Page:The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (1881).djvu/18

 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 Élie de Beaumont, wrote about my "singulière théorie," and objected that it could apply only to "les prairies basses et humides;" and that "les terres labourées, les bois, les prairies élevées, n'apportent aucune preuve à l'appui de cette manière 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. Von Hensen estimates that there are