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Show 122 llABITS OF WORMS. CHAP. IT. three cubic centimeters. They were, therefore, of small size in comparison with those often found in England; for six large castings from a field near my house averaged 16 cubic centiIneters. Several species of earth-worms are common in St. Catharina in South Brazil, and Fritz Muller informs me" that in most parts of ''the forests and pasture-lands, the whole soil, "to a depth of a quarter of a metre, looks as if it "had passed repeatedly through the intestines "of earth-worms, even where hardly any cast" ings are to be seen on the surface." A gigantic but very rare species is found there, the burrows of which are sometimes even two centimeters or nearly-!- of an inch in diameter, and which apparently penetrate the ground to a great depth. In the dry climate of New South Wales, I hardly expected that worms would be common; but Dr. G. Krefft of Sydney, to whom I applied, after making enquiries from gardeners and others, and from his own observations, informs me that their castings abound. He sent me some collected after heavy rain, and they consisted of little pellets, about ·15 inch in diameter; and the blackened CHAP. H. r:l'IIEIR WIDE DIS'l'RIBUTION. 123 ·andy earth of which they were forn1ed still cohered with considerable tenacity. The late Mr. John Scott of the Botanic Gardens near Calcutta made many observations for me on worms living under the hot and humid · climate of Bengal. The castings abound almost everywhere, in jungles and in the open ground, to a greater degree, as he thinks, than in England. .After the water has subsided from the flooded rice-fields, the whole surface very soon becomes studded with castings-a fact which much surprised Mr. Scott, as he did not know how long worms could survive beneath water. They cause much trouble in the Botanic garden, "for "some of the finest of our lawns can be kept "in anything like order only by being almost "daily rolled; if left undisturbed for a few days "they become studded with large casting .'' These closely resemble those described as abounding near Nice ; and they are probably the work of a species of Pericbrota. They stand up like towers, with an open passage in the cent.re. .A figure of one of these castings from a photograph 1s here given (Fig. 3). The |