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Show 68 HABITS OF WORMS. CrrAP. II. for 1. t 1. s c1 e ar tl1 a t the.y would not hav. e failed in drawing them in by the base or middle. T h. e I eaves of a .1c1 oreiOo 'n plant were next search e d 1.c 0r, the blades of which were not 1nore p01. n t ed t ow ards the apex than towar.d s the base. This proved to be the case Wlth those of a I a burnum (a hybrid betwe. en Cyti us alpinus and laburnum) for on doublmg the terminal over the basal half, they generally fitted exactly; and when th~re was any d1· .cu£' erenc e , the basal half was a httle the narrower. It might' therefore ' have been expected that an almost equal number of these leaves would have been drawn in by the tip and base, or a slight excess i~ favour ~f the latter. But of 73 leaves (not Included m the first lot of 227) pulled out of wormburrows, 63 per cent. had been drawn in by the tip; 27 per cent. by the base, and 10 per cent. transversely. We here see that a far larger proportion, viz., 27 per cent. were drawn in by the base than in the case of lime leaves, the blades of which are very broad at the base, and of which only 4 per cent. had thus been drawn in. We may perhaps account for the fact of a still larger CrrAP. II. THEIR INTELLIGENCE. 69 proportion of the laburnum leaves not having been drawn in by the base, by worms having acquired the habit of gen~rally drawing in leaves by their tips 'tnd thus avoiding the foot-stalk. For the basal margin of the blade in many kinds of leaves forms a large angle with the foot-stalk; and if such a leaf were drawn in by the foot-stalk, the ba al margin would come abruptly into colltact with the ground on each side of the burrow, and would render the drawing in of the leaf very difficult. Nevertheless worms break through their habit of avoiding the foot-stalk, if this part offers them the most convenient means for drawing leaves into their burrows. The leaves of the endless hybridised varieties of the Rhododendron vary much in shape; some are narrowest towards the ba ·e and others towards the apex. 1\..fter they have fallen off, the blade on each side of the midrib often becomes curled up while drying, sometimes along the whole length, sometimes chiefly at the base, sometimes towards the apex. Out of 28 fallen leaves on one bed of peat in my garden, no less than 23 were narrower in the basal quarter than in the terminal quarter |
