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Performance Performance. Then, the gods noticed some small clay scraps that had been dropped and decided to create worms, which they instructed to live underground and eat soil — although they could come to the surface from time to time in search of anything they found edible.
What worms eat may have engaged a few good minds over the centuries, but none more positively than the questing intellect of Charles Darwin. A life of observations, investigations, conclusions and pronouncements culminated in the fusty title The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms. This was his last work, published in , six months before his death, and probably his least remembered. He estimated that an acre of midth-century arable land, the result of centuries of gentle pummelling and fertilisation by farm animals and traditional toil by countrymen, contained 53, earthworms.
He further calculated that, over the course of a year, they moved 15 tons of soil to the surface — a process known to agrology as bioturbation. It is a marvellous reflection that the whole of the superficial mould over any such expanse has passed, and will pass again every few years, through the bodies of worms. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so import-ant a part in the history of the world as these lowly organised creatures.
His experiments to determine earthworm sensitivity or otherwise to light, warmth and sound included placing lamps, candles and hot pokers close to them, blowing tobacco smoke over them, sounding a tin whistle and playing a piano close by and having his son play a bassoon loudly.
Down House, Kent, the home of Charles Darwin. In the garden at the family home, Down House in Kent, he determined that worms exploring the surface chose cabbage, carrot, celery and horseradish before other vegetables, that they preferred fallen wild cherry leaves above all others and that they pulled the leaves into their holes by the tips.
Darwin also measured, over almost three decades, the sinkage of a large stone caused by worm activity below. The bassoon and the stone are among the exhibits displayed in the house, now the Darwin Museum.
Research into worms took a serious turn from the mid 20th century, with some 30 scientific papers published since Modern assessment has shown that he hugely underestimated worm populations.
Even poor soil sustains , worms per acre — astonishingly, the figure for fertile farmland is 1. At the sharp end, ongoing worm count surveys by the farming community are encouraged during the impressively named World Worm Week, which was held between and and supported by the NFU and the Soil Association www. A suitably eccentric and bibulous English rustic event, the even more grandly named Blackawton International Festival of Worm-charming, occurs in Devon on May 9. A worm digests half its own bodyweight in a hour period, taking food from the soil itself and from decayed plant material that it has dragged into its tunnel using a sensitive fleshy lobe, the prostomium, located above the mouth.
Analysis of the soil layer influenced by worm secretions and castings, known as the drilosphere, has identified a richness in nitrogen, phosphorus and organic matter that encourages microbial communities and macroaggregate formation. Furthermore, worm movement to and from the surface by means of short stiff bristles, called setae, constitutes a pumping action that helps to aerate the soil. Rainwater and plant roots follow worm tunnels to depths they would otherwise not reach, at once draining and stabilising.
The value of worms is inestimable. Without the silent labours of the army beneath our feet, the soil would be almost sterile. To call anyone a worm is unthinkingly disrespectful to worms.
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