Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1901-04-19
Washingtun Standard
FISH WORMS FOR BAIT.
Facts About the Angle Worm


-. Louis Globe Democrat.
Where he lives, what he does, how
he works. l. an eyoluti0nist. Eats
everything digs deep holes; turns up
the soil; buries things; is useful to
man.
Earthworms have a reason for being
ever 80 much more important than to
serve rs bait for fishermen. For all
their lowly estate, few creatures have
done more for mankind. Earthworms
are not merely the original plowmen
they have brought about the condi-
ton of the earth's surface that makes
other blowing possible and profitable.
Field crops, for the most part, grow
and iced upon vegetable mold-the
layer of warm, light brackish earth
resting upon the subsoil. Save by
grac" OF the earthwOrm, vegetable
mold would exist only in those places
where dead leaves and decaying
growths generally resolve themselves
into their original elements. The
earthworm which may be described as
an embodied appetite, eats everything,
animal matter, green leaves and dead
ones, twigs, leaf stalks, small stones
and earth. The residuum OF all he
casts up on the surface at the rate
throughout pastures and garden
ground of some ten tons year. Con-
tinue the process hundred years, or
even fifty, and many inches of fine,
friable, productive soil result.
Beyond all that their burrows let
down light and air from the subsoil.
Sometimes the burrows run six feet
deep. In winter the worms hibernate
in roundish chambers at the bottom.
The chambers are lined with very
small stones or hard, rounded seed.
A dozen worms sleep together, knotted
into a squirming ball. It is only in
the winter sleep that they are thus
gregarious. At other times they 60
in pairs. Though they do not in cap
tivity appear to be very sensitive Of
cold or heat, in hot, dry weather they
60 almost as far down as they do in
winter.
Eyeless. they have yet certain per-
ceptions of sight. retreating before it
to their burrows. Vibration also af-
fects them--hence, say the country
folk, the woodcock's habit of drum.
ming to call them out of the ground.
Their sense of smell is acute, and by
the help Of it they find their food
either laying on the surface or under
meath it. As soon as it is found, the
worms drag it to their burrow by pres
sure of their smooth, ringed bodies
and by literally eating out the earth
ahead. The digestive apparatus in-
cludes crop and gizzard, like those
OF birds. After the manner of birds,
the gizzards arc kept supplied with
small stones to serve as millstones in
grinding down the food.
The burrows are plastered all round
with the finely chewed earth and kept
shape often long after they are unten-
anted. From the dead leaves which
makes 80 large part of their food,
the worms secrete humus acids, which
attack and help dissolve the rocks
buried in the earth. Thus the earth.
worms do not merely tranform the
soil chemically and mechanically, but
add to the bulk of it-since coil OF
every kind comes from the disintegra-
ton OF rocks. Further many leaves
dragged down into the burrows are
only partly eaten and decaying, fur
nish gases which permeate the soil
and counteract upon its mineral ele.
ment.
Earthworms are the best allies of
those gentlemen the antiquaries. A
coin, an arrow head, q spear point, An
inscribed slab, tesselated pavement.
they bury, surely, safely, to await the
day of resurrection. The burying il
done in two ways-by castings spread
above the thing to be buried, and by
undermining the soil underneath.
Earth honeycombed with burrows
sinks in times of heavy rain or frost.
Thus, in course of thousand years,
an object may be many feet under the
surface, yet remain exactly as it fell.
Indeed, the wise men declare the
earthworms, in the mass. keep the
whole face of the planet in State of
evolution.