Page:The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (1881).djvu/234

 The nature of the beds immediately beneath the vegetable mould in some of the sections is rather perplexing. We see, for instance, in the section of an excavation in a grass meadow (Fig. 14), which sloped from north to south at an angle of 3° 40′, that the mould on the upper side is only six inches and on the lower side nine inches in thickness. But this mould lies on a mass (25½ inches in thickness on the upper side) "of dark brown mould," as described by Mr. Joyce, "thickly interspersed with small pebbles and bits of tiles, which present a corroded or worn appearance." The state of this dark-coloured earth is like that of a field which has long been ploughed, for the earth thus becomes intermingled with stones and fragments of all kinds which have been much exposed to the weather. If during the course of many centuries this grass meadow and the other now cultivated fields have been at times ploughed, and at other times left as pasture, the nature of the ground in the above section is rendered intelligible. For worms will continually have brought up fine earth from below, which will have been stirred