food. Glass beads and bits of tile, which had been strewed on the surface of the soil, were stuck into the interstices between the pine-leaves; and these interstices were likewise plastered with the