Page:The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (1881).djvu/182

 house where the lady lived, the castings were not collected at such short intervals of time as those on the terrace; consequently the loss of fine earth during rainy weather must have been greater in this than in the last case. The castings moreover were more sandy, and in collecting them during dry weather they sometimes crumbled into dust, and much was thus lost. Therefore it is certain that the worms brought up to the surface considerably more earth than that which was collected. The last collection was made on October 27th, 1871; i.e., 367 days after the square had been marked out and the surface cleared of all pre-existing castings. The collected castings, after being well dried, weighed 7.453 pounds; and this would give, for an acre of the same kind of land, 16.1 tons of annually ejected dry earth.

(1.) Castings ejected near Nice within about a year, collected by Dr. King on a square foot of surface, calculated to yield per acre 14.58 tons.

(2.) Castings ejected during about 45 days on a square yard, in a field of poor pasture at the bottom of a large valley in the Chalk, calculated to yield annually per acre 18.12 tons.

(3.) Castings collected from a square yard on an old terrace at